Many happy returns?

LAST MONDAY was the first anniversary of man's first steps on the moon.

America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated the event in a way that has become all too common over the last four years—-they sacked yet another 900 members of the space agency's staff and reduced it to below the 30,000 level, the lowest since 1963.

Overall, space manpower is down from its peak of 440,000 in 1966 to 144,000 and the NASA budget has been reduced from $6 billion a year to the current year's $3.4 billion — a cut by over half in real terms because of inflation.

The first anniversary of Apollo-ll's successful flight finds the US space programme cut to the bone financially and NASA is forced to look back on a year which although producing the successful Apollo-12 mission, was dominated by the disastrous journey of Apollo-13.

For the US space programme, the year 1970 will go on record as the year when the capitalist economic crisis, which had already begun to show itself from the earliest days of America's race for the moon, finally took its toll in demoralization and negligence and produced just one damp squib.

"The Economist', commenting NASA's plight, makes no mention of the recession but 'The Americans wete as good as inviting trouble when they made an all-out bid to get to the moon without any clear programme in their minds about what to do when they got there. No nation invests $24 billion in one interesting potents and a bagful of rocks.' To which one can only reply that the United States government was quite willing to invest the cash (and the aerospace corporations were just as willing to take it) providing that it was an American who had held the camera and carried the bag.

If the 'bleep' of the 1957 Soviet Sputnik was a shock for the US ruling class, the 108minute orbit of Yuri Gargarin on April 12, 1961 was the signal for any attempt at a controlled programme to be thrown out of the window.

One Congressman, James Fulton of Pennsylvania, convinced that a Soviet moon landing was imminent suggested 'a blue project, to scatter blue dust so that the moon will be red, white and blue' President Kennedy sent the following directive to his vice-president Lyndon Johnson on April 20:

In accordance with our conversation 1 would like you as Chairman of the Space Council to be in charge of making an overall survey of where we stand in space. '1. Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to • the moon and • back with a man? Is there any other space programme which promises dramatic results in which we could win?

How much additional would it cost?

Are we working 24 hours a day on existing programmes.

If not, why not? If not, will you make recommendations to me as to how work can be speeded up.

In building large boosters should we put our empiquid on nuclear, chemical or fuel, or a combination of these three?

Are we making the maximum effort? Are we achieving necessary results?

'I have asked Jim Webb, Wiesner, Secretary McNamara and other responsible officials to co-operate with you fully.

I would appreciate a report on this moment. at the earliest possible The need to beat the Russians whatever the cost became the underlying principle behind the US space programme.

Now came the opportunity for the aerospace corporations to cash in.

Jim Webb, the then NASA administrator, had the final word on which company would gain the lucrative contracts, in particular the plum prize for the main spacecraft series.

In November 1961, Webb announced that North American Aviation would get the main contract. North American had proposed a total cost of $400 million, one-ninth of the actual final cost!

It was not until 1967—six in a routine around to deal years later after the fire that him a cheque and a note simultaneously. With that he instructed the bank to buy 10 per

first manned Apollo craft-that Webb admitted that he had overruled the Source Evaluation Board who had rated the MartinMarietta Corporation higher than North American.

The reason is not difficult to understand. In fact the mechanics were simple.

Webb owed his position in NASA and his wealth to Senator Robert Kerr, the most powerful man in the Senate and chairman of its Space Committee.

Kerr had thrown his weight behind North American on assurances that the corporation would build plants in Oklahoma, his home state. Naturally, there was something in it for him.

Kerr's own company leased some of its unused land to NA at a price.

In the book, 'Journey to TranFred Black, NA's lobbyist in the deal with Kerr, throws some light on the sort of wheelings and dealings that were involved as favours were freely given and taken and everyone got their cut. 'From Cape Town to Cairo THE FUNDAMENTAL importance of apartheid S Africa to British imperialism has been shown once again by a number of events in July.

SCIENTIFIC WORLD Thursday, July 23, 1970 •"He invited me round to his office," Black remembers, "and we played some gin rummy. Then he asked me if I'd like a bank. He told me to write a cheque for $175,000. When I said I didn't have it, he said he hadn't asked me that. He told me to write the cheque on the Fidelity National in Oklahoma City and then be took out a private telephone from his bottom drawer and called the Bank President.

•"He told him he had a new customer for the bank, and that the bank had just loaned me $180,000 and that I was giving

Now Smith has visited S Africa and one report ('Daily cent of the stock in the Farmers' and Merchants' State Bank in Tulsa and to forward it to me. And that was how I bought my way into the Farmers and Merchants'. I'd borrowed the money, bought the stock, and then put the stock to secure the original loan. It makes sense if you look at it long enough."' (p. 158.)

No doubt, these and similar activities continue, but the pickings are not quite so rich as before.

As 'The Economist' puts it, NASA's future plans to build orbiting space stations by the use of re-useable shuttles 'has the Nixon Administration's blessing. But not its money.

"This kind of work cannot be funded on $3.4 billion a year, with a run-down and demoralized staft, when engineering groups and test teams have been broken up and scattered to the four winds.' So we can expect Apollo-14 to try again for Apollo-13's target in the moon's hilly Fra Mauro region next February and probably Apollo-15 will not leave until 1972.

The original plan for three Apollo flights a year up to about Apollo-24 is now defunct and it is most probable that the balance of the spacecrafts on order will be used in the development of a space station.

Although NASA scientists have put the probable cost of the series of space shuttle launches between $3 billion and $10 billion, this is almost certainly too low.

The plan is to launch a space shuttle every six weeks to construct a 12-man space station. This would involve about 90 flights spread over a decade and is unlikely to cost less than the $24 billion bill, notched up by Apollo.

It should be added that North American has already got in on the ground floor, hardly the worse for wear after its slap od the wrist over the Apollo-13 fiascol A year after Apollo-11, the first semblance of an American space 'programme begins to emerge but, we predict, the necessary funds will not be forthThe biggest audience in history saw Neil Armstrong step down from Eagle and walk on the lunar surface only one year ago.

After Apollo-15, it would be rash • to predict when the next American will follow in Armstrong's footsteps.