Originally Apollo 8 was intended as an Earth-orbital test of the Saturn V and the Lunar Module Moon lander, but the Lunar Module was not ready. Sending Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon was first proposed in August 1968 by George Low, director of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office at MSC, and was eagerly promoted by Tom Paine despite initial skepticism from NASA Administrator Webb. 24 Because the crew lacked a Lunar Module, they lacked the backup propulsion and life support systems it could provide. These would come in handy during James Lovell's next flight to the Moon on Apollo 13 in April 1970.
The image of Earth rising into view over the pitted gray Moon featured prominently on end-of-year magazines and newspapers. It formed a counterpoint of fragile beauty and bold human achievement that accentuated the war, dissent, and assassinations of 1968. This was reflected in Nixon's first inaugural speech on 20 January 1969:
We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the Moon, but falling into raucous discord on Earth. We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by divisions, wanting unity. 25
Democrat Paine submitted his resignation pro forma when Republican Nixon took office. Surprisingly, Nixon did not accept it. Though Aviation Week & Space Technology reported that Nixon was impressed by the job Paine had done since coming to NASA, the real reasons were apparently less meritorious. 26 Nixon had never shown much interest in space and could find no ideologically suitable replacement who wanted to head NASA. He may also have desired to have a Democrat in place to blame if the Kennedy/Johnson Apollo program failed. 27 Paine was confirmed as NASA Administrator in March 1969.
Being a Democrat in a Republican administration was enough to leave Paine in a weak position. On top of that, however, Paine was a Washington neophyte. Webb had been wily, a Washington insider given to deal-making; Paine was an idealist given to emotive arguments. Paine was, according to NASA Historian Roger Launius, "every bit as zealous for his cause as had been his namesake." Furthermore, he was "unwilling to compromise and . . . publicly critical of the [Nixon] administration's lack of strong action" with regards to space. 28 He excoriated his Center directors for lacking boldness. He considered this disloyal to his view of America, the expansive country, ready to tackle any challenge. 29
To Paine, the late 1960s was not a time to try men's souls. He complained to the Washington Evening Star of "what I would call almost a national hypochondria . . . in many ways crippling some of the forward-looking things we're able to do . . . I feel that one of the very highest priority matters is the war on poverty and the problems of the cities. But in the meantime we're making . . . a lot of progress in the civil rights area and really, this nation is a good deal healthier than we're giving it credit for today." 30
Paine tried to use the excitement generated by Apollo 8 as a lever to gain Nixon's commitment to an expansive post-Apollo future for NASA. His efforts were countered by voices counseling caution. Nixon had appointed "transition committees" to help chart a course for his new Administration. On 8 January 1969, the Task Force on Space transition committee, chaired by Charles Townes, handed in its report. The Task Force, made up of 13 technologists and scientists, recommended against new starts and proposed a steady NASA budget of $4 billion per year "a rather frugal amount" equivalent to "three-quarters of one percent of GNP [Gross National Product]." 31
The Task Force counseled continued lunar exploration after the initial Apollo Moon landings and advised Nixon to postpone a decision on a large space station and the reusable shuttle vehicle needed to resupply it economically. The primary purpose of the station was, it said, "to test man's ability for an extended spaceflight over times of a year or more, so that the practicality of a manned planetary mission could be examined. However, the desirability of such a mission is not yet clear . . . ." 32
The Task Force recommendations resembled those in the February 1967 PSAC report, and with good reason—the membership lists of the two groups were almost identical. One new addition was Robert Seamans, Secretary of the Air Force, who had been NASA Deputy Administrator when the PSAC had submitted its 1967 report.
Even as the Task Force presented its recommendations to Nixon, Paine's optimistic plans for NASA's FY 1970 budget foundered. President Johnson's FY 1970 budget request for NASA, released 15 January 1969, was $3.88 billion—$800 million less than the $4.7 billion "optimum" figure Paine had given the Budget Bureau in November and more than $100 million less than what Paine had said was the "minimum acceptable." When Nixon's Budget Bureau chief, Robert Mayo, asked agency heads a week later to further trim the Johnson budget, Paine pushed for a $198-million increase. Mayo quickly rebuffed Paine's request. 33 Nixon's FY 1970 budget went to Congress on 15 April. NASA's share was $3.82 billion, of which Congress eventually appropriated $3.75 billion.
Space Task Group
Paine pointed to the Task Force on Space report as an example of what he did not want for NASA's future. 34 At a NASA meeting on space stations held in February at Langley, Paine invoked instead von Braun's Collier's articles. 35 Following the meeting, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reported that NASA planned a 100-person space station by 1980, with first 12-person module to be launched on a modified Saturn V in 1975. 36
Nixon's science advisor, Lee Dubridge, tried to get authority to set NASA's future course, in part because he sensed Paine's aims were too expansive, but Paine protested. On 13 February 1969, President Nixon sent a memorandum to Dubridge, Paine, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, and Vice President Spiro Agnew, asking them to set up a Space Task Group (STG) to provide advice on NASA's future. 37 On 17 February, Nixon solicited Paine's advice on the agency's direction. Paine's long, detailed letter of 26 February sought to step around the STG process and secure from Nixon early endorsement of a space station. 38 In his response, Nixon politely reminded Paine of the newly formed STG. 39
STG meetings began on 7 March 1969. In addition to the four voting members, the group included observers: Glenn Seaborg of the AEC; U. Alexis Johnson, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; and, most influential, the Budget Bureau's Mayo. Robert Seamans stood in for Melvin Laird. The STG chair was Agnew, another Washington neophyte. Misreading the Vice President's importance within the Nixon Administration, Paine focused his efforts on wooing Agnew to his cause. Much of the STG's work was conducted outside formal STG meetings, which occurred infrequently.
NASA's STG position became based on the Integrated Program Plan (IPP) developed by Mueller's OMSF, which was first formally described to Paine in a report dated 12 May. 40 Mueller attributed many of its concepts to a NASA Science and Technical Advisory Council meeting held in La Jolla, California, in December 1968. Though concerned mostly with Earth-orbital and cislunar missions, the report proposed that "the subsystems, procedures and even vehicles" for such missions "be developed with a view towards their possible use in a future planetary program . . . ." 41
The IPP schedule was aggressive even by 1960s Moon race standards. Between 1970 and 1975, NASA would conduct a dozen Apollo lunar expeditions and launch and operate three AAP space stations—two in Earth orbit and one in lunar polar orbit. The year 1975 would see the debut of the reusable Earth-orbital Space Shuttle, which could carry a 25-ton, 40-foot-long, 22-foot-wide payload in its cargo bay.
Shuttle payloads would include a standardized space station module housing up to 12 astronauts, a propulsion module usable as a piloted Moon lander or Space Tug, and tanks containing liquid hydrogen propellant for the NERVA-equipped Nuclear Shuttle, which would first reach Earth orbit on an uprated Saturn V in 1977. Significantly, Mueller's IPP gave NERVA a non-Mars mission as part of a larger reusable transportation system in cislunar space. Up to 12 astronauts would conduct a Mars flight simulation aboard the Space Station in Earth orbit from 1975 to 1978, and 1978 would see establishment of a Lunar Base.
By 1980, 30 astronauts would live and work in cislunar space at any one time. Four Nuclear Shuttle flights and 42 Space Shuttle flights per year would support the Space Station Program. Six Nuclear Shuttle flights, 48 Space Shuttle flights, and eight Space Tug Moon lander flights per year would support the Lunar Base Program.
NASA’s Big Gun
Paine liked Mueller's ambitious IPP. He asked Wernher von Braun to make it even more expansive by building a Mars mission concept onto it in time for a 4 August presentation to the STG. The presentation was timed to capitalize on the enthusiasm and excitement generated by the first Apollo Moon landing mission, which was set to lift off on 16 July 1969.
Paine saw von Braun as "NASA's big gun." He believed that the space flight salesmanship for which the German-born rocketeer was famous could still help shape the future of American space flight as it had in the previous two decades. According to Von Braun, "it was an effort of a very few weeks to put a very consistent and good and plausible story together." 42
Meanwhile, Paine's efforts to woo Agnew were, it appeared, beginning to pay off. At the Apollo 11 launch, the Vice President spoke of his "individual feeling" that the United States should set "the simple, ambitious, optimistic goal of a manned flight to Mars by the end of the century." 43
On 20 July, Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed the spider-like Lunar Module Eagle on the Moon's Sea of Tranquillity. At the start of humanity's first two-hour Moon walk, Aldrin described the landscape as a "magnificent desolation." The astronauts remained at Tranquillity Base for 21 hours before rejoining Command Module Pilot Michael Collins aboard the CSM Columbia in lunar orbit. On 24 July 1969, they splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, achieving the goal Kennedy had set eight years before.
In reporting the Apollo 11 landing, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner pointed to space-age spin-offs, such as "new paints and plastics," then predicted that "the Mars goal should bring benefits to all mankind even greater than the . . . [M]oon program." 44 The Philadelphia Inquirer anticipated opposition to a Mars program; it asked, "will the inspiration be abandoned before the veiled censure of those who seem to suggest the solution of all human dilemmas lies in turning away from space to other priorities?" 45
Aviation Week & Space Technology reported that "[s]pace officials sense that public interest is near an all-time high . . . ." 46 Yet polls taken at the time did not indicate strong public support for Mars exploration. A Gallup poll showed that the majority of people polled aged under 30 years favored going on to Mars; however, a larger majority of those over 30 opposed. Taken together, 53 percent of Americans opposed a Mars mission, 39 percent favored it, and 8 percent had no opinion. 47
In addition to the polls, new automated probe data supplied Mars mission detractors with ammunition. The Mariner 6 spacecraft had left Earth on 24 February, just before STG meetings began. On 31 July 1969, as Paine and von Braun put the finishing touches on their 4 August pitch, it flew over the southern hemisphere of Mars, snapping 74 grainy images of a forbidding landscape pocked by craters. A feature known to Earth-based telescopic observers as Nix Olympica ("the Olympian Snows") appeared as a 300-mile crater with a bright central patch.