Apollo: Where Is Its Poetry?

NOT since the tragic fire that killed three astronauts on the launch pad in 1967 has NASA's morale been so low or its future so bleak. The signs are all too apparent: shops are shuttered in Florida's once-booming Brevard County, the home of Cape Kennedy. Thousands of engineers and technicians are out of work in Southern California and other aerospace centers. Last week, even as Apollo 15 streaked to the moon, Congress sent the White House a compromise $3.27 billion NASA appropriations bill--$1.9 billion below the allocations of the space agency's heyday.

The Russians meanwhile are moving steadily ahead. Despite the disastrous end of Soyuz 11, they are launching payloads of all kinds at almost three times the U.S. rate. It almost seems, says Norman Mailer, who chronicled the first lunar landing in his book Of a Fire on the Moon, as if Americans no longer find any poetry in the quest to reach the stars.

Two years after Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind," many Americans have become blase about moon voyages. The technical argot of the astronauts has turned off some early enthusiasts, while the rigorous attention the moon walkers must pay to their inflexible schedules has made them seem like robots. Beyond that, the U.S. has be- come concerned with other pressing priorities: urban decay and pollution, poverty and racial inequality. -

For years, NASA was little bothered by such problems. To fulfill President Kennedy's mandate to land men on the moon within the decade, it frequently made space sound like a celestial Grand Prix with one purpose above all others: to beat the Russians. NASA became bloated by success and aloof from normal budgetary restraints. Engineers and jet pilots ruled Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center and NASA became the symbol of an older, less troubled America. While there may have been some minority members toiling in the back rooms, the men out front--the astronauts--have been white, middle class, and, it seemed all too often, unimaginative or insensitive. Mailer touched a raw nerve when he called Al Shepard's lunar golfing an "incredible vulgarity.'' Said Mailer: "Golf is insulting enough to people who live in ghettos, but when we start doing it on the moon, there is something obscene in it." While that judgment may be too harsh, it does point up the difficulties NASA faces in trying to rewin public support. Critics damn the astronauts for their taciturnity but condemn them when the space voy- agers display any hint of exuberant fun. -

There still are both poetry and purpose in space. The world is already reaping the benefits of the space program. Improved weather forecasting by earth satellites, for example, has saved millions of dollars in property damage and an untold number of lives by warning of dangerous storms. Other benefits are less visible: technological spin-offs from space research, which include everything from improved kitchen appliances to navigational aids with pinpoint accuracy. NASA has helped the economy directly. At its peak in 1966, NASA employed or provided jobs through its major industrial contractors for almost half a million people. Less tangible but no less significant has been the spiritual uplift provided by the spectacle of man overcoming the danger and complexities of travel beyond his own world.

Still, NASA seems unable effectively to rebut its critics. Because of the budget cuts, NASA will be able to send up only two more moon missions; originally there were to be another five. Plans to land an unmanned probe on Mars have been set back to 1975. The launching of Skylab, the first U.S. orbital space station, is unlikely to occur before 1973. Cape Kennedy's director, Kurt Debus, explained NASA's problem on the eve of Apollo 15's launch: Space is enormously important to the future well-being of the U.S., he said, but we have not yet found the way to convince the American public of that.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.