posted 06-24-2015 11:03 AM               

His Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Deputy Director Caspar Weinberger was opposed to this, persuading Nixon to keep the remaining Moon missions. NASA cancelled Apollo 18 and 19 on 2 September 1970 (nearly five months after Apollo 13).

posted 06-24-2015 02:17 PM               

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Originally posted by Headshot:
It seemed obvious, even at the time, that there were other factors, besides money...

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posted 06-24-2015 02:26 PM               

Politics for example. Apollo was viewed as Kennedy's project and while Nixon knew he couldn't derail the goal of a fallen president, Apollo 11 had already achieved what Kennedy challenged the nation to accomplish. Further, Apollo 11 put to bed the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, such that Nixon and Congress had no pressing interest to keep Apollo going.

And, as Carmelo noted, the concern existed (and was certainly heightened as a result of Apollo 13) that the longer Apollo flew, the more chances there were that a crew would be lost in flight.

posted 06-24-2015 05:21 PM               

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Originally posted by carmelo:
NASA cancelled Apollo 18 and 19 on 2 September 1970 (nearly five months after Apollo 13).

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posted 06-25-2015 12:13 PM            

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Apollo was viewed as Kennedy's project and while Nixon knew he couldn't derail the goal of a fallen president, Apollo 11 had already achieved what Kennedy challenged the nation to accomplish.

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posted 06-25-2015 05:39 PM            

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Originally posted by Paul78zephyr:
I have read extensively about Nixon. He hated the Kennedys and anything/everything 'Kennedy'.

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posted 06-25-2015 05:57 PM               

Space, though, was not a priority for the Nixon Administration, which struggled in general to get organized after taking office. While Nixon was happy to celebrate the success of Apollo 11, he did not necessarily care for space that much: for example, the White House reported that Nixon watched the 1971 launch of Apollo 15 on television, when in fact he had slept through it. In 1971, Nixon told an advisor he supported the space program because it was "exploring the unknown," but added, "I don't give a damn about space. I am not one of those space cadets."

...even as late as 1971 Nixon was weighing cancelling Apollos 16 and 17, fearing the effect an accident would have during an election year. While Nixon gets blamed for ending Apollo and shutting down production of the Saturn V, Logsdon doesn't believe he bears the sole blame. "The United States decided in 1970 to retreat from exploring the Moon; that decision had several parents, not just Richard Nixon."

posted 06-25-2015 06:45 PM               

For nostalgic reasons, many members of the public, and a few politicians, felt it should have been the brand new aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67). They blamed President Nixon for making a "spiteful" ship selection.

In reality, CV-67 was undergoing readiness trials in the Atlantic Ocean in mid-1969. She was not prepared to handle a "real" mission, was many thousands of miles away, and was a front line attack carrier, not a support carrier. Aircraft carrier battle groups, and aircraft squadrons, require lengthy and complex advanced planning, involving many Navy units, for logistics and placement. The President of the US was far removed from being involved in ship mission selection.

posted 06-26-2015 07:48 AM            

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Originally posted by Charlie16:
...only Nixon (little man) vs. Kennedy (great man) and money... a lot of money.

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posted 06-26-2015 08:02 AM               

My thoughts: This, of course, resulted in the less than spectacular Skylab, which was never the original plan or design, if I recall correctly.

The main reason does in fact seem to be budgetary. The space program was always a financial boondoggle, but it was justified because we needed to beat the Soviets to the moon and there was a certain air of excitement and patriotism associated with the program that a politician couldn't resist.

posted 06-27-2015 04:27 AM            

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Originally posted by Jonnyed:
In addition to the obvious budget pressures, could not another major factor be diminishing scientific returns? After a few missions collecting moon rocks and running various science experiments, could the later (eventually cancelled) Apollo missions add much more to our scientific understanding of the moon?

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The Moon has a surface area equal to approximately 25% of Earth's land area. The popular impression that twelve men have essentially fully explored it in six visits and less than 7 man days of surface EVAs is frankly laughable. So yeah, I'd guess that much more can be added. How much on any one mission? Well that depends how lucky you are.

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And even if we wanted MORE science activities, couldn't UNMANNED missions to the moon accomplish most goals?

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Depends entirely on those goals. Unmanned missions, though they've obtained amazing results, are still very limited in their overall capability.

But as Robert has rightly reminded us, science wasn't the point of Apollo.

posted 06-27-2015 09:29 AM               

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Originally posted by Orthon:
Did the so called "leaders" of this country realize that an entire infrastructure had been assembled to explore the solar system and benefit the United States?

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How would it benefit the United States? There would be little economic return and the US didn't need anymore soft power.

posted 06-28-2015 10:03 PM               

Remember, we'd already had the Apollo 1 fire three years earlier. If anyone was worried about people dying in space, that would have been the perfect opportunity to shut down the entire manned space program and call it quits.

While the cuts didn't save a lot of money, politicians did save their jobs. As was pointed out by others in this thread, public support for space exploration waned considerably after the Apollo 11 flight. I saw news reports all during the Gemini and Apollo programs where people were saying we needed to spend our money on the people here on earth, not sending people into space. That kind of talk intensified greatly after Apollo 11. Civil rights leaders were especially critical of the space program, which they felt took away valuable resources that could have been spent on the War on Poverty. That was too many votes for any politician to ignore, regardless of party affiliation.

So basically, the cancellations achieved the goal of making people think that Congress and the President were serious about more earthly matters, which was far more important than mere dollars. Were they short-sighted? Of course. But politicians were fighting a losing battle trying to justify the amount of money being spent on human space exploration. We all know that the NASA budget was or is about one penny per tax dollar. But people don't look at it like that. The only thing they see is the half a billion dollars it took to send each group of three astronauts to the moon.

posted 06-29-2015 01:00 AM               

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Originally posted by schnappsicle:
We all know that the NASA budget was or is about 1 penny per tax dollar. But people don't look at it like that. The only thing they see is the half a billion dollars it took to send each group of 3 astronauts to the moon.

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posted 06-29-2015 08:35 PM               

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Originally posted by schnappsicle:
Anyone who wants to know what we could have learned with the last three flights needs to read "To A Rocky Moon."

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posted 06-30-2015 01:05 AM               

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Originally posted by Jim Behling:
That is another fallacy. The "simple economic truth" is that government spending does not stimulate the economy.

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posted 06-30-2015 06:28 AM               

The Apollo program and subsequent follow on programs created jobs, skills training, revolutionized manufacturing and engineering, provided years of technology improvements in the aerospace industry, led to new materials and testing methods and a whole lot more beneficial items.

The original post of Apollo 13 leading to the cancellation of Apollo 18 can be viewed from many angles. But the significant point that Apollo 1 through 17 happened is more important. The rate of development should have been ridden further, somewhere along the ride the can do attitude became more cautious, more reserved and the focus was softened.

Apollo 13 is a moment in history that has taught more lessons as we have had more time to reflect. It is natural for a failure like 13 to cause people to become more cautious, Columbia and Challenger showed us this, SpaceShipTwo, the Russian space program, SpaceX and others have all had setbacks, it is how the setbacks are handled that count.

posted 06-30-2015 07:58 AM               

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Originally posted by David C:
The Moon has a surface area equal to approximately 25% of Earth's land area. The popular impression that twelve men have essentially fully explored it in six visits and less than 7 man days of surface EVAs is frankly laughable.

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David I had the same initial thought to this idea. And I've read somewhere that we've only explored an area of the moon equal in size to the state of New Jersey here on earth. But does the moon have that much to explore? It doesn't have areas of large physical differences (desert, rainforest etc.). There are no seasonal changes (I think). It appears to be a big ball of rock.

I agree that we have not fully explored it, but don't we know most of the moon from the Apollo science? Thanks in advance, great discussion on many fronts.

posted 06-30-2015 08:27 AM               

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Originally posted by oly:
The Apollo program and subsequent follow on programs created jobs, skills training, revolutionized manufacturing and engineering, provided years of technology improvements in the aerospace industry, led to new materials and testing methods and a whole lot more beneficial items.

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Originally posted by moorouge:
These needed service industries and spending just in shops rose by £11 million in 1960's values.

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posted 06-30-2015 09:47 PM               

• 1946 - 37.23%
  
• 1945 - 76.35%
  
• 1944 - 118.27%
  
• 1943 - 117.22%
  
• 1942 - 89.93%
  
• 1941 - 39.14%
  
• 1940 - 21.20%
  
• 1939 - 25.84%
  
• 1938 - 30.84%
  
• 1937 - 62.59%
  
• 1936 - 42.69%
  
• 1935 - -4.01%
  
• 1934 - -27.55%
  
• 1933 - -45.32%

posted 07-01-2015 01:18 AM               

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Originally posted by Jim Behling:
It actually reduced overall spending.

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Kennedy inherited an economy that turned sharply downward in the summer of 1957 and reached its low point in the spring of 1958. Industrial production fell 14 percent, corporate profits plummeted 25 percent and unemployment rose to 7.5 percent. President Eisenhower did little to stimulate the economy because he worried more about inflation and not unemployment. Subsequently, in 1959 the economy realized $12 billion deficit, a new record for a budget shortfall during peacetime.