DECISION ON ill! SPAC1 SHUTTLE 287 



THE COMMITTEE AND THE 1972 SHUTTLE DECISION 



One of the Shuttle's early critics, Congressman Karth, left the 

 committee in October 1971 to assume a position on the House Ways 

 and Means Committee. The year 19~2 also marked the last year in 

 which Chairman Miller, defeated in the California primary, served 

 on the committee. Both Miller and Karth had been charter members 

 who had served since the creation of the Science and Astronautics 

 Committee in 1939. 



As support tor the Shuttle rose in the House of Representatives, 

 thanks to the leadership of the committee, the opposition mounted 

 in the Senate, where Senators Walter F. Mondale (Democrat of Minne- 

 sota) and William Proxmire (Democrat of Wisconsin) led the criticism. 

 NASA, and to an even greater extent the Nixon Office of Management 

 and Budget, kept a wary eye on Congress in attempting to cost out 

 the economics of the Shuttle. 



"We did not think we could sell a 10 to 15-billion-dollar program 

 to the Congress right then", recalls Dr. Fletcher in looking back in 

 1979 on the decision in 1972 to reduce the size and expense of the 

 Shuttle. Clearly, Tcague, Fuqua, Frey and the strongest boosters of 

 the Shuttle felt that the correct course of action was to press forward 

 with the original program for a completely reusable Shuttle and Space 

 Station at a higher cost. To Teague's consternation, the President 

 appeared to be leaning strongly toward his budget advisers instead 

 of choosing the bold solution. Teague publicly denounced President 

 Nixon for failing to support the Shuttle and the space program while 

 the big debate on the Shuttle's future was going on during 1971 : 



He isn't even following the advice of his own Space Task Group. They told him 

 and us that anything below a $4-billion budget for NASA was a "going out of business 

 budget", but he's allowed those damned pencil-pushers in the Budget Bureau to set 

 policy instead of following the experts' recommendations. 



While the debate was going on during 1971 over the size and 

 configuration of the Shuttle, the political cross-currents were already 

 swirling over where the Shuttle was to be launched. Fuqua and Frey 

 were the most articulate leaders to keep the launch facilities at Cape 

 Kennedy, to protect NASA's billion-dollar construction investment 

 at the Cape. The Chairman of the Senate Aeronautical and Space- 

 Sciences Committee, Senator Clinton P. Anderson (Democrat of New 

 Mexico), terribly upset by termination of his favorite Nerva project, 

 insisted that the Shuttle would be in trouble unless it were launched 

 from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Meanwhile, Chair- 

 man Miller mobilized the Californians to press for the use of Vanden- 



