Niche Policies and Presidential Agendas : Human Spaceflight and NASA, Opportunity and Failure
After JFK's assassination in 1963, the Apollo program was virtually guaranteed a run at achieving success although its value was not as high as later mythology suggests. Lyndon Johnson cut the program's budget and vetoed a continuation in the form of the Post Apollo Applications Program, a position ratified by his successor, Richard Nixon. A subsequent tempt by NASA to extend the Apollo program concept to future space exploration was rejected by Nixon and the agency was sent on its journey through the backwaters of American politics. This 1969 decision foreshadowed future presidential decisions regarding the human spaceflight program over the past nearly five decades. What makes the relative status of the human spaceflight within presidential agenda interesting and information is that its importance fluctuates dramatically across time and often due to events outside the realm of space policy. What often happens is that major changes in either international and/or domestic politics occur and as consequence American space policy changes. What appears on the surface as an agency and program insulated from such mundane considerations is in fact one totally subservient to such events. Space policy is only successful in seeking presidential support when it is directly and publicly linked to current presidential priorities; however, those linkages often prove fragile and short term in part because of the field's parochial focus and politics. By one count, there have been at least eighteen instances when space policy through NASA and its activities came to the president's agenda in a manner requiring a presidential decision. This analysis draws upon the public policy literature dealing with science and technology and the unanticipated outcomes that arise within that field. What has not occurred to this point is an explicit analysis of presidential engagement across administrations in a framework not driven by presidential personality and short term events but rather one that focuses on space policy as an example of normal politics, meaning presidential engagement in space policy occurs only under certain conditions