Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There was, nevertheless, plenty of suspense as Skylab slipped ever closer to its doom. The craft was monitored by the worldwide network of NASA and NORAD's space-tracking stations. From NORAD'S underground headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., calculations about the craft's flight were transmitted to the Skylab Control Center at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston. There Charles Harlan, the Skylab flight director, estimated the vehicle's probable reentry point, and the possible dangers. He, in turn, was responsible for advising the Skylab Coordination Center at NASA headquarters in Washington whether...
...provided 31 hours of continued coverage; ABC naturally stopped after 30. "Save us a copy," the astronauts radioed back, when informed that the New York Times had used the largest headline--"MEN WALK ON MOON"--in its history. Nine more moon landings were planned to follow Apollo XI, and NASA officials glibly predicted that a permanent space station in earth orbit as well as a lunar base would be established by the mid-seventies...
...exploration in general, wore off quickly, in part because the government's commitment to those programs came out of political and military expediency ("Beat the Commies"), rather than any scientific motivation. In aligning itself in the public eye with Johnson and Nixon, the Pentagon, and other symbols of conservatism, NASA unintentionally hurried its own decline. For these "friends" of the space program aided it only when such help was good policy...
...long before Apollo XI left the pad at Cape Kennedy. The $25 billion price tag for the manned space program, spread out over ten years, provided a nice target for those who thought we should "solve our problems on earth before we worry about space." The public image of NASA and space exploration evolved into one of tremendous waste, of massive expenditures for little or no return...
...fell faster than Skylab. Nixon, whose obnoxiousness had interrupted the moonwalk, turned around and canned the last three Apollos. The funds for the proposed space station were cut sharply, meaning that Skylab would be built on the cheap, out of a mishmash of spare parts from the Apollo programs. NASA wanted to put the station into a higher orbit than the one ended in Australia last week, but the money wasn't there...