NASA and the Space Industry (New Series in NASA History) by Joan Lisa Bromberg

Author:Joan Lisa Bromberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-01-26T17:14:00+00:00

NASA versus Department of Defense space expenditures. The figures are in current-year dollars. They may not add because of rounding. Department of Defense expenditures on missiles are not included.

Source: Aeronautics and Space Report of the President: i 989-i 99o Activities, Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1991, 16z.

NASA strategy was first to elaborate the scientific, commercial, and military missions to which a station might be put, deferring discussion of its design. Eight aerospace companies received small contracts in August r98z, to aid with the definition of the station's missions. Boeing, Lockheed, TRW, Grumman, Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta, and General Dynamics got just under $8oo,ooo each for the studies. One of the few details that were firmly stipulated was that the components out of which the station and its satellite structures were to be built would be carried into space by the shuttle, rather than by expendable launch vehicles."

Beggs wished to involve as many centers as possible in the station. This would give it a wide constituency within NASA, and it would enlist the congressional representatives of the districts in which the centers were located. Marshall and Johnson were both actively seeking as much of the program as they could get and were each contending for the role of lead center. Goddard was not interested. It was the center most closely linked to the scientific community, however, and Hodge wanted Goddard in the mix to give scientists confidence in the project. Lewis was NASA's core center for space propulsion, and Lewis' director, Andrew J. Stofan, wanted the station's power system, so as to add to the center a new and related area of expertise.29

To the aerospace industry, the station had many attractions. They saw manned space as a natural extension of the aircraft business. Transporting people through space was the next step beyond transporting them through the air. The habitation and laboratory modules of a station had structural affinities with the bodies of airliners. It was the kind of work that made excellent copy for advertising and that helped attract the most capable members of the new crops of graduating engineers."' Finally, and not least, it would mean multibillion-dollar contracts over a decade or more. The companies therefore lobbied Congress and the president on behalf of the station. Meanwhile, they jockeyed to aggrandize the share of those NASA Centers with which they had the closest ties, and from which they were most likely to receive station contracts."

At the end of 11983, Reagan decided to approve the station. His own enthusiasm for space and for the aerospace industry of his home state of California won over the opposition of some of his advisors.12 The president's announcement of this new initiative, in his January 1984 State of the Union address, was industry's signal that contracts would be coming its way, first for the Phase B stage of defining the station's architecture, and later on for hardware. By this time, NASA had begun to adjust its internal rivalries by dividing the station into four "work-packages," one

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