!! spellx done
87   Demands of Vietnam Hobble
     Our Steps to Outer World
     The Washington Post  Saturday, March 2, 1968

     "No New Starts!" was the central message of the 1968 budget, and
for many long-range progressions of the Nation's ideals, may be the
most optimistic hope for 1969.  It has become wearisome and
exasperating to talk, think or write about the drain of America's
resources in the Asian war.  But there it is, and it is pointless
to comment on expectations for science and education without paying
homage to the tyranny of military "solutions" to world problems.

     "No new starts!" was applied with particular force to NASA's
programs for the exploration of space.  Many other agencies were
subjected to the attrition implied by a fixed dollar ceiling; NASA
was cut back from a 1967 expenditure level of nearly $5 billion to
$4.6 billion in fiscal 1968.  This appropriation ran a half-billion
lower than President Johnson's budget request.  This year he has
asked for $4.37 billion; some critics of any-space-at-all have set
their sights on reducing this to an even $4 billion.

     The Apollo project has still been left virtually intact at about
$2.5 billion and the brunt of these cutbacks is taken by space
science, planetary exploration and other advanced missions.  This is
paradoxical, insofar as the loss of the three astronauts in the Apollo
fire last year has played a large part in public disenchantment with
space efforts.  However, NASA Administrator James E. Webb has made a
convincing case that we might still manage a lunar manned landing
by 1970, that we can hardly abandon the program at this stage, and
that a reprogramming to a stretched-out schedule would eventually
cost more than continuing with established plans.  He has also
stressed the importance of unmanned planetary exploration as a basic
program for the next decade.

     The momentum of this effort still leaves the possibility of 
continuing a significant program after 1970, provided we make a
continued investment in advance planning and design and make
special efforts to maintain the integrity and morale of the teams
of experts who have committed their careers to space.

     In this light, the deferral for another year or two of
large-scale operational spending for planetary missions need not be
a major tragedy for the overall chronicle of this frontier.  There
are, in fact, potential advantages to mounting a broader, more
carefully planned campaign.  An essential element of this strategy
is to leave enough time between successive missions to each target for
the data from one to be digested and to have a significant impact on
planning the next.  This might impose a four-year rather than the
minimal two-year cycle of visits to Mars, unless the Mars missions
can be programmed to have far more flexibility in the revision of
details than is now provided.  Against this philosophy of planning is
the pressure of technological obsolescence, and the competition with
the Soviet program.

     The mapping and eventual surface analysis of Mars remain the 
most plausible and rewarding next steps in the mastery of the outer
world.

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