NASA still living with Nixon space policy

In name and appearance, no place embodies the presidential vision that landed men on the moon more than Kennedy Space Center, whose towering launch pads and processing facilities remain symbols of those epic achievements.

But for decades now, it is really Richard Nixon's vision for space — or lack thereof — that has defined NASA and KSC.

After the successful Apollo 11 moon landing, it was up to the Nixon administration to decide what the nation's space program should do next, space policy expert and historian John Logsdon told a group of KSC employees in a presentation Monday.

"One might have thought that the impact of Apollo 11 would carry over into a positive attitude towards post-Apollo – certainly NASA thought so," said Logsdon, author of "After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program." "Didn't turn out that way."

Nixon wanted a space program that maintained U.S. leadership, advanced technology and created jobs, but that slashed spending.

From an Apollo-era peak of 4.4 percent, NASA's share of the federal budget has fallen to less than half of 1 percent.

The space agency has struggled since the early 70s to accept diminished human spaceflight ambitions while competing with other government programs for funding, Logsdon said, often resulting in an agency stressed by trying to do too much with too little.

Nixon's approval of the shuttle program in 1972 kept NASA in the human spaceflight game, but without a clear purpose or long-term goal, he said.

"That lack of a strategic focus or a goal has been part of the criticism of NASA in recent years," said Logsdon. "I know (NASA Administrator) Charlie Bolden would not agree with those statements, but some very authoritative groups have been making them. And I think that lack of strategic focus is Richard Nixon's most lasting heritage."

A professor emeritus at George Washington University who served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003, Logsdon is also the author of "John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon."

He signed copies of his new book after his presentation in a training auditorium near KSC headquarters.

The Apollo program's shutdown quickly had a devastating impact on KSC, where total employment dropped from a peak of nearly 26,000 in 1968, the year before Apollo 11 launched, to about 9,300 six years later.

Launch infrastructure worth billions of dollars was temporarily mothballed, and Saturn V production ended. NASA today is trying to recreate a rocket as powerful as the one it had then.

During the frenzy of Apollo, NASA had hugely ambitious plans to follow moon landings with a series of space stations, a shuttle and human missions to Mars by the 1980s. But its enthusiasm was out of step with political reality.

The Nixon space doctrine, as Logsdon calls it, decided space would no longer be treated as special and would have to compete with other government priorities each year, principles that have endured.

"I think most of us in the space community think that was a big mistake," said Logsdon. "That's the argument that's been made for the last 40-plus years."

But he said one equally could argue that Nixon's path has stood the test of time because it properly read public opinion that there was no compelling reason for a major post-Apollo exploration program.

"Kennedy and Apollo created an image of what the program is supposed to be that has been a lasting image, and that's the heritage around here," Logsdon told FLORIDA TODAY at KSC. "But the program that has been executed since 1972 is a Nixon program."

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.

Weather good for Wednesday launch

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, a 20-story United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is scheduled to roll to its Launch Complex 41 pad in preparation for a Wednesday morning launch of the Air Force's unmanned X-37B mini-shuttle. There's a 60 percent chance of favorable weather during the launch period opening at 10:45 a.m.