NRO-MOL_2015

Chapter II - A National Space Station
15
A National Space Station
While the ad hoc committee of the Gemini Program
Planning Board was working to identify the military
experiments to be flown aboard the NASA vehicle,
OSD in the spring of 1963 invoked a provision of the
21 January agreement to prevent the space agency
from proceeding unilaterally with plans for a new space
station study project. The provision was similar to one
contained in a DoD-NASA agreement dated 23 February
1961, in which the two agencies agreed that neither
would begin development “of a launch vehicle or booster
for space without the written acknowledgement of the
other.” The January 1963 Gemini agreement stated that
neither agency could initiate a major new manned space
flight program in the near-earth environment without the
other’s consent. 1
Figure 17. James E. Webb
Source: CSNR Reference Collection
NASA was reminded of this restriction following a
statement made to Congress by Dr. Hugh D. Dryden,
Deputy Administrator of NASA, on 4 March 1963. Dryden
reported that the space agency planned to award study
contracts during fiscal year 1964 for “a manned orbiting
laboratory orbiting the earth as a satellite.” The completed
studies, he said, would provide the information NASA
required “to justify and support a decision (to proceed
with a development) to be made in time for the fiscal
year 1965 budget.” USAF officials felt that these plans
not only violated the NASA-DoD agreement but also
constituted “a Phase I program definition of a MODStype
manned space station.” They further involved
issuance of requests for proposals for demonstration of
space station subsystem hardware. 2
On 5 March Maj Gen O. J. Ritland, Deputy for Manned
Space Flight, AFSC, advised Gen Bernard A. Schriever
that—in light of NASA’s proposals—he believed
some kind of centralized management of planning
for development of a space station was required. He
reported to the AFSC commander that while the Air
Force was pursuing its MODS studies, NASA had greatly
intensified its contracting efforts and was planning to
spend several million dollars for space station studies
during fiscal year 1964. 3
After this situation was brought to OSD’s attention,
on 15 March John Rubel, Deputy DDR&E, met with
Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Associate Administrator
of NASA, to discuss the issue. Several weeks later
Dr. Harold Brown, DDR&E, also wrote to Administrator
Webb about the subject. Secretary McNamara felt,
Dr. Brown wrote, that it would be “contrary to existing
NASA-DoD agreements... were NASA to initiate any of
these projects without prior written concurrence from the
Defense Department.” He said that he and the Defense
Secretary (then on an overseas tour) would be glad to
discuss the subject with him. 4
In a letter to McNamara on 24 April 1963 on the subject,
Webb referred to NASA’s “statutorily assigned functions”
and its need to look constantly to the future “to insure U.S.
leadership in the field of space science and technology.”
This was normally accomplished by letting contracts
and doing some in-house work for advanced studies
which, he said, seldom included hardware fabrication.
According to Webb:
... such advanced exploratory studies
do not fall within the purview of
existing DoD-NASA agreements as they
relate to the initiation of “major or
new programs or projects”... While
we would like nothing better than to
have a two-way exchange of ideas and
plans concerning the initiation of
such advanced studies, we feel that
a restriction which would require
formal DoD concurrence as a precondition
to the initiation of NASA