After Apollo - Richard Nixon and the American Space Program

摘要

It is a great mistake, made by publicists and cheer-groups to self-delude into believing that a rapturous outpouring of public enthusiasm and emotion translates into financial commitment. Thousands throng to events and displays for which they hold little permanent enthusiasm and for which they hold no loyalty: build it and they will come, abandon it and they will never miss it. It is the definition of the fickle. And so it is with the space programme. It is that way with political leadership - take the temperature of the voters and second-guess their inevitable response when actions anticipate their real, understated, commitments. And leave out the rest. It was that way too with the most critical period in the history of the US space programme: between 1969 and 1972 when the future of America's human space flight programme was threatened with termination along with the very institution which had placed men on the Moon - NASA.