The Decline of America’s Mission in Space

These are the weeks of space, a post-mortem followed by a plan for future exploration. The detailed National Aeronautics and Space Administration report about the shuttle Challenger is scheduled to reach the President on Friday; the larger subject--recommendations about how America should proceed with its space program--will be delivered later in the month.

Despite the widely held public perception prior to the Challenger explosion that our national space program was riding a wave of success, the facts were otherwise. The National Commission on Space, appointed last year by the President to develop a comprehensive, balanced and long-term national space policy, and the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, have both uncovered problems that are deep-seated and complex. At the heart is a failure among the public and policymakers to support the real nature, purposes and importance of our space enterprise.

In a sense both space commissions have uncovered the real, not-so-hidden weakness that preceded and contributed to the Challenger tragedy. It was not deliberate, merely a weakness of complacency and shortsightedness among the public and the Congress, of timidity and indecisiveness, manifesting in an overburdened and fearful NASA bureaucracy overseeing the decline and growing parochialism of the overall American space endeavor. What accounts for this drift in such a highly visible national program and public asset?

This same question was asked at the time of Sputnik. After the 1957 Sputnik launch, both houses of Congress and the President created special committees to look into the failure of NASA’s predecessor, the old National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, to keep pace with the Soviet Union in space propulsion. These investigating committees found then that governmental leadership and participation were vital to the comprehensive development of science, original research and new technology programs.

The bipartisan creators of NASA fared better. They forged a space program designed to cultivate attention and support among the decision-makers and the American public. NASA was made, in a sense, self-promoting. Research, development and field centers were dispersed around the country. NASA was required to make its activities public information.

Most important, a National Aeronautics and Space Council was established in the office of the President. An institutional memory was thus created to document and facilitate coordination among the many federal departments, agencies and other public and private entities interested in space policy.

Following significant success under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the space council was abolished by Richard M. Nixon in a governmental reorganization act. Before abolishment, in Nixon’s first year as President, a space task force called for a bold and comprehensive program embracing shuttles, space stations, lunar bases, orbital research and manufacturing--even interplanetary travel to Mars between the years 1985-1995. Those ambitious recommendations were remarkably similar to what will be given to the President this month by the National Commission on Space--17 years later. An early look at that report confirms the need for a revitalized effort.

What happened 17 years ago to squelch a once-viable space program? Politics, complacency, the Vietnam War. The space effort needed continued funding at about 4% of the federal budget to accomplish the most ambitious version of the 1969 plan. But with a lunar landing already assured in each year of his first term and raging inflation, Nixon reduced funding, limited his support to the Pioneer and Voyager missions and settled for a less sophisticated shuttle system built at half the cost of the optimum design.

National space policy began its descent during nearly two decades of indecisiveness and timidity. The “built-down” shuttle program was justified by commercial viability, a concept alien to NASA’s research and exploration mission. NASA became an even more “operational” and conventional government agency. Skylab fell, original research declined by 90% and the NASA budget dropped by 1977 to 0.6% of the federal budget, roughly one-fifth of the peak 1966 NASA budget in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The stipulation that NASA programs were to be reauthorized every year was originally designed to focus the attention of Congress on the space program. But annual reauthorization worked against the space effort. The requirement made each program a hostage to inconsistent and unsteady authorizations and priorities. Long-range planning became unclear and confused, linked to the annual whims of the budget cycle.

Such an environment impelled President Reagan to create an ad hoc Senior Interagency Group to coordinate space policy. Then, last spring, he appointed the National Commission on Space. Among the most important recommendations of this national commission are:

--The restoration of the space council in the office of the President.

--The amendment of the NASA Act to permit five-year authorizations to promote consistency and long-range planning.

--A phase-out of NASA’s participation in commercial space transportation after the shuttle era, and a return to its original mission of exploration, research and development.

But even these important “how-to” recommendations may become lost in the ambitious commission blueprint. There are recommendations for 26 major new space vehicles and facilities beyond the space station during the years 1995-2020. And there are visionary prospects: commercial vehicles with private passenger capacity, such as an airport-to-orbit spaceplane by the year 2000; vigorous scientific and planetary exploration; a national space laboratory; a space university; an orbital spaceport with vehicle construction facilities by 2008; a lunar orbital station by 2004; a lunar surface base for research and mining by 2012, and an inhabited Mars spaceport by 2020-25.

While governmental expenditures for such endeavors have enormous economic, defense, foreign policy, scientific and educational benefits, Congress--in the era of Gramm-Rudman--may be deterred by the commission’s $700-billion quarter-century price tag. The civilian space program has sunk so low that these recommendations would require nearly tripling the NASA budget over the next five to 10 years, from $7.7 billion now to about $25 billion in 1996--or roughly 2.5% of the federal budget.

The commission’s report, however, does not make an up-front statement of how much its recommendations will cost each year. Perhaps reflecting the preceding era of timidity, the report veils matters of price, calling merely for a stable annual expenditure, starting in the 1990s. Yet all the recommendations can be implemented at costs of about half the annual expenditures of the Apollo-era NASA in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Should this bold, justified course once again be rejected by a Congress in the throes of a budget crisis, it is imperative that the policy baby not again be thrown out with the program bathwater as in 1969. If the three low-cost suggestions of the commission are followed, then organizational giant steps will have been taken toward eventual implementation of a strong, comprehensive program. This could be the greatest contribution of the National Commission on Space to the current national debate on space policy.