Word: space
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Beset by critics and uncertain about the Nixon Administration's objectives in space, high NASA officials from Cape Kennedy to the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center mutter about quitting or fret about being laid off once the initial lunar landings are made. Internal feuds, once muted, are beginning to erupt in public; most notable was the resignation of Paul Haney, "the voice of Apollo." The NASA budget is down to $3.8 billion from its $5.9 billion 1966 peak. The army of skilled craftsmen, whom Wernher Von Braun calls 90% of NASA's investment, has dwindled from a high...
Preoccupied by the Viet Nam war and proliferating troubles at home, the White House has placed a low priority on establishing America's post-Apollo goals in space. Unless stimulating goals are enunciated, the team that made Apollo possible may begin to disintegrate for lack of a sufficiently compelling challenge. For purely technical reasons as well, time may be running out if the Administration is to maintain America's current lead in space. The last of the 15 first stages for the Saturn 5, NASA's journeyman booster for manned flight, will roll off assembly lines...
Searching Re-Evaluation. Not since John Kennedy first proclaimed Apollo has the entire space program undergone so searching a reevaluation. NASA's manned flight chief, George Mueller, has even asked veteran newsmen: "Now you tell me how we can sell the country the space program." Other NASA officials fear that too many Americans view the lunar landings not as a beginning but as an end. All the old questions are reappearing with increasing frequency in public debate: Does man have a place in space? Should he establish a base on the moon? Should he explore the planets...
...they will be quite content to settle for some sort of balance between the practical and the visionary. Last week, in a report from its own advisory committee on goals for 1975 to 1985, the agency endorsed a program that would call for continued manned flight, lunar exploration, orbiting space stations, planetary probes and cheaper space transportation. This should be accomplished, the committee noted, with a budget ranging from ½% to 1% of each year's gross national product ($4.5 billion to $9 billion based on a projected 1969 G.N.P. of more than $900 billion...
...ORBITING LABORATORIES. A byproduct of the billions spent on Apollo is the hardware to send three missions, beginning in late 1971, to a manned space laboratory in orbit some 200 miles above the earth. Saturn 4B rockets will spend their fuel and then serve as bungalow-size space stations for three-man crews. The first will include a doctor, who will study the effects on himself and his companions of 28 days under zero gravity. The crew will also try to learn how vacuum and weightlessness affect certain manufacturing processes. These include electron beam welding and the use of molten...