David.Smith@cmu-cs-ius.arpa (05/25/84)
[The following is excerpted from "What presidential election could mean for aerospace," an article in the May 1984 Aerospace America. I have omitted the introductory paragraph and the military positions.] Mondale could claim to have been the Space Shuttle's number-one enemy in the Senate, having led the fight to kill the program not once but three times from his post on the space subcommittee. Along with other liberal senators such as William Proxmire, he routinely voted against space budgets. In the spring of 1970 it was Mondale who led the Senate opposition to the Shuttle, coming within four votes of killing its authorization on the Senate floor. Intense efforts by other space-subcommittee members defeated his effort, but Mondale did not give up. The program still faced two appropriations votes, and Mondale again offered his Shuttle-killing amendments, but with less success. He dropped the fight only after the program was well underway, in part, some believed, because of the growing support for the Shuttle by organized labor, one of his major constituencies. Although all this occurred over a decade ago, Mondale's critics remember that in opposing the Shuttle he was opposing "The Space Shuttle/Space Station" program, as it was called then, and his feelings toward the space station have not mellowed. Campaign staffers say he feels that NASA "has not done its homework" with respect to what a space station would actually do and how much it would cost, and he could not favor it until the proposal has been "well thought out." He also fears that such a program would, like the Shuttle, draw funds away from space science programs, which he strongly supports. Gary Hart represents a largely unknown quantity for aerospace, even to his Senate staff, who say that his position is only now being formulated. In 1980 Hart led a move in the Armed Services Committee to zero funding for the Vandenburg Space Shuttle facility. As chairman of the subcommittee on military construction, Hart had obtained enough proxy votes from absent members to pass his amendment in the subcommittee's "mark-up," with the full committee scheduled to vote the next day. Last-minute scrambling behind the scenes by committee staffers led the late Senator Howard Cannon to oppose Hart and defeat his amendment. Hart was denied even a face-saving token cut. Then, in FY81, in a battle on the Senate floor to slice 2% across the board in the HUD-Independent Agencies' budget, which includes NASA's funding, Hart supported the cut and an amendment paring NASA's R&D funding in the same year. On the plus side, aerospace manufacturers in Hart's home state recall strong expressions of support from the Senator for programs such as Skylab and Viking. Reagan's space-station initiative has become the biggest star on the space horizon, and it is not the only bright one. This year's proposed NASA budget includes funding for a Mars Geoscience Climatology Orbiter, an Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, a Naval Remote Sensing Satellite, and a 13% real growth in aeronautics. The decline in NASA manpower will be halted for the first time in many years. Perhaps even more important, NASA Administrator James Beggs recently announced an agreement with the White House that grants NASA 1% real funding growth for the next five years. This demonstrates what Beggs calls Reagan's accptance of "the importance of NASA R&D to our national economic well-being." Total basic research has also fared well under Reagan, having risen 55% (before inflation) since he took office. "In the same period," Science Advisor George Keyworth announced recently, "we've drastically reduced funds for the kinds of demonstration projects that industry can pursue better as well as for other non-defense development, at the same time ... bringing basic research from the smallest to the largest component of non-military R&D funding." Non-defense R&D has actually declined in real terms under Reagan, but defense R&D has ballooned by 107% over four years (before inflation). Reagan's strong support for defense spending is a surprise to no one, but his interest in space has been almost continually underestimated, despite statements to the contrary by Keyworth since the first days of his appointment. As a case in point, Reagan's space-station decision took much of the aerospace community by surprise (a statement by the National Coordinating Committee for Space praising the decision had to be drafted and endorsed in one day in order to be released in time for Reagan's speech). Perhaps most significant, Reagan is reported to have made his decision in the face of opposition from most of his top advisors.