Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 145
the development of technology such as multi-beam spacecraft antennas, low-cost earth stations
and on-board signal switching—technologies which do not readily derive from current
or anticipated future activities of the private communications common carriers. In
addition, because of the disaggregated nature of those who need these services, the private
sector often cannot find a ready market which justifies the risk of expansion into the
provision of these new services. There is, then, an appropriate federal role in [31] assisting
the development of needed technology and in demonstrating new public services for
a sufficient period that their users may be perceived as a viable market by the private sector.
The most appropriate supplier of the needed technology is NASA.
The Committee recommends that as soon as possible, NASA, with the participation of appropriate
user groups, begin conceptual definition of both the needed technology (Option 4) and
the public service experiments themselves (Option 5).
These initiatives are the first steps in the implementation of the Committee’s Options
4 and 5 which have been described earlier in this report. The report also describes a
process of checks and balances which the Committee believes are essential to channel the
expanded NASA role in the needed direction.
Document I-29
Document title: John J. Madison, Legislative Affairs Specialist, NASA, Memorandum for
the Record, “Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) program meeting,
October 13, 1983.”
Source: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Beginning in 1980, NASA reentered the communications satellite research and development area,
first with a technology development effort and then with a proposal for a satellite mission that would
demonstrate various new technologies and their ability to work together as a system. This mission,
known as the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), was controversial within the
government. The Reagan administration believed that it was the private sector’s responsibility to
invest in technology and demonstrate its capabilities in areas where the primary payoffs would be commercial.
For several years during the mid-1980s, President Reagan refused to approve funding for
NASA to develop ACTS. Hughes, the world’s leading builder of communications satellites, also
opposed the program on the grounds that it represented inappropriate government competition with the
private sector. Congress, with a Democratic majority, believed in a partnership between the public and
private sectors would assure the nation’s continued leadership in the communications satellite sector.
Each year, for several years, Congress restored funding for the mission to NASA’s budget. It was not
until early 1987 that the Reagan administration reversed its opposition to the program, allowing it
to move forward. ACTS was finally launched in 1993. This memorandum captures the early NASA
justification for the program, as presented in a meeting of two staff members of the space subcommittee
of the House of Representatives (Rad Byerly and Tim Clark), head of the ACTS program at NASA
Headquarters (Robert Lovell), and NASA’s legislative affairs specialist (John Madison). The program’s
rationale and design underwent continual change until a program concept acceptable to both
the executive branch and Congress was developed.