^ss HISTORY OF Till I OMMITTE1 ON S< IENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



berg or Edwards Air Force Base NASA responded with a somewhat 

 tongue-in-cheek letter pointing our that the Roush amendment to the 

 authorization bill required that "consideration be given to the geo- 

 graphical distribution of Federal research funds whenever feasible", 

 a provision which had rarely been used to govern decisions. In a 

 letter to George Low of NASA, Teague seemed to lean toward the 

 Florida site: 



Unless I .mi convinced that NASA is making maximum use of existing facilities, 

 I intend to oppose any money tor the Shuttle in every way, form 01 fashion * * *. 



h is mil 'pork barrel" as far as I am concerned. 



NASA made a Solomon's choice in 1972 hv concluding that Cape 

 Kenneclv and Vandenberg on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts should 

 share the Shuttle's launching facilities. 



On January 5, 1972, President Nixon announced his decision: 



I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the 

 development of an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help 

 transform the space frontier of the 1970's into familiar territory, easily accessible for 

 human endeavor in the 1980's and 1990's. 



The decision involved a pared-down version of the Shuttle. 

 Instead of a fully reusable system with a larger, manned crew, the 

 final selection favored a two-man, recoverable orbiter which would 

 still glide in for an Earth landing on return, but there would be an 

 unmanned and recoverable booster and expendable fuel tanks. The 

 smaller version was estimated to cost about $5.15 billion to the end 

 of the decade of the 1970's. On behalf of NASA, Dr. Fletcher issued 

 a public statement that the Shuttle would cost $5-15 billion plus 

 or minus 20 percent. OMB instructed him never to mention this 



COMMITTEE REACTION TO THE DECISION 



Although the committee had pressed for an early, firm decision 

 on the Shuttle, and individual members like Frev had warned that to 

 defer a decision beyond January would strengthen the opposition, 

 Teague and Fuqua were not entirely happy with the cutback in the 

 size of tlie Shuttle. With some asperity, Fuc]ua asked Dr. Fletcher 

 when he appeared before the committee on February 8, 1972: 



Is this the final configuration, or later in the year are we going to hear that has 

 been modified, as we did last year 



Frev noted : 



( >l course, one of oui sales pitches on the recoverable craft was the reduction in 

 cost per pound, but now that you're going hack to rhis concept, it seems to me you're 



