The Perils of Apollo

...Yet even if the Republicans were merely getting in their punches, they struck a delicate nerve in suggesting that the space race may be taking funds from more important projects and that "within the framework of fiscal responsibility, these problems should, perhaps, be examined side by side with the moon shot program...

...Perhaps the answer is that he thought a space race with the Russians would be good for the national ego, or perhaps he wanted to take people's minds off the Bay of Pigs fiasco which occurred scarcely a month before his sudden interest in lunar activities...

...to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year...

...But that argument has failed to wash in Congress...

...While praising the goal of space research, Lee Du Bridge, president of the California Institute of Technology, spoke for a large number of scientists when he said: "Many of us feel that the prestige and competitive factors have forced us to move too far too fast, to spend too much money and devote too much effort to the 'spectacular' as contrasted to the purely scientific ventures...

...In addition, there is the suspicion that its programs are marked by waste and unnecessary duplication, that the "easy money" of the past four years has led to bureaucratic empire-building, and that the impact of the space program on the nation's scientific resources may not be wholly salubrious...

...In a similar venture this past May, NASA assembled eight leading scientists—three of them Nobel Prize winners—to issue another statement of support...

...The cuts are far from final, of course, since the Senate space committee and the appropriations committees of both houses have still to make their wishes felt...

...The President's own science advisor...

...Of this number, 130,000 have been absorbed into government projects...

...Liberals, who might ordinarily get heated up at the idea of spending $20 billion to go to the moon at a time when other areas of American life are crying out in need, have greeted the priority argument with a disrespectful yawn...

...The statement backed up the moon project decried recent criticism of the cost and pace of the program in scientific circles, and reminded disgruntled colleagues that "a broader concern for national interests and goals"—i.e...

...Since national virility seemed to be at stake, however...

...Congress has begun to wonder whether there may not be other uses for the money devoted to the exploration of space...

...Senator Spcssard Holland (D.Fla...

...Knowledgeable in the ways of Congress, Webb worked on Capitol Hill as a staff assistant, later serving as director of the Bureau of the Budget and then Under Secretary of State for President Truman...

...Jerome Wiesner, has been pressing for an earth-orbiting system, rather than the lunar-orbiting one favored by NASA in the interests of speed...

...With billions of dollars of fat contracts to award, it has been careful to put them in the places that count most...

...Among those that have risen to the top by their own vigorous efforts, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is a Washington success story writ large...

...The House Science and Astronautics Committee, which has traditionally clasped the space agency to its bosom, showed an unexpected truculence by recommending a cut of $489 million in the space budget, nearly 10 per cent of the total...

...took issue with the President's observation...

...Resistance is hardening around the most expensive and glamorous item in NASA's program: the $20 billion Project Apollo, which is supposed to put an American on the moon, and hopefully bring him back alive, by the end of the decade...

...chimed in with "a formal request for information with regard to New York State...

...The House space committee saw no need to support that campaign pledge and suspended the project until NASA could show why its heart is set on Boston...

...Philip Abelson, editor of Science Magazine and one of Apollo's most trenchant critics, warned the Senate space committee during the June hearings that the U.S...

...Among the eight signers were such NASA stalwarts as Dr...

...A good many have challenged the Administration's attempt to sell it as a scientific venture, since they themselves see it primarily as a political gambit...

...prestige— was a major reason for the program...

...Nor is it an altogether clear-cut war, for even among the NASA faithful there is a general feeling that the agency has grown too big in too short a time...

...While applauding dutifully...

...He moved over to NASA from the presidency of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, whose chairman, the late Senator Robert Kerr (D.-Okla...

...Even such a normally loyal supporter of the Administration as Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Ark...

...As President Kennedy told a cheering Houston audience last year: "During the next five years NASA expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area...

...The ceremonies surrounding Major Cooper's orbital flight in May—the motorcade down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Capitol Hill, the inexplicable convocation of a joint session of Congress to hear a few homilies, and the ticker tape parade in New York—were handled with a sure professionalism that has become the hallmark of NASA'S approach to space...

...But the fact that the House space committee—which is so NASAoriented that its own meeting room is decorated with huge color photographs of the astronauts peering over each member's shoulder— should make anything more than token cuts in the budget is news indeed...

...The taxpayers," said Moss, "certainly should not be called upon to spend billions of dollars on our space programs without being given all the facts necessary to make an intelligent judgment as to whether we are behind, ahead, or at least keeping pace with Russian space efforts...

...And five years after Sputnik, Congress has learned to relax about the space age and not go into spasms of anxiety every time the Russians shoot a capsule into orbit...

...said the Senate Republicans, "is not whether man will ultimately reach the moon and beyond...

...Webb warned that if the budget were cut by as much as $400 million, Apollo could not meet the 1970 target date and "it would slow the work of these industrial contractors...

...Even these token cuts, though, are something new for a Congress which, under Administration prodding, has never been allowed to forget that he who gives also has it given unto him...

...Congress went along without a murmur of protest...

...Having opened the tap during the post-Sputnik panic...

...The old argument about snatching prestige from the Russians is beginning to wear thin...

...So that no one might think that they have become big-time spenders and welfare-statists, the Republicans hastened to add the disclaimer that "no advocacy of large government spending is intended...

...Vannevar Bush of MIT, Columbia University physicist Polycarp Kusch, and a number of Nobel Prize winners have all expressed the opinion that instruments could do the job of moon exploration just as well as a man, and at a fraction of the cost...

...Warren Weaver, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have attacked the "frantic, costly, and disastrous pace" of the program...

...Robert Jastrow, director of NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies...

...To vote against the funds could be disastrous for a Congressman...

...This brought a sharp rejoinder from John Moss (D-Cal...

...Congressional skeptics are not opposed to space exploration and scientific progress per se, but rather to the breathtaking speed with which Project Apollo is being pursued...

...In an effort to convince Congress that America is wildly exhuberant about space, NASA has been busily milking the astronauts' flights for publicity...

...In the war of pro- and anti-Apollo scientists, it has been quietly but effectively lining up a team on its own behalf...

...Although NASA'S largess has not been evenly distributed—of the $2.7 billion the space agency spent in fiscal 1963 on prime contracts, California received 30 per cent, three Southern states 28 per cent, and all New England only one per cent —it has enormous political leverage...

...Willard Libby, formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr...

...Such are the blessings of science...

...In any case, the President no doubt realized what until this year Congress has preferred to ignore: that the cost of the moon project would be enormous, the concentration of scientific talent critical, and the gamble on beating the Russians far from a sure thing because of their big lead in rocket boosters...

...While making pointed inquiries about their own districts...

...The living example of governmental Parkinsonism at work, NASA has never had any trouble in getting a doting Congress to furnish all the money it could handle...

...They are, in short, asking the question that slipped their minds in May 1961 when President Kennedy committed the nation to putting a man on the moon by 1970: Since the moon will likely still be there after that magic date, why has the President been in such a hurry...

...Thus for the first time, NASA finds itself waging a two-front war: warding off attacks from the scientific community on the one hand, and from a budget-conscious Congress on the other...

...Edward Tatum of the Rockefeller Institute has cited the "tremendous amount of waste involved in a crash program...

...Congress has nonetheless managed to contain its excitement, thus forcing NASA to fall back on the biggest gun in its defensive arsenal: the porkbarrel...

...With a shrewdness that belies its tender years, the space agency has been larding its way into Congress' heart...

...and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this city...

...just happened to head the Senate space committee, the friendliest place in town for a NASA witness...

...When all the committees concerned have had their chance to pat and poke at the NASA budget, they will most likely accept the House's trimmings of $489 million in a $5.7 billion request...

...This spring a group of scientists told the House space committee that "at least 60 per cent of the men in the physical sciences will be working as government employees for NASA" if Project Apollo goes ahead as planned...

...summed it up beautifully by demanding "a clear picture of just what exactly you intend to do in Florida next year...

...On the Senate side, Webb was confronted with the issue that is topmost in many legislators' minds when they deal with the space budget...

...Gordon MacDonald, of Libby's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA, and Dr...

...Since 1954 the number of scientists and technicians working in research and development has increased by 160,000...

...From a modest $117 million at its inception in 1958, it is now asking Congress for $5.7 billion to carry it through the next fiscal year...

...This admission tended to give a hollow ring to his repeated attempts to sound the alarm over Russian designs on the moon—attempts which the Republican policy statement dismissed as an "adolescent desire to beat the Russians in a space race...

...A few Congressmen are even beginning to ask whether the Russians really are racing us to the moon as everyone presumably thinks, NASA has clamped a lid on all information regarding Soviet space efforts and, along with the Pentagon, has been stamping "secret" on reports of Soviet space failures...

...When," the Senator asked, "will we receive a breakdown of these projects by geographical area so we can tell our own people what they can expect...

...Despite its humble beginnings, the space agency's budget is now exceeded by only three government agencies—Defense, Treasury and Agriculture, all old-timers with a long head start...

...The question is rather how should it be done, and whether other aspects of human needs should be bypassed or overlooked in the one spasmodic effort to achieve a lunar landing at once...

...Although hesitating to commit themselves publicly to an open purse policy, the Republicans speculated as to whether the money for the space program could not be better applied elsewhere: to eradicating cancer, freeing mankind from "the tragic chains of mental illness," making our highways safer for earthly travel, charting the oceans, providing drinkable water for our cities (apparently no longer a problem "better left to the states"), improving education, disposing of nuclear waste, and even, mirabile dictu, "bringing order to a world of emerging nations...

...Last summer, for example, NASA joined the National Academy of Sciences in sponsoring a Space Science Summer Study program that drew a good many scientists who, despite some skepticism about the agency's time schedule, "enthusiastically endorsed the NASA space science program on the whole...

...Congress' sudden qualms about the taxpayer's pocketbook have been inspired by mounting criticism of the space program from scientific quarters, and by a pervading feeling that NASA's spectaculars may not be worth their cost...

...William Lineberry appears in these pages for the first time...

...Congressmen have been irritated by some of the more blatant activities going on in other bailiwicks...

...It is difficult to judge which prospect caused greater consternation among committee members...

...chairman of the House subcommittee on government operations...

...The question...

...In any case, I find the negative argument that we would not in any case use funds that now go into space for constructive purposes a singularly unconvincing reason for the expenditure of vast sums of public money...

...Hugh Dryden—has been a formidable combination in its appearances before the House and Senate space committees...

...By chopping off other fat—such as a second Venus shot, another Ranger moon probe in the wake of five successive failures, an Ml rocket engine for which the agency was unable to think up a function, and a three-ship NASA navy—the House made cuts just big enough to appease some of NASA'S critics without in any way threatening its program in general and the crash moon landing in particular...

...Still, for the most part the scientific community has shown surprisingly little enthusiasm for Project Apollo...

...There is also growing concern that the crash space program may be draining off not only money, but also scientific talent and resources needed for more earthly tasks...

...As Congress drifted through a sleepy spring, the Senate Republican Policy Committee astounded friend and foe alike by issuing a 19-page critique of the space program entitled "A Matter of Priority...

...Despite receiving a few punches, NASA is neither down nor out, and has a good deal of strength in reserve for its showdown with Congress...

...Presumably Vice President Lyndon Johnson, that faithful Texan who happens to be chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, was not displeased by the choice...

...This year, however, there are signs that Congress may be imposing the same kind of budget scrutiny on NASA that other government agencies endure annually as a matter of course...

...to invest some $200 million in plants and laboratory facilities...

...As the fastest growing agency in the Federal government, NASA has just about managed to double its budget every year...

...The committee is now headed by Clinton Anderson (D.-N...

...moon program was wasteful and damaging to "almost every effort of science, technology and medicine" and that the "rush to get to the moon is taking away from our national security...

...Its leaders are harddriving men who know what they want, and how they intend to get it...

...And such may be the saving grace of NASA...

...A good many of them seem to agree with the President when, in response to NASA budget-cutters, he said: "My judgment is that what would happen would be that they would cut the space program and you would not get additional funds for education...

...One that has particularly raised their ire is the little item in the current budget for $50 million to build an electronics research center in Boston, a city of some interest to a young Senator who has promised to "do more" for Massachusetts...

...The nation's lawmakers are less enthralled by visions of winning prestige in the xenophobic world of underdeveloped nations and have begun to be concerned about such earthly problems as civil rights, unemployment, education and health—problems that might just be more urgent than sending an astronaut to the moon as a ceremonial pageant to top off the end of President Kennedy's second term...

...Not to be pre-empted by the scientists, the Republicans, too, have managed to express their doubts about the Kennedy Administration's pet project...

...Others, such as Dr...

...Not to be outdone, Senator Kenneth Keating (R.-N.Y...

...The debate over Project Apollo has now moved from the quiet halls of bureaucracy and academe into the rough-and-tumble corridors of Congress...

...Nevertheless, equipped with a public relations shop that would do justice to Madison Avenue, NASA is putting up a sophisticated defense...

...M.) who recently showed his warm feelings for NASA when he chided its scientific critics for having "neither the time nor the opportunity" to keep informed of the program...

...By itself, Apollo will consume 75 per cent of the space agency's requested budget this year, and it is expected to eat up an increasingly larger percentage in the future...

...The NASA team—square-jawed, aggressive Administrator Webb, and his scholarly deputy, Dr...

...The Senators seem to have forgotten what a Princeton astronomer had just finished telling them: that the space program is supposed to be the "spearhead for a renaissance of [America's] pioneering spirit...

...Ronald Steel, a frequent contributor, is a Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association...

...Perhaps tweaking the nose of NASA and embarrassing the Kennedy Administration was the real matter of priority involved in such marvelously ingenuous questions as: "Is a fistful of lunar dust meaningful to the 17 million Americans who, we are told, go to bed hungry each night...

...The Congress has come close on several occassions to adopting a meaningful program of Federal aid to education," he said in his Clayton Lectures this spring at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, "and it is quite possible that the reduction of costs in other areas such as space would provide the necessary impetus for the enactment of an education bill...

...In hearings before the House space committee earlier this year, Webb pointed out that 90 per cent of Apollo's work was given over to non-governmental contractors—many of whom are in states and districts so dependent on them that their economies might suffer if the contracts were cut back or cancelled...

...By a remarkable coincidence, for example, NASA decided to build its $130 million Manned Space Center in Houston, adjoining the district of Albert Thomas, chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that approves NASA'S budget...

...As a general rule, the Congressional space committees try to lop off budgetary fat in order to prevent axe-wielding by opponents once the bill actually reaches the floor...

...The critical problem of the use of the nation's scientific resources has also deeply concerned many scientists...

...James Webb, the director of NASA, may have made a tactical error in admitting to Congress earlier this year that he had no evidence the Russians were engaging in any moon race with the U.S...

...Now, two years and two tickertape parades later, the thrill is apparently wearing off...