gbaikie said:

"From rear mirror view, probably the best course would been a immediate termination of Space Program. NASA was built from small agency into a larger organization in order to put a man on the Moon. Once the organization had met it's goal and there was no further evolution to this goal [a clear idea of where it was going] the wisest course would been to shut down this huge organization."

It's hard to argue with this. As of today, NASA has walked off the cliff and is now in free-fall. However in 1970, when the decision was made for "slow death", NASA was a very impressive research and technology development organization (world's best). Many of mankind's best engineers and scientists were either working directly for NASA or subcontracted to NASA. NASA had the world's best aerospace facilities, including wind tunnels, computer facilities, machine shops, etc. The whole aparatus was there to send humans to Mars or the Moon. All that was required was for the political establishment to say "do it" and NASA had the technical capability to quickly achieve the goal. Unfortunately the political establishment had not the slightest interest in pursuing new Space objectives. Funding a Mars program was not an option. So were they supposed to tear down a national treasure and throw away billions of dollars worth of technical capability? In 1970, NASA was the pride of the nation. That was the political dilemma. The politicians had no further goals for NASA but were unable to turn NASA "off". They had summoned the demon without knowing the spell of dismissal. Slow death for NASA was their only political option.

Gary