The Space Program under a Bobby Kennedy Presidency

Bomster

Banned
IOTL, President Richard Nixon discontinued the Apollo Program and approved the development of what would become the Space Shuttle. However, assuming that Bobby Kennedy either enters the presidential race earlier or survives his assassination, and goes on to win both the primary and the general elections, what kind of decisions would President Bobby Kennedy have made in regards to NASA? Would he have made the same decision that Nixon made and ended the Moon landings at 17? Would he have continued the moon landings in his brother’s honor, such as going ahead with the scheduled Apollo 18 mission, or perhaps even going on to approve a future Mars landing or Venus flyby (something that was considered in the Apollo applications program)? What do you guys think?
 
IOTL, President Richard Nixon discontinued the Apollo Program and approved the development of what would become the Space Shuttle. However, assuming that Bobby Kennedy either enters the presidential race earlier or survives his assassination, and goes on to win both the primary and the general elections, what kind of decisions would President Bobby Kennedy have made in regards to NASA? Would he have made the same decision that Nixon made and ended the Moon landings at 17? Would he have continued the moon landings in his brother’s honor, such as going ahead with the scheduled Apollo 18 mission, or perhaps even going on to approve a future Mars landing or Venus flyby (something that was considered in the Apollo applications program)? What do you guys think?

I suspect that the odds are that the US space program would have shrunk even more. That may be a good thing, depending on how you view the Shuttle Program.

But Mars landings and Venus flybys would be laughed right out of Congress. Congress wanted a space program that didn't cost as much as a small war and with the technology of the 70s, there was just no way that NASA could put together an interplanetary space program that would fit inside the funding box that Congress would allow. A continued moon program, with a Saturn V being launched once every two years to the moon would be possible, but I don't see anyone being very interested in it since given the money available NASA can EITHER do interesting things with space stations and better launch vehicles OR it can keep going to the moon - and more moon landings just don't offer the same benefits as the revolution that might happen if NASA succeeded in dropping launch costs by an appreciable amount.

Nixon was a genuine fan of the space program, and while he bent with the political and economic winds of the time, he still spent some of his limited political capital to back a big NASA shuttle. Under Bobby Kennedy... Well, to an extent, he has credit from his brother's legacy, and he can spend that credit killing Apollo earlier/shrinking the space program further and announce "mission accomplished". Also, so far as I know, Bobby did not show the same close interest in the space program that Nixon did. And cutting the space program down would free up money in a tight time to be spent on other programs.

So we may have no shuttle at all, or a much smaller shuttle.

On the other hand, in the early 70s, the US aerospace industry was in a painful recession and there was alot of space industry in some important states. As Nixon was thinking about votes in California when he approved the shuttle, Bobby Kennedy might be thinking that he needs an expensive R&D program to keep those important companies and states happy and in business.

There's a possibility that Congress would have funded the US space program a little better with a more politically astute NASA and an executive branch that made space a higher priority, but I have difficulty seeing NASA being more politically astute and I don't see why any president's team would fight harder than Nixon's team when there were so many other fires to worry about. So funding might be a few hundred million dollars higher, but no more. That's maybe enough to fund a small shuttle AND a space station in the 70s. Or enough to fund a better big shuttle. Or enough to fund a space station AND NERVA derived upper stages. It's not enough money to fund anything really big though.

fasquardon
 

Marc

Donor
(Robert please, especially when imagining him a President, he was more of a grown up than most who have run for office these last 50 years.)

I think, hesitantly, that he might have been willing to keep NASA funding at around 2% of Federal expenditures - particularly if he could capture some post-Vietnam revenue. But not much more than that. [Point of comparison, under the Nixon-Ford era it averaged around 1.35%]
What NASA would do with the extra income is tricky: it was such a cauldron of science, military urges, politics, ego and theatre. My guess is at least run through Apollo 20, at best, start the Apollo Extension Program. Not more than that.
 
Just my whimsy, perhaps rfk might press forward on us soviet space cooperation. President Kennedy had called for a joint moon mission. What about a timeline in which von Braun and the chief designer, avoiding his operation, work together? The possibilities!
 
Is there a chance where Shuttle is scrapped and more money is put on important, ie. unmanned, stuff earlier? Could we have more interplanetary probes and space telescopes earlier?
 
Is there a chance where Shuttle is scrapped and more money is put on important, ie. unmanned, stuff earlier? Could we have more interplanetary probes and space telescopes earlier?

I'm not sure that it is fair to call the unmanned stuff more important. But manned spaceflight at that stage was a very long term investment for sure. I can't see the investment being repaid until the 90s at the very soonest (and by repaid, I mean men in space actually being some part of a money-making sector of the US economy, like asteroid mining or SPS construction).

And some more money going to unmanned spaceflight is possible, if you avoid the cuts to the unmanned budget that happened due to the shuttle, but I think manned space flight is too politically important to be cut entirely.

At minimum I reckon the US would be launching men into space on Titan-derived boosters and going to a Salyut-style space station.

fasquardon
 
I'm not sure that it is fair to call the unmanned stuff more important. But manned spaceflight at that stage was a very long term investment for sure. I can't see the investment being repaid until the 90s at the very soonest (and by repaid, I mean men in space actually being some part of a money-making sector of the US economy, like asteroid mining or SPS construction).

And some more money going to unmanned spaceflight is possible, if you avoid the cuts to the unmanned budget that happened due to the shuttle, but I think manned space flight is too politically important to be cut entirely.

Yes, I do agree with you that in very long term manned spaceflight is important, but concentrating on manned spaceflight often obscures the vast and exciting catalogue of scientific discovery achieved by unmanned spacecraft - of which the US was a clear leader during the Cold War right after initial Soviet probes.

At minimum I reckon the US would be launching men into space on Titan-derived boosters and going to a Salyut-style space station.

In retrospect, wouldn't that have been good going?
 
IOTL, President Richard Nixon discontinued the Apollo Program and approved the development of what would become the Space Shuttle. However, assuming that Bobby Kennedy either enters the presidential race earlier or survives his assassination, and goes on to win both the primary and the general elections, what kind of decisions would President Bobby Kennedy have made in regards to NASA? Would he have made the same decision that Nixon made and ended the Moon landings at 17? Would he have continued the moon landings in his brother’s honor, such as going ahead with the scheduled Apollo 18 mission, or perhaps even going on to approve a future Mars landing or Venus flyby (something that was considered in the Apollo applications program)? What do you guys think?

Ok, two (2) key data points in any "Apollo continues..." thread;

(1) even before the politicians got serious about cutting/canx Apollo missions and the program, NASA’s key program managers (Paine, Krantz, Low, and a lot to mission control specialists) wanted to end the lunar landings after the first 2 or 3 (they knew how much risk they were taking, see their books...) and focus on low/middle orbit (AAP) building up experience and improving the systems.

(2) The composition of Congress isn't going to significantly change (it may even be worst with RFK’s coat-tails bringing in more liberal (for the time) Congressmen in 68 & 70. While we beat up Proxmire and Mondale there were a lot of Congress men ready to scale back the space program, IOTL. Tip O'Neil (and a young Nixon White House staffer, named Moynihan tried to tell that to Agnew and this working group...they didn’t listen)

So, a RFK administration (meaning no Agnew.... pushing for Mars!) is likely going to get the recommendation to scale back into flight test mode (endorsed by the men who run the program). Also RFK has the cred (he's JFK's brother).... to "reorient" the program's "focus" to earth orbit/space station ops, and curtail lunar flights.

At best, I see RFK getting (assume 13 goes as OTL) 13-15 (and 15 is a long shot), an extra mission for Skylab 1, and MAYBE Skylab II or a “winged shuttle” program (with a modest budget line item).
 
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