Destination: Low Earth Orbit

by Kate Doolan.

NASA picture of Apollo 17 crew
(NASA photo of Apollo 17 crew - the last men to be sent to the Moon)

In August 1969, not long after the landmark Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, President Richard Nixon gave a reception for the crew. During the evening, an unnamed astronaut raised his glass and toasted, “Here’s to the Apollo program. It is all over.”

Thirty years after the last men walked on the Moon, it is now possible to see that his statement was effectively correct. The United States has only sent two robot explorers, Clementine and Lunar Explorer, back to the Moon. There is a space station in low Earth orbit - the International Space Station which has been subjected to design and budgetary overruns; and a human expedition to Mars is possible, but probably fifteen to thirty years away. The Apollo program is now part of history, and seems inconceivable to anyone who was not alive at the time when Armstrong and Aldrin stepped onto lunar soil.

On 25 May 1961, in a special address to Congress, President John F Kennedy gave America a challenge. He called on the American people to work together to have a man land on the Moon by the end of that decade. It was a mission statement to end mission statements, especially given that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had been in existence for less than three years and had only accumulated 15 minutes' manned spaceflight experience.

In time, his mission statement would make Kennedy immortal and would exemplify the character of his short presidency.

The early to mid sixties were a magnificent time for NASA. The manned Mercury and Gemini flights were successful, robot probes were enroute to other planets and the space program as a whole enjoyed support from the Congress, media and the public. Ambitious plans were underway for a space station, as well as lunar and Martian bases.

Things began to change for NASA in 1966. During that financial year, NASA had reached its peak Apollo budget of six billion dollars - which would be halved by 1970. The reasons were manifold. The Vietnam War, once a small conflict, was turning into a fully fledged war and was reportedly costing the United States nearly a billion dollars a month. Under President Lyndon B Johnson, spending for his “Great Society” programs had also increased.

By 1969, another component had entered the picture: Richard Nixon was elected President. Nixon did not believe that the government should be spending large sums of money on the space program or even social programs. Some prominent Republican politicians were calling for the space program to be scrapped before the first Moon landing, but Nixon ignored their advice.

There was another motive for Nixon to keep the space program going. Should the first lunar landing fail, he could blame the previous Kennedy and Johnson administrations. If the landing was to succeed, Nixon would, by default, pick up the reflected political and international glory that would come America’s way. To that end, he did not appoint a new NASA Administrator. Instead, he kept on Dr Tom Paine, who had been appointed by Lyndon Johnson in late 1968.

In June 1969, Nixon appointed Vice President, Spiro Agnew, to head a Task Force to determine what direction the space program should take in the seventies and eighties.

Following the highly successful flight of Apollo 11 in July 1969, the media and the public began to turn away from the space program. This was partly NASA's fault. In their public statements and literature, they pictured Apollo 11 as the culmination of the Moon program, rather than promoting it as the beginning of a new era of scientific discovery and exploration.

Other reasons included the increasing pressures of poverty, social change and the Vietnam War. Both Congress and the White House noted the change in public attitude towards the space program, and kept this in mind when it came time to consider (and fund) future spaceflight activities. One politician, Ed Koch, who later became Mayor of New York City, stated that the US should not go to Mars while there were rats in New York houses.

In September 1969, Spiro Agnew and his team presented their report to the White House. Nixon let the report sit on his desk and made no comment for four months. In the meantime, he had been to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to witness the Apollo 12 launch. Due to the Presidential presence, Apollo 12 was launched during a thunderstorm, and only the quick action of the crew prevented a launch disaster after the rocket was hit by lightning.

The Task Force report contained some options for the future of the US space program:

  1. A manned journey to Mars in 1983 which would require funding of nine billion dollars per year from 1980 onwards. The final decision would need to be made by 1974.
  2. A Mars expedition to leave Earth by 1986. This would cost eight billion dollars a year from 1980 onwards and would require a commitment by 1977.
  3. Defer a Mars flight until 2000 with a decision to be made by 1990.
    4.

One of the main elements of these plans was the development of a reusable space vehicle that would make “routine” flights to an Earth-orbiting space station. Another requirement would be a rocket that was powerful enough to send humans and their supplies on a Mars journey. A team headed by visionary rocket designer, Dr Wernher Von Braun, had drawn up plans for a nuclear powered rocket engine christened, “Nerva”, which would provide sufficient thrust for both a space shuttle and a Mars vehicle.

These ambitious plans ground to a halt after the 1970 announcement that NASA's budget was to be frozen at three and a half billion dollars until the end of Nixon’s first Presidential term in 1973. In a personal appeal to Nixon, Tom Paine pointed out that NASA would be unable to continue production of the Saturn V booster that was sending Apollo crews to the Moon. Nixon rejected Paine’s appeal.

During January 1970, in response to Nixon’s rejection of the space program, Tom Paine made some tough decisions. Production of the Saturn V booster would cease, Apollo flights 18, 19 and 20 were cancelled, and the launch of the Mars Viking robot spacecraft would be delayed until 1975.

The recommendations of the Agnew Task Force were permanently shelved. After the White House gutted the space program, Tom Paine resigned from NASA in mid-1970. Ironically, that era is now considered to be one of NASA’s finest hours after the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft returned to Earth following an inflight accident which nearly saw the demise of the spacecraft and its astronauts.

Another casualty of the decline of the space program was the human cost: from a peak of 400,000 people nationwide working on the space program during 1965, employment dropped to 180,000 people in 1970. This had a devastating effect in the states that had built up a large aerospace industry around the Apollo program.

The states that were most affected by the slow down were California, Texas, Florida and other southern states which would be electorally important to Richard Nixon in 1972. In order to win a convincing electoral victory, Nixon would need to win these states, so he decided to begin another large space project.

In January 1972, Nixon announced the development of the space shuttle project, which was expected to fly from the mid-seventies onwards and would be the United States’ main access to space for the remainder of the century. As history has shown, the space shuttle has had a chequered career, never living up to its promise of “routine” flights that would make low cost spaceflight possible. Furthermore, the Challenger explosion of 28 January 1986 brought the once-proud NASA to its knees and almost destroyed the US human space program.

At the end of the Apollo program in December 1972, NASA shelved future plans for lunar exploration, due to fiscal restraints. Instead, their efforts were to be concentrated on the development of the space shuttle. Only the most optimistic person would make predictions of a return to the Moon by 2000.

This continued for the remainder of the seventies and the early eighties. From 1981 onwards, debate regarding construction of the space station caused several White House staff members to suggest that NASA consider a lunar base. This was seen by some as a threat to the proposed space station: NASA would not receive any extra money to return to the Moon in the face of massive spending on defence during the first Reagan Administration.

The National Commission on Space, headed by Tom Paine, released its report, “Pioneering the Space Frontier”, in May 1986. This urged space policy makers to seriously consider the idea of a human return to the Moon.

Unfortunately, the detailed and visionary report never received the recognition it deserved, because it was released at almost the same time as the “Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Accident” was issued. The damning Rogers’ Report, as it came to be known, was seen as an indictment of how NASA was operating the space shuttle system. Its release dimmed enthusiasm for a revived lunar program.

In 1987, NASA finally turned its attention to a human return to the Moon. In a report to the NASA Administrator Jim Fletcher, entitled, “Leadership and America’s Future in Space”, astronaut Sally Ride suggested four points:

NASA Administrator Fletcher established the Office of Exploration, which would be responsible for implementing the Ride Report goals by developing the knowledge and technology that would be required.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Apollo 11 in July 1989, President George Bush suggested that America return to the Moon, and land on Mars, by 2019 — fifty years after the first Moon landing.

Unlike the Kennedy declaration twenty eight years earlier, Congress and some sections of the media met Bush’s declaration with hostility. Democrat Dick Gephardt stated that there was no such thing as a free launch any more. It was clear that NASA would not receive a sympathetic hearing for expanded funding. In fact, funding for the Office of Exploration was slashed and eventually the office was closed in 1992.

NASA's immediate future is unlikely to go any further than the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. This sad fact was emphasised by an Apollo astronaut, while he watched a space shuttle launch in 1985: “To think, we could have being going to Mars today.”
NASA photo of Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin on Moon
(NASA Photo - Apollo 11)

Portions of this article appeared in the September 2000 issue of “Spaceflight” magazine.
The author wishes to thank Jody Russell of the Johnson Space Centre and Colin Burgess for their assistance with this article.

FURTHER READING:

“Last Man on the Moon”, Eugene Cernan, St Martins Press, 1999
“A Man on the Moon”, Andrew Chaikan, Viking 1994
“Prescription for Disaster” Joseph Trento, Crown 1987