How did NASAs transition from Apollo to the space shuttle affect astronomy?
It was a little chaotic. When I came to Goddard, we were entering a period where NASA had agreed to use the space shuttle for everything. It was pretty clear to all of us that it was a politically driven decision that made no technical sense. The unmanned vehicles were perfectly fine and they did some things the space shuttle could never do. So we were forced to design the COBE to go up on the shuttle even though we had to add a 5,000 pound propulsion system to get to where we needed to go. After the 1986 Challenger accident, we were put on a Delta 2 and life became a lot simpler. But political decisions made a huge difference to the technical content of the NASA program in the late 1970s. It did not seem sensible at the time, but there was no avoiding it. Those were forces much higher than us. Is NASA in a similar situation today as it sets its sights on going back to the Moon? Well, I don’t know. Almost every commentator on the subject says it’s a great idea, but there isn’t enough m
