From President Kennedy to President Reagan, through good times and bad, the American space program has represented national challenge, inspiration, pride and–always–the ”right stuff” in the face of fear and unknown odds.
Alan Shepard, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, and the scores of other American astronauts pioneered a whole new pantheon of American heroes.
But from the beginning, too, the American space program has been a major and continuing focus of political, military and economic controversy. In recent years the battle has heated up, as the civilians at NASA were increasingly hardpressed by a Pentagon hungry for a greater role in space.
The tough infighting pushed the space agency into ever-greater efforts to cement the loyalty of politicians and the public to its programs with imaginative projects. On Tuesday, one of those efforts, which made a teacher from New Hampshire the first civilian in space, ended in NASA`s worst disaster as the space shuttle Challenger exploded in early flight and stunned a nation. NASA was, in fact, born in controversy and wounded national pride.
The Soviets got there first. On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the first ”Earth satellite,” Sputnik I, which weighed a mere 184 pounds but alarmed America and set off a great national drive to catch up and to re-dynamize American scientific education.
The U.S. indisputably claimed the lead in space exploration on July 20, 1969, when Armstrong walked on the Moon.
It also served to lessen the concerns and fears inspired by the space program`s only, until Tuesday, major failure. That was the 1967 accident in which three astronauts were killed when their Apollo 1 capsule caught fire on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy.
But it was not long after the Armstrong triumph and successive Moon landings that doubts about the space program–its cost, its worth and its direction–surfaced again.
To a considerable extent, the space program–and the billions of tax dollars that fueled it–had always been at the mercy of public opinion.
People were happy in the beginning to pick up the check for catching up with the Soviets. They loved seeing the American flag planted on the Moon.
No one could argue that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hadn`t run up an astonishingly good record in terms of achievement, efficiency and safety. Space travel came to seem safer than driving a car in the supermarket parking lot.
But pretty soon people and politicians were asking, What`s next and what`s the point?
The bonanza of scientific and technological information gained from the space program was not enough to sustain public interest and support.
To keep the program going, to keep Congress in the mood to go on funding it, NASA was under almost constant pressure to come up with new goals, new spectaculars, a new sense of national involvement and pride.
Blacks, women, a Hispanic American joined the astronaut corps and got their turn in space.
Where public support had once been automatic and enthusiastic, now it had to be drummed up with publicity, promotion, public relations and other gimmicks.
Only on Sunday, National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle, discussing the popularity of professional football on television, was quoted in the New York Times magazine as saying: ”It`s entertainment and it`s live news. It`s hard to find a program like that, except maybe a space shot, and that`s getting a little boring now.”
Boring. That was something NASA could not survive.
Where in the beginning the astronauts were presented as almost a-breed-apart heroes, now NASA began promoting the idea that anyone can do it. There was talk of building factories in space, of colonizing the Moon.
Private enterprises were offered the chance to buy space in the cargo hold of space shuttles. Foreign countries were invited to launch satellites from U.S. space vehicles.
Foreign scientists and celebrities–a Mexican, a German, a Frenchman, a Saudi Arabian prince–went along for the ride on American space shuttles.
To help keep the tax dollars flowing, NASA invited two members of Congress, Sen. Jake Garn of Utah and Rep. Bill Nelson of Florida, to become the first civilian passengers in space. Neither could claim any special expertise or usefulness for such a flight–except one: Garn was a Republican, Nelson was a Democrat, and both served on committees that deal with NASA appropriations.
Then President Reagan, in the midst of his 1984 re-election campaign, came up with an idea that ended in tragedy Tuesday.
On Aug. 27, 1984, while trying to counter opposition from teachers unions angered about administration budget cuts for education, Reagan announced that the first ”citizen passenger” in space would be a schoolteacher.
This would point up ”the crucial role of teachers and education” in American society, he said, and ”I can`t think of a better lesson for our children and our country.”
The teachers unions were not impressed. Said Mary Hatwood Futrell, president of the National Education Association: ”We don`t need to send a teacher into outer space. We need to send teachers into classrooms fully equipped and ready to help students learn.”
This year, journalists are scrambling for the privilege of being the first professional newsperson in space. One of more than 1,500 applicants, including the venerable Walter Cronkite, is to be selected in the spring for a flight next fall.
Another problem that the civilians who controlled the nation`s space program hit was competition with the military. NASA has traditionally relied upon heavy publicity to foster public support for its programs. Any military applications were played down.
Early last year, though, the Pentagon draped a cloak of secrecy over a mission of the space shuttle Discovery, because it was used to launch a $300 million spy satellite designed to eavesdrop on Soviet radio and satellite communications from an orbit 22,500 miles above the Equator.
The Pentagon`s demand for secrecy clashed with NASA`s preference for exposure, and it resulted in a highly publicized dispute that focused attention on the growing military use of the shuttle.
NASA officials also criticized the Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a plan to launch some satellites with surplus Titan and Atlas missiles rather than using the space shuttle.
Air Force officials said its plans were motivated by the service`s desire to get adequate access to space, but officials with the oceanic and atmospheric agency echoed some of the economic criticisms that also were beginning to plague the shuttle program.
Every time the nation hits a budget crunch, the space program–and most recently shuttle missions–become an inviting target for savings. By some estimates, the true cost of delivering payloads by shuttle is about $5,000 a pound, or about 20 times greater than was projected when the project was being sold to Congress, and higher than the cost of using conventional rockets that the Air Force calls ”expendable launch vehicles.”
The oceanic and atmospheric agency estimated it would save $90 million by using Air Force expendable launch vehicles to launch three advanced weather satellites over the next seven years.
NASA said the plans by the Air Force and weather officials would cost its shuttle program $500 million in lost fees, and the Air Force eventually cut a deal in which it agreed to use the shuttle four times a year for its programs while relaying on its refurbished expendable launch vehicles for its remaining space shots.
Meanwhile, the nation`s space program also came under competitive pressure from the Soviets. In 1985, for example, the USSR staged 96 space launches, compared with 17 for the U.S., nine of which were shuttle launches. In 1980, the first year of the shuttle program, NASA was estimating that the shuttle would fly up to two dozen missions a year, or a total of 77 by year-end 1985. Tuesday`s disaster marked only the 25th launch in the program`s history.
To cope with its problems, NASA has scheduled increasing numbers of shuttle flights to build support for its program and to lower the costs. The more the space vehicles are used, NASA officials say, the more cost effective they will be as other agencies and private companies lease space in the shuttle cargo bay, which goes for $74 million a mission.
Under current plans, NASA had scheduled 15 shuttle launches for 1986, nearly double the total for 1985, as it pushed for a goal of 24 flights annually by the end of the decade.
New scientific projects were planned, too, including one that would launch a large orbital telescope that would allow astronomers to look close to the edge of the universe.
But as NASA increased the number of flights, problems also surfaced, tarnishing the shuttles` otherwise impeccable image of dependability. Last summer, for example, Challenger lost power in one of its three engines while traveling 16,000 miles an hour less than six minutes after takeoff. A heat sensor indicated that a second engine was in trouble and Challenger ended up reaching a lower orbit than planned.
Moreover, late last year NASA administrator James Beggs took a leave of absence after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that, before he joined NASA, he and several other people tried to defraud the Pentagon on an antiaircraft gun contract while he was an executive of General Dynamics Corp. Beggs vowed he was innocent of the charges and that he would fight them. The agency now is being run by William Graham, who is acting NASA chief.
