Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

“the ‘rIGht’ StUFF: the reaGaN revOLUtION
aND the U.S. SpaCe prOGraM”
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Congress subsequently gave the DOt’s new role a legal basis with the
passage of the Space Launch Commercialization act, h.r. 3942 (Senate bill
S.560), better known as the Commercial Space Launch act of 1984. Members
of Congress felt that the designation of a lead agency was insufcient because
it lacked “legislative authority. the result could inhibit decision-making
and interagency coordination and allow the present inefcient approaches to
commercial launch approvals to persist.” 46 acting on the authority of both the
act and a presidential executive Order, Secretary of transportation elizabeth
hanford Dole established the Ofce of Commercial Space transportation
(OCSt), which issued launch licenses and in general regulated the new launchfor-hire
industry. NaSa itself recapitulated the reagan administration’s
evolving commercial space policy by issuing its own Commercial Space policy 47
and creating its own Ofce of Commercial programs in 1984. 48
as a result of the new projects that the reagan presidency started in
conscious fulfllment of the conservative agenda, the United States ended up
with a space program that was, at least in the eyes of the New right, “politically
correct.” the malfunctioning hubble Space telescope and other issues
suggested fundamental faws in the way NaSa operated, while the Challenger
accident (coupled with the military’s grounded expendable launchers) and the
subsequent reevaluation of the space program brought on by the end of the
Cold War signaled a turning point in U.S. space history. the conservative space
agenda shifted accordingly. although from society’s perspective the changes
that followed Challenger were neither as profound nor as pervasive as those
wrought by Sputnik, the space program was never the same.
Conservatives now abandoned the Shuttle, which they held up as a symbol
of everything wrong with NaSa, and called for basic changes to NaSa
management. the chief institutional voice for these changes was vice president
Dan Quayle, who acted as head of the recently (1988) reestablished National
Space Council. Quayle wanted to “shake up” NaSa, which he believed was
“to a great extent, still living of the glory it had earned in the 1960s.” he
complained that NaSa projects were “too unimaginative, too expensive, too
46 U.S. house of representatives, Commercial Space Launch Act, 98th Congress, 2d session, report
98-816 (Washington, DC: GpO, 1984), 9.
47. “NaSa Commercial Space policy,” October 1984, ii & v, “Summary of policy Initiatives,” and
“research and Development Initiatives,” folder 386, box 15, X-33 archive.
48. NaSa Special announcement, “establishment of the Ofce of Commercial programs,”
September 11, 1984; NaSa News press release 87-126, “assistant administrator Gillam to
retire from NaSa,” august 19, 1987; “NaSa Commercial Space policy,” October 1984,
“Summary of policy Initiatives;” and Isaac t. Gillam Iv, “encouraging the Commercial Use of
Space and NaSa’s Ofce of Commercial programs,” NASA Tech Briefs, n.v. (Spring 1985): 14-15,
all in folder 383, box 15, X-33 archive; John M. Cassanto, “CCDS Shock Waves,” Space News,
January 24-30, 1994, 21.