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How President Nixon Saved/Wrecked the American Space Program
MarkWhittington writes John Callahan posted an accountof a talk given by space historian John Logsdon on the Planetary Society blog in which he described how President Richard Nixon changed space policy. The talk covered the subject of an upcoming book, After Apollo: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program. Logsdon argued that Nixon had a far more lasting effect on NASA and the American space program than did President Kennedy, most famous for starting the Apollo project that landed men on the moon.
Nixon came to office just in time to preside over the Apollo 11 lunar mission. At that time, the space program was a national priority due to the Kennedy goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. However by the time Neil Armstrong made that first footstep, public support for large-scale space projects had diminished. Nixon, therefore, made a number of policy decisions that redound to this very day.
Nixon came to office just in time to preside over the Apollo 11 lunar mission. At that time, the space program was a national priority due to the Kennedy goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. However by the time Neil Armstrong made that first footstep, public support for large-scale space projects had diminished. Nixon, therefore, made a number of policy decisions that redound to this very day.
Coincidentally, just today I've read about the NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and related projects and their cancellation again. It really boggles the mind... They basically had a working and thoroughly tested nuclear engine design, ready for use in manned missions to Mars and beyond by the 1970s, which was, ironically, its own downfall:
The RIFT vehicle consisted of a Saturn S-IC first stage, an SII stage and an S-N (Saturn-Nuclear) third stage. The Space Nuclear Propulsion Office planned to build ten RIFT vehicles, six for ground tests and four for flight tests, but RIFT was delayed after 1966 as NERVA became a political proxy in the debate over a Mars mission. The nuclear Saturn C-5 would carry two to three times more payload into space than the chemical version, enough to easily loft 340,000 pound space stations and replenish orbital propellant depots. Wernher von Braun also proposed a manned Mars mission using NERVA and a spinning donut-shaped spacecraft to simulate gravity. Many of the NASA plans for Mars in the 1960s and early 1970s used the NERVA rocket specifically, see list of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century.
The Mars mission became NERVA's downfall. Members of Congress in both political parties judged that a manned mission to Mars would be a tacit commitment for the United States to decades more of the expensive Space Race. Manned Mars missions were enabled by nuclear rockets; therefore, if NERVA could be discontinued the Space Race might wind down and the budget would be saved. Each year the RIFT was delayed and the goals for NERVA were set higher. Ultimately, RIFT was never authorized, and although NERVA had many successful tests and powerful Congressional backing, it never left the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
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Read the article. They don't credit Nixon with starting Apollo. They don't even credit him with ending Apollo though he had some say in what final missions flew or didn't. What they credit him with is the basic policies and strategies NASA has followed for the last forty years as well as it's current status as yet another domestic program.
"Reagan's economic changes doomed Bush Sr due to debt but helped Clinton with a the good economy."
Thanks for the chuckle.
"But his support of a puppet in Iran led to a overthrow by an extremist regime that will be in power for decades more."
The revolution happened while Carter was president.
"Clinton's economic decisions are affecting us now through joblessness (Perot had it right - a big sucking sound as jobs leave)."
Perot was right, but it was Clinton's financial deregulation and capture of the remaining regulation that tanked the economy, and that's what caused the spike in unemployment. What NAFTA did was suck away *good* jobs.
"Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off."
You ever hear of ISIS? The national debt? Massive wealth inequality?
Play Command HQ online
But his support of a puppet in Iran led to a overthrow by an extremist regime that will be in power for decades more.
That particular one goes back a bit further than Reagan by a couple of decades itself. 1953 Iranian coup d'état IMHO Putting the puppet dictator in power in the first place is the root cause of a hell of a lot of radical islamic behavior.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
it's a word. Look it up.
Nixon was a "complicated" man, with a "complicated" presidency. I personally think the guy did a lot of rotten shit, although through the course of time, I have come to view him more with pity rather than contempt. He was a deeply unhappy and insecure man with (it seems to me) few, if any, real friends.
Reading this article, I get the sense of his pragmatic realism, especially in light of a country which was at-the-time engaged in a very costly war, and a nation riven with socio-economic strife. (It is a good thing those days are behind us).
What evidence is there that Kennedy would not have taken the necessary steps to fulfill his own famous proclamation?
The most important step he took was getting shot. Once he was dead, few people wanted to challenge his legacy by opposing the moon race.
1953 Iranian coup d'état IMHO Putting the puppet dictator in power in the first place is the root cause of a hell of a lot of radical islamic behavior.
While Ike certainly didn't help matters by agreeing to do this for the British. The British and French carving up the Ottoman empire as they saw fit happened much earlier than the 1950's and is the biggest catalyst for the current "radical Islamic behavior". It was certainly the first domino.
Stop calling it that. The bill to repeal Glass-Steagall was written by three Republicans. Clinton only got on board because he had his mind on his dork and his treasury secretary was a wall street asshole who had promised his pals that he'd look out for them in a big big way.
The initial votes for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act were along party lines with all but one Democrat voting No. But the banks, smelling blood in the water, smoothed all the objections over with money and the rest is the ugly history of the 21st century so far.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nixon was the first U.S. President to see a human space launch (Apollo 12).
Someone forgot Project Mercury.
President Kennedy - Jan 20 1961 to Nov 22 1963
Freedom 7 (May 5 1961), Liberty Bell 7 (July 21, 1961), Friendship 7 (February 20, 1962), Aurora 7 (May 24, 1962), Sigman 7 (October 3, 1962), and Faith 7 (May 15, 1963). Kennedy, as president, saw ALL the manned Mercury spaceflights. Here's a pic of Kennedy watching the Shepherd launch on TV in the White House, same as millions of other people.
And Project Gemini.
President Johnson - Nov 22 1963 to Jan 20 1969
Gemini 3 (23 Mar 1965) through 12 (11-15 Nov 1966), all manned. Apollo 1 (fatal fire), Apollo 7 (11 October 1968), Apollo 8 (21 December 1968) - the "around the moon mission". Here's a pic of Johnson watching the launch of Gemini 3
And there were the other flights, Apollo 9 through 11 - the first moon landing, all observed by Nixon as president.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Logsdon and Callahan, for reasons best known to themselves and like so many others, continue to mythologize the space program... to the detriment of the facts.
They forget, as so many do, there's a third President (Johnson) and a number of years between President's Kennedy and Nixon. Nixon's policy decisions were shaped largely by decisions made by and during the Johnson Administration by the President and Congress. Most notably, in the budget battles of '65-'67 Apollo's budget was sharply cut, capping hardware production (and thus limiting the number of landings) and all but cancelling the follow on Apollo Applications program. During the same period, both NASA management and the Administration began to concentrate on the Shuttle as an Apollo follow on as cheaper access to space began to loom as a more important national priority than flags-and-footprints stunts. Nixon was thus caught between a rock and a hard place - inheriting (as every President after him has) a rudderless, directionless mess that would take far more money to fix than the public would stand for and far more political capital than the returns could possibly justify.
And really, Apollo has screwed us up in space pretty much for all time... Because it's lead too many people to believe that progress is only made by Great Leaps Forward. Because it stuck us (as a nation) with a bloated and inefficient NASA bureaucracy. Because it's blinded too many people to the fact that it was an accident of history and a detour from any rational path of space development.
I bring to your attention King John, Magna Carta and how it's part of the foundation of the law of the USA. In fact a US president put a major part of it in modern terms "no man is above or below the law". Since divine right of kings and later presidents got thrown out they do not have unlimited power which was why there was so much sneaking about with Iran-Contra and selling weapons to Hezbolla less than a year after they had blown up more than one hundred US marines.
or they are neither utterly perfect or don't have the numbers to prevent an inquiry being a whitewash.
That space pork-barrel stuff led directly to the deaths of seven astronauts in 1986. If they built the solid rocket boosters on-site rather than in fricken Utah, there would have been no need to transport it in segments and use faulty o-rings to assemble it.
He couldn't have been traitorous as president, the president himself decides who our enemies are and are not.
Except:
1) Reagan wasn't president at the time of the supposed deal that GP mentioned
2) Iran was subject to an arms embargo at the time the administration sold it arms
3) The profits from arms sales to Iran were then funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras, further violating the law
In defense of Reagan - a phrase I never thought I'd write - there's no proof that he actually knew about (3), at least. So, a dupe, but not necessarily a traitor.
To build NASA’s post-Apollo program around the space shuttle without establishing a specific goal or long-term strategy the shuttle would support
Not true. The shuttle was designed to lift and recover spy satellites. It actually did put several in orbit (and the Hubble, same size as a spy satellite) but in the end it was more cost effective to use one-time rockets.
It is even worse than that: They were refilled in Utah. That means for refilling, they had to be transported overland for huge distances - twice!
Because it is equivalent to the idea that a President is above the law and has had no place in the English and US legal systems since the 1200s. A President or King can be charged with treason if there are grounds for it. If a President were to declare or "undeclare" an enemy due to outside inducement and enough of the rest of the State saw it as a betrayal of the country then treason would be the charge. If a "Manchurian Canditate" situation was possible you can bet treason would be on the table if someone under the control of another state got the top job.
Initially that was before he was President so the silly "President can't be treasonous because they are the LAW" thing doesn't apply either way.
Growing up on the mythology of Apollo (the space program not the god) I was shocked to read the things found in the quite below. But mythology is one thing and history is another.
As a Senator Kennedy did not believe in manned space flight, he thought the money should be spent on social programs. He was more open to less expensive robotic missions.
As President he was still not interested in manned flight. The "new frontier" was actually of little interest to Kennedy. What did get Kennedy behind the Apollo program was, payback to Vice President Johnson for his support and more importantly Cold War politics.
Shockingly, here is NASA's portrayal of Kennedy's motivations:
"Kennedy as president had little direct interest in the U.S. space program. He was not a visionary enraptured with the romantic image of the last American frontier in space and consumed by the adventure of exploring the unknown. He was, on the other hand, a Cold Warrior with a keen sense of Realpolitik in foreign affairs, and worked hard to maintain balance of power and spheres of influence in American/Soviet relations. The Soviet Union's non-military accomplishments in space, therefore, forced Kennedy to respond and to serve notice that the U.S. was every bit as capable in the space arena as the Soviets. Of course, to prove this fact, Kennedy had to be willing to commit national resources to NASA and the civil space program. The Cold War realities of the time, therefore, served as the primary vehicle for an expansion of NASA's activities and for the definition of Project Apollo as the premier civil space effort of the nation. Even more significant, from Kennedy's perspective the Cold War necessitated the expansion of the military space program, especially the development of ICBMs and satellite reconnaissance systems."
http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo...
Another interesting and shocking bit of trivia.
"Consistently throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this a poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of Americans believed that the government was spending too much onspace, indicative of a lack of commitment to the spaceight agenda."
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...
World War 2 would have had US involvement far earlier if that was actually the case.
Good points. For those who care about the NASA budget, you need to understand federal budget politics. The NASA budget is part of "domestic discretionary spending". The Republicans have successfully pressured domestic discretionary spending for many years, and Democrats have failed in defense of it. Now defense discretionary spending consumes a larger share of total federal discretionary spending. If you support Republican budget policies, you support squeezing the NASA budget.
I could tell you many things to cut in domestic discretionary spending, but not enough to free up money to fund NASA. NASA has poorly managed its budget by starting too many projects it could never pay for. Then NASA whines about the result.
There was no "quota". The only part of the strategy that had the force of law was that lenders could no longer discriminate based upon the fact that black people lived in the neighborhood. The only part that was put into regulation was the anti-redlining provisions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The deregulation came about because Clinton put a quota on banks giving mortgages to people who didn't qualify. His “The National Homeownership Strategy" was what caused the housing bubble and burst.
As you point out "The National Homeownership Strategy" was deregulation, which I agree is the problem. But let's be clear, the banks wanted and lobbied for the deregulation. There's no quota, no bank was forced to give a loan (a quota would be a regulation). They were allowed to make loans they wanted to, not forced to and not regulated. But people that hate regulation point to this as if this is an example of government overreach and conflate it with the CRA which required banks to make some loans in their local neighborhoods. CRA loans accounted for a very small portion of subprime loans and did not have a significant default rate. Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law, all the rest of the institutions making subprime loans were doing so completely voluntarily.
Banks created "liar loans" specifically because investors wanted a place to put their money with a decent return and they were begging the banks for more loans which could be then be sold to investors as CDOs. The banks were deregulated, and the banks used their freedom to crank up short term profits, created the housing bubble and tanked the economy.
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