Michaels was nodding, rubbing the thick jowls under his chin. “Yeah. I understand. You’re doing a good job, Joe. You’re doing just the job I hired you for.”
“Fred, we’ve gone wrong, somewhere. We scraped this kind of crap out of Apollo; back then we had an operation, right across the country, that was as slick as snot. But now we’ve slipped back.”
Michaels grunted and sipped his drink. “Maybe. But we had lots of things working for us, back then. A goal you couldn’t have defined more sharply, a lot of goodwill — even though Congress squeezed the budgets — and, hell, I don’t know, a kind of romance about it all. We were still moving outward, Joe; it was still a great adventure, a time of firsts, every year. And we had one hell of a schedule pressure; we still thought the Russians might beat us to it.
“Now,” he ruminated, “it’s different. All the forces working on us have changed. Even though we’ve got the prospect of Mars, somewhere out there in the future, we’ve been mooching about in Earth orbit for a decade, and what the hell do we have to show for it but a couple of tin-can fuel-tank ’Labs, Apollo hardware still in orbit a decade after the Moon landings, a Saturn upgrade booster that hasn’t flown once, and a lethal bucket of bolts called NERVA?”
“Yeah, but you have to take a positive view of it, Fred. Skylab A is still operational, nearly a decade after it was launched. What if we’d abandoned it? — let it fall back to Earth? What a hell of a waste that would have been; we’d have been a laughingstock. And Moonlab is still up there—”
“Okay, okay. But it’s still just Apollo applications. Nothing we didn’t design in the sixties. And meanwhile, the world is moving on, Joe. We don’t have the lead that we had a decade ago. The Russians have kept on flying Soyuz and Salyut—”
“But our stuff is advanced over theirs.”
“Maybe, but their endurance records have been beating the pants off us. And the Soviets aren’t the only ones. Even our buddies are moving into the gaps we’re leaving. The Europeans have been flying their Ariane for a couple of years, so we’re soon going to lose out in terms of commercial launches, too, to our so-called allies.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fleshy fingers and closed his eyes. “Ah, hell. Another eight or nine years on, and here I am again trying to reshape the space program for another new president. And once again I’m trying to figure out the way the future is going to pull at us, and which way the new White House is likely to jump. Maybe it’s not so obvious to you guys; I know what it’s like when you’re buried inside the program. But things are so different now, from 1971, and 1960; so different…”
Muldoon grunted. “Oh, I look around, Fred. I can see the changes. In spite of the Afghanistan thing, the Cold War is done now. Or at least people want to think so. And if space was all about fighting the war symbolically—”
“Then what use is it now?” Michaels smiled over his glass. “You got that right. We were happy enough to play that card when it suited us, Joe; maybe we couldn’t have flown without it. But now people have had enough, and we’re being paid back. But on the other hand…”
Muldoon prompted, “Yeah?”
“On the other hand, maybe there are still some angles we can use. You know Reagan is expanding his military spending.”
Muldoon grunted. “Sure. Just as he’s cutting taxes, and the rest of the budget.”
“And I don’t think that’s going to go away, not during Reagan’s term.” Michaels was thoughtful, calculating. “Haig is saying that all of Carter’s human rights stuff was misguided; that what we’ve got to do now is counter the Soviets, who are still the main threat.”
“So what does that mean for us, Fred?”
Michaels smiled, tiredly. “You need to see the angles. We have to position ourselves so we’re in the part of the budget that gets expanded, not the part that gets cut. If all that money is going to flow into defense, then we’ve got to be in the way of that flow. Divert a little bit.” He sipped his drink. “Then you have Reagan himself. That old ham. You know, I’ve been working with Reagan and his people since he was nominated. And I think it’s possible he might want to emulate Kennedy. Or rather, finally put Kennedy in his box, after all these years. You know that in the Republican platform last year, Reagan attacked Carter/Kennedy for not keeping up NASA’s funding the way they should have. Now, he has to deliver on that.
“And maybe, for Reagan, the state of flux we’re in after the NERVA thing is an opportunity. A chance for him to shape events. The space program is like a litmus test for new administrations when they come in, a way for them to prove themselves. You had Kennedy and the Moon, and Nixon and his long-range Mars program… Joe, I think if we could come up with some program, some clear goal, that promised to restore our image, and put us back in the lead in space in a few years time — say, in five or six years, within his possible term of office — Reagan might buy it.” His rheumy eyes gleamed. “And now’s the time to strike, while his administration is settling in. But—”
“But what?”
“But Reagan’s no Kennedy. And Bush sure as hell is no LBJ. An announcement isn’t enough. I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to assemble, and keep, a coalition of interests behind any such program. And besides, if NERVA’s a busted flush, what the hell do we have to give Reagan anyhow, Joe?” He poured himself another drink. “Ah, God. I tell you, I don’t know if I can do it anymore. I’ve used up a lot of credit on the Hill over the years, in the endless program delays and overspends. And now this NERVA thing. I don’t know if I can go in there and start fighting again. I don’t know if I should even be trying anymore.”
He’s thinking of giving up, Muldoon realized The sudden perception was painful to him, almost a physical shock. Fuck. How come I haven’t seen this before?
Because, he thought, he hadn’t wanted to admit it.
A NASA without Fred Michaels at the top was all but inconceivable to Muldoon, as it no doubt was to most Americans.
Muldoon knew enough about the workings of NASA to know what kind of man it needed as its Administrator. It shouldn’t be a scientist, or an engineer. It had to be someone who understood the great issues of national and public policy. It had to be a manager, someone able to keep the multiple warring centers in effective and efficient operation. It had to be a man who knew his way around Congress, and the Pentagon, and the Bureau of the Budget.
Such a man was Fred Michaels.
Michaels, as had James Webb before him, had shown himself to have the ability to build up a political lobby behind a space program — and then, crucially, to sustain it across the years. Michaels’s continuity, and his endless energy and commitment, had probably meant as much as Kennedy’s advocacy in keeping the NASA show on the road, over all these long and seemingly fruitless years.
With lesser men in the Administrator’s office, Muldoon realized, NASA might have fallen on bad times years before.
And now, at this lowest moment, he wants to give up, to slink back to fucking Dallas.
Muldoon sat there in the gloom of the office, listening to Michaels, watching the flickering of the TV screen.
He was reminded of the day, long ago, when his own father had admitted to him that he was terminally ill; he felt the same loss of foundations, of surety.
I guess I’m going to have to become one of the grown-ups now, he thought.
But what the hell am I supposed to do?
March-April 1981
LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON
From Joe Muldoon’s point of view, the arguments and decision making about the future shape of the space program accelerated dramatically over the next few weeks.
Reagan asked his White House counsel to review options. A small meeting was pulled together in a room of the White House, overlooking the South Lawn. Tim Josephson briefed Muldoon on how the session had gone. Just a handful of men had been in there, talking and arguing for hours: the counsel, the budget director, Fred Michaels, Josephson and a couple
of assistants, and Michaels’s old adversary, Leon Agronski.
“It was important to us, Joe. It could have been maybe the single most important meeting since the decision to go to the Moon. But we spent most of the time bitching about the lousy decisions that have landed us in this mess in the first place. And you had Agronski weighing in yet again about how manned spaceflight is a waste of time… I still feel Reagan is looking for something positive, and feasible, and real, that he can unite us all around; but so far we haven’t come up with anything. We’re in danger of being picked apart; Reagan will find his prestigious morale-boosters somewhere else, and we’ll end up flying nothing but goddamn low-orbit spy missions.”
Muldoon wasn’t sure why Josephson was getting into the habit of taking him into his confidence. Muldoon guessed Josephson spent a lot of time making tentative calls to a host of other contacts inside NASA and out, trying, in his own way, to help Fred Michaels through this difficult time.
Josephson had said: We haven’t come up with anything. Muldoon knew that was true.
So Muldoon — already working all his waking hours on the Apollo-N investigations and organizational changes — started using the hours he should have been asleep to do his own research.
“What kind of program can we run?” he asked Phil Stone. He riffled a pile of photostats, journals, and books on his desks. “If I could eat proposals, I’d be a fat man; the one thing we’re not short of is ideas. Should we go back to the Moon and start mining it for minerals? Or maybe we should capture an asteroid, push it toward the Earth, and mine that. Maybe we can build colonies at the libration points of the Earth-Moon system. Maybe we should have factories in space, making crystals, or drugs, or perfect, seamless metal spheres. Maybe we could build huge hydroponic farms in space, where the sun always shines. Or maybe we ought to put up square miles of solar arrays, for clean power. Maybe we could mine the Earth’s upper atmosphere for lox…”
NASA wasn’t short of visionaries, and new ideas, and proposals of all sorts. But there was no unity. Historically, NASA as an organization was lousy at long-range planning; fragmentary ideas and plans came bubbling up from the bottom, from the centers, and almost all of them fell afoul of turf wars.
Stone waved a hand. “All this stuff is great, Joe. But I don’t see what’s distinctive about any of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Soviets are already ahead of us in putting together big structures in orbit, and they have more experience of long-duration spaceflight. So we’re behind before we start. Whatever we try to do in this area, the Russians ought to be able to pass us easily. And there’s something about all this, factories and power plants in orbit, that’s kind of…”
“What?”
“Lacking inspiration. It’s dour. Russian. Joe, with this stuff we’re not going anywhere; and we haven’t been anywhere since Apollo.”
“So what do we do? Some kind of stunt?”
“Go to Mars. That was the point of the last ten years anyhow, wasn’t it?”
“But we never had a Mars program, in the way that we had a Moon program back in the sixties. The point was that we were going to develop the technology bit by bit — the nuke rocket, and new heat shields, and new navigation techniques, and long-duration experience, and so on. All of which could be put together into a Mars mission one day, if we chose to; but it would all be modular, and able to be configured into a lot of flexible mission requirements—”
Stone laughed. “You’ll have to get out from behind that desk, Joe. You’re beginning to sound like you belong there.”
Muldoon grunted and rubbed his eyes. “Well, anyhow, we sure as hell ain’t going to Mars. Not anymore; not in my lifetime or yours, Phil.”
“You’re so sure? We’ve got most of the elements. We do know how to survive long-duration missions.”
“Sure I’m sure. The fucking nuke rocket blew up in orbit, remember. The Russians are still sending down pictures of the damn thing glowing blue in the dark. From what I hear there’s no way we’re going to be allowed to fly a NERVA again. And without NERVA—”
“There goes your Mars mission. Unless you fly chemical.”
“Yeah,” Muldoon growled. “But how? Here — look at this thing.” He grubbed on his desk until he found a glossy report, full of spectacular color images. “This is from Udet and his guys, at Marshall. They’ve reworked some old papers that go all the way back to the early sixties. Have you heard of the EMPIRE studies?”
“Nope.”
“Marshall and a couple of contractors, back in ’62 and ’63. Back then, Apollo-Saturn had just about crystallized, and the engineers were asking, what the hell else can we do with this stuff? And they came up with EMPIRE — Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Round-trip Expeditions. Look at this. Some of the options needed nuke stages, but others were chemical only. There were a lot of studies like that, from that period. Soon after, every aerospace engineer in the country had his head up Apollo’s ass, and the flow dried up.”
Stone leafed through the report. “So what is Udet doing with this now?”
“He wants to revive a chemical-only Mars flyby option. A couple of S-IVB third stages in orbit, ganged together and fired off on a minimum-energy trajectory, looping around Mars. You’d need two, maybe three Saturn launches to do it.”
“A flyby of Mars? What the hell kind of mission is that?”
Muldoon rubbed his face. “Well, you’re talking maybe a seven-hundred-day round-trip, and about one day of useful work at Mars.”
“Whipping by at interplanetary speeds…”
“Oh, and by the way. You’d pass on the dark side.”
Stone laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“Well, that was the kind of mission they were proposing, back in 1963. The point was to go — just like Apollo, really — nobody cared what you did when you got there.”
Stone threw the report on Muldoon’s desk. “You can’t approve this, Joe. We’re beyond stunts like this now. Aren’t we? In the long run, they come back to bite you. Damn it, Udet and his boys ought to know better than this. We’d probably get laughed out of Congress anyhow.”
Muldoon shrugged, cautious. “Hell, it might get past Reagan, Phil.”
Stone looked reflective. “Look at it this way. What would Natalie York think of this?”
Muldoon laughed; then the laugh tailed off, and he studied Stone. “You know, you’re right. York’s a good touchstone.” Awkward pain in the ass as she is, if she wouldn’t approve a mission, he thought, it’s probably not worth flying. “All right. So we need to find some way of devising an all-chemical mission that will deliver a crew into Mars orbit for a respectable chunk of time — including a landing. But that brings us back where we started; it doesn’t look as if we can do it with chemical.”
Stone shrugged. “So find some smarter way of getting there.”
“Like what?”
“How should I know? Joe, you’re head of the program now, for Christ’s sake. There are a lot of smart guys around here. Use them.” He looked thoughtful. “Natalie York, huh.”
“Yeah. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
Muldoon got back to his work on the investigation.
Except, as he tried to sleep that night in a small, stuffy room in JSC, with his head full of the conflicting demands of his new and complex job, Muldoon found himself thinking of a conference he’d sat in on long ago. It was in the von Braun Hilton over at Marshall, as he recalled: a seminar on Mars mission modes. And some little guy had stood up with a strange proposal — Muldoon had spent most of the conference sleeping off a hangover, and couldn’t recall the details — some way to boost the lower delta-vee offered by chemical technology by using gravitational assists. Bouncing off Venus, en route to Mars. And the little guy had been laughed off the stage by Udet and those other assholes from Marshall.
Now, what the hell was that about?
At 3 A.M. he got out of bed and padded down to his old desk in the Astro
naut Office, and began digging through his old notes and diaries, chasing down the elusive memory.
By 5 A.M. he’d found what he was looking for. Gregory Dana. Jesus. It was Jim Dana’s father.
By 7 A.M. he was on the phone, trying to find Dana.
So Muldoon started to dip his toes, tentatively, into the shark-pool of NASA politics.
He pulled strings and set up a short-term working group, of NASA people and contractors, which would be able to flesh out in detail the idea that was lodging in his head. While that was coming together he drafted a hasty report to Michaels, summarizing the research he’d been doing.
He had Tim Josephson polish up a final draft for him, thus further extending their unspoken, ambiguous alliance. And when Muldoon sent his report to Michaels, he sent a copy to Josephson, to make sure it was leaked to the White House.
Natalie York was the Astronaut Office representative on Joe Muldoon’s task force. She was sent to NASA HQ for an initiation meeting.
Before arriving, she’d hardly thought much about this assignment. She was just grateful to have a break in Washington — to get away from the grind of training that had become meaningless in the context of a rudderless program, to get away from her empty, unlet apartment, and from all the holes in her life where Ben used to be.
But she found herself in a meeting the likes of which she had only imagined a couple of months earlier — and which she’d thought would never take place again, not after the disaster.
Muldoon had called in staff from all the major NASA centers, including Udet and his team from Marshall, and senior engineers and managers from all of NASA’s major contract partners: Boeing, Rockwell, Grumman, McDonnell, IBM, others. Pulling out so many senior staff put a dent in a lot of other projects, including the post-Apollo-N inquiries and the rectification program, and really Muldoon was going far beyond his organizational authority.
But he evidently hadn’t been shy about using his new position to pull strings.
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