WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- President Ronald Reagan presided over an expansion of the U.S. civil and military space programs during his eight years in the White House, bolstering the space shuttle and launching the International Space Station.
Until the new space exploration goals announced by President Bush last January, Reagan's approval of an orbiting, permanent space facility comprised the strongest support for NASA programs by an American president since the initiation of the shuttle in 1972 and the Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s.
Though Reagan eventually supported development and use of the shuttle fleet, his record also includes policy failures and internal political arguments among his own White House staff that diluted support for space objectives. His biggest space proposal of all was development of a space-based defense system to shoot down ballistic missiles -- an effort that became popularly known as "Star Wars," after the 1977 blockbuster movie.
When Reagan took office in January 1981, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was readying the first space shuttle, Columbia, for its maiden launch. During the previous year's presidential campaign, Reagan's only comments about space were made in the context of military programs, the expansion of which he supported.
Certainly, Reagan did not regard space programs and policy as priority items during the early months of his presidency. For example, he canceled a planned solar probe, which raised concern in the scientific community he might initiate greater cuts in space missions. Rumors filtered through Washington policy circles that the president might transfer the space shuttle's operations from the Johnson Space Center in Houston to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and close Johnson.
On April 12, 1981, however, when Columbia lifted off for the first time, Reagan -- who was still recovering from an unsuccessful assassination attempt March 30 -- released a statement supporting the launch and the shuttle era. During the shuttle's brief flight, Vice President George H.W. Bush spoke on Reagan's behalf with astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen and pledged the administration's support for the program.
On July 4, 1982, Reagan flew to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he greeted the Columbia as it returned from its fourth space mission. He pronounced the shuttle fully operational, and attended the takeoff of the second flight-rated shuttle, Challenger, atop a Boeing 747 carrier plane, for Florida from Edwards later that same day.
Also in July 1982, Reagan signed a new space policy declaring the shuttle to be the basis of all U.S. space transportation needs, calling it the National Space Transportation System. Challenger would make its first flight in 1983, followed by Discovery in August 1984 and Atlantis in October 1985.
The seeming success of the shuttle system led the administration to commit to the development of a permanent space station that would be assembled in space and serviced by the winged craft following its completion.
In his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, 1984, Reagan established the development of the permanent station a national goal, calling for its completion by NASA within a decade.
"We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain," he told the Congress. He also predicted "the market for space transportation could surpass our capacity to develop it," and urged NASA to help promote private sector opportunities in space.
Still, Reagan's faith in the shuttle belied internal fights within his administration over how to fund it and the proposed space station. Though NASA budgets grew modestly during the Reagan years -- from approximately $5.2 billion in fiscal year 1981 to nearly $8 billion in FY 1987 -- it was not until the final year of his administration that the space budget swelled, mainly to fund the $1.7 billion cost of the replacement space shuttle Endeavour.
Ultimately, the shuttle failed to reach the frequency of flights proposed for it and on Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing its seven-member crew, including teacher Christa McAuliffe. Two years earlier, Reagan announced he had decided the first ordinary American to travel on the shuttle should be "one of America's finest, a teacher."
The investigation into the accident revealed major shortcomings in the shuttle's safety program, indicators that would be reflected 17 years later, on Feb. 1, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated during its re-entry.
Reagan failed to defend the station program against budget cuts by Congress, and as its technical development lagged, its content, scope and size were cut. Instead of being completed within a decade as he had proposed, the station still is under construction, more than 20 years after Reagan's announcement. Its completion date remains uncertain.
Other space proposals also stalled during the Reagan years. In his January 1985 State of the Union address, Reagan proposed a runway-to-orbit space plane called the Orient Express. It would take off horizontally, climb to Earth orbit at Mach 25 -- or 25 times the speed of sound -- and land horizontally on conventional runways. Such a craft would allow travel from the United States to every major city in the world within three hours.
Though the plan was initiated -- and eventually renamed the X-30 -- technical problems and cost issues led to its cancellation during the first Bush administration. Commercial space initiatives also failed to ignite extensive development of low Earth orbit, despite attempts at reducing regulatory burdens on space entrepreneurs.
Reagan initially favored using the shuttle as a space-going truck to ferry commercial satellites into orbit, only to abandon the practice following the Challenger disaster. However, that policy shift led to the re-establishment of the U.S. commercial launch industry, which had lost nearly all of its market share during Reagan's tenure to the European launch firm Arianespace.
In March 1983, Reagan proposed developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its spacecraft components, technologies and the heavy lift rockets that would have been needed to lift SDI systems into orbit and service them would have exceeded the cost of all of NASA's programs.
Despite huge investments in technology and research into the SDI systems, the program eventually was cut back in the 1990s and terminated after the fall of the Soviet Union. The missile defense system deployed by President George W. Bush is based on ground-located missile interceptors. The only surviving part of the original SDI is a space-based tracking and warning satellite.
Despite the mixed record, Reagan's steady support for the reusable shuttles and the permanent space station is the foundation of today's civil space effort. Also, his speeches following the Challenger accident remain among his most memorable public utterances.
"We will never forget them," Reagan said of the Challenger's lost crew, "nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to touch the face of God."
Reagan addressed the nation just after 5 p.m. the day of the Challenger disaster. Three days later, speaking at a memorial service for the crew at Johnson Space Center, he comforted the stricken space community by promising to continue the shuttle missions. He pledged to "forge ahead with a space program that is effective, safe, and efficient-but bold and committed."
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Frank Sietzen covers aerospace for UPI Science News. E-mail [email protected]
