BATTLESTAR BUREAUCTICA
BATTLESTAR BUREAUCTICA When the shuttle was chosen as the space project to follow Apollo. scientific potential was not its primary qualification. The best thing about the shuttle was that a man sat...
...NASA had invested heavily in manned flight---its space centers in Houston, Huntsville, Alabama, and Cape Kennedy are "geared almost exclusively to training and accommodating astronauts," GAO says...
...The best thing about the shuttle was that a man sat up front...
...that follows...
...The Air Force still wants B-1 bombers, even though drones will do a better job for a fraction of the price...
...Shuttles, you see, w"ill be the capital ships of outer space...
...It started to build the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a reusable winged spacecraft similar in concept to the shuttle...
...It was rejected, insiders say, because there still was no answer to the question, "'What are we going to do with it...
...AU space money was diverted to the moon race...
...He can react...
...A man has judgment...
...The Navy still lusts after aircraft carriers, even though carriers are sitting ducks for modern missiles...
...If you see the shuttle as a capital ship, you w"ill not be surprised to learn that, when Air Force Secretary Hans Mark informed the Senate of the new Space Division, his second sentence was "The commanding officer will hold the rank of lieutenant general...
...One reason the manned shuttle exists at all is· the Department of Defense's three-decade quest to get a soldier into space...
...Along the way it was agitating for its o'wn launch site at Vandenberg (it won), its own shuttles (jury still out), and a new Space Division headquarters in Colorado Springs (approval likely...
...you need admirals to command them...
...B-Is can fly over a reviewing stand in formation: cruise missiles do not need a pre-flight peptalk from a general with a swagger stick...
...Through the 1960s it spent $1 billion planning MOL-Manned Orbiting Laboratory...
...Would you want to be the general assigned to decorate a computer...
...All this even though DOD has announced no plans to do anything in space it didn't do before the shuttle...
...It opted into the space shuttle project...
...And how will Life do a profile of the computer's family...
...DOD kept pushing it," says Pete Bush, a Boeing engineer who helped design Dyna-Soar, "even though no~ body could answer the question, 'What are we going to do with it?''' After spending $500 million on Dyna-Soar, the Pentagon saw it canceled...
...Would you care to say a few words...
...It sounds . unpleasant, but it's true that in space, man is in the way," says Albert Cameron, a Harvard scientist and NASA advisor...
...Having a manned shuttle "provides all kinds offlexibility:~ says a Pentagon spokesman...
...The question back then was 'What can you do with a man in it?''' says Doug Lord, a NASA official who was in on the deliberations...
...G...
...Men may not do better than robots in space, but they're certainly better on the ground...
...a permanent space station: When time came in 1969 to choose a post-Apollo project, DOD asked for MOL...
...You have to sympathize...
...At that point, DOD decided to play by NASA rules...
...But the Pentagon didn't give up...
...There is very little work that requires a pair of hands...
...I present you with this Distinguished Flying Cross," you would have to say, "for service above and beyond the call of your programming...
...What he will react to isn't clear yet, since the shuttle is still basically a ballistic projectile until it leaves space and begins landing...
...But most of what the man flies is equipment- life support, shields, wingsdesigned to get him back...
...During the 1950s, when DOD was sparring with the fledgling NASA for space authority, the Air Force was flying its X-IS rocket plane to the very suburbs of space...
...Human judgment is needed only when the shuttle has to be flown home...
...In space the men sit and watch the dials...
...What's the evening news going to do with the "Meep Meep Me-Me-MeMEEP...
...Carriers are grand...
Vol. 12 • April 1980 • No. 2
