Turf Wars

© Laurence B. Winn

Dec 1, 2001

In Washington D.C., where the official secret is the ultimate status symbol and the power pyramid has more levels than a Babylonian ziggurat, bureaucrats battle over crumbs of influence. U.S. civilian imaging spacecraft are perceived as a threat (while similar foreign spacecraft are not) because their use breaks an existing government monopoly on the information they provide. Washington watchers have seen the U.S. Commerce, State and Defense Departments locked in acrimonious turf wars over what exports should be controlled and by whom. Here we will examine what may be the most visible and damaging conflict of all, that which exists between civil and military space enterprises.

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was the chief architect of the U.S. space program at its best. As recently as 1986, it enjoyed a kind of technological supremacy, unchallenged in its dominion over matters extraterrestrial. In fact, mostly behind the scenes, the Air Force and NASA were entrenched in mortal combat to determine which organization would be preeminent in space, and NASA was losing. Since the early seventies, the post-Apollo moon project years, NASA has been the victim of Defense Department manipulation of Congress to the detriment of capability, cost effectiveness and safety in spaceflight.

America's most expensive technological project during the '70s, and NASA's reason for being, was the space shuttle. Congress, however, was reluctant to fund it. So the Air Force, wanting access to space, worked out a deal with NASA. The Air Force would intervene in Congress on NASA's behalf. In return the civilian space agency would increase the shuttle's payload to 65,000 pounds, provide a larger cargo bay to accommodate military payloads and design in a longer cross-range capability -- the ability to glide to a landing at points distant from the orbiter's ground track. The Air Force wanted enough added cross-range, 1500 miles, to make possible shuttle operations from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The requirement that all of this be done, at essentially no additional cost, resulted in the shuttle's present partially-recoverable configuration, with strap-on solid rocket boosters and a throwaway external fuel tank. The weakness of the shuttle's politically-driven design became obvious with the loss of the Challenger in January 1986.

By 1987, the Air Force role in space had become conspicuous. Its space budget had become larger than NASA's entire budget, even excluding the "Star Wars" research to develop a high-technology space-borne defense against missile attack. It was proposing to develop its own heavy-lift booster, independent of NASA, to serve its own needs. In addition, then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was attempting to usurp control of the U.S./International space station for military operations of an unspecified nature.

Symbolic of NASA's new black sheep status was a botched launch attempt in March of 1987 which the aerospace trade journal Aviation Week & Space Technology immediately dubbed "Atlas Launch Follies". The unmanned Atlas rocket was destroyed after being struck by lightning from a storm in the launch area. According to the account, a NASA team had warned before the launch that the Air Force Weather Service recommendation to proceed might be unreliable. The NASA team noted that the meteorological support provided by the Weather Service was barely adequate and that there was poor coordination between weather forecasters and NASA's launch controllers.

Although it was clear that the Air Force had made a questionable call in recommending a launch, it is frightening that NASA was either unwilling or unable to challenge that call. According to Aviation Week, an untrained observer could see how bad the weather was. Sensors around the launch pad showed extremely high electrical potential. Besides, NASA had data on lightning hazards dating back to Apollo 12, which was struck several times during liftoff, and extensive testing at Cape Canaveral had shown that even a small rocket can trigger multiple lightning strikes. NASA's crisis of confidence had gone beyond dangerous. Only years later, after the collapse of the Soviet threat and the partial loss of the military leverage in Congress, would civilian space enterprises recover control of their own operations.

Not everyone will see it the same way, but this is what frontier theory warns against in current events: After September 11, the U.S. military may be back, standing squarely in the gateway to the high frontier, brandishing a gun.

References:

McConnell, Malcolm, Challenger - A Major Malfunction: A True Story of Politics, Greed, and the Wrong Stuff, Doubleday & Co., 1987