Abstract
Reagan staffed his administration with a mixture of true believers in his conservative ideology and pragmatic individuals familiar with the functioning of the U.S. political system. He preferred to have issues come to him for decision only after being analyzed and debated by his administration officials. Reagan’s focus was “on the big picture, setting basic directions and letting aides handle the details.” To lead NASA Reagan chose two individuals, James Beggs and Hans Mark, with long experience in the aerospace sector.
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Notes
- 1.
Ronald Reagan: “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1981. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, APP, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43130; Charles O. Jones, The Reagan Legacy: Promise and Performance (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1988), 24; David Gergen, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership: Nixon to Clinton (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 170–171; Jacob Weisberg, Ronald Reagan (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016), 48.
- 2.
Martin Anderson, Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 290.
- 3.
John P. Burke, Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), 105.
- 4.
Reagan is quoted in Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009), 12–13.
- 5.
Interview with Craig Fuller, December 14, 2016.
- 6.
Richard Reeves, President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 12–13; Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980–1989 (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009), 82–83; David Stockman, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 60, 54.
- 7.
Stockman, The Triumph of Politics, 71, 74. This part of Stockman’s treatise is quoted in Defense Daily, January 6, 1981, 6. The interchange with Glenn is quoted in a memorandum from Terry Finn to Robert Allnutt, January 14, 1981, Folder 2222, NHRC.
- 8.
Colin Norman, “Science Adviser Post in Doubt,” Science, March 6, 1981, 1026.
- 9.
Gregg Herken and Richard Leone, Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising from the Atomic Bomb to SDI (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 199, 201. Colin Norman, “The Making of a Science Adviser,” Science, November 12, 1982, 9.
- 10.
Bruce Murray, Journey into Space: The First Thirty Years of Space Exploration (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 199. It is likely that Mark advocated only that the Air Force control the Shuttle fleet operating out of the west coast Vandenberg Air Force Base, not also the fleet operating out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
- 11.
Hans Mark, The Space Station: A Personal Journey (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 108–113.
- 12.
Ibid, 116; AWST, December 15, 1980, 17; WP, January 29, 1981, A-5.
- 13.
Mark, The Space Station, 120; interview of Hans Mark, May 24, 2016.
- 14.
Oral history interview with James Beggs conducted by Kevin Rusnak, March 7, 2002. A copy of the interview is in the NHRC. Also, oral history interview of James Beggs conducted by Howard McCurdy, December 3, 1985. I am grateful to Professor McCurdy for sharing this interview and other material.
- 15.
Mark, The Space Station, 121–122.
- 16.
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, U.S. Senate, Hearing on James Montgomery Beggs to be the Administrator and Hans Michael Mark to be Deputy Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, June 17, 1981, 11, 22. A copy of the hearing report is in Folder 4235, NHRC.
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Logsdon, J.M. (2019). Getting Started. In: Ronald Reagan and the Space Frontier. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98962-4_2
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