Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 133
and meeting on NASA’s fiscal year 1973 and fiscal year 1974 budgets with officials of the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) in Washington. To meet the stringent budget cuts proposed by the
Nixon administration’s OMB, it was Low’s idea to take NASA out of communications satellite
research and development (R&D). NASA had had an Applications Technology Satellite (ATS) program
since 1963 to follow up its support of the initial Relay and Syncom projects, and that program
had helped develop many new technologies and capabilities in the communications satellite area. The
NASA decision to withdraw from communications satellite R&D meant that the final ATS mission,
the ATS-G, was canceled.
[1] December 23, 1972
PERSONAL NOTES NO. 83
[2] Fiscal Year 1973 and 1974 Budget
Meanwhile back on earth, things weren’t going quite as well. On Monday, December
11, approximately at the time of the lunar landing, we received a call from Bill Morrill asking
Fletcher, Lilly, and me to meet with him to discuss the FY 1973 and 1974 budgets. We
tried to get him to give us our mark by telephone, but he was unable to do so. As a result,
Fletcher, McCurdy, Shapley, Lilly, and I traveled back to Washington on Wednesday,
December 13, roughly between EVAs 2 and 3. (We were in Houston for the full period of
both of these EVAs.)
We met in Bill Morrill’s office with Morrill, Young, and Taft. (We had left Houston at
5:15 in the morning on a Jet Star for Andrews [Air Force Base] and arrived in Morrill’s
office at precisely 9:30, the time of the appointment.) Morrill informed us that the
President was determined to bring the FY 1973 budget down to a $250 billion ceiling in
outlays, and to have a not too much higher number for FY 1974. As a result, all departments
and agencies had to take major cuts, both in FY 1973 and in FY 1974. The 1973 cuts
were particularly difficult to sustain, since only one-half year was left for money savings. In
effect then, any cut made in 1973 would have double the normal effect. In NASA’s case,
OMB had accepted the “submarginal submission” and made drastic cuts below that level.
Within the submarginal budget, we had already cut out the aircraft engine retrofit work,
most of the new starts, almost all of the nuclear work, and had cut back in many other
areas. The OMB mark, in addition, canceled Viking, canceled QUESTOL, delayed the
Shuttle, delayed ERTS-B [Earth Resources Technology Satellite or Landsat] (did not allow
ERTS-C in the Interior budget), and made further across-the-board cuts. (I should [3]
have mentioned that OSO-I was also cancelled in our submarginal submission.) The net
result was a budget at approximately the $3 billion level in outlays for both FY 1973 and
FY 1974. We were also told that the number of cuts were policy decisions approved by the
President and not ours to change. These were particularly the major ones such as Viking,
OSO [Orbiting Solar Observatory], nuclear work, QUESTOL, etc. In the area of minor
cuts, we would be allowed to make adjustments. The President then also asked, we were
told personally, that a fairly substantial number of dollars be included in the NASA budget
on the supersonic transport, with the words that he felt that this was a mandatory
development for the country and that NASA should take on the fight with the Congress.
Our meeting lasted for about an hour, and following that meeting, Lilly continued to
meet with Young and Taft for approximately one more hour. We then got back on our airplane
and returned to Houston. We held additional meetings on the plane on the way
back to Houston, in Houston the next morning, and then returned to Washington immediately
after the lunar rendezvous and docking for meetings on the following Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. By Sunday noon we had firmed up our position and
Monday was spent in writing the position for a reclama submission to OMB.