THE EARLY MII.J.ER YEARS 



115 



to be on the Education and Labor Committee, but there simply weren't 

 enough vacancies in 1959. He pitched into his Science Committee work 

 with a vengeance, won the respect of his colleagues on the committee 

 and in Congress as a man who did his homework, and exercised great 

 influence over the unmanned side of the space program. Karth served 

 as chairman of the Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications 

 until he left the committee to join the Ways and Means Committee 

 on October 6, 1971. 



As Teague put it, "Manned space flight got all the credit and all 

 the publicity, and the hardest working subcommittee was Joe Karth's 

 and he got no publicity." Karth and his subcommittee were sort of 

 like the battered and begrimed gridiron linemen who rarely were 

 recognized, while Teague and his glamorous crew in the backfield got 

 all the headlines and the glory of manned space flight. 



The Karth subcommittee's investigation of the Centaur program 

 in 1962 marked the first critical, independent analysis of NASA's man- 

 agement problems with private contractors. It was a healthy demon- 

 stration of legislative oversight, and revealed the committee at its best 

 in probing and recommending how NASA could improve its adminis- 

 trative performance. 



Centaur was a second-stage rocket, fueled by liquid hydrogen and 

 liquid oxygen, and mounted on top of an Atlas missile. In the mid- 

 1960's, Centaur was important as an intermediate link between the 

 smaller Atlas-Agena class and the Saturn vehicles still being developed. 

 The Centaur was needed for NASA's Ranger and Surveyor hard and 

 soft instrumented landings on the Moon, as well as for the Defense 

 Department's communications satellite program. Furthermore, its suc- 

 cess was essential to provide the needed experience in handling and 

 storing liquid hydrogen fuels for many other vehicles. The Karth sub- 

 committee investigation revealed that inadequate supervision and 

 quality control by NASA had been factors in the many delays. The 

 committee report concluded that "Putting out fires is no substitute for 

 effective program management. The subcommittee is forced to conclude 

 that management of the Centaur development program has been weak 

 and ineffective both at NASA headquarters and in the field, and that the 

 program has suffered from a diffusion of authority and responsibility." 



In its final report, the Karth subcommittee recommended that 

 "NASA should exercise close, continuing, and centralized supervision 

 and direction over the Centaur development program. This should 

 result in a coordinated program in which contractors and subcon- 

 tractors are required to exercise high-level quality control." 



One of the results of the Karth subcommittee's investigation of 

 Centaur was to transfer the responsibility for Centaur out of the 



