Jimmy Carter’s space policy and the saving of the space shuttle

Former President Jimmy Carter, aged 98, has entered hospice care, signaling to the world that he is experiencing his last days of life. The news has caused a reappraisal of both his presidency and his post-presidency, mainly the latter, which has been exemplary.

Carter’s single term in office is not known for any space initiatives. President Kennedy launched America to the moon. President Nixon started the space shuttle program. President Reagan initiated the program that began the International Space Station. After two false starts under American presidents named George Bush, President Trump and now President Biden have sent America and much of the world on a voyage back to the moon and eventually on to Mars under the Artemis Program.

The Carter presidency, despite a dearth of high-profile new space projects, did have an official, albeit vaguely worded space policy. Carter also made a decision concerning the space shuttle program that affected the course of NASA and American space efforts in a decidedly positive way.

The Carter administration issued its official space policy in the form of Presidential Directive/ NSC 37 on May 11, 1978. The document did not contain any specific proposals. Rather, it listed some general principles that just about any administration of the latter third of the 20th century might have supported.

For example, one of the “basic principles” for the Carter-era space program was “the exploration and use of outer space in support of the national well-being and policies of the United States.” That was nice insofar as it goes, but it lacked detail. What programs included “the exploration and use of outer space?”

The document also stated, “The United States shall conduct civil space programs to increase the body of scientific knowledge about the earth and the universe; to develop and operate civil applications of space technology; to maintain United States leadership in space science, applications, and technology; and to further United States domestic and foreign policy objectives.” The policy directive was not specific as to how the civil space program would do these things.

NASA pursued two major programs whose origins predated the Carter presidency. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977, beginning a multi-decade voyage of exploration to the outer planets. The space agency also continued to develop the space shuttle, an ostensibly reusable rocket ship that would take humans and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.

In January 1978, NASA announced a new class of astronauts who would fly the space shuttle, dubbed “The 35 New Guys.” The term was something of a misnomer, as the group contained a number of women, including Sally Ride, who would become the first American woman in space, and Judith Resnick, who would die on board the Challenger.

Carter’s crucial role in developing the space shuttle is not well known. According to Eric Berger, writing for Ars Technica, in 1978, NASA concluded that it could not meet any meaningful flight schedule given the state of the program and the budget it had been allotted. The story has become a far too familiar one for post-Apollo NASA programs, a program fraught with cost overruns and schedule slippages, Then-NASA Administrator Robert Frosch had two options. The space agency could either morph the space shuttle into a purely research vehicle, giving up the idea of it delivering crews and payloads to space, or it could ask for more money. With that choice in mind, Frosch had a meeting with Carter to give him the bad news.

The meeting did not go as Frosch had feared it would. “When Frosch went to the White House to meet with the president and said NASA didn’t have the money to finish the space shuttle, the administrator got a response he did not expect: ‘How much do you need?’”

The president’s response is even more remarkable given the fact that Carter didn’t much care for human spaceflight. He believed that robotic space probes were sufficient to explore the universe at much less cost. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, was vehemently opposed to the shuttle program, believing that the money spent to sustain it should be instead used to fund social programs.

However, Carter believed that the shuttle was an important national security asset due to its role in launching military satellites. So, he pushed for supplementary funding for the project and saved the shuttle from cancelation. Thus, an unlikely president saved American human space flight. The shuttle and all it accomplished in subsequent decades became a part of Carter’s legacy.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.