Customer Reviews

Space Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1)

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I remember when the Shuttle program was being debated in the early 1970s, but at the time I viewed it as a simple pro-space (good!) vs. anti-space (bad!) argument. Partly this was my relative youth, and partly the fault of the over-simplified reporting of the time. This book provides the background--technical, financial, and political--to show that the decision was far more complex than that. And it left me with a greater appreciation of the Shuttle and both its strengths and limitations.

The book covers the difficulties NASA had in trying to figure out what to do after Apollo, when public and financial support for the space program was waning. The Vietnam war, a faltering economy, the election of Richard Nixon, the decline of the Soviet space program, and a new focus on earthbound problems all made NASA's grand plans for manned Mars missions, space stations, and moon bases financially out of reach. The days of Apollo-era blank-check budgeting for NASA had actually ended in 1966.

Eventually focusing on reducing the cost of getting payloads into space--with grander plans deferred to the future--the Shuttle program went through many possible configurations. For the technically inclined, some of the discarded shuttle concepts are fascinating. And the amount of technology that had already been developed for other programs was a surprise to me. But as important as the technical issues were, the process of getting a budget through the White House and a hostile Congress were just as difficult. The result of this meeting of technology and budget is the Shuttle that flys today.

Rather than focusing only on the final Shuttle design, the author takes us through various technology stories that defined the environment in which the Shuttle was being contemplated. Those stories include the X-15, SST, 747, L-1011, spy satellites, and the cancelled Apollo Applications program. They might seem unrelated but the author makes it clear how they all fit together.

Although easy-to-read, the author doesn't skimp on technical detail, and makes even the arcane budgeting process seem understandable. It makes many of the events I remember from that time seem less random. Even the political opponents of the space program come off as more rational (if still misguided) than in most books on the space program. (But some decisions, such as cutting a third of the Apollo missions to save less than 10% of the budget, still seem remarkably stupid.)

If you've already exhausted the available books on the glory days of NASA (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo), or want to gain an understanding of how we got where we are today, I recommend this book for a view of the transition period to the modern NASA, and the development of a technological marvel. I look forward to reading the second volume in the series.

I finished reading this book after the loss of Columbia. It left me with a feeling that the current shuttle was the spacecraft nobody wanted except for the OMB. We have paid for inept space policy in both money and blood. This book outlines the decisions made by NASA and gives a good background as to what the aerospace industry was feeling after the heady days of the early 60's. NASA had to constantly redesign the shuttle not because of technical hurdles but mostly due to political and fiscal considerations. The tragic losses of both Challenger and Columbia are foreshadowed quite spookily in historical NASA documents of the 60's and 70's.

Mr. Heppenheimer has executed a masterful piece of research and writing. Combing through the wide-ranging historical aspects that led to the final configuration of the Space Shuttle, he has painstakingly reconstructed the technological, political and economic hurdles that had to be overcome to produce this modern marvel. While this first of three volumes deals with the initial decision (1965-1972), it lays the groundwork for what is to come and eagerly anticipated by the reader. It also foreshadows the tragedies that would befall the project. While its depth and tedious detail precludes casual reading for all but the serious student of aerospace technology, it provides fascinating insight into such obscure bureaucracies as the "Office of Management and Budget" (formerly BoB). Brief side excursions that examine the Boeing 747 and Supersonic transport development are easily endured although they add little to the Shuttle story.

Excellent review of the technical trades blended with the economic and political forces on NASA as they worked to get the space shuttle program approved and funded.

Heppenheimer's book is a history of the planning, designing, budgeting and politics in the years leading up to the development of the space shuttle.

He shows how all these organizational and technical factors interplayed with each other to produce the final design of the space shuttle. The players included NASA, the USAF, the aerospace corporations, and the executive and legislative branches of the US federal government. Historical factors that Heppenheimer includes are, of course, the Cold War USA-USSR competition, the pre-war and post-war (WWII) development of rocketry technology, commercial aviation, and of course the declining US economy and federal budget in the wake of the Vietnam conflict and the 1970s recession.

Some have remarked that the Jenkins space shuttle book contains more information. I have not examined it, but it seems that Jenkins, being an engineer, has included in his book more detailed technical information than does Heppenheimer (a historian). So it is only to be expected that Heppenheimer does not focus so much on the technical factors, though I can say that the technical detail Heppenheimer includes is more than enough to satisfy anyone other than the geekiest space shuttle uber-geek. (You know of whom I speak -- those guys who can rattle off details on every STS mission: the astronauts, the payloads, all the ACRONYMS for every system, even the consoles in mission control, etc. etc.).

Here in Heppenheimer's book you will not learn where every nut and bolt is on the space shuttle. What you will learn is how the various technical options available to the spacecraft designers interplayed with one another and the prevailing fiscal and political factors. One of the main themes here is the then-ongoing manned space programs -- Gemini and Apollo, and the planned follow-on programs -- Skylab and the Space Station. He shows how the space shuttle fit in to NASA's planning for the 1970s and later, and how the principal rocket programs of the 1960s -- mainly Titan and Saturn -- influenced space shuttle design choices.

Yet another major theme is the "deal with the devil" that NASA made with the USAF to secure funding and political backing for the shuttle program. In return for this backing, the deal involved giving the USAF a major say in space shuttle capabilities (volume and mass budget for the payload bay, 1000+ mile reentry cross-range, polar orbit capability, between-mission serviceability). This produced detrimental effects on the space shuttle design -- huge delta wing producing high weight and drag and need for thermal protection and excessive payload capacity (mostly never used during the shuttle's service life). This is all the more galling considering the fact that the USAF spent untold-billions preparing its shuttle launch facility at Vandenberg California which was never even used once following the Challenger disaster. (personal note -- I distinctly recall reading in Aviation Week the month before the Challenger episode that the USAF shuttle people were planning on enhancing the shuttle polar-orbit payload capacity by shaving the SRB casings thinner than standard! What a shame they didn't get to try that before NASA sent up the Challenger)

So, as far as the shuttle technology goes, Heppenheimer refers to it not for its own sake, as one would expect of a book authored by an engineer, but rather, as one of many factors influencing the decision making involved in the Space Shuttle Decision. And I believe that's squarely where the emphasis belongs. That said, the book does still contain a wealth of technical detail. He covers the propulsion systems (the SRB and SSME, the Saturn's F-1 and J-2, the Titan II SRB, and the abortive "aerospike" nozzles), the choice of propellants, thermal protection systems (silica tiles, ablative tiles, hot structures, carbon-carbon composite), the options for booster and orbiter flyback systems, booster and orbiter lifting bodies and parachute systems, runway and ocean recovery, options for internal and/or external propellant tankage, solid or liquid booster stages, pump-fed versus pressure-fed combustion chambers, and the various physical configurations available for system components (such as serial or parallel staging, boosters strapped-on or stacked, etc.). About the only possible technical option I do not see represented is the so-called "hybrid" rocket, in which a cylinder of solid fuel is oxidized with liquid oxidizer, as used on the SpaceShipOne. Apparently, this technology was not under consideration at the time of space shuttle development.

Heppenheimer gives a thorough treatment of space shuttle economics. This ties in with NASA's goals for the space program. The more flights made to orbit, the less each flight costs, but the greater the overall cost of the space program. As it turns out, NASA really did not send up nearly so many shuttle missions as they first planned, and Heppenheimer shows how planning for the post-Apollo years played this out. His other major economic theme is the tension between up-front development costs versus follow-on operational costs. He shows how the severe fiscal climate of the early 1970s tended to produce political pressures to keep down the up-front development costs at the expense of the later operational costs. Heppenheimer even gives a mini-economics lesson when he explains how financial planners weight the value of a dollar from one budget year to another -- and this was a primary driver in the Nixon administration emphasis on paring development costs at the expense of operational costs. This is the main reason why shuttle missions in the 1990s cost upwards of a half billion dollars each. Had Nixon spent just a little more on development of a totally-reusable shuttle, it would have cost but a fraction of that for each mission. The peculiarities of the Nixon administration also produced a downward pressure on planned post-Apollo overall NASA budgets -- not least of which was Nixon's toxic attitude toward the Kennedy-inspired Apollo program, since Kennedy was always Nixon's nemesis even following his assassination.

It is true that Jenkins includes the whole space shuttle story in one volume, and Heppenheimer splits his into two. However, the Jenkins book costs much more than twice what the two Heppenheimer books do, at least at the time I wrote this review. I cannot see how anyone but a space shuttle uber-geek could be disappointed with the Heppenheimer history of the space shuttle. He puts the book's emphasis right where it belongs, on the broad picture.

This book does okay, but I expected a lot more. If you are looking for a description of the current space shuttle, or a detailed examination of why the shuttle configuration turned out the way it did, you are much better off with Dennis Jenkins' "Space Shuttle."

What I was hoping this book would cover was the side that Jenkins did not dwell on in his otherwise excellant book (at least until the third edition when he added a great deal) - the politics and management of the shuttle program. I figured a good academic book from the Smithsonian (or from the NASA History Office, which originally published this volume) would cover the managerial side in greater detail. I was wrong.

Instead, Heppenheimer presents essentially the same information as Jenkins, but without the thousands of wonderful illustrations. Admittedly, the text might be a little easier to read, but it is a lot less technical.

The author does present some additional detail, and comes to a few different conclusions from Jenkins, so the book has merit as a companion volume. However, if you are only going to buy one Space Shuttle book, get the one by Jenkins.