SPACE SCIENCE, APPLICATIONS, AND ADVANCED RESEARCH, 1963-6') 261 



Mr. Rumsfeld. Well, I would say that this has certainly been the chairman's 

 policy, as well as the chairman of the subcommittee, since I have been on the com- 

 mittee, which amounts to just a few weeks now, and I certainly appreciate it. 



The following day, NASA was besieged with a barrage of ques- 

 tions concerning $90 million NASA asked to modify three ships for 

 NASA's exclusive use in the Apollo program. Roush, Wydler, Hechler, 

 Rumsfeld, Fulton of Tennessee, and other members of the subcom- 

 mittee raised the warning flag that they objected to the concept that 

 NASA seemed to want its own Navy. NASA insisted they had nego- 

 tiated over a year with the Department of Defense, and could not 

 conclude an arrangement which would give them the instrumentation 

 ships on short notice when they needed them for the critical tracking 

 missions required by the Apollo program. The subcommittee directed 

 NASA to send a new letter to the Department of Defense, with specifi- 

 cations for the ships, and then called Assistant Secretary of Defense 

 John H. Rubel before the subcommittee to clarify the fact that Defense 

 could offer a satisfactory arrangement to NASA for $10 million less 

 than NASA was proposing. Also, for $80 million, the Defense Depart- 

 ment indicated it could supply five ships instead of the three initially 

 requested by NASA, at an annual operating cost of $4.5 million less 

 than NASA estimated. 



The House conferees on the authorization bill then threw the 

 whole problem into the laps of the conference committee which met in 

 the waning days of August 1963. NASA persuaded the Senate conferees 

 to give them a little more than $80 million, but the House conferees 

 won the fight to require some tough language on coordination. In 

 exchange for raising the authorization to $83-3 million, the House 

 conferees persuaded the conference to stipulate that none of the funds 

 could be obligated until a joint NASA-DOD study had been completed 

 by January 1964, "that would result in a pooling of tracking ship 

 resources." The conference backed up the subcommittee position 100 

 percent, and further required that priority for the use of the ships by 

 NASA should be given to NASA, but that DOD should have responsi- 

 bility for navigating and operating the ships under regulations jointly 

 negotiated by NASA and DOD. 



Following up the victory by the subcommittee, Chairman Miller 

 dispatched a letter to Vice President Johnson asking him to take the 

 initiative to crack some heads together, through the Space Council, 

 to get some coordination. The fur began to fly. The Council rode herd 

 on NASA and DOD to get them to give a high priority to the joint 

 study. Within NASA, Retired Navy Adm. W. Fred Boone, head of the 

 NASA Office of Defense Affairs, took central responsibility to move 

 the study forward. 



