TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080690/0806107.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 10.2 KB | 248 lines

                Σ╥ú                                                              NATION, Page 26

Spinning Out of Orbit


With the shuttle grounded, the Hubble troubled and its future
role in jeopardy, NASA is an agency lost in space

By LEON JAROFF -- Reported by Glenn Garelik and Dick Thompson/
Washington


    It was the embodiment of Yankee ingenuity and derring-do,
the pride of the U.S. and the envy of the world. The very
mention of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
evoked images of intrepid astronauts walking in space and
frolicking on the moon, of sophisticated robot craft swooping
past ringed and rocky alien worlds. To millions of people
around the globe, the voice of Mission Control was the true
Voice of America.

    Those days are long gone. In Washington NASA is under siege,
its reputation tarnished, its programs in disarray, its future
clouded. Overhead, the crippled $2.1 billion Hubble Space
Telescope orbits, its vision blurred by an embarrassing,
inexcusable flaw in one of its reflecting mirrors. In Congress
legislators are having second thoughts about any further
funding of the highly touted $37 billion space station,
questioning its usefulness and NASA's ability to assemble and
operate it.

    At Cape Canaveral last week, technicians prepared to move
the shuttle Atlantis from its launching pad back to the
vehicle-assembly building for repairs after failing to halt the
seepage of hydrogen from a flange connecting fueling pipes to
the spacecraft's giant external tank. As a result, all three
U.S. shuttles are grounded while NASA continues to probe the
cause of the mysterious leaks, not only in Atlantis but also
in its sister ship Columbia.

    Only one event brightened an otherwise gloomy week for the
space agency. The first commercial version of the Atlas rocket
was finally launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral. It lofted
into orbit a satellite that in September will provide
scientists with important data on radioactive damage to
satellites in outer space.

    That lone success did little to bolster NASA's sagging
morale. Last month Vice President Dan Quayle, in his role as
chairman of the National Space Council, instructed NASA
administrator Richard Truly "to put together an outside task
force that will consider the future long-term direction of the
space program." And last week Quayle announced that Norman
Augustine, chairman of Martin Marietta Corp., has been selected
to head the new group. To some, creation of the task force
signaled a diminished role for NASA in space.

    The mounting criticism of NASA is in sharp contrast to the
almost uninterrupted acclaim heaped on the agency in the years
that followed its establishment in 1958. With virtually
unlimited funds, sound management and inspired creativity, NASA
soon overcame the Soviet Union's head start, sending
brilliantly conceived and increasingly sophisticated unmanned
craft to every planet but Pluto and landing men on the moon.

    Not long after Neil Armstrong took his "one small step for
man," however, even as more Apollo flights were successfully
plying the lunar route, the seeds of NASA's decline were
planted. Some space historians go so far as to pinpoint the day
it happened: March 7, 1970, when President Richard Nixon,
preoccupied with Vietnam and budgetary problems, decided that
it was not in the best interests of the U.S. to have a
high-profile space program.

    Rejecting suggestions that the nation proceed apace with a
space station and a permanent base on the moon in preparation
for sending astronauts to Mars, Nixon issued a statement that
shook the NASA hierarchy: "Space must take its place with other
national priorities." Suddenly the space agency's primary
mission became sheer survival. "Once NASA's goals in space were
rejected," says John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy
Institute at George Washington University, "its purpose became
maintenance of the institution. A siege mentality developed.
NASA circled the wagons and began to lie to itself and
everybody else."

    Seeking a major project that would involve manned flight and
thus more easily elicit the support of Congress ("No bucks
without Buck Rogers," quip congressional aides), the agency
opted for the Space Transportation System, the shuttle program.
Lobbying the White House, the Defense Department and Congress
intensively, NASA portrayed the shuttle as all things to all
people. The winged craft would be reusable and thus economical,
a safe, reliable space truck with many different roles. In as
many as 60 flights a year, it would loft or capture satellites
and patrol the skies for the military. Furthermore, NASA
assured the White House, it could lead to the direct employment
of 8,800 people in 1972 and 24,000 by 1973.

    In January 1972 Nixon authorized the development of the
shuttle, a decision that Logsdon calls "one of the major public
policy mistakes of the last quarter-century." As the naysayers
predicted at the time, the shuttle was highly oversold. While
a remarkable feat of engineering, it was highly complex and
subject to recurring glitches that have prevented NASA from
ever achieving more than nine launches -- never mind 60 -- a
year. Worse, since it depended almost solely on the shuttle to
orbit satellites until after the Challenger disaster, the U.S.
has fallen behind in the development of expendable rocket
launchers. More and more U.S. companies are looking to the
European Space Agency's Ariane rocket, which last week carried
two television satellites aloft, for placing commercial
satellites in orbit, and also -- now that Washington has given
its approval -- to the Soviet Proton.

    NASA critics see a disturbing parallel between the shuttle
and the proposed space station. The concept of the station
evolved in part to provide a useful mission for the shuttle,
which could be employed to carry crews back and forth to the
orbiting base. But, say Ronald Brunner and Radford Byerly,
researchers at the University of Colorado, the station was more
important to the NASA hierarchy as a mega project to stem the
decline in the agency's manpower, which by 1981 had dropped to
22,000 from a high of 36,000 in 1967.

    Having polished its sales technique with the shuttle, NASA
successfully lobbied Ronald Reagan and his aides, again
overselling, exaggerating the benefits and downplaying the
difficulties of building the space station.

    The extent of NASA's sales hype became evident in July when
the space agency announced that the station had to be
extensively redesigned and simplified. An independent study had
found that some 3,800 hours of spacewalking would be required
annually merely to maintain the proposed station -- a figure
drastically higher than the 130 hours NASA had estimated and
far beyond the capacity of the current U.S. space program.

    Truly, who has held his post only since 1989, argues that
NASA is taking a "bum rap," especially about the shuttle's
latest troubles. "It is very frustrating to be castigated, to
end up in political cartoons and to be made fun of," he says,
"when the agency carefully checks for hydrogen leaks, finds
them and judiciously cancels flights to ensure the safety of
astronauts." Bruce Murray, a Caltech planetary scientist and
former head of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, agrees: "I
don't think that it is fair to beat the current NASA people
about the head and shoulders when they are trying to implement
a flawed plan."

    Not all the news is bad. After the benign neglect of space
during the Reagan Administration, Murray, a confirmed Democrat,
has been pleasantly surprised by the Bush Administration's
approach. He lauds Bush's so-called Space Exploration
Initiative, which would forge a sensible, coherent space
program that, step by step, could land astronauts on the red
sands of Mars by 2019. That program largely follows
recommendations made to the White House by the National Academy
of Sciences in 1988. The Academy urged, among other things,
that "core functions" such as developing inexpensive and
reliable means for launching payloads into orbit be assured of
stable funding -- roughly $10 billion annually -- before any
"special initiatives" like the space station are approved. Bush
is also seeking a 23% increase in NASA's budget, to $15.2
billion for fiscal 1991. "With this kind of leadership," says
Murray, "I think it will be possible again to draw in the young
people with stars in their eyes." Once more, after two decades
of meandering in space, NASA has a strong space advocate in the
White House and a mandate to return to its winning ways. The
question remains: Is NASA up to the task?


____________________________________________________________
NASA'S UPS AND DOWNS:


    -- July 29, 1958

    NASA is founded.

    -- Aug. 2, 1958

    First successful launch of an Atlas rocket.

    -- May 5, 1961

    Mercury 3: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space
with a suborbital flight that lasts 15 min. 22 sec.

    -- Feb. 20, 1962

    Mercury 6: John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the
earth.

    -- June 3, 1965

    Gemini 4: Astronaut Edward White is the first American to
walk in space.

    -- May 30, 1966

    Surveyor 1: First unmanned U.S. probe lands on the moon.

    -- Dec. 21, 1968

    Apollo 8: Astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders orbit the
moon.

    -- July 20, 1969

    Apollo 11: Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin become the first
men to set foot on the moon.

    -- May 14, 1973

    Skylab 1: First U.S. space station is launched. Eleven days
later, astronauts Conrad, Kerwin and Weitz fly to the station.

    -- July 15, 1975

    Apollo-Soyez: U.S. and Soviet astronauts dock their capsules
in a display of international cooperation in space.

    -- April 12, 1981

    Columbia: Shuttle makes maiden flight.

    -- Jan. 28, 1986

    Challenger: Explodes after launch, killing seven crew
members.

    -- Sept. 29, 1988

    Discovery: Shuttle flights resume.

    -- June 27, 1990

    Serious flaws in the Hubble telescope's mirrors are
announced.

    -- June 29, 1990

    Hydrogen leak grounds shuttle fleet.