Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

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THE HISTORY OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS
Within NASA we were fairly unanimous in deciding that a Viking cut would be unacceptable.
First of all, Viking is the only highly visible sign of space exploration in the middle
70’s. Secondly, more than half of the $800 to $900 million on Viking has already been
spent. Third, it would be almost impossible to sustain the support of the scientific community
for the rest of the NASA program if Viking were cancelled. For all of these reasons
and many more, we decided to do our best to try to get Viking back into the budget. My
first inclination was to try to cancel the ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project] mission, since
from NASA’s point of view it contributed least to our overall program. However, after
some discussion and after some G-2ing by Fletcher, it became very clear that the President
considers ASTP the highest priority NASA mission, and that any suggestion on our part to
cancel this flight would be totally unacceptable. The President also considers the Shuttle
the second priority NASA mission, and, we were told, would not consider cancelling [4]
that project. From NASA’s point of view, of course, it was clear that at a $3 billion level we
would not have started either the Shuttle or ASTP. Thus, we were in a major bind.
I then suggested that it might be time to phase out of the communications business.
The reasoning here goes something like this: NASA has been a catalyst for space communications
development in the early phase of the space program and until now. However,
there now has developed a significant communications satellite capability in private industry.
For example, COMSAT/INTELSAT is spending $14 million a year on advanced R&D.
It is clear, therefore, that communications work will go on whether or not NASA participates.
Of course, there are some areas, such as direct broadcasting, which will take much
longer without federal government participation. In other areas of applications, such as
earth resources, environmental work, etc., there exists no commercial/industrial capability
that will carry on if the federal government gets out of it. I, therefore, reasoned that it
would be best to do one applications area well instead of doing two major areas not nearly
so well. Fletcher at first was quite reluctant to accept this reasoning, but after a day or
so of thinking about it, enthusiastically supported it. As a result, we decided to propose
cancellation of ATS-G, to carry out ATS-F because most of the money on it was already
spent, but at the same time to phase down all in-house communications R&D so that by
the time ATS-F flies we will completely phase out of this business. Incidentally, this may be
a major first for a government agency to get out of an R&D business of its own volition.
In the Office of Space Science we decided to keep Viking, but suspend HEAO [High
Energy Astronomy Observatory]. Suspending a program is something else that has never
happened in NASA before. Basically, we would keep a skeleton team together, both in
NASA and in industry, for a year or more while we reviewed HEAO to determine whether
we can meet its objectives at, for example, half the costs. Naugle was in favor of outright
cancellation, if this were the case, but my view was that through suspension we might be
able to pick the project up again without again seeking a “new start.” In space science also,
OSO is no longer in [5] the program as we submitted it (I will come back to that later),
and there were many across-the-board cuts.
In OAST [Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology], in our basic and first submission,
QUESTOL and the engine refanning were out, almost all nuclear work was canceled,
and there were additional cuts in SRT/ART. In the overall SRT/ART program, I
established guidelines that 90% of this work should have a promise of being relevant within
a period of seven years; and that only 10% of our SRT/ART work should be in the
future beyond the seven-year period.
In Manned Space Flight, Skylab and ASTP were left as they were, and the Shuttle was
cut back somewhat in costs and thereby delayed by a total of one year, considering the
schedule changes already made by previous 1973 expenditure cuts on top of the present
cuts.
OMB also suggested major cuts in personnel totaling 1880 with the bulk of these coming
at Marshall and at Lewis/Plumbrook. We have, in effect, accepted the Lewis/