Carter is hardly remembered as a champion of NASA. Unlike Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, he has no NASA center bearing his name, and his time in office wasn’t characterized by grand visions for astronomy or human spaceflight.
Yet, it was Carter who ultimately saved NASA’s space shuttle program — giving the country perhaps its most iconic space vehicle. And it is Carter’s words that have been journeying aboard the Voyager probes for more than 45 years, carrying a message of peace and hope deep into the cosmos.
“It doesn’t show up in any of the retrospectives of major accomplishments of his term in office, but one might call him an unsung hero for the space program,” said Valerie Neal, an emerita space history curator at the National Air and Space Museum.
Years before Carter took office, NASA was eyeing its next big endeavor. By the late 1960s, as the Apollo moon missions were ongoing, agency officials were contemplating new destinations, Neal said.
Consensus formed around trying to establish a presence in Earth orbit — a space station where astronauts could stay for longer periods and where researchers could learn about microgravity and its effects on the human body.
“But to build a space station, you need a new vehicle that can carry all the equipment into low-Earth orbit,” Neal said.
Enter the space shuttle.
NASA envisioned the shuttle having myriad functions. In addition to hauling space station modules and cargo into orbit, agency officials suggested it could launch satellites and other commercial payloads while also serving as its own temporary lab in space.
By the time Carter took office in January 1977, however, political appetites for the shuttle program were on thin ice. Carter himself didn’t see much value in sending astronauts into orbit, according to Neal.
“He approved of a lot of what NASA did in aeronautics and in planetary exploration, but he just didn’t see a strong reason for the space shuttle,” she said.
Five years earlier, President Richard Nixon had approved $5.5 billion for the nascent shuttle program. But the project’s budget had mushroomed in the intervening years, as engineers struggled with the design of the vehicle’s main engines and the thermal tiles that would protect the spacecraft as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.
“These were the first rocket engines that were designed to be used repeatedly, so they had to meet a very high certification standard,” Neal said. “NASA was having a lot of trouble with them.”