a means to gather knowledge about the Sun. Accommodating what was clearly NASA's mandate, the Board urged NASA to select appropriately trained astronauts to conduct the scientific observations and to improve expertise in "failure circumvention." Goldberg added in a cover letter, however, that the Board was concerned that the mission take place before the end of the coming solar maximum, expected to last until 1971.4 (See Document I-8.)

Even though the Board acknowledged that the chief rationale for ATM was to demonstrate the utility of humans working in space, it still lobbied hard for a timely launch to maximize scientific return. At the least, it wanted to be assured that NASA would be sensitive to scientific needs in scheduling launches. Goldberg and the Board well knew that achieving the initial launch date of 1969 required serious compromises. In July 1967, Goldberg recalls, George Mueller visited his office, asking if there were some way that Harvard could have its instrument ready for a 1969 launch. One of Newell's primary conditions for OSSA's endorsement of ATM-A was that the Harvard experiment fly. Goldberg was willing to substitute a simpler instrument, a spectrum scanner optimized for the solar maximum and its expected high-energy solar flares, provided that Harvard's original experiment would still fly on ATM-B. Goldberg and Newell went ahead with this plan. But by May 1968, when the launch date had slipped into 1971, and looked like it would slip even further, Goldberg insisted that Harvard's original instrument, still under development, be reinstated. Harvard in fact had to threaten to withdraw from ATM entirely before NASA acquiesced."

Not known to Goldberg in May 1968 was that slips for ATM launches were projected far beyond 1971, reaching to 1973 and even 1975. Newell, reacting to a series of inquiries from Goldberg, instructed John Naugle to respond, knowing full well that then-present "planning for the Saturn V workshops suggest[ed] that launches in 1973 and 1975 might be possible, but that these workshops [were] expected to be devoted primarily to the study of man himself." (See Document I-9.) Possible payloads, including ATM, as well as a large UV stellar package and a large x-ray and gamma-ray package, all competing for berths, could not possibly fly before 1975 and probably would not fly until much later. In an effort to meet Goldberg's demands, however, Newell instructed Naugle to search for "other equally effective means" to launch large-scale astronomical instruments. Options included extending the OAO program, converting the OSO and OGO programs from proprietary instruments to "guest observatory” status, expanding the Astronomy Explorer program, or modifying later OSOs to accommodate larger solar physics instruments and smaller stellar instruments. Above all, Newell wanted a "candid assessment of our space astronomy program, both in the unmanned and the manned spacecraft.”

"45

Goldberg was, of course, distressed when he started hearing of the expected slips in the spring of 1968. Telegrams from NASA in April indicated at first a slip to 1972, which Goldberg argued would greatly diminish "the scientific importance of the payload." Then,

43. Astronomy Missions Board, "Resolution,” 17-18 January 1968, attached to letter from Dr. Leo Goldberg to Dr. Homer Newell, 25 January 1968, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

44. Letter from Dr. Leo Goldberg to Montie Wright, 17 June 1980, NASA Historical Reference Collection. 45. Memorandum from Dr. Homer Newell to Dr. John Naugle, 9 April 1968, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

Naugle and Newell, despite their internal correspondence, somehow led Goldberg to believe that the slip would only be to June 1971, which hardly comforted the Harvard astronomer, who remained convinced that there would be further slips of “at least two to three months." There was a silver lining however, for Goldberg: this delay would give Harvard enough time to reinstate its original experiment. Goldberg urged Naugle to do this. (See Documents I-10, I-11, and I-12.) Goldberg's frustrations were shared by the members of the Astronomy Missions Board, as well as by the Principal Investigators for the other major ATM instruments. A brief glance at the chronology of the definition of ATM, and eventually the Skylab mission, will reveal why this was so.

46

Skylab and the Apollo Telescope Mount

The Apollo Applications Program was born at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in September 1965, and the orbital workshop concept grew from that within the next month. In February 1966, MSFC submitted a proposal for an Apollo Telescope Mount based upon an engineering study by Ball Brothers. By that summer, plans called for building and launching no fewer than four ATMs involving some nineteen Saturn launches and twenty-six Saturn IB launches, with three Saturn-IVB wet workshops and four ATM payloads. The "wet" workshop concept (meaning that the stage would be launched with instruments mounted and its fuel tanks full, and unused fuel vented before the stage was used as a scientific laboratory) was the framework for the definition of the Apollo Applications Program.

In July 1966, Mueller's OMSF was given full responsibility for Apollo and Apollo Applications missions; Newell's OSSA would select experiments and analyze the data. Throughout the rest of that year, as OSSA identified major experiments, OMSF and NASA Headquarters personnel debated using a dry (launched with no fuel in the stage) workshop as a viable alternative. The dry workshop solved severe “habitability problems." In January 1968, budget cuts reduced the Applications Program to one ATM flight, slated for April 1970, the first major slip, but well within the boundaries set by the Astronomy Missions Board. Further budget cuts, however, caused NASA to slip the first launch to November 1970. A major schedule shift occurred when NASA Administrator Thomas Paine finally approved the dry workshop in May 1969; this decision was announced on 22 July 1969 (two days after the Apollo 11 lunar landing). This was a good choice in terms of the design of the workshop, but inevitably it led to further slips; an 11 December 1969 press release stated that the change to a dry workshop would not cause any further slips but set the launch date at “mid-1972."47 By August 1970, the Apollo Applications Program, now named Skylab, announced another slip to 1 November 1972, although internal planning dates were far more pessimistic. By April 1971, the launch was slipped to April 1973; the first Skylab was launched late that month.

46. D. L. Forsythe, Telex, 10 May 1968, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

47. NASA News Release 69-164, "Orbital Workshop Design Changes," NASA Historical Reference Collection. 48. Compton and Benson, Living and Working in Space.

48

The history of Skylab has been treated in some detail. There were many problems that had to be overcome after the deployment of the laboratory, particularly the loss of one of the primary Skylab solar panels. In August 1973, NASA canceled plans for a second Skylab/ATM flight. Within a year, the program was closed down except for lingering support to process the data. The backup Skylab workshop, Multiple Docking Adapter, and Apollo Telescope Mount ended up at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., as one of the most costly museum exhibits ever.

Looking back in 1980, however, astronomers like Goldberg expressed satisfaction with the Skylab program, once all the data had been retrieved and processing and analysis were well underway. Only then did Goldberg admit that the mission had evolved “into a marvel of engineering and scientific perfection (thanks in large measure to lengthy delays in the schedule)."" He and his colleagues recall their deep skepticism during the early years of the program, brought about by constant redefinition, budget cuts, and slips in almost every milestone. Nevertheless, Goldberg was among those who endorsed ATM/Skylab when called upon to do so by Homer Newell's office in preparation for budget briefings in November 1970. (See Document I-14.) As a quid pro quo, one month earlier, speaking for the Astronomy Missions Board, Goldberg urged that NASA improve support for ground-based facilities and analysis: “Full interpretation [of the ATM observations] will be possible only if ground-based observations are available and relevant laboratory studies have been carried out.'

"550

Despite the Astronomy Missions Board's endorsements, making ATM a high priority for NASA was not supported by many in the astronomical community. It was neither discussed nor endorsed in the National Academy of Sciences's 1972 report Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s. Headed by Caltech's Jesse Greenstein, the panel assessed all forms of astronomical practice, including space research. Even though Goldberg, by then Director of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, was on the central committee, he was not part of the study group that deliberated over priorities in solar research. There were deep fault lines in the community in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially over spending priorities and maintaining the health of the disciplinary infrastructure, which was still perceived as optical and ground-based. As Greenstein noted in his introduction to the report, for the time period 1968 to 1971, NSF funds for basic research in astronomy (basic research grants alone) had flattened out at $6 million annually, whereas some 400 new Ph.D.s had entered the field in the same period, looking for support. Astronomy had made incredible advances in the 1970s but was heading for a period of retrenchment. He suggested that the field regain a balance over all areas of endeavor. Highest priority for the committee was that ground-based facilities not suffer due to overemphasis on spacebased observatories." Throughout the 1960s, total annual federal support for basic research in astronomy had been on the increase, averaging over $100 million from NASA (including all instrumentation) and between $10 and $20 million from the NSF. By far,

49. Goldberg to Wright.

50. Memorandum from Dr. Leo Goldberg to Dr. Homer Newell, 30 September 1970, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

51. Jesse Greenstein, “Introduction," in National Academy of Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (1972), p. xii.

52. Ibid., Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6, pp. 61-64.

the largest single expenditure identified was for ATM, which reached the $70 million mark in the 1968-69 timeframe. By 1970, the funding was down to $30 million, which was still twice that of OSO and thirty times greater than levels of support for data analysis.52

In this fiscal state, the eleven members of the solar working group of the Greenstein committee, dominated by ground-based observers, endorsed continuing an everimproving OSO program, with OSO-8 capable of one arc second of spatial resolution. "This program of continuous development and gradual improvement has made the OSO program among the most successful and productive of all astronomical satellite programs." They strongly recommended extending the OSO program to thirteen flights through the next solar maximum, expected to occur in the 1977-81 period. They called the OSOS and an upgraded sounding rocket program “the backbone of the solar space program. .”53 Not included as a high priority for the coming decade, but definitely within the committee's sights, was a high-resolution solar telescope in space, of some 40-inch aperture, and capable of a guiding accuracy of 0.1 arc second.

The Space Science Board was hardly more sympathetic to scientific programs based on using astronauts as investigators. At its conference center at Woods Hole in July and August 1970, it articulated programs that would be possible at three levels of funding for the period 1971 to 1980. Among other projects, the working group on astronomy called for active design studies leading to a robotic solar observatory with capabilities equal to that of ATM-A: stability to one second of arc or better and payloads comparable to ATM. But the group also endorsed a crewed space station, for reasons reminiscent of those of the Working Group at the Iowa Summer Study in 1962: such operations offered a “great opportunity for solar research because of the high data rates inherent to solar observations.” More immediate priorities included a continuing OSO program for timedependent studies of solar phenomena and the need to support allied solar-terrestrial programs, which depended upon continuing flights of the Navy's SOLRAD monitoring satellites, as well as the continued development of OGOs, the Atmospheric Explorer, IMP, and the Solar-Terrestrial Probe. Reflecting NASA's and national priorities, the astronomy working group highlighted the close relation between solar physics and Earth's environment.55

Given the complexity of the data-gathering requirements and perceived deficiencies in digital recording and transmission, coupled with the multiple goals of its advisory panels, NASA was always able to collect sufficient endorsements to demonstrate the general support of scientific advisory bodies for programs like ATM. By May 1971, for instance, NASA pointed to some seven different reports ranging from the 1965 Woods Hole study to a February 1971 Space Science Board summary in support of the program." (See Document I-13.)

p. 78.

54. Space Science Board, National Academy of Sciences, Priorities for Space Research, 1971-1980 (1971),

55. Ibid., p. 83.

56. J. Allen Crocker, “Advisory Group Comments on Skylab and ATM," 21 May 1971, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

The State of Solar Physics During the 1970s

After fifteen years of solar research from space, NASA's program officers and administrators could point to many valuable things learned about the Sun. The OSO era, 1962 to 1974, saw the first detailed studies of the sharp transition zone between the chromosphere and the corona and the first highly detailed images of the outer corona from rocket-borne and then satellite-borne coronagraphs. The extreme temperatures of flares were confirmed by OSO measurements, including studies of flare-related nuclear gamma-ray spectra. Coronal holes, the solar wind, and coronal transients were detected in a wide range of energies with resolutions capable of providing detailed information on energy transport.

The ATM and Skylab era saw highly detailed studies of chromospheric networks, prominences, and high-resolution x-ray imaging of solar photosphere and coronal structure. The post-Skylab era saw a return to AOSO-scale observatory-class programs using improved detectors and broadband data transmission, filling in the picture of the high-energy solar environment. During this period, NASA did begin to pay greater attention to solar-terrestrial relations, reflecting political pressures, societal trends, and institutional changes. Also of greater priority were joint international programs, which the United States initially embraced but, more than once, did not follow through to completion. During this period, priorities in NASA shifted from Apollo and Apollo Applications to supporting the Shuttle program.

The 1970s also saw significant changes in the relationship of specialists in solar physics to the general astronomical community, and this change may have been reflected in the advice given to NASA from its various boards and panels, which calls for comment here. Solar physicists were among the first specialists, along with planetary scientists, to feel that the mainstream American Astronomical Society was not able to meet their growing needs as a discipline. In the mid-1960s, a number of solar physicists and astronomers, including Henry J. Smith of NASA and Goldberg of Harvard, began to worry that fewer and fewer solar physicists attended AAS meetings. Smith in particular suggested that NASA-funded solar physicists meet periodically to air issues of mutual concern, whereas Goldberg, very much a leader of mainstream optical astronomy, preferred that these specialist meetings be held somehow under the aegis of the national society. Goldberg was, in fact, president of the AAS in the mid-1960s, and he was well aware of the concerns many of his colleagues had over the "Balkanization" of the society into specialist groups. Astronomy was one of the few disciplines in the physical sciences small enough to retain a unified national focus, and no one wanted that to change. For one thing, this unity gave the National Academy Decadal Surveys (the so-called Whitford and Greenstein Committees) significant political weight in Washington.

The result of this movement was the establishment of a Solar Physics Division (SPD) within the AAS in 1968, after several years of successful specialist meetings, rather than the creation of a new society. The planetary scientists, high-energy astrophysicists, dynamical astronomers, and even astronomy historians also established divisions, preserving to some extent the unity of the discipline under the parent society. The SPD sponsored many special sessions based upon space activities; in 1973, it convened a lengthy discussion of observations of the solar corona from Skylab. It also formed a conduit for interdisciplinary