Author Topic: After Apollo?: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program (book)  (Read 21685 times)

Offline Blackstar

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I've seen speculation by Cold War historians that if Kennedy had not been assassinated America's involvement in Viet Nam would have been very much smaller, never expanding much beyond advisors on the ground. They based this on the idea that Kennedy, having come through the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis, would had a strong enough anti-communism reputation to avoid having to demonstrate his opposition through military entanglements. If so, that would have left much more money for the moon, as well as probably denying Nixon the presidency.

That is a common myth in most history text books. Looking at his record with the Berlin Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs I question that. Personal opinion based on the stands he took, Kennedy would have ratcheted up VietNam. How the war would have progressed after that point is anyone's guess. I also do not think we would have had as large a space program. There is a good chance that he would have closed the money valve sooner. That said, Johnson would have never launched the Great Society social programs, which also drained a large amount of money.

Yes. I think that the people who pushed this argument--that JFK would have kept us out of Vietnam--are generally regarded as JFK supporters, the people who tried hard to perpetuate the Camelot myth (essentially: "Kennedy was a saint and never would have done what that evil LBJ did and get us mired in Vietnam"). I think that other, less biased, historians have found the evidence for this claim to be weak. If I remember correctly, most of the claim is based upon a single document indicating that JFK did not want to introduce more troops into Vietnam. But there were other documents that indicated that a lot of options were under discussion at that time, so it's wishful thinking to believe that the one document represents the likely outcome, and all the others were wrong (or had been rejected).

It is risky when playing with alternative history ideas. You have to be careful and recognize your assumptions and the strength or weakness of the evidence.

Offline wolfpack

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I have finished the book.  Took a while to get through because it was so disturbing to me the dismantling of the Apollo program.  It was shocking to me to read how Apollo 16 and 17 were almost canceled by Nixon.  A big reason they were not canceled was so Nixon could win California in the 1972 election.  How Apollo 16 was moved so it wouldn't coincide with Nixon's trip to China in February 1972.  Makes me wonder what would have happened if a Democratic President was elected in 1968 instead of Nixon.

Perhaps he should have flown 18, put his "secret" tapes on it, and THEN cancelled Apollo. ;)

Offline Rocket Science

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As someone who registered for the draft upon turning 18, I don't see things turning out all much differently in Vietnam Military advisers went from 700 under Eisenhower to 16, 000 under Kennedy up to his death. Once the domino fell we we in it on an offensive role by default by being there in the worlds eyes. If Robert Kennedy became president I believe that Apollo would have still winded down after his brother's Moon challenge was accomplished. I supported the Kennedys and "perhaps" the war may have ended sooner with all the riots going on. We would have still the cost of the war to deal with and the political fallout of the draft. We saw the similar winding down with Shuttle as when station was complete, the flaw was not having and operation crew program online line as a condition creating the dreaded "gap"....
"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
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Offline Kansan52

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The education this site has provided has change my mind that 'it's Nixon's fault' (a position I've held since Nixon was in office) to 'it was inevitable'. International politics created the conditions for Apollo to be proposed and flown. There was no political need for Apollo by the time it succeeded . Sure, we see the benefits of the program beyond the political but we don't control the budget.

Offline Rocket Science

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The education this site has provided has change my mind that 'it's Nixon's fault' (a position I've held since Nixon was in office) to 'it was inevitable'. International politics created the conditions for Apollo to be proposed and flown. There was no political need for Apollo by the time it succeeded . Sure, we see the benefits of the program beyond the political but we don't control the budget.
In an ideal world Saturn V tooling and jigs should have been secured and mothballed as a national investment. Apollo could have kept flying on Saturn 1B to Skylab until Shuttle was fully operational with liquid boosters which I wanted... But we all drank the Kool-Aid back then... So maybe only just a "little blame"...
"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
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Offline Proponent

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There's a memo dated May 24, 1972 that discuss long term storage of Saturn V, well into the 80's. Main issue: lost of skills, and money.

I used to have a copy of what I think was that memo, but, if I recall correctly, it addresses only the Saturns -- likely for launching space stations.  I don't believe it covers the preservation of the Apollo spacecraft and systems.

By the way, if anyone has a copy of that memo, I'd be grateful for a copy.

Offline Proponent

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I really enjoyed Logsdon's book.  In fact, it was the first piece of non-fiction I've read in a while that I found difficult to put down.  It's pretty clear that NASA was due for a fall: the moon landing having been accomplished, there was no possibility of a similarly aggressive follow-on program.  Not only was Nixon not interested, but for the most part, neither was Congress.*

Maybe Apollos 18 & 19 would have flown under another president.  Nixon seems to have been quite traumatized by Apollo 13.  But -- and this is what I found most interesting -- parts of NASA were not that keen on continuing Apollo either, partly because of risk aversion, and partly because what they really wanted to do was develop new hardware.  And that last factor largely answers the question that had most interested me before I read the book, namely why an Earth-orbit-focused program based on Apollo hardware never got much consideration.  It seems to me that would have been the best course.

The thing I'd really like to know more about is the Flax Committee, which in the run-up to the Shuttle decision was charged with exploring options for post-Apollo human spaceflight.  A wide range of options were under consideration, including Shuttles of various sizes, Titan III-launched spaceplanes and others.  Unfortunately, the Flax Committee never produced a final report, and googling has revealed no interim reports or other records.

As yg1968 says, Nixon shifted NASA's human spaceflight program to a capabilities-driven path.  But I think Logsdon's tone is a little bit more negative than that.  Though I don't have the book in front of me, Logsdon's phraseology is that Nixon essentially turned the manned program into a self-licking ice cream cone.  It's purpose was to fly astronauts, so that America could have astronauts -- and, incidentally, re-elect Nixon in 1972.  In particular, there had been pressure from OMB to build a smaller Shuttle, but the decision to go with the larger one appears to have been based largely on the fact that the larger Shuttle would generate more employment in California.

NASA's argument for the larger Shuttle was that the smaller version preferred by OMB would not have been able to carry big military payloads, so the Air Force would have had to keep the Titan III in service.  In retrospect, that would have been a very good thing.

Logsdon tends to confirm an accusation I've hurled at the Nixon administration in the past.  Why would you entrust NASA, of all agencies, to develop and operate a vehicle which was tasked primarily with being economical?  NASA had done the impossible -- after being given a blank check.  But running something for economic gain requires a different mindset, a different skill set.  At the higher levels of the Nixon administration, this never seems to have been appreciated.  But then, if the main point of the Shuttle was just to fly astronauts, it didn't much matter either.



* When listening to congressional hearings in which members of Congress praise Apollo and lament the loss of the "Apollo spirit," I'm am tempted to yell at my computer:  "But Senator, don't you know that your predecessors, sitting in the very same room that you're in today, decided it was a waste of money?"

Offline gosnold

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In particular, there had been pressure from OMB to build a smaller Shuttle, but the decision to go with the larger one appears to have been based largely on the fact that the larger Shuttle would generate more employment in California.

NASA's argument for the larger Shuttle was that the smaller version preferred by OMB would not have been able to carry big military payloads, so the Air Force would have had to keep the Titan III in service.  In retrospect, that would have been a very good thing.

The shuttle requirements suffered from huge miscommunication problems between the White House, DoD and NASA. Early on it was found the shuttle needed a high flight rate to be interesting? For NASA that meant launching DoD payloads, at the same rate as during the 1960s. The DoD knew the move from from film-return systems to the electro-optical system and the general increase in satellite reliability would dramatically reduce the launch rate, but that was unknown to NASA.  Also, the DoD needed a very large payload bay to launch its larger satellites, wanted to launch heavy payloads, and also wanted a large cross-range capability, all of which drove the final design.

Offline QuantumG

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That is a common myth in most history text books. Looking at his record with the Berlin Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs I question that. Personal opinion based on the stands he took, Kennedy would have ratcheted up VietNam. How the war would have progressed after that point is anyone's guess.

Sometimes I do wonder if I'm the only one who liked the ending of Stephen King's 11/22/63.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Blackstar

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...to 'it was inevitable'. International politics created the conditions for Apollo to be proposed and flown.

Nothing in history is inevitable. There are lots of ways that simple random chance can have major impacts on outcomes.

There is a great example during the Revolutionary War. General George Washington was on Long Island and was defeated and the Redcoats were moving in on Washington's men. He ordered an evacuation. But Washington stayed behind to oversee the evacuation. The sun was coming up, Washington had not left, the British were closing in, and at the last minute a fog closed in and concealed Washington's retreat. If the fog had not closed in, it is entirely possible that Washington would have been captured and the revolution could have collapsed. So what was inevitable about that? Change the atmospheric conditions just a little bit and the course of the war would have changed dramatically.

http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/battle-of-long-island/

« Last Edit: 08/06/2016 01:01 am by Blackstar »

Offline Archibald

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There's a memo dated May 24, 1972 that discuss long term storage of Saturn V, well into the 80's. Main issue: lost of skills, and money.

I used to have a copy of what I think was that memo, but, if I recall correctly, it addresses only the Saturns -- likely for launching space stations.  I don't believe it covers the preservation of the Apollo spacecraft and systems.

By the way, if anyone has a copy of that memo, I'd be grateful for a copy.

Part of it can be found in "Exploring the unknown" volume IV.  Now if someone has the complete document, I'll be interested, too.
« Last Edit: 08/06/2016 03:59 pm by Archibald »
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline Proponent

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By the way, anyone who doesn't have access to a copy of Logsdon's book may get the flavor of it from the attached article by Logsdon that was made available on the website of the journal Space Policy.

Offline Proponent

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Attached is a Bellcomm memo possibilities for post-Apollo lunar exploration, written at a time when Apollos 18 & 19 were in doubt but not yet canceled.  (I figure, you can't have too many Bellcomm memos!)

Offline Blackstar

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I've been working on space history for 25 years now. I was one of the editors on the first two "Exploring the Unknown" volumes mentioned up-thread. I worked for Logsdon as a grad student and I also helped edit his manuscript for "After Apollo?" So I've been steeped in a lot of these issues for many years. Yet I still found a number of things in "After Apollo?" to be surprises. In particular:

-the breadth and depth of animosity within the Nixon administration to continuing any further deep space exploration;
-the opposition within NASA itself to continuing lunar missions beyond the first six or so;
-the degree to which some Nixon administration officials wanted to get rid of NASA entirely, or at least human space flight.

For a long time I clung to the view that a lot of the blame for what happened after Apollo could be laid at the feet of NASA administrator Tom Paine and the Space Task Group. I thought that when Paine/STG proposed a Mars mission that it was so expensive, so ambitious, that it poisoned the well and no other options, such as continuing lunar missions, were possible. If only they had been more realistic in their proposal (like Nixon's own transition group for space), then maybe they could have kept the Apollo hardware and continued missions beyond low Earth orbit.

But as "After Apollo?" makes clear, this wasn't even an option. NOBODY wanted more lunar missions, not even NASA. And Mars was just too big and too expensive. But it wasn't even the case that more Skylab missions were under consideration. The Nixon administration was looking at various options that even included changing NASA's name and making it a technology agency, perhaps with no human spaceflight at all. They just did not see the point. And if the opposition had been weaker, it is possible that we could have ended human spaceflight in the early 1970s and maybe even stopped robotic space exploration as well. Maybe the Soviets would have then been the only ones doing this stuff.

Although I am not thrilled with the shuttle program that we got, considering that most of the other policy options were for far less, I think we were pretty lucky.


Offline Archibald

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By the way, anyone who doesn't have access to a copy of Logsdon's book may get the flavor of it from the attached article by Logsdon that was made available on the website of the journal Space Policy.

A very good read. After Apollo is now on my (expensive) Amazon wish list (among 10 books totalling 300 euros)
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline RanulfC

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By the way, anyone who doesn't have access to a copy of Logsdon's book may get the flavor of it from the attached article by Logsdon that was made available on the website of the journal Space Policy.

A very good read. After Apollo is now on my (expensive) Amazon wish list (among 10 books totalling 300 euros)

Keep a sharp eye out on the prices, for some reason they tend to change for what seems no rhyme or reason and what it quotes might not be the lowest price available :)

I was looking to order a paperback reference book I'd lost a few years ago when my wife looked over my shoulder and said "NO!" in no uncertain terms. Looking closer the one Amazon defaulted to was a "used-paperback" copy listed for $243.00! I found one for a much more reasonable $25.00 but... :)

« Last Edit: 08/08/2016 04:16 pm by Chris Bergin »
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline Blackstar

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By the way, anyone who doesn't have access to a copy of Logsdon's book may get the flavor of it from the attached article by Logsdon that was made available on the website of the journal Space Policy.

A very good read. After Apollo is now on my (expensive) Amazon wish list (among 10 books totalling 300 euros)

Keep a sharp eye out on the prices, for some reason they tend to change for what seems no rhyme or reason and what it quotes might not be the lowest price available :)

I was looking to order a paperback reference book I'd lost a few years ago when my wife looked over my shoulder and said "NO!" in no uncertain terms. Looking closer the one Amazon defaulted to was a "used-paperback" copy listed for $243.00! I found one for a much more reasonable $25.00 but... :)

Yeah, you gotta double check before you click. Some Amazon sellers use automated software that increases their prices above their competitors by a few cents. What happens sometimes is that two sellers with the same software end up in an arms race and soon their books cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and they never know it. Nobody ever sells at these prices.

You can also wait around Christmas when there are some deals, although books don't always fall into those deals.


Offline RanulfC

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I really enjoyed Logsdon's book.  In fact, it was the first piece of non-fiction I've read in a while that I found difficult to put down.  It's pretty clear that NASA was due for a fall: the moon landing having been accomplished, there was no possibility of a similarly aggressive follow-on program.  Not only was Nixon not interested, but for the most part, neither was Congress.

Well really "nobody" was interested, (which actually answers part of your question below) as everyone except NASA had other priorities. And as noted, NASA itself was 'done' (at least for the time being) with manned moon missions.

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Maybe Apollos 18 & 19 would have flown under another president.  Nixon seems to have been quite traumatized by Apollo 13.  But -- and this is what I found most interesting -- parts of NASA were not that keen on continuing Apollo either, partly because of risk aversion, and partly because what they really wanted to do was develop new hardware.  And that last factor largely answers the question that had most interested me before I read the book, namely why an Earth-orbit-focused program based on Apollo hardware never got much consideration.  It seems to me that would have been the best course.

I kind of doubt that 18/19 would have flown under another President given even NASA was saying that the chances of another, or worse accident was getting higher. It seems to be that the fall from awestruck to just-another-job for Nixon was realizing that NASA wasn't as confident as they projected themselves to be. As far as I can find there was no draft speech given to be presented if Apollo-8 or 10 failed but Nixon was handed speeches that specifically said "say this if we can't get them home again" and I think that really shook him. I know it shook me, and this is after being the in military where you always plan to deal with failure even if you never admit it.

Apollo-1 tarnished the NASA image, Apollo-13 brought home this wasn't a "routine" operation and the fact that everyone pretty much agreed another accident COULD happen, (was in fact likely to happen) and the need for NASA to find another "goal" now that the Lunar one was met it's actually amazing we got as far as 17.

Apollo could have been re-purposed for Earth orbital duty but at that point it was mostly directed at Lunar operations and major changes would have to be made, and if you're going to go that direction why not go all the way and build the "right" system?

Hence the idea of a Space Station and a shuttle vehicle (note small "s" there) to service it. But NASA was no longer set up to do an incremental, step-by-step, slow and modest program, (which is all they had the budget and support for) either organizationally or mentally. The next 'program' had to have as much investment of NASA facilities and personnel as possible, attract support and interest from industry in a sizable amount, push technological boundaries, and be something that at least appears to encompass an "Apollo-like" effort.

The "requirements" do not address the goals you'll note, they address the institutional "needs" of NASA itself and pretty obviously those "needs" continue to drive how NASA plans and organizes its operations.

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The thing I'd really like to know more about is the Flax Committee, which in the run-up to the Shuttle decision was charged with exploring options for post-Apollo human spaceflight.  A wide range of options were under consideration, including Shuttles of various sizes, Titan III-launched spaceplanes and others.  Unfortunately, the Flax Committee never produced a final report, and googling has revealed no interim reports or other records.

As noted in the book the actual decisions were already being made outside the Committee before it began to meet to discuss the subject! NASA had already made some preliminary (and binding) decisions on what they wanted and were, disinclined to say the least, in alternatives no matter who was suggesting them. Also several aerospace companies were putting pressure on NASA and the government to invest in certain development programs and suggesting major job segments were on the line if this was not done. (Logsdon notes Aerojet pretty much told everyone without a large new engine development program they would go out of business and shut down within a few years)

I'd also like to see an expanded and more detailed account of what went on in the Flax Committee, (oh there's a wealth of articles, books and reports on "flax" and the "flax committee" but it's the wrong one :) ) as some of the mentioned conflicts and discussions are tantalizing to say the least. (And offer so many interesting PODs for alt-history time-lines :) ) But in the end, (in OTL) the major decisions were already made and anything the Flax Committee had recommended probably would have been ignored anyway.

As yg1968 says, Nixon shifted NASA's human spaceflight program to a capabilities-driven path.  But I think Logsdon's tone is a little bit more negative than that.  Though I don't have the book in front of me, Logsdon's phraseology is that Nixon essentially turned the manned program into a self-licking ice cream cone.  It's purpose was to fly astronauts, so that America could have astronauts -- and, incidentally, re-elect Nixon in 1972.[/quote] 

Actually the conclusion that NASA's human spaceflight program actually "shifted" is what Logsdon seems to be pointing out. That may have been at least part of the intent of the shift in placing NASA as just another agency with equal but not superior priority but it's obvious that NASA couldn't make that shift and no one in either the White House or Congress was going to force them. The idea was to turn NASA into a capability rather than a goal driven organization but everyone seemed to forget that since 1962 NASA had been torn down and rebuilt to BE a goal driven organization and they had neither the temperament nor broad experience base to significantly change.

Human space flight has pretty much always been a "self-licking-cone" in that when you get right down to it the main reason to fly humans is flying humans. This has only gotten more clear, and note there is NOTHING wrong with that because at some point, (if you're honest) you are going to need them AND it's the oft-stated but barely supported end-goal of making humanity a space-faring species. The main problem is that end-goal takes a very deliberate, long-term, step-by-step process that takes time, money and effort and most likely won't give you huge PR boosts and massive budgets. It would most certainly not resulted in a man-on-the-Moon is less than a decade.

Unfortunately that's last is what NASA was built to do and not only can't it change but no one in government wants them to. "Capability" is seen and approached like a "goal" with the result that once each goal is achieved, effort and support are focused on the next goal even if the last goal wasn't fully met. Hence the Shuttle followed Apollo, the ISS followed the Shuttle, (and outlasted it) and now we focus on another goal of "capability" which if anyone is paying attention ignores the ISS to focus on "BLEO" capability...

Things have in fact NOT changed and even when NASA has tried to pursue a more 'capability' driven path it's own organization and history along with government and industrial pressure combine to prevent it from treating that "capability" as a singular goal and focus which becomes a program and consumes the whole of the NASA effort and budget.

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In particular, there had been pressure from OMB to build a smaller Shuttle, but the decision to go with the larger one appears to have been based largely on the fact that the larger Shuttle would generate more employment in California.

NASA's argument for the larger Shuttle was that the smaller version preferred by OMB would not have been able to carry big military payloads, so the Air Force would have had to keep the Titan III in service.  In retrospect, that would have been a very good thing.

OMB wanted a smaller "shuttle" launched on an expendable booster where as NASA wanted a larger Shuttle that would be both a personnel and cargo booster. The former is only good for delivering a small number of crew and supplies to an orbital destination, (space station) which NASA already knew it wasn't going to get at the moment. The latter had the capability from the start of delivering a LOT of cargo (space station modules specifically when they were allowed to do so) and a small crew and being it's own limited-space-station until a real one came along.

The problem as Logsdon points out is that a large Shuttle was going to be big, cost a lot to develop and use UNLESS it was used so much, (read exclusively by all US and allied users because that IS what the economics report is saying) and is so cheap to operate that the operations price is very, very low. Hence the "promise" of the Shuttle.

Another thing to note in the book is that the Military did not initially take the idea that the Shuttle was going to actually carry military payloads seriously. There was an assumption that NASA would get it's Shuttle but the military would still use Titan's for it's needs. The book notes meetings between DoD/Air Force and NASA higher-ups to get across that the "military requirements" that NASA was given were not only less 'rigid' than NASA was saying but also that the utility of the Shuttle as a DoD/AF LV was highly in question. It was already too late though, by this time OMB had acknowledged that IF everything NASA was predicting was correct then the Shuttle would be required to be almost all the US's future launch capability. The White House and enough of Congress were convinced as well to make it happen.

We know what happened but outside of NASA, some of it's contractors and some of the military aerospace community none of the 'problems' with the initial analysis and expectations seemed insurmountable for a nation that had put a man on the Moon less than 10 years after their first manned suborbital flight...

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Logsdon tends to confirm an accusation I've hurled at the Nixon administration in the past.  Why would you entrust NASA, of all agencies, to develop and operate a vehicle which was tasked primarily with being economical?  NASA had done the impossible -- after being given a blank check.  But running something for economic gain requires a different mindset, a different skill set.  At the higher levels of the Nixon administration, this never seems to have been appreciated.  But then, if the main point of the Shuttle was just to fly astronauts, it didn't much matter either.

Because NASA was all there was and in fact the problems with NASA's organization and set-up were know which is why an initial suggestion was to turn them into a combination of ARPA and an "application" Agency for aerospace and science projects but, (as noted) it was the inability of NASA to perform the latter half of the requirement that was a major reason in not doing so. So it becomes a choice between shutting NASA down and either regulating "spaceflight" to only the military, building up another "agency" to handle "operations" of (and probably development as well since someone would have to direct and organize that before operations could begin) American spaceflight or leaving NASA in place and working within the existing structure and capabilities of NASA as a whole while having NASA re-invent itself to handle the tasking.

As noted, the first one would cause massive disruptions and huge job losses not only in NASA but in many of it's contractors as well. Then trying to justify organizing, budgeting and getting Congressional approval for another space-related "agency" (all while being taken to task by the media, public, Congress, and industry for "destroying" American spaceflight in the first place) AND the design, development and operations of a new space launch system for that "agency" to handle. The second one leaves pretty much the existing structure in place and regulates NASA to "just another agency" with over-watch on American spaceflight and the system they are going to design, develop and deploy anyway. The only snag is that NASA management, Congress and the Administration have to work together to fundamentally change the way NASA works and avoid continually repeating the pattern of the Apollo Moon program which in no way lends itself to the development and operation of a economic driven... Oh... Right.

So, lets review what the purpose of American Manned Spaceflight is again; American Astronauts in space. Right, it's not like they have anywhere to go or anything to actually do after all...

Randy
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline RanulfC

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An aside on the Flax Committee;

The book mentions that there were a couple members with a "Libertarian" bent, (no names given) who suggested in the initial meeting that space access be "privatized" and operated by private industry which was roundly ignored and IIRC the member left and never came back.

This was probably linked to the late 70s/early 80s idea that the Libertarian's were all for selling the US space program to the highest bidder and junking the Space Program but with hindsight sounds more like a very early concept of Commercial Crew/Cargo. Though it has to be recalled that at the time there was no "destination" for such and each flight would in effect be an orbital delivery of a satellite with little or no commercial incentive for manned flights...

The business case for satellite delivery, (obviously) could be made and assuming that NASA is still tasked with some type of human spaceflight mission the question is could a similar business case be made for human space flight? I recall that it often was during the SPS/Space Colony discussions but to a one those always "assumed" that the government would build the first facilities with the private sector providing transportation and/or the government operating the really heavy launch vehicles and facilities.

Given everything we know about the workings inside the various players at the time Apollo "ended" I have my doubts that anything like this could have happened but on the other hand it's rather obvious that NASA is going to have issues, (and did) developing and operating an "economical" spacecraft. So what if NASA were regulated to launching TSTO Saturn-Vs with heavy payload occasionally to support a Space Station program but was instructed to devolve supply and crew capability to the private sector?
(Technically they could as the only significant operator for human spaceflight in America, though it's possible the issue could be forced through by a combination of Congressional and Administration pressure, but unless NASA sees it as a survival issue and they might that's a fight they would not want to make)

The Shuttle as we know it, (and in fact most of the Shuttle Phase-A if not most of Phase-B designs would out) would never "win" but there were a number of concepts that would have worked for a more limited role. Apollo or Gemini would have to be used for interim operations but then again the "ferry" would need to wait on NASA putting up the Space Station in the first place.

Probably should take this one to the alt-history boards instead but I'd like some opinions :)

Randy
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline Blackstar

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Probably should take this one to the alt-history boards instead but I'd like some opinions :)

Here's one: I think you're using quotation marks when you generally mean to italicize.

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