GEMINI AND APOLLO 



205 



After the fire, the Oversight Subcommittee rode herd on both the 

 technical and administrative changes which were carried out. Boeing 

 was assigned a technical integration and evaluation contract, which 

 enabled NASA to have an extra watchdog. There was a wholesale 

 personnel shakeup at North American Aviation. Harold Finger was 

 promoted from NASA's Director of Nuclear Systems and Space Power 

 to Associate Administrator for Organization and Management. As a 

 result of the fire and the Oversight Subcommittee hearings, and the 

 initiative of Representative Donald Rumsfeld (Republican of Illinois), 

 the authorization bill passed in 1967 included an Aerospace Safety 

 Advisory Panel to report on and make suggestions regarding facilities 

 and operations. The bill ran into stormy seas both in the committee 

 and on the House floor. There were 36 pages of various minority views 

 out of the 194-page committee report. 



Fulton caught his colleagues by surprise with a motion to re- 

 commit the authorization bill with provisions for cuts of about $170 

 million below NASA's budget request, and for the establishment of 

 the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. An even greater surprise oc- 

 curred when Fulton's recommittal motion passed by a rollcall vote of 

 239 to 157. One Democrat (Ryan) and seven Republicans (Fulton, 

 Roudebush, Pelly, Rumsfeld, Wydler, Winn, and Hunt) on the com- 

 mittee voted to recommit the bill. It then passed as amended by the 

 recommittal motion by a 342 to 53 vote. The final conference commit- 

 tee version passed in 1967 authorized $4,865 billion — or $235 million 

 below what NASA had requested. A big slash was made in the Apollo 

 applications program, which was clipped down to $347 million in 

 contrast to the $454 million originally asked by NASA. 



Once again, Gross was the most outspoken critic of the manned 

 lunar landing, proclaiming: 



I live in fear of the day when, if ever, we plant a man on the Moon because if we 

 find a single, living human being on the Moon, this Government will start a whole 

 new multibillion-dollar foreign giveaway program — a whole new foreign aid pro- 

 gram. 



With the encouragement and full support of the Science Com- 

 mittee, NASA made a brilliant recovery from the catastrophe on pad 

 34. Apollo 4, the first unmanned Saturn V, was launched in Novem- 

 ber 1967. Teague characterized it as "the free world's largest and most 

 complex space vehicle." In April 1968, the Saturn was again success- 

 fully tested in near-Earth orbit, and driven back into the atmosphere 

 at the 25,000-mile-an-hour speed of a return trip from the Moon. 

 Despite another successful attack on the Apollo applications program 

 by Fulton in 1968, the committee lines held to preserve support for the 

 Apollo program, and the authorization bill survived by a 262 to 106 



3S-120 



