Word: space
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Reagan initiative was long overdue. While the nation's manned space program has been grounded since the Challenger disaster, the commitment of Americans to space exploration remains firm. In a poll taken for TIME by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, most respondents agree that it is important for the U.S. to be the world's leading space-faring nation, and more than half fear that the U.S. has slipped behind the Soviets. Washington's dilemma has been how to maintain pre-eminence in space without exacerbating record budget deficits. Reagan's answer surprised no one: privatize wherever possible. True, his plan reasserted...
...more significant were Reagan's promises to encourage private-sector participation. Commercial space firms, for example, were assured that federal agencies would buy their launch services. Companies across the country saw the new policy as an important symbolic move. "It's great news," said Bruce Jackson, a Houston space-engineering consultant. "It's a shot in the arm, and it will snowball." But without long-term funding, presidential promises mean little. Said Consultant Christopher Kraft, former head of the Johnson Space Center: "The proof of the pudding is, Where's the bucks...
Federal dollars have already been committed to the Industrial Space Facility, an unmanned mini-space station designed by Houston's Space Industries, Inc. The Reagan initiative calls on NASA to become the primary tenant aboard such a facility to the tune of some $140 million a year -- the major complaint of NASA's Fletcher. The agency recently has been fighting ISF for fear that ax-wielding Government budgeteers will see the laboratory as an alternative to its own expensive space lab. Says one Commerce Department source bluntly: "NASA fears it's an effort to kill the space station...
NASA's concern was understandable. Last fall Congress slashed $342 million from the agency's $767 million space-station funding request, then voted $25 million in start-up money for ISF. NASA resistance to the mini-station had prompted a group of Senators led by Wisconsin Democrat William Proxmire to hold up some $97 million in funding until the space agency would go along with the smaller project...
...launched by the Soviets, but six years before NASA's maxi-station becomes operational. Besides, say ISF proponents, it poses no threat to NASA. Designed primarily for materials research and automated manufacturing, it will use little new technology and carry no life-support systems for visiting astronauts. Explains Space Industries CEO Maxime Faget, an ex-NASA engineer: "We're an interim step toward the space station." At least, says Thomas Lee, deputy director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the new policy "gives us a clear understanding of the long-term priorities...