Author Topic: Senators on the Shuttle.  (Read 1988 times)

Offline carmelo

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Senators on the Shuttle.
« on: 01/15/2009 02:37 am »
A little curiosity:
why the senators Jack Garn and Bill Nelson were send in space?

Offline dwmzmm

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Re: Senators on the Shuttle.
« Reply #1 on: 01/15/2009 02:43 am »
A little curiosity:
why the senators Jack Garn and Bill Nelson were send in space?

I think Jim and JimO can answer that question.
Dave, NAR # 21853 SR.

Offline Skylab

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Re: Senators on the Shuttle.
« Reply #2 on: 01/15/2009 03:21 am »
The original question should have included John Glenn.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Senators on the Shuttle.
« Reply #3 on: 01/15/2009 04:07 am »
Nelson was a congressman, not a senator, at the time.

And the Glenn flight is different.  Not in the same league.

To get to your question, the simple answer is that it was done to gain favor for NASA within the Congress.  Officially the explanation was that Senator Garn and congressman Nelson had oversight of NASA and therefore it would benefit them in their oversight duties if they saw what NASA did firsthand.  But it was a craven decision.  However, I believe that neither man was on an appropriations committee, so neither one was in a position to actually give NASA more money.

That said, you should also consider the larger picture, which is that NASA had convinced itself and was trying to convince everybody else that the space shuttle was safe, routine, and prolific.  They also had a spacecraft with extra seats.  So they flew a lot of people as passengers.  This included a lot of foreign astronauts (remember that there was a Saudi Prince) and there were plans to fly a journalist as well as a teacher.  If you're practically giving these seats away, why not fly members of Congress?

An interesting sidenote to this is that the USAF planned on doing the same thing, flying Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge on the first Vandenberg shuttle launch carrying a USAF payload, the Teal Ruby experimental infrared satellite.  That's the equivalent of NASA flying members of Congress.

The Glenn situation was different.  That was not really about currying favor with a member of Congress.  It was more of a PR stunt.  My personal opinion is that the Garn and Nelson flights were definitely something that NASA should not have done, whereas the Glenn flight was more acceptable.

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