Category Mars Wars

“There are moments in history when challenges occur of such a
compelling nature that to miss them is to miss the whole meaning of
an epoch. Space is such a challenge. ”

James Michener, 19791

By 1989, the American space program had been in a steady decline for nearly two decades. NASA had failed to find its footing in the years following the triumphs of the Apollo moon landings. During the intervening period, the space agency had become increasingly conservative, risk averse, and bureaucratic. After failing to gain support for a robust human exploration program, the agency had retreated and become an ever more cautious organization. During this time, the space program had no great supporters in the White House, nor great advocates within the Con­gress. This forced the agency to focus its political energies on protecting its turf (e. g., the Space Shuttle and space station programs) and trying to slow the regular reduc­tions in its annual appropriation. The result was a NASA that hardly resembled the organization that had taken on the Soviet Union on one of the most prominent battlegrounds of the Cold War—an agency that had won a great victory for the United States.

Despite this long interlude, there had been stirrings within the space policy com­munity in recent years that seemed to indicate that a return to glory might be achiev­able. The National Commission on Space had recommended human exploration of Mars as the appropriate long-term objective of the space program. The American [85] public had rallied around NASA in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger acci­dent. President Reagan had placed human exploration beyond Earth orbit back on the space agenda for the first time in two decades. Perhaps most importantly, Presi­dent-elect George Bush was an outspoken supporter of the space program—perhaps more supportive then any incoming president in the history of the space age. On the larger national stage, however, forces that are more significant were develop­ing that didn’t bode well for the adoption of an overly aggressive or expensive new undertaking in human spaceflight. In particular, a struggling economy and rising deficits were placing enormous pressure on the federal budget. This political reality would be the most important constraint facing adoption of an expanded exploration program and attempts to revitalize the national space program. In fact, the situation was so grave that it seriously called into question whether the new president should support such an endeavor at all. Despite the potential hazards, though, only a few short months after taking office, President George Bush and his key space policy advisors decided to champion an ill-defined yet exorbitantly expensive exploration plan—the Space Exploration Initiative.

George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts on 12 June 1912, the second child of Dorothy Walker and Prescott Bush, an investment banker and later Republican Senator from Connecticut. He grew up a member of the East­ern elite. Biographer John Robert Greene writes that Bush’s parents were “…mem­bers of the genteel class—well educated, well pedigreed, well mannered, and well connected. They were also wealthy— The world in which the Bush children were raised then was one in which comfort was never an issue, but neither were the constant reminders that that comfort could not be taken for granted. Prescott Bush used his wealth as a safety net for his children. They were expected to go out, earn their own wealth, and do the same.” As befitting one of this social standing, George received a private school education—first attending the Greenwich County Day School and then moving to prep school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachu­setts. On his 18th birthday, George graduated from Phillips Academy and enlisted in the U. S. Navy. Within a year, he received a commission as an ensign and became the youngest pilot in the navy. During World War II, Bush flew 58 combat mis­sions against Japanese forces, survived being shot down on a bombing mission, and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Upon returning from the war, he entered Yale University, where he earned a B. A. in economics in only two years and gradu­ated Phi Beta Kappa. Following college, Bush spent the subsequent two decades earning his fortune as an executive in the oil industry.[86]

In 1964, George Bush made his first run for elective office when he challenged incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough for the U. S. Senate. Despite a good show­ing for a Republican in Texas, a Democratic Party united under the leadership of fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson stymied Bush—he only received 43% of the vote in the November election. Two years later, however, in 1966, Bush made a successful run for a congressional seat in Houston, becoming the first Republican to repre­sent that city. One of the few freshman congressional representatives ever selected to serve on the powerful Ways and Means Committee; he was reelected two years later without opposition. In 1970, at the behest of President Nixon, Bush made another run for the U. S. Senate. This time running against conservative Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, who had surprisingly beaten Yarborough in the primary, he lost once again, garnering only 46% of the vote.[87]

On 11 December 1970, President Nixon, who greatly appreciated Bushs willing­ness to sacrifice a safe House seat to run for the Senate, appointed him to the post of U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He served in this capacity for two years, but in early 1973 Nixon asked him to take the reigns of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in. In that position, Bush was an early defender of Nixon. When tapes were released that proved the president was guilty of obstruction of justice, however, he changed his stance and strongly lobbied the president to resign. In December 1975, after serving as the American envoy to China for a year, President Ford appointed Bush as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). After Jimmy Carters election, despite a solid record of achievement at the CIA, he became the first DCI to be dismissed by an incoming president-elect. He spent the next four years preparing to contend for the Republi­can presidential nomination. In 1980, despite winning the Iowa caucuses, George Bush never recovered from his loss to former California governor Ronald Reagan in the New Hampshire primary. After an effort to create a Reagan-Ford “dream ticket” collapsed, the conservative Reagan asked Bush to accept the vice presidential nomination because he was “the most attractive surviving moderate.” Biographer John Robert Greene explains, “Bushs major task as Vice President was to be the administration’s front man on the road. Between 1981 and 1989, Bush put in 1.3 million miles of travel, visiting the 50 states and 65 different countries.”[88]

Vice President Bush meets Shuttle Challenger families (NASA Image 86-HC-181)

“Some say the space program should wait—that we should only go
forward once the social problems of today are completely solved. But
history proves that attitude is self-defeating.. .Many an American
schoolkid has read the story of Columbus’ doubters, and shook their
heads in disbelief that these naysayers could have been so
shortsighted. We must not let the schoolchildren of the future
shake their heads at our behavior. ”

President George Bush, 20 June 1990

As was discussed in the first chapter of this book, John Kingdon’s Policy Streams Model and Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones’s Punctuated Equilibrium Model epitomize an innovative approach to analyzing agenda setting and policy formation. Both models were developed because there was a sense that political scientists and policy analysts could benefit from overarching approaches to understanding the policy process. The policy sciences had previously been dominated by a prolifera­tion of theories that dealt with specific policy phases (e. g., agenda setting, adoption, implementation, and evaluation). The goal of the new models was to provide a more comprehensive system to improve policy analysis within large issue areas.1 Policy Streams and Punctuated Equilibrium were originally conceived to study social and [341] economic policy. One of the objectives of this book, however, is to assess whether the models are relevant to the examination of science and technology policy—par­ticularly large space policy initiatives. This evaluation led to the conclusion that the models offer useful methodologies that can be applied to further our understanding of the space policy community and long-term trends in national space policy.

Before being elected as vice president, despite having served as a naval aviator during WWII, George Bush did not exhibit a particular interest in the American space program. As vice president, however, Bush became increasingly involved in space policy making—particularly in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Bush met with the families of the lost astronauts just hours after the tragedy and was deeply moved by both their sorrow and continued dedication to NASA. Dr. June Scobee, the wife of the mission commander, told him not to let the disaster hurt the agency and to fight to keep the space program alive. On 21 March 1987, at the dedication of the Challenger memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, Bush stated, “the greatest tribute we can pay to the Challenger’s brave crew and their families is to remain true to their purpose, and to rededicate ourselves to America’s leadership in space.”[89]

In the summer of 1987, NASA Administrator James Fletcher requested a meet­ing to brief Vice President Bush on issues relating to the American space program.[90]

Specifically, the administrator wanted to talk about the U. S. and U. S.S. R. civil space programs, the status of the Space Shuttles return to service, and the keys to the agency’s future. On 10 August, Fletcher went to the White House to present the agency’s vision for the 1990s and beyond. He told Bush that the Soviets were beating the Americans in space because of the former nation’s unrelenting expan­sion of its civil and military capabilities during the prior three decades. The primary examples of that preeminence were the permanently occupied Mir space station and the massive Energia launch vehicle. Fletcher argued that Space Station Freedom and a Shuttle-derived advanced launch vehicle would not be capable of achieving parity with the Soviets until the end of the century. He suggested that this disparity in technical capabilities gave the U. S.S. R. an advantage in robotic and human explora­tion of Mars, which was the long-term goal of Soviet space efforts.[91]

Administrator Fletcher indicated that four important steps needed to be taken to reverse the current course of American-Soviet competition. First, NASA needed funding to develop a flexible and robust space transportation system to assure access to Earth orbit. Second, several critical enabling technologies needed to be tested, including: artificial gravity, closed loop life support, aero-braking, orbital transfer and maneuver, cryogenic storage and handling, and large scale space operations. Third, the U. S. needed the national will to excel. Finally, policy makers needed to choose a long-term, post-Space Station goal that would provide a strategic focus for the space program. Fletcher argued that human exploration of the solar system would provide this direction. He outlined a plan that would commence with a return to the Moon, establishment of a scientific outpost, and exploitation of lunar resources. Then, in the early 21st century, the space agency would be ready to start sending human missions to explore Mars. The meeting with the vice president was purely informational in nature and was not aimed at gaining an immediate response. The main objective was to lay the groundwork for further lobbying efforts should Bush be elected to replace President Reagan.[92]

On 13 October 1987, speaking at Houston’s Hyatt Regency Hotel, Vice Presi­dent George Bush announced he would make a second run for the presidency. Just weeks after declaring his candidacy, Bush delivered a major policy address on the future of the space program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala­bama. While space policy was not a hot issue during the election cycle, Bush gave it more attention than any presidential candidate since John Kennedy. He told the crowd gathered at the NASA field center, “In very basic ways, our exploration of space defines us as a people—our willingness to take great risks for great rewards, to challenge the unknown, to reach beyond ourselves, to strive for knowledge and innovation and growth. Our commitment to leadership in space is symbolic of the role we seek in the world.” Exhibiting his moderate Republican roots, Bush spoke eloquently of the environmental problems facing humanity and the role that NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth (a planned network of earth science satellites) could play in altering “our disastrous course.” He also endorsed aggressive launch vehicle developments aimed at replacing the Space Shuttle, assuring access to low-Earth orbit and drastically reducing launch costs. Finally, drawing on his briefing from Administrator Fletcher two months earlier, Bush argued that the nation “…should make a long-term commitment to manned and unmanned exploration of the solar system. There is much to be done—further exploration of the Moon, a mission to Mars, probes of the outer planets. These are worthwhile objectives, and they should not be neglected. They should be pursued in a spirit of both bipartisanship and international teamwork.” He stressed the need for international cooperation, stat­ing that the solar system should be explored not as Americans, Soviets, French, or Japanese, but as humans. Despite delivering a relatively optimistic address about the future of the space program, Bush also openly spoke about the budgetary pressures facing the federal government and its impact on the space agency. “We cannot write a blank check to NASA… while our dreams are unlimited, our resources are not, and we must choose realistic missions that recognize these constraints.”[93]

During the course of the next year, the country watched one of the nastiest presi­dential contests in history unfold. After a slow start with a third place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Bush stormed back with a solid win in New Hampshire followed by a sweep of the Super Tuesday primaries on 9 March 1988. In August, the Repub­lican Party unanimously nominated Bush. On the morning of 3 October 1988, while engaged in a chaotic general election campaign against Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, the nominee was on hand at Edwards Air Force Base for the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery, the first shuttle mission since the Chal­lenger accident. That afternoon, at a campaign stop in Redding, California, Bush strayed from his regular stump speech to talk about the space program. He stated that if he were elected president, he would have certain strong notions about the proper priorities for the space program. Once again drawing upon the NASA brief­ing he had received the previous year, Bush contended that the logical progression of the human spaceflight program would involve completion of the Space Station, followed by missions to the Moon and Mars. He stopped short of endorsing the adoption of an exploration plan focusing on the red planet, however, stating that he was “not completely sure Mars is the next place we ought to go, and I want to receive the best thinking on that. But if we decide to go, we’ll have to be ready, and a space station is part of that process.”

Vice President Bush meets Discovery STS-26 crew (NASA Image 88-HC-410)

Still, Bush made it clear that while robotic probes had great benefits he believed the future of the American space program should place an emphasis on human spaceflight. The primary rationale he gave for human involvement was that mis­sions to explore the solar system were “journeys of discovery and daring, and they will lose their impact and their meaning if they are performed only by machines.”[94] [95] The following month, George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis—with a supportive president-elect ready to take office, this opened a policy window for adoption of a long-term human spaceflight initiative. The main question facing the space policy community, however, was whether a plan could be formulated that would revitalize the space program without requiring a large infusion of budgetary resources.

Although the original intention was to primarily utilize the Policy Streams Model to guide the historical analysis of SEI’s failure, in writing this book it became increas­ingly clear that the theory could also be used to provide insights regarding important actors within the space policy community. The methodological core of Kingdons book were hundreds of interviews conducted over four years with congressional staffers, upper-level civil servants, political appointees, presidential staffers, lobby­ists, journalists, consultants, academics, and researchers.[342] One objective of these interviews was to determine which players were important in a given policy com­munity.[343] Due to resource limitations for this book, it was not possible to conduct a large number of comprehensive interviews. Instead, a survey was created to identify influential actors within the space policy community. This survey was circulated to a population of civil servants, presidential staff, lobbyists, academics, researchers, and members of industry. Those surveyed were asked to rate the importance of given actors within the community. This direct inquiry allowed for accurate coding of responses into one of four categories: very important, somewhat important, little importance, or no importance. The goals were twofold. First, to determine who the most influential players are within the space arena. Second, to determine whether SEI’s policy entrepreneurs effectively engaged key space policy community actors during the initiatives agenda setting and alternative generation processes.

No single actor has the same ability to set the space agenda as the president. Eighty-three percent of those surveyed considered the president very or somewhat important—very important represented 59% (see Table on next page). Although President Bush wasn’t heavily involved in SEI’s development, he endowed Vice Pres­ident Quayle with the authority to push forward the initiative. Before ascending to the presidency, Bush was an outspoken proponent of the American space program and was already leaning toward a commitment to human exploration beyond Earth orbit. Armed with a presidential mandate to fashion a long-term strategy, Quayle was able to force SEI onto the national agenda. Throughout the agenda setting pro­cess, he was the crucial policy entrepreneur advocating for the initiative.

Vice President Quayle was aided in this effort by National Space Council Execu­tive Secretary Mark Albrecht. Within the space policy arena, presidential staffers were collectively among the most frequently discussed actors. Ninety-eight percent of those surveyed considered the presidential staff very or somewhat important— very important represented 74%. During the Bush administration, the staff had more influence over the space policy agenda than at any time in the history of the space program. This was primarily due to the broad role of the Space Council. Combined with budget and policy analysts from OMB, OSTP, and the NSC, there was arguably more attention given to space issues than under any other presidential administration. The centrality of Mark Albrecht and Richard Darman as key policy entrepreneurs for SEI provides evidence of staffer influence. Although strong presi­dential support was a requisite component for pushing the initiative onto the national agenda, having a dedicated staff working on these issues was an important factor.

Presidential appointees were also among the most frequently discussed actors in the agenda setting process. Ninety-six percent of those surveyed considered presi­dential appointees very or somewhat important—-very important represented 81%. As NASA Administrator, Admiral Truly was heavily relied upon to advocate on SEI’s behalf. Although several commentators have questioned whether he was ever sincerely supportive of the undertaking, he was critically important in shaping the proposal that was eventually embraced by Vice President Quayle. The full member­ship of the Space Council added to the influence of political appointees under the Bush administration. With regard to SEI, however, these cabinet-level officials were not heavily engaged during the agenda setting process.

GOVERNMENT ACTORS	Very Important	Somewhat Important	Not Very Important	Not Important
President	59%	24%	13%	4%
Presidential Staff	74	24	2	0
Presidential Appointees	81	15	4	0
Civil Servants	28	50	22	0
Congress	36	57	7	0
Congressional Staff	42	50	8	0

Importance of Government Actors in Agenda Setting

Congress is among the most frequently discussed actors within the space policy arena, although it was seen as significantly less important than the administra­tion—the opposite of what Kingdon found when looking at social and economic policy. Ninety-three percent of those surveyed considered Congress very or some­what important—but very important only represented 36%. Kingdon found that when a presidential administration decides to put forth a proposal, consulting with

Congress can be crucial for the eventual adoption of the initiative—although this doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t otherwise reach the national agenda. The Bush administration overlooked the importance of conferring with Congress when con­sidering SEI. Although Quayle and Truly did brief key members of Congress, this was only after the initiative had been formulated and the decision had been made to go forward. There was never any effort to create a coalition of congressional sup­porters or to engage potential congressional policy entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the administration did not adjust any of its plans based on the reactions of the Con­gress—particularly in the case of important staffers. Within the space sector, these staffers were equally important as members of Congress. Ninety-two percent of those surveyed considered congressional staffers very or somewhat important—very important represented 42%. This significant influence is probably due to the fact that staffers can spend more time gaining an understanding of the relevant technical details. Similar to congressional members, the value of obtaining staffer support was overlooked by key policy entrepreneurs within the administration.4

For the most part, non-governmental actors were not considered to be influential in agenda setting within the space policy community. The primary exception was the aerospace industry and interest groups representing those companies, although even this group was considered far less important than government actors. Professional and public interest groups, academics and researchers, mass public opinion, and the media were all seen as having limited significance. The SEI case study appears to be consistent with these general findings. The White Fiouse briefed industry leaders before launching the initiative, but the less than enthusiastic response did not sway the administration from its course. Likewise, although several influential academics and researchers were briefed to gauge reaction to the initiative, they did not participate in SEI’s development. The media and public opinion played no part in bringing SEI to the national agenda.

NONGOVERNMENT ACTORS	Very Important	Somewhat Important	Not Very Important	Not Important
Interest Groups: Industry	16%	66%	18%	0%
Interest Groups: Professional	2	38	56	4
Interest Groups: Advocacy	4	27	47	22
Academics & Researchers	2	49	42	7
Media	5	46	40	9
Industry	16	62	18	4
Mass Public Opinion	7	38	50	5

Importance of Non-Government Actors in Agenda Setting

The president cannot dominate alternative generation in the same way as agenda setting. This appears to be particularly true within the space arena, where the sci­entific and technical options require special training and significant effort. Only forty-one percent of those surveyed considered the president very or somewhat important—very important represented 13%. This lack of control over alternatives was one of the most important factors confronting successful adoption and imple­mentation of SEI. Due to a lack of in-house expertise, President Bush and Vice President Quayle were forced to turn to NASA to generate options for the explora­tion initiative. The agency, however, did not produce actual alternatives. Instead, the agency chose to put forward different timelines for the same basic approach. The lack of internal technical capability meant Bush and Quayle were largely at the mercy of NASA bureaucrats.

GOVERNMENT ACTORS	Very Important	Somewhat Important	Not Very Important	Not Important
President	13%	28%	42%	17%
Presidential Staff	49	38	11	2
Presidential Appointees	74	22	4	0
Civil Servants	60	33	7	0
Congress	24	49	27	0
Congressional Staff	33	51	16	0

Importance of Government Actors in Alternative Generation

The presidential staff is considered to be among the most important actors in alternative generation. Eighty-seven percent of those surveyed considered the presidential staff very or somewhat important—very important represented 49% percent. Kingdon contended that the staff has sway because it is able to “engage in the detailed negotiations—with departments, the Hill, and the major inter­est groups—that will produce the Administrations proposals and that will clarify the Administrations bargaining positions.”5 In the case of SEI, the Space Council actually abdicated its authority to direct the alternative generation process when it allowed NASA to conduct the 90-Day Study in a policy vacuum. Without clear direction from the Council regarding key budgetary constraints, the space agency was allowed to produce a plan that didn’t match up with political reality.

Political appointees were mentioned as the most influential actors in the space sector. Ninety-six percent of those surveyed considered presidential appointees (e. g. NASA Administrator) very or somewhat important—very important represented

74%. Kingdon writes that there are few cases of confrontation between the White House and appointees because the latter “finds it prudent to bend with the presi­dential wind, and the President finds it politically embarrassing to be portrayed as being at war with his major advisors.”6 SEI was a clear exception to this rule. Admi­ral Truly clearly wasn’t a strong advocate for the initiative. Under his leadership, NASA flouted requests from the Space Council to provide President Bush with a variety of strategic and technical options. Instead, Truly was committed to carry­ing out a study that drew heavily on technical approaches that had been developed during the past several years by the NASA Office of Exploration—which resulted in the selection of a single program alternative.

Career civil servants have much more influence on alternative generation than on the space agenda. Ninety-three percent of those surveyed considered career civil servants as very or somewhat important—very important represented 60%. Without doubt, NASA civil servants played a crucial role in the alternative genera­tion process for SEI. The TSG was the most important actor in producing options for the initiative—even though it ultimately developed a single highly expensive alternative. The Space Council was highly critical of this result, but was equally to blame because it failed to provide the agency with clear, written guidance adequately explaining the key constraints facing SEI. Combined with Admiral Trulys reluc­tance to fully support the initiative, this ultimately doomed its chances for adoption and implementation.

Although Congress is a somewhat important actor for alternative generation in the space sector, it is not considered to be among the most influential. Seventy-three percent of those surveyed considered Congress very or somewhat important—but very important only represented 24% percent. As with the agenda, within the space arena it appears that it is crucial to consult with Congress to understand the con­straints facing specific program alternatives—as opposed to members of Congress actually developing those options. With regard to SEI, Congress was never brought into this process. Likewise, congressional staffers were not terribly influential in alternative generation. Eighty-four percent of those surveyed considered congres­sional staffers very or somewhat important—-very important represented only 33% percent. Unlike in other issue areas, where staffers become heavily involved in draft­ing legislation and negotiating agreements between interested parties, most Hill staffers lack the expertise to develop the very detailed technical plans needed for an initiative like SEI. This has often resulted in mission agencies like NASA having an inordinate amount of influence over the alternative generation process.

With a few exceptions, the non-government actors examined do not have a great deal of impact on the alternative generation process. Interest groups representing the

NONGOVERNMENT ACTORS	Very Important	Somewhat Important	Not Very Important	Not Important
Interest Groups: Industry	36%	42%	22%	0%
Interest Groups: Professional	45	11	40	4
Interest Groups: Advocacy	9	27	46	18
Academics & Researchers	20	46	28	6
Media	4	20	45	31
Industry	47	36	15	2
Mass Public Opinion	6	19	45	30

Importance of Non-Government Actors in Alternative Generation

aerospace industry were considered only somewhat influential—professional and advocacy groups were much less important. Academics and researchers affect alter­natives more than agendas, primarily because they can match the technical expertise enjoyed by civil servants at NASA. For this very reason, the aerospace industry itself was deemed to be the most influential non-government actor. This is not surprising considering the fact that throughout the history of the space program, government contractors have frequently been turned to during the development of technical alternatives. In the case of SEI, non-government actors had no discernible impact on the initial generation of alternatives. During the course of the 90-Day Study, the TSG did not seek inputs from any of the outside actors with the capability to generate strategic and technical options for the initiative. Instead, the agency relied solely on its own expertise and judgment. In the end, the outcome was a process that resulted in the production of a single alternative.

A great many people provided me with assistance during the preparation of this book. I am particularly indebted to John Logsdon and Roger Launius for their invaluable insights regarding the history of the American space program, the role of various actors within the space policy community, and the context in which Mars exploration should be viewed. I also owe a great deal to Steve Balia and Jeff Henig, who helped me employ the political science and public policy theories that are used in this book. I would also like to thank Ray Williamson and Joe Cordes for their support and helpful comments. I am also very grateful for all the hard work contributed by Steve Dick and Steve Garber getting this book ready for publica­tion. I would like to thank Heidi Pongratz at Maryland Composition, Angela Lane and Danny Nowlin at Stennis Space Center, and Jeffrey McLean at NASA Head­quarters for handling the copyediting, layout, and printing of the book. Finally, I would like to thank the dedicated archivists at both the NASA History Divi­sion in Washington, D. C. and the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M – they were all crucial to the successful completion of this project. In particular, I would like to thank Colin Fries and Jane Odom at the NASA History Division and Debbie Carter, Bob Holzweiss, John Laster, Laura Spencer, and Melissa Walker at the George Bush Presidential Library.

This book is dedicated to Joe Hogan, for teaching me how to dream big dreams; to Ron Beck, for believing in my potential when few others did; and to Kate Kuva – lanka, for inspiring me on a daily basis

After his election, President-elect Bush set upon the task of selecting a White House staff and appointing a cabinet. During the campaign, President Reagan took extraordinary measures to ease the new presidents transition into office. This was the first time in six decades that a president of one party was succeeded through election by a president of the same party. James Pfiffner argues in Presidential Transi­tions: The Reagan to Bush Experience, “The fact that the transition to a Bush admin­istration was a ‘friendly takeover’ [meant] there was no rush, as there would be with any party-turnover transition, to ensure that the opposition political party was out of office as soon as possible.”11 In retrospect, this proved to be a mixed blessing for the White House when it came to appointing a new NASA administrator. Changing the space agency’s political leadership was not a top priority for the Bush transition team. Administrator Fletcher had returned to the space program in the aftermath of the Challenger accident to get NASA back on its feet. While it was assumed that he would choose to return to the private sector, there was no perceived hurry in find­ing his replacement. In coming years, this relatively laid-back approach to naming a new administrator would come back to haunt the White House.

In December 1988, President-elect Bush received a report from the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering (NAS/NAE) that pro­vided recommendations for determining the proper role for the civil space program with respect to other claims on federal resources. The NAS/NAE team, chaired

by H. Guyford Stever, decided that the most important policy question that Bush needed to address after taking office regarded the future of the space station pro­gram. The study found that “a permanently manned space station is needed to maintain a viable manned spaceflight capability for the United States. However, its primary justification is to establish the feasibility of human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.” Thus, the report argued that final decisions regarding the pace of station development and its final configuration should be made in the context of long-term goals for the space program. The report contended that attaining space leadership required a civil space program with two structural components. First, NASA must have a base competency in all forms of space activities to ensure the fea­sibility of a wide-range of large initiative alternatives. These fundamental capabili­ties included: assured access to space; a respectable space science and Earth remote sensing program; and sufficient funding for advanced technology development. The report estimated that this foundational element would cost $10 billion per year. Second, NASA should adopt a long-term strategy for major human spaceflight initiatives serving scientific, political, cultural, and foreign policy objectives. The report argued that these projects should be funded separately from the base pro­gram, primarily to avoid the erosion of crucial capabilities. Potential initiatives that the study team identified were: the space station; a permanent return to the moon; and a human mission to Mars. The report approximated the annual expenditure for these endeavors at between $3 and $4 billion. The NAS/NAE team also suggested that President-elect Bush should take advantage of opportunities offered by coop­erative endeavors with other space faring nations, which would provide costs savings and political, scientific, and technical benefits.[96] Although this approach seemed to match the budgetary realities facing the space program, it was not seriously consid­ered by the incoming administration or NASA.

During the transition period, a four-person team was established within NASA and tasked with studying open issues facing the civil space program. Led by Brad Mitchell, the team spent the two months before the Bush inauguration prepar­ing a report for whoever would eventually replace Fletcher.[97] In mid-January, the NASA Transition Office Contact Team submitted its briefing report for the NASA Administrator-Designate, who was expected to be appointed sometime in the late spring. The transition team concluded that the space agency’s strategic planning must be carried out, taking into account the Administration’s concerns about the budget deficit. Therefore, it found that an efficient priority-setting mechanism was needed to achieve the most value for NASA’s budgeted dollars.[98] The briefing report further outlined the major space programs and themes that President Bush spoke about during the campaign. The transition team argued that one of the most impor­tant tasks for the new administrator would be to assist the President in prioritizing these programs. The study separated the various space issues into seven categories: policy formulation; exploration and scientific research; aeronautics and technology development; commercial initiatives; international cooperation; national security; and science and mathematics education. With regard to policy formulation, one of the first tasks for the new administration would be the creation of a National Space Council chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle—Congress had mandated this the previous year.[99] The primary duty of this organization would be to “set ambitious goals for a space comeback and re-establish U. S. preeminence in space.” With rela­tion to human exploration, the study made clear that the primary near-term objec­tive was to develop an operational space station by 1996. While the report men­tioned the Reagan administration’s space policy that called for human exploration beyond Earth orbit, it did not specifically suggest whether the Bush administration should make that same commitment. Instead, the transition team discussed pro­grams that would lay the foundation for such undertakings, including: development of an aerospace plane; advancement of pathfinder technologies; and construction of heavy-lift launch vehicles.[100] Beyond setting out the Bush administrations basic ideas about the space program, the hastily prepared Mitchell Report added little to the ongoing debate regarding human exploration beyond Earth orbit. The contact team itself implied that the next NASA Administrator and President Bush should make strategic policy decisions based on more authoritative studies like the Ride Report and Beyond Earth’s Boundaries. Therefore, as the new Bush administration came to power, it was still unclear what direction it would take with regard to future human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

The Punctuated Equilibrium Model provides a useful tool for better understand­ing trends within the space policy arena. In particular, it supplies metrics that can be applied to evaluate whether these long-term movements predetermined SEI’s fate. A mixture of policy image and venue indicators was drawn upon to conduct this assessment. These results provide a mixed picture regarding the potential for human exploration of Mars to reach the national agenda and obtain support for success­ful adoption. During the first 30 years of the space age, backing for both the space program and human exploration of Mars fluctuated a great deal within the Ameri­can public and key institutional venues. Throughout this period, Mars exploration never reached the same levels of support that other projects (e. g., Project Apollo, Space Shuttle, and Space Station) enjoyed. While several indicators suggest there was growing support for the space program in general (and crewed Mars explora­tion in particular) by the late 1980s, a dramatic 20-year decline in space program budgets called into question the viability of a costly new initiative.

Baumgartner and Jones elected to study media coverage to gauge trends in policy image. The primary information source they utilized was The Readers’ Guide to Peri­odical Literature.[344] They coded the number and tone of articles written in a given year to set the context for the agenda process in a given issue area. The first step in this process was to choose the proper keywords to ensure that all of the appropriate articles were included. The results were then entered into a spreadsheet, where they were further coded by different subtopics. One concern was that looking at only one index would not fully capture the nature of public opinion regarding specific issues. Baumgartner and Jones found, however, that “when we compare levels and tone of coverage in the Readers’ Guide with those of other major news outlets…it makes little difference which index one uses.”[345] For this book, the above methodol­ogy for monitoring the public agenda was adopted in almost every respect. Articles were tabulated from 1957 to 1996, coding them for topic and tone. Due to the extraordinarily large number of articles examining different aspects of the space program, only articles relating to human exploration were coded. Six broad topics were chosen to compare different exploration areas: Moon, Mars, Space Shuttle, Space Station, Orbital Flight (non-Shuttle or Station), and an “Other” category that encompassed articles relating to other destinations in the solar system or interstellar flight. To code each article’s tone, a basic question was asked: would an advocate of an American human exploration program, managed by a civilian sector agency, be happy or unhappy with the title? Over 6,500 articles were coded in this way.

Space Exploration in the Popular Press—By Program (number of articles) Based on an analysis of the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, 1957-1996

Tone of Mars Exploration Coverage (number of articles) Based on an analysis of the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, 1957-1996

During the early years of the space age, while the popular press was clearly focused on NASA’s efforts to orbit the first American and send humans to the Moon, Mars exploration was largely overlooked. Media coverage for crewed missions to the red planet was trivial compared to other space efforts. Although there were only a small number of articles, media coverage of Mars exploration during the Apollo era was largely supportive, with nearly 90% of the items positive in tone. Coverage slowly increased and reached an initial peak of nearly 20 articles in 1969, when post – Apollo planning was taking place within the federal government. By the 1970s, in the aftermath of the failed effort to push crewed missions to Mars onto the national agenda, media coverage plummeted to at most one article every couple of years. During this period, the majority of media attention focused on Space Shuttle devel­opment, the Skylab space station, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Flight Program. Over the course of the 1980s, media coverage of Mars exploration began growing again, although it was still dwarfed by the Shuttle and Space Station Freedom programs. This increase was the result of “softening up” activities like the Case for Mars confer­ences, the National Commission on Space, and the Ride Report. By the end of the decade, as SEI reached the national agenda, reporting of crewed Mars exploration represented a significant portion of total coverage. While the reporting was highly supportive, there was no massive increase in attention as there had been for Project Apollo. Regardless, coverage of Mars exploration reached all time highs after Presi­dent Bush announced SEI, with over 20 articles written annually. In the aftermath of the initiatives failure, however, media attention plummeted. By the mid-1990s, fewer than ten articles were being written per year as the Clinton administration focused on completion of the International Space Station.

Baumgartner and Jones found that survey research, if available in a system­atic form, is another data resource for observing changes in policy image. Survey research has become a progressively more important tool for policy analysts and policy makers.[346] The polling data utilized for this book was compiled by the NASA History Division and reveals interesting trends in mass public opinions regarding the American space program. During the post-Apollo planning period, the vast majority of the American public believed that the NASA budget was too large. This provides a compelling reason for the failure of human exploration of Mars to garner support from President Nixon. Over the next 20 years, however, this attitude toward the NASA budget shifted significantly. In the years leading up to the announcement of SEI, there was a relatively high level of support for the space program. By the late 1980s, the majority of Americans believed that NASA spending was either just right or needed to be increased. In 1989, the year that SEI was announced, that figure reached sixty percent for only the fifth time in the post-Apollo era. Despite this rela­tively high level of public support for NASA, human exploration of Mars was still seen as a lesser priority. Robotic exploration of the solar system and construction of a crewed space station consistently received more support from the general public. Regardless, when the initiative was announced, more than 60% of the public sup­ported establishment of a human outpost on Mars.

As SEI began experiencing difficulties and NASA was dealing with problems in the Hubble and Shuttle programs, however, those numbers began dropping once again—falling to below 50% by December 1990. Although these numbers would eventually recover slightly, by that time the policy window for Mars exploration had already closed.

Public Opinion of NASA Spending (as percentage)

While examining media coverage and opinion polls provides information relat­ing to policy image, other measures are needed to evaluate venue access. Four dif­ferent indicators were selected for this book to monitor changes in venue access for space policy issues. The first indicator relied upon an analysis of the Congres­sional Information Service Abstracts (CIS annual)—a yearly compilation of data on Congressional hearings. In the late 1990s, Baumgartner and Jones established the Center for American Politics and Public Policy to provide researchers with tools to better understand the dynamics of policy change. Under the auspices of the center, more than 67,000 congressional hearings were classified using a common policy content code to ensure compatibility over time.[347] [348] [349] For the purposes of this book, the entire CIS annual dataset was downloaded. A separate dataset was created, which included only hearings that related to the American space program. This dataset included over 550 hearings covering the years from 1958 to 1994.11 The second indicator utilized to monitor changes in venue access, which will be discussed in concert with the CIS annual, relied upon an analysis of the Public Papers of the Presi­dents.11 For this study, a methodology similar to that used for coding the Readers’ Guide was employed. Presidential addresses and speeches were coded by topic from 1957 to 1996. This included all papers relating to the civilian space program. These papers were then used to assess trends in venue access for agenda items relating to the American space program.

During the 1960s, presidential support for the nations space program reached its apex. President Kennedy’s decision to send humans to the Moon initiated a decade of close White House attention.[350] Through the ’60s, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon delivered well over 400 addresses and speeches relating to the civilian

space program. At the height of interest in Project Apollo, presidential addresses and speeches frequently topped 40 per year—and reached as high as 70. This indicated significant access to an important policy venue (e. g. The White House). Similarly, Congressional interest in space exploration peaked during this period.[351] In particu­lar, there was a pronounced spike in congressional interest following the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts (see Figure on page 152).

Trends in Presidential Attention (number of speeches/addresses) Based on an analysis of the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1958-1996

Trends in Congressional Attention (number of hearings) Based on an analysis of the ‘Policy Agendas Project,’ Center for American Politics and Policy

By the mid-1970s, the number of presidential speeches and addresses had plunged below ten annually as NASA concentrated on building the Space Shuttle and send­ing robotic probes to explore the solar system. While Congressional attention dipped below Apollo era levels as well, the number of space-related hearings remained rela­tively stable at about 15 a year. This was primarily due to annual appropriation and authorization hearings. As the Space Shuttle began operations during the 1980s, presidential addresses and speeches began slowly rising again—with increased inter­est surrounding the decision to build the Space Station and in the aftermath of the Challenger accident. Although Congressional interest remained steady during this period, there were noticeable spikes in interest surrounding the first Space Shuttle flight and as Congress held hearings following Challenger.

While presidential interest in the space program was relatively high during the SEI era, congressional support was not particularly robust. President Bush was clearly interested in the space program, as evidenced by his espousal of human mis­sions to the Moon and Mars. During his presidency, he made a number of signifi­cant space policy speeches, most directly related to gaining support for SEI. Still, compared with presidential attention during the first decade of spaceflight and even during the Reagan administration, Bush made fewer annual speeches and addresses relating to the space program. On its face, it would appear that Mars exploration had only modest access to this important policy venue during the Bush presidency. This discounts, however, the important role played by Vice President Quayle and the Space Council staff during this period. Combining the involvement of Bush and Quayle with a dedicated internal policy staff to work on space issues, this admin­istration was probably more engaged in this arena than any other during the post – Apollo period. In contrast, Congressional interest was relatively low at this time. After a peak following the loss of the Challenger, Congressional attention waned as the Bush administration was pushing for SEI. The next peak did not occur until the problems with the Hubble and Space Shuttle programs came to the fore. This indi­cates that during the post-Apollo period, Congress has been highly reactive to prob­lems within the space program. At the same time, it has not been terribly engaged during relatively calm periods. The lack of access to this critical venue was likely a contributing factor in the eventual failure of SEI.

A third indicator utilized to monitor venue access relied upon an analysis of technical strategies for human exploration of the Moon and Mars. This metric pro­vided insight into Mars explorations ability to garner attention within a key policy venue—the federal bureaucracy (e. g. NASA). In 1996, NASA Johnson Space Center Historian David Portree created a website called Romance to Reality: Moon and Mars Plans. It was a comprehensive catalog of classic, seminal, and illustrative human exploration plans. The majority of these studies were conducted under the auspices of government agencies and private sector companies.[352] The site included detailed summaries and descriptions of reports dating back more than five decades.[353] Portree emphasized studies that emerged as important to later mission planning, but also included reports that helped illustrate essential strategic architectures. For this book, the above reports were used to observe trends, both inside and outside the federal government, in the generation of Moon-Mars exploration plans. Each report from 1950 to 1996 was coded using the same three categories Portree employed: Moon plan, Mars plan, and Moon/Mars plan. Nearly 300 technical studies were coded in this way.[354]

During the course of the 1950s, eight major studies were conducted by govern­ment agencies and aerospace companies as part of the “softening up” process for Mars exploration. The following decade, as NASA was working full throttle to meet President Kennedy’s lunar landing deadline, more than 50 Mars exploration studies were conducted in preparation for a post-Apollo space program. Despite its growing

Technical Reports Focusing on Mars Exploration (number of studies) Based on an analysis of Romance to Reality: Moon and Mars Plans, 1957-1996

profile within the space agency, however, Mars exploration had relatively low vis­ibility with the American public. Likewise, it was not supported by President Nixon or Congress—which led to its exclusion from post-Apollo planning. In the 1970s, NASA’s official interest in crewed exploration of the red planet basically disappeared. An illustration of this fact is that the space agency did not conduct one major Mars – related study from 1972 to 1985. At the same time, however, private actors kept the dream alive by generating over 20 reports. These were partially responsible for the Reagan administration’s decision to place human exploration beyond Earth orbit on the national agenda. By the time President Bush announced SEI, Mars exploration had greater access to the bureaucratic venue than at any other time in the first 40 years of spaceflight. During the four years of the Bush administration, over 35 dif­ferent studies were conducted. The dilemma for the Space Council, however, was that the politically infeasible 90-Day Study became so closely associated with the initiative.

While the three preceding venue access indicators suggest that by the late-1980s there were favorable trends supporting a major new human spaceflight initiative, a final indicator paints a very different picture—the federal budget. At the height of Project Apollo, NASA’s budget was $6 billion, or about 4.5% of the entire federal budget. This represented an extremely large financial commitment to the American space program, which was allocated primarily in an effort to beat the Soviets to the Moon. By the time Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in the Sea ofTranquil – ity, NASA’s budget had already begun a rapid decline. Although Congress remained

NASA Budget (In billions) OMB, “Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2004: Historical Tables”

engaged in the space program during the next two decades, it was nevertheless steadily cutting NASA’s budget from its Apollo peak. The mid-1970s saw a bud­getary low of $3-25 billion, with budgets increasing slightly into the early 1980s. More significantly, the NASA budget dropped to under 1% of the entire federal budget—where it would remain permanently except for a three-year period in the early 1990s. Despite the fact that it had experienced steadily decreasing resources, NASA continued to conduct its program planning by assuming that it would receive future budget increases. This tendency to overcommit itself did not foretell a positive result for NASA-led development of another major exploration initiative. While the Bush administration increased funding for NASA, the available resources were far below those available during the mid-1960s. There was little public or congressional support for dramatically increasing the NASA budget. This did not bode well for SEI, which as envisioned by the TSG would have required doubling or tripling the annual allocation for NASA.

Baumgartner and Jones’s approach to studying agenda change provides an inter­esting perspective for understanding larger themes within the American space pro­gram. Using policy image and venue access indicators not only reveals interesting trends, it provides insight into factors that helped SEI reach the national agenda but dramatically reduced its chances of gaining Congressional support. As discussed above, there have been striking shifts in media coverage over the past four decades. During the nine years after President Kennedy announced the Moon decision, over 2,100 human spaceflight-related articles were written (an average of 235 annually). During the subsequent nine years, as NASA was developing the Shuttle, under 1,200 articles were written (125 annually). The ten years after the Shuttle began opera­tions, including those years following the Challenger accident, saw another upward shift with nearly 2,200 articles written (220 annually). This included increased cov­erage of Mars exploration, which was largely positive in tone. Finally, during the eight years after President Bush announced SEI, coverage plummeted to fewer than 1,000 articles (110 annually). This trend suggests that there have been relatively extended periods of general excitement about the space program within the general public (which resulted in significant media coverage), but that these periods have been followed by equally long periods where the public becomes disengaged. These declines in overall media attention seem to be correlated with periods of poor eco­nomic performance and tightening federal budgets. SEI came to the fore toward the end of a cycle of increased media coverage, which enhanced the likelihood it would successfully reach the national agenda. At the same time, however, an examination of past polling data reveals that economic forces were working against any dramatic increase in NASA’s annual appropriation. In the end, these budgetary pressures were far more important than any perceived public support for Mars exploration.

An analysis of the Public Papers of the Presidents and the CIS annual reveals that the White House and Congress are largely reactive when it comes to addressing space policy issues. Past presidents have delivered the majority of their speeches in reaction to programmatic successes and failures. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon gave regular speeches during the triumphant Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, while President Reagan spoke out primarily in the aftermath of the Chal­lenger accident.[355] The fact that President Bush delivered a relatively large number of space-related speeches during his tenure suggests that the space program had significant White House access during this period. This is particularly true because there were no great successes or failures of a similar magnitude during Bush’s presi­dency. Combined with Vice President Quayle’s heavy involvement in space policy making, this represented one of the most active administrations in this issue area. Access to this important institutional venue made possible the elevation of SEI to the national agenda. The relative lack of congressional interest, however, tremen­dously reduced the initiative’s chances of actual adoption. The space program has enjoyed relatively stable congressional attention, with significant peaks after major failures (i. e., Apollo 1, Challenger, Hubble). When SEI was being considered, there was a clear lull in congressional interest as the legislature focused on an imposing budget crisis. While this did not necessarily preclude adoption of any new human spaceflight program, it did indicate that promotion of projects requiring large bud­getary increases was ill-conceived.

An examination of past technical reports shows that there were two clear periods of interest in Mars exploration, one leading up to post-Apollo planning and another leading up to the announcement of SEI. Prior to both attempts to garner support for adoption of such a program, NASA and non-government actors conducted a steadily increasing number of studies that provided the technical background for the eventual policy alternatives that were considered. Particularly in the case of SEI, this indicates that significant bureaucratic forces were aligned to force an aggressive exploration program onto the national agenda. As discussed above, the fiscal con­straints quashed these plans. The federal budget is the single most effective indica­tor for evaluating the potential for bringing about dramatic programmatic change at NASA. Budgetary trends expose Project Apollo as a clear outlier in the history of the space program, where a unique political environment led to the program’s adoption. Subsequent experience has proven that without the emergence of a similar crisis environment, the space program will not receive a large infusion of resources to carry out aggressive human spaceflight programs. SEI’s failure is the quintessential example of this lesson. Regardless of bureaucratic desires, technical plans for human exploration beyond Earth orbit must be fiscally feasible.

The policy image and venue access indicators utilized for this study provide a relatively consistent picture regarding the potential for SEI to reach the national agenda and to be successfully adopted. With regard to agenda setting, a combina­tion of metrics suggests that Mars exploration would receive favorable consideration as the long-term goal of the human spaceflight program. These included increased media coverage of Mars exploration, general public support for the establishment of a Martian outpost, and a growing number of reports providing the technical details for such an undertaking. Combined with strong support from the Bush White House, this virtually guaranteed that the initiative would be pushed onto the national agenda. With regard to actual adoption, however, a number of other indicators suggest that SEI faced an uphill battle. Most important among these were fiscal constraints, limited public support for increased NASA budgets, and no con­gressional backing for expensive new programs. While a less costly Mars exploration program may have been able to gain approval under these circumstances, after the release of the 90-Day Study, the ultimate failure of SEI was assured.

While the above analysis provides some evidence that both the Policy Streams Model and Punctuated Equilibrium Model provide valuable insight into the rise and fall of SEI, a concluding discussion is in order to generalize these findings beyond this specific case study. This is logically assessed by answering a simple question: Do we know something about SEI we wouldn’t have without using these two models? There are at least three potential answers—a lot, a little, or nothing at all. It seems

like the most defensible answer lies in the middle. To start with, although we may instinctively have a sense of who the important actors are within a given policy community, Kingdon provides an effective framework for quantifying these beliefs. The survey used for this book was designed to determine whether the appropriate actors were involved in the policy process for SEI. While we may have come to the same conclusion even if we didn’t have the survey results, they provide some actual data to back up our assumptions. This survey, or some instrument like it, could just as easily be used to better understand the policy community for other science and technology issue areas. More importantly, it has the ability to provide policy makers with a real world tool for deciding who to engage during the agenda setting and alternative generation processes.

The operational indicators introduced by Baumgartner and Jones, and those developed specifically for this book, also provide a potentially valuable tool for sci­ence and technology researchers. Most of these indicators provide good data for large issue areas. For example, the data collected for this book provides revealing trends for space policy as a whole. The data is not as good, however, when one drills down to the next level of detail. Public opinion polls, presidential speeches, and congressional hearings can only be used to gauge large scale trends within an entire field. They cannot easily be used to examine specific issues within this area, such as interest in Mars exploration or space science or orbiting space stations. Although it requires a good amount of effort, it is possible to use data sources like media coverage and technical studies to gain some appreciation of interest in these more specific issue areas. Overall, however, these indicators are a bit cumbersome to use—although this would be made easier if this data, regarding space policy issues in particular, were readily available to policy makers. That is not currently the case, which makes the use of this set of indicators somewhat impractical in the real world.

Therefore, the Policy Streams Model and Punctuated Equilibrium Modelvs>iz pro­vided an understanding of the failure of SEI that the case study alone may not have provided. We have better insight regarding who the important actors are within the space policy community, which reveals weaknesses in the agenda setting and alter­native generation processes for SEI. We have a better insight regarding larger trends within the space policy arena (i. e., public opinion, congressional attention, federal budgets) that conspired against the adoption of this costly human spaceflight initia­tive. This type of data not only informs an academic work like this book, but can (and probably should) be used by policy makers in the real world. There does not seem to be any reason why these methodologies could not be applied widely within the science and technology policy field. While this would clearly require a good amount of work, both compiling the data and periodically updating it, the potential benefits for successful agenda setting and alternative generation processes would be worth the effort.

“Why Mars? Because it is humanity’s destiny to strive, to seek, to
find. And because it is America’s destiny to lead. ”

President George Bush, 20 July 19891

Sitting on the steps of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum on 20 July 2004, it was difficult to imagine that fifteen years earlier at this place the fiercest domestic political conflict of the first space age commenced. Bright-eyed children poured off tour buses and hurried to examine the museum’s wonders, teachers and parents close behind with digital cameras ready. They lined up to touch a four billion year-old lunar rock, clamored around the Apollo 11 Com­mand Module Columbia, and gazed up at an ungainly Lunar Module— monuments to past American triumphs in space. It was on a similarly hot and muggy Washing­ton morning that President George Bush had used this location to announce a renewed commitment to human exploration beyond Earth orbit. Even before this declaration, however, the winds of war had been swirling in the nation’s capital.

On the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon, President Bush had stood atop these very steps and proposed a long-range exploration plan that included the successful construction of an orbital space station, a permanent return to the Moon, and a human mission to Mars—this enterprise became known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). The president charged the newly rees­tablished National Space Council with providing concrete alternatives for meeting these objectives. To provide overall focus for the new initiative, Bush later set a 30- year goal for a crewed landing on Mars. If met, humans would be walking on the red [1] planet by 2019, which would be the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar land­ing. Within a few short years after President Bush’s Kennedyesque announcement, however, the initiative had faded into history—the victim of a flawed policy process and a political war fought on several different fronts. The failure of SEI, combined with problems ranging from the Hubble Space Telescope’s flawed mirror to space shuttle fuel leaks to space station budget problems, badly damaged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) image and prompted dramatic changes in the American space program.

The rise of SEI and its eventual demise represents one of the landmark episodes in the history of the American space program—ranking with the creation of NASA, the decision to go to the Moon, the post-Apollo planning process, and the space station decision. The story of this failed initiative is one shaped by key protagonists and critical battles. It is a tale of organizational, cultural, and personal confron­tation. Organizational skirmishes involved the Space Council versus NASA, the White House versus congressional appropriators, and the Johnson Space Center versus the rest of the space agency—all seeking control of the national space policy process. Cultural struggles pitted the increasingly conservative engineering ethos of NASA against the “faster, better, cheaper” philosophy of a Space Council looking for innovative solutions to technical problems. Personality clashes matched Vice President Dan Quayle and Space Council Executive Secretary Mark Albrecht against NASA Administrator Dick Truly and Johnson Space Center Director Aaron Cohen. In the final analysis, the demise of SEI was a classic example of a defective deci­sion-making process—one that lacked adequate high-level policy guidance, failed to address critical fiscal constraints, developed inadequate programmatic alternatives, and garnered no congressional support. Some space policy experts have argued that SEI was doomed to fail, due primarily to the immense budgetary pressures facing the nation during the early 1990s.[2] This book will argue, however, that the failure of the initiative was not predetermined; instead, it was the result of a deeply flawed policy process that failed to develop (or even consider) policy options that may have been politically acceptable given the existing political environment.

On 20 January 1989, George Bush was sworn in as the nation’s 41st president. Although space policy was not a pressing issue for the Bush administration during its first few months in office, work did begin relatively early to put a space policy team in place. This specifically took the form of establishing the National Space Council mandated by Congress. On 9 February, President Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress and delivered his first State of the Union address. In the oration, he proposed a $1.16 trillion “common sense” budget that would give attention to urgent priorities, provide investment in the future, attack the budget deficit, and require no new taxes. The space program was prominently placed in the speech. Unlike previous presidents, Bush made the space program a significant part of the government agenda from the beginning of his presidency. Bush stated efforts must be made to extend American leadership in technology, increase long-term investment, improve the educational system, and boost productivity. To facilitate meeting these goals, the new president stated, “I request funding for NASA and a strong space program, an increase of almost $2.4 billion over the current fiscal year. We must have a manned Space Station; a vigorous safe Space Shuttle program; and more commercial development in space. The space program should always go ‘full throttle up.’ And that’s not just our ambition; it’s our destiny….” Despite his strong request for an expanded space program, Bush did not specifically declare himself in favor of human exploration beyond Earth orbit.[101]

A week after his state of the union address, Bush received a congratulatory letter from Republican Senator Jake Garn of Utah. In April 1985, Garn flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as the first public official to travel in space. A former Navy pilot and Brigadier General in the Utah Air National Guard, he served as a payload specialist on STS 51-D. Garn, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, applauded the president s emphasis on federal investments in science and technol­ogy as crucial to the nations economic vitality and future. Garn wrote, “your words on science, space, and technology promise the aggressive and ambitious stance that your administration will take in pursuing these needed investments for Americans future.” Despite his praise of Bush’s leadership, he enunciated the misgivings of the space community resulting from the failure of the administration to move quickly in appointing a leadership team for the space program. He lauded the proposed cre­ation of the National Space Council under the leadership of Vice President Quayle, but suggested that the organizations “membership and staff must be selected and mobilized quickly to make a difference in the current budget cycle.” He concluded by saying that strong and decisive leadership was needed to counteract the power of entrenched political interests that resist new budgetary initiatives.[102]

A few weeks later, President Bush responded to Senator Garn’s call to action regarding the national space policy agenda. On 1 March, press secretary Marlin Fitzwater announced in a press release the appointment of “Dr. Mark Albrecht as the Director of the staff of the National Space Council which is to be created by Executive Order.” The administrations first choice for the position, a State Depart­ment official with military space experience named Henry Cooper, had asked that his name be withdrawn after concerns were raised about his ties to former Senator John Tower.[103] Although Albrecht brought a wealth of Washington experience to his post, he was not well known within the civilian space community. “Albrecht was a typical Hill rat, a squat, bearded infighter with a Ph. D. from the RAND Corpora­tion who…knew next to nothing about NASA.”[104] His background was entirely within the national security policy arena. For the previous six years, he had served as National Security Advisor to Senator Pete Wilson of California. Prior to that, he had worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as a Senior Research Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1988, he was the chief drafter of the defense planks for the Republican Party platform—where he caught the attention of Vice President Bush. Dr. Albrechts background in the national security space program, with its preference for clean sheet planning processes and requirements-based pro­gram development, would be one of several factors that would eventually contribute to a dysfunctional relationship between the Space Council and NASA.

The appointment of a national security and weapons specialist heightened already existing concerns among the space community that White House policy would tilt toward military interests. John Pike from the Federation of American Scientists said, “I can’t see that Albrecht brings much to the table besides ‘Star Wars.’ I’m looking for a silver lining here and haven’t seen it yet.”[105] Reaction on Capitol Hill was more

muted. Congressional staffer Stephen Kohashi remembers that those. responsible for civilian space activities [weren’t] familiar with [Albrecht]. I [recall] learning that his space background was primarily in the military or intelligence world, and being somewhat concerned. [But] I don’t recall considering this appointment [to be] par­ticularly critical relative to the effectiveness of the council.”[106] Despite any potential misgivings from outside the administration, Albrecht clearly had the support of Vice President Quayle—whom he had periodically done work for as a Senate staffer. In his vice-presidential memoir Standing Firm, Quayle wrote that NASA at that time “was, to a great extent, still living off the glory it had earned in the 1960s, and I thought Mark Albrecht was just the sort of guy who could shake it up.” It also seemed that Democratic staffers would be willing to work with him. One top aide was quoted at the time as saying, “It’s not what Albrecht did before. It’s what he does in the future. The important thing is to make this work… to formulate a policy consensus and get some pragmatic policy decisions out of the White House.”[107] The selection of Albrecht, who would become one of the key policy entrepreneurs sup­porting human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit, was a major catalyst to assembling a dedicated staff committed to providing the space program with a new vision for the future. This path, however, would not be without obstacles. As one commentator pointed out, the biggest “challenge facing Albrecht… will be to negotiate peace and find common ground among the competing interests on the [Space Council] — Albrecht is very bright, very competent, but nothing can prepare you for that kind of work. It’s like war.”[108] It would remain to be seen whether this civil space policy neophyte would be able to control the various elements of the space community, especially NASA.[109]

On 9 March, Administrator Fletcher sent a letter to President Bush that would prove to be an important stepping-stone on the road to the announcement of SEI. The letter addressed the forthcoming 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. Fletcher wrote the president that the occasion provided a unique opportunity to define the administrations commitment to the exploration of space. The administrator suggested that Bushs participation in an event planned at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (to be attended by Apollo 11 astro­nauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins) would enhance the signif­icance of the anniversary. Fletcher suggested that, “Taken by itself, an anniversary of this sort tends to focus on past glories and a nostalgia for days long gone. Coupled with a message of leadership and strong direction for the future, it becomes an inte­gral part of the American space experience; it can reenergize the country by setting new challenges and new horizons in the historic context of earlier goals success­fully met….” Having received this letter, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft wrote that the President “has made it clear that space policy and exploration would be a priority of his Administration. This would be a tangible demonstration of his commitment.” This letter from Fletcher got the White House thinking about the possibility of utilizing the anniversary, only four months away, as a platform for a major space policy speech.[110]

It was clear during the early months of the Bush administration that the president had not settled on Mars exploration as the penultimate goal of the American space program. On 16 March, while speaking at a Forum Club luncheon in Houston, he was asked to comment about his support for the Space Station and a human mis­sion to Mars by the end to the century. Bush replied, “On the Space Station, I am strongly for it. We have taken the steps, budgetwise, to go forward on that. I have not reached a conclusion on whether the next major mission should be a manned mission to Mars… [Wje’re asking the [newly reconstituted] Space Council… to come forward with its recommendations. So, no decision is made [regarding] what happens beyond the Space Station itself, and I will make that decision when I get their recommendation.” Once again, the president cautioned that although his Administration had requested a budget increase for NASA, constrained resources meant that he was not ready to support the immediate adoption of a human mission to Mars. This statement indicated that just four months before announcing a major new space initiative, neither President Bush nor his senior space policy advisors had committed to a costly new human spaceflight program.[111]'[112]

As the Bush administration was beginning to assemble its space policy team, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, released a report analyzing national space policy. Entitled A More Effective Civil Space Program, the study was significant because it had been co-chaired by Brent Scowcroft before his appointment as the new presidents national security advisor. The report suggested that while NASA’s charter was to help maintain Amer­ican leadership in science and technology, it was far from clear whether the agency was meeting that objective in the post-Apollo era. CSIS indicated that a combina­tion of factors, including a declining budget and a short-sited planning process, had held the space program back during the prior two decades—while the Soviets, Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese were all making significant strides in their space programs. The task force contended that to reverse this disturbing trend the civil space program should figure more prominently on the national agenda. To accom­plish this goal, CSIS recommended that the Bush administration and Congress “set solar system exploration by means of automated and piloted spacecraft as a long­term national objective. This should include an important ‘Humans to Mars’ com­ponent, with deliberate and orderly preparation.” The report advocated a gradually planned buildup of key technologies and skills, rather than an accelerated program that overextended current capabilities. Finally, CSIS proposed establishing a two – year study effort aimed at developing programmatic alternatives for implementing this long-term strategy. As Administrator Fletcher had done just weeks earlier, the report concluded that 20 July 1989 would be an auspicious date for announcing a new initiative because of its symbolic importance.[113]

By early spring, with momentum growing for a presidential announcement on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Mark Albrecht broached the idea of a new human spaceflight initiative with Vice President Dan Quayle. He argued that the adoption of a long-term goal would provide focus to a directionless space program and a means to prioritize and streamline existing programs, espe – dally the Space Station. Quayle liked the idea. Although he had not been heavily engaged in space policy during his political career, the new vice president would become the single most important space policy entrepreneur within the Bush White House. Born in 1947, James Danforth Quayle was the grandson of Eugene Pul­liam, founder of an empire of conservative newspapers. Although he spent most of his childhood in Arizona, Quayles political roots were sowed in Indiana. After graduating from DePauw University and Indiana State University Law School in Indianapolis, he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives at the age of 29- Four years later, he became the youngest person ever elected to the U. S. Senate from Indiana. During his Senate tenure, Quayle focused his legislative work in the areas of national defense, arms control, and labor policy. In August 1988, George Bush tapped Dan Quayle to be his running mate. Although this selection was widely criti­cized because it was felt that Quayle did not have enough experience to be president should something happen to Bush, these opinions had little impact on the ultimate outcome of the election. As vice president, Quayle became the first Chairperson of the National Space Council, which had been statutorily re-established the previous year by Congress. Quayle embraced this assignment, telling the media, “for the first time in a long time there will be a space advocate in the White House—and that will be me.” Within a short period, Quayle came to believe that the Space Councils primary objective was to fix a dysfunctional space agency. The vice president agreed with Mark Albrecht that the main rationale for adopting a new human spaceflight initiative was to restore NASA to prominence. His main concern, however, was achieving this renewal given the existing budgetary and political environment.[114]

Given his unease regarding the budgetary constraints, Quayle immediately scheduled a meeting with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Richard Darman to discuss announcing a new initiative. In his memoirs, Quayle stated, “despite his image as a budget cruncher and arm-twister… Dick Darman has his visionary side, and he was a cheerleader for a manned mission to Mars.” This became apparent at a meeting in early April attended by Quayle, Albrecht, Darman, and OMB Executive Associate Director Bob Grady. Darman was supportive, but cautioned that the current budget situation mandated that the administration could not serve up an Apollo-like crash program. As a result, three basic tenets emerged from this meeting. First, recognizing that there were interest groups in favor of both Moon and Mars exploration, President Bush would not come out in favor of one over the other. Second, any new initiative for human exploration of the Moon and/or Mars would be a long-term commitment—so there would not be any huge budgetary impact. Finally, this program would be utilized as the central organiz­ing principle for the entire civil space program—so that everything from the Space Station to space transportation to planetary programs would be structured around accomplishing this continuing objective.[115]

On 5 April, with Darman on board, Quayle raised the idea of announcing a robust exploration initiative with President Bush at their weekly lunch meeting. By the end of the discussion, the first of many on the topic that would occur over the coming months, President Bush gave the go-ahead to plan for a 20 July 1989 announcement. Quayle wrote in Standing Firm that the president wanted to use the anniversary “to make a major address on the space program, a speech that didn’t just look back toward former glory but ahead to bold new achievement.” Furthermore, he viewed this as an opportunity to challenge the long-held belief that only Demo­cratic presidents (e. g., Kennedy and Johnson) had visionary approaches to space. Finally, President Bush, who had been criticized for a lack of vision, viewed this as a chance to answer his detractors by putting the weight of the White House behind a bold human exploration program. The eventual placement of human exploration of Mars on the government agenda had its genesis in this meeting.[116]

Over the coming weeks, the White House began aggressively taking steps to finalize its core space policy team. The previous month, Administrator Fletcher had formally resigned as NASA Administrator. After receiving his resignation, the administration began working to fill the position. During this search, the name of a former astronaut rose to the top—Rear Admiral Richard Harrison Truly. Vice Presi­dent Quayle wrote in his memoirs, “Dick Truly was a friend of [White House Chief of Staff John] Sununu and became his candidate; I didn’t have a good candidate of my own, and so I went along with Truly’s selection.”[117] Truly joined NASA in 1969 as an astronaut. Prior to that, he spent nearly a decade serving as a naval aviator, test pilot, and member of the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. After serving as CAPCOM for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) and Skylab mis­sions, Truly served on one of the astronaut crews that conducted the Space Shuttle Enterprise approach and landing test flights. He made two flights into space, the first in November 1981 as the pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia and the second in

August 1983 as commander of the Space Shuttle Challenger—which was the first night launch and landing during the shuttle program. After this mission, he left NASA for several years to head the newly formed Naval Space Command. In 1986, he returned to NASA as Associate Administrator for Space Flight—he was widely credited with guiding the shuttle program back to operational status after the 1986 Challenger accident. Vice President Quayle wrote in Standing Firm, “as often hap­pens in Washington, Truly got the job by default: he didn’t have the sort of negatives that might make news and sink the nomination.” Mark Albrecht recalled that the decision to make Truly administrator was made “rapidly, without a great deal of seri­ous discussion or assessment.”[118] Over the subsequent three years, this hasty selection of a true NASA insider and devoted “Shuttle Hugger” would come back to haunt an administration that needed somebody heading the space agency who shared the Space Council s objectives. Although the White House thought it was completing a policy triumvirate (including Quayle and Albrecht) capable of transforming NASA, Truly saw his job as protecting the space agency from danger. As a result, it eventu­ally became clear that he did not share the Space Councils reform goals.[119]

On 12 April, President Bush officially introduced Admiral Truly as his nominee to head NASA at a ceremony in the White House Roosevelt Room—attended by key members of Congress. The president opened by saying, “this marks the first time in its distinguished history that NASA will be led by a hero of its own making, an astronaut who had been to space, a man who has uniquely experienced NASA’s tremendous teamwork and achievement.” Bush acknowledged that because Truly was still an active duty flag-rank officer with the Navy, he would have to attain a congressional waiver for his appointment—the National Aeronautics and Space Act (NAS Act) of 1958 prohibited military officers from heading the civilian space agency. The president then handed the podium over to the nominee, who thanked Bush for showing confidence in his ability to guide the space agency. In conclusion, Truly stated that he looked forward to working with Vice President Quayle and the National Space Council.[120]

The Washington Post and The New York Times ran articles the next day suggesting that news ofTruly’s nomination was met with widespread approval on Capitol Hill.

The Post article explained that Truly had initially expressed doubts regarding the post, because he was concerned that it would necessitate the forfeiture of his military pension. Despite some congressional wariness related to placing a military officer in charge of NASA, it was reported that his military status was not expected to be a problem. The newspaper further reported that Democratic Congressman Norman Mineta of California, an opponent of military influence in the space agency, was nevertheless supporting the appointment due to Trulys unmatched depth of experi­ence. House appropriation committee staffer Richard Malow remembered thinking Truly was a good choice. “Dick Truly always came across as being very honest and he was an outstanding head of the Shuttle office.”[121] Senate staffer Stephen Kohashi recalled feeling that Admiral Truly was a competent individual, with a significant technical background and a sincere excitement for the space program. “I…recall [feeling relieved] that somebody solid and steady was assuming the helm,” Kohashi said, “…although some [people], I suspect, would have preferred someone with a… more dynamic image.”[122] [123] [124] The only true criticisms of Truly were that he was “too much the technocrat to be the combination of diplomat and salesman that his new job requires… [and that he is] no fan of developing commercial space enter­prises.”39740

On 20 April, at a White House ceremony in the Old Executive Office Presi­dent Bush signed an Executive Order establishing the National Space Council.[125] [126] He opened his formal remarks by telling the attendees that he was fulfilling the promise he had made the previous year to create the legislatively mandated council. With Vice President Quayle serving as Chair, Bush stated his belief that, “the Space Council will bring coherence and continuity and commitment to our efforts to

explore, study, and develop space___ ” The president stated his belief that the space

program was essential to sparking the American imagination, which inspired young people to enter the fields of science, math, and engineering—keys to ensuring the nation’s competitiveness in the future. He concluded by saying he was signing the executive order with “one objective in mind: to keep America first in space…it’s only a matter of time before the world salutes the first men and women on their way outward into the solar system. All of us want them to be Americans.”42,43 With the Space Council officially created and a core set of policy entrepreneurs in place, the administration was organized to begin a concerted effort aimed at shaping an initiative for human exploration beyond Earth orbit.44

“The story of the dreams and the unbuilt spaceships for flights to
Mars should be recorded so that in the future people can examine
past ideas of space travel just as we can examine the unconsummated
ideas of Leonardo da Vinci by reading his notebooks. Years from now
people should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to
go to Mars or if they prefer to stay earthbound. But let us not destroy
the dream, simply because we do not wish to pursue it ourselves. ”

NASA Historian Edward Ezell, 1979

During the agenda setting and alternative generation processes for SEI, key policy entrepreneurs did not adequately heed the lessons of the past—particularly those learned from the unsuccessful attempt to place Mars exploration on the gov­ernment agenda during post-Apollo planning. At that time, the Space Task Group and NASA failed to account for contemporary fiscal and political constraints. This led to the STG endorsement of a Mars exploration approach that required doubling the space agency’s annual budget. This was contrary to President Nixon’s philoso­phy and the budgetary environment, which resulted in the eventual failure of the initiative to reach the government agenda. In 1989, exploration of the Moon and Mars gained vital support from President Bush as his administration sought to pro­vide direction to a directionless agency. The policy process that the Space Council nominally directed, however, failed to provide adequate guidance regarding the con­straints confronting adoption of the initiative. As a result, NASA’s 90-Day Study was significantly at variance with what Congress judged to be in the long-term interest of the nation. Current policy makers are facing similar issues.[356] Future policy makers will surely face them as new policy windows open, providing opportunities to shape the national space program. Understanding the lessons of SEI provides a chance to avoid sharing SEI’s fate.

One of the primary causes of SEI’s failure was a lack of clear policy guidance from the White House. This deficiency began in early spring 1989, when announcing a robust human exploration initiative was first contemplated by the Bush adminis­tration. While Vice President Quayle and Mark Albrecht clearly believed such an undertaking would provide NASA with needed direction, the administration did not have well developed substantive ideas for future programs. Consequently, the Space Council relied heavily on the space agency to provide the details necessary to make an informed decision regarding the technical feasibility of human exploration beyond Earth orbit. The problem, however, was that adequate instructions were not provided regarding the key constraints that should guide the development of a programmatic approach. As a result, the Ad Hoc Working Group assembled a scenario for human exploration, based largely on existing technology, which would have cost an estimated $400 to $500 billion. Regardless of the potential problems represented by this cost profile, the White House decided to go ahead with the announcement of SEI—probably assuming that cheaper alternatives could be found for the initiative.

On 20 July 1989, during his speech announcing SEI, President Bush directed the Space Council to assess technical approaches and budgetary resources required to carry out the initiative. After the address, however, the Council largely abdi­cated this authority to NASA. This took the form of the 90-Day Study. Given the outcome of the initial alternative generation process (e. g., selection of a technical approach that would require more than doubling the agency’s budget), the decision to allow NASA to control the post-announcement alternative generation process was clearly a mistake. The decision not to include other actors within the space policy community ultimately presented serious problems. This outcome could have been avoided if a presidential decision directive with a detailed strategy for imple­menting SEI had been released concurrently with the presidents speech. Instead, this guidance was not provided for nearly eight months. The inability of the Coun­cil staff to draft such a directive, given the short period of time available, presents a compelling explanation for why NASA was allowed to generate the 90-Day Study in virtual isolation with scant direction from the White House.

From the start, the Space Council should have more firmly controlled devel­opment of SEI. Given the administration’s goals, after President Bush announced the initiative the Council should have commenced technical studies conducted by NASA and outside actors (e. g., government contractors, universities, think tanks, and national laboratories) based on detailed written guidance. This type of coor­dinated alternative generation process would have engendered the kind of “clean sheet” thinking the White House desired. Instead, the space agency followed a more expedient path and developed reference approaches based on past studies. Although the Space Council had verbally asked NASA to supply a variety of technical options and cost profiles, the top NASA leadership either misunderstood or ignored those requests. By the time the 90-Day Study was released, it was probably too late to regain control of the initiative. Congress already associated SEI with $500 bil­lion budgetary requirements. Without any other studies initiated to provide real alternatives, the Council could not present a compelling argument that cheaper options existed. By the time the National Research Council and Synthesis Group were brought in to provide this perspective, the damage had already been done. Similarly, the presidential directives released in spring 1990 arrived too late to save the initiative.

Perhaps the most important lesson learned from the failure of SEI was that NASA needs competition for ideas from other space policy community actors. Since the post-Apollo deceleration, NASA has not proven itself capable of present­ing White House policy makers with a robust suite of policy alternatives for large human spaceflight programs. From the earliest stages, the Space Council relied too much on the space agency to develop alternative approaches for SEI. There were a number of warning signs that should have led the council staff to bring other governmental and nongovernmental actors into the process. The most troubling of these was the initial $400 billion price tag introduced by the Ad Hoc Working Group. Given existing political and budgetary constraints, it is beyond explanation why the administration didn’t seek out cheaper options before announcing the ini­tiative. Instead, Vice President Quayle and Mark Albrecht were apparently satisfied with NASA’s conclusion that the initiative was technically feasible. They chose not to focus on the staggering price tag at that point. Regardless, the political infeasi­bility of the required cost profile clearly demonstrated the need to include other actors in the subsequent alternative generation process. Additional warning signs that the alternative generation process had gone awry emerged even before NASA began assembling the 90-Day Study. The most obvious example was the conversa­tion between Mark Albrecht and Aaron Cohen, when it became clear the two actors had fundamentally different definitions of alternatives. Throughout that period, the Space Council staff became increasingly alarmed by the lack of technical details being provided by NASA. Despite these growing concerns, however, the adminis­tration maintained its “wait and see” approach. By the time the 90-Day Study was released, it proved impossible to turn back the clock.

Responsibility for the ultimate demise of SEI should not all land at the White House doorstep. NASA missteps shared equally in its failure. Although it was directed to develop multiple options with different cost profiles, NASA presented only one expensive reference approach. To check the “alternatives” box, the agency simply provided slightly varied mission timelines and potential destinations. Even without clear written guidance from the administration, Admiral Truly and NASA’s senior leadership should have recognized that existing budgetary constraints neces­sitated consideration of alternatives that could be implemented with modest resources. Instead, a plan was developed that never had any hope of gaining con­gressional support. An examination of the 90-Day Study reveals several factors that virtually guaranteed this outcome. First, the TSG selected an aggressive develop­ment sequence that called for emplacement, consolidation, and operations phases. While this may have been a logical strategy for maintaining permanent human presence beyond Earth orbit, it was not politically feasible. Second, making the ulti­mate objective of both Moon and Mars exploration the establishment of permanent outposts dramatically increased the expense of the initiative. Cheaper stand-alone missions should have been included. Third, making the Space Shuttle and Space Station programs central to the system architecture drove costs up dramatically. It also alienated potential supporters on Capitol Hill. Dick Malow said later he would have been “more positive if NASA had taken Space Station off the plate and focused on going to Mars. The budget envelope that would have opened up would have been sufficient to get the initiative going. I never felt space station was critical to going to Mars, never made any sense to me, if anything it may even have been a detractor.”[357] Fourth, innovative in-space propulsion technologies were not given serious consideration. The basic chemical propulsion designs selected could have been supplemented with other options ranging from electric propulsion to solar sails to nuclear propulsion. Finally, additional strategic approaches should have been included. There was no shortage of architectural approaches available. In the end, the TSG’s failure to consider a wide-variety of alternatives crippled SEI and exposed NASA to wide-ranging criticism. Although the Space Council attempted to find other options, the odds were already stacked against the initiative. In the end, the failure of the Space Council to coordinate a competition of ideas from the outset doomed the initiative.

Even before he won the presidency, George Bush acknowledged that any new human spaceflight program would be significantly constrained by the federal budget. During the transition, the NASA Transition Team recommended the establishment of an agency priority-setting mechanism to take into account these concerns regard­ing the budget deficit. On his first day in office, President Bush told Congress his top agenda item was deficit reduction. Throughout its early months in office, the administration made clear that any decision regarding human spaceflight programs beyond Earth orbit would be made taking into account the limited resources avail­able. In April 1989, when Vice President Quayle and Mark Albrecht met with Rich­ard Darman and Bob Grady from OMB, it was agreed that any new initiative could not have a major budgetary impact. This body of evidence reveals that the Bush administration knew it would not gain congressional support for expensive explora­tion projects. It is equally clear, however, that NASA did not understand, or chose to ignore, this political reality. This is the primary reason why written guidance regard­ing the formulation of alternatives with favorable cost profiles was needed.

Drawing on the Apollo paradigm, NASA leaders believed President Bush’s endorsement of a bold human spaceflight initiative was an opportunity to obtain a large funding increase. This was made clear when the AHWG developed a strategic architecture that would have required more than doubling the agency’s budget. This was exactly what the administration did not want, yet Vice President Quayle and the Space Council perplexingly endorsed the review and proceeded with plans to announce SEI. Instead, given its desire to keep the space agency’s budget in check, the administration should have taken one of two actions. First, it could have post­poned the announcement of the initiative on the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 and sought out less expensive options. Second, it could have announced SEI and imme­diately commenced a competition of ideas to determine what other alternatives were available. Rather than take control of the policy making process, the Space Council abdicated its authority to NASA. Admiral Truly, in turn, believed there was a right way and a wrong way of doing things, and the right way didn’t include considering resource constraints. Preparing plans for SEI based on this fundamental principle proved to be an enormous political miscalculation.

Admiral Truly’s approach to SEI was not without precedent. Something similar happened during post-Apollo planning. During that period, NASA advocated an aggressive human spaceflight program based on Vice President Agnews support for Mars exploration. President Nixon and Congress were not won over. Rather than learn from this disappointment, the agency followed essentially the same course 20 years later. An examination of the record suggests the agency never seriously considered using President Bush’s backing to gain support for modest budgetary increases that could fund a more limited human exploration program, which would not necessarily eliminate Mars missions. Thus, NASA missed a historic opportunity to right itself two decades after the post-Apollo deceleration. Instead, it proposed a highly expensive reference approach that would require doubling the agency budget because there was no inclination to cancel on-going programs. SEPs resultant demise badly damaged the American space program.

The failure to adequately consult Congress was one of the biggest mistakes made by the Bush administration before announcing SEI. Considering both houses were controlled by the opposition party, and given the existing budgetary crisis, this should have been a crucial part of the policy making process. Congress and congres­sional staffers are among the most critical actors in any policy community. Despite this fact, the administration did not involve legislators in SEPs agenda setting pro­cess. Instead, the Space Council and NASA simply ‘informed’ key members and staffers, instead of consulting’ them regarding the initiative’s substance or political feasibility. Furthermore, there was no attempt made to build a coalition of support­ers for human exploration beyond Earth orbit. This explains why SEI never had any true champions on Capitol Hill, even among constituencies usually supportive of the space program. This procedural flaw was compounded when the Space Council and NASA continued to operate without seeking advice from Congress as alterna­tives were being generated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 90-Day Study was pronounced ‘dead-on-arrival’ when it reached Capitol Hill. Without Congressional buy-in, it was impossible to garner support for SEI after the report was released. The Space Council made continual efforts to prove the program could be implemented with fewer resources. The space summit held in May 1990 was indicative of this struggle, but did not sway any Congressional supporters to come to the fore. By the time the Hubble flaw and Space Shuttle leaks were revealed, it was too late to save SEI. It is unclear whether broad-based support would have been forthcoming even if attempts had been made to build a coalition of congressional supporters, but the failure to make the effort clearly contributed to the ultimate failure of the initiative.

The philosophical disconnect between Admiral Truly and the Space Council was one of the most significant secondary causes of SEI’s demise. After taking office, the Bush White House did not take early steps to find a new NASA Administrator. Although the administration knew James Fletcher was departing, there was no ini­tial rush to find his replacement. Thus, the eventual decision to appoint Truly was made very rapidly. As a result, there was little time to make sure that his vision for the agency’s future matched President Bush and Vice President Quayle’s. Over the course of the subsequent three years, it became increasingly clear Truly’s priorities were at odds with the Space Council’s. In fact, Truly actively fought the Council’s efforts to take control of space policy making within the federal government. In the end, this led to his firing and the hiring of Dan Goldin. SEI’s outcome demonstrates how important it is for the president and NASA administrator to be on the same page when trying to gain approval for a major human spaceflight initiative.

In the absence of a true crisis environment, rapid decision making to meet arbi­trary deadlines has not proven to be terribly successfully within the American space program. The determination to announce SEI on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing was a perfect example. Although many within the space policy commu­nity recommended that NASA embark on an extended evaluation of future options, a decision to approve SEI was made in less than four months. As a result, President George Bush announced an initiative that had not been thoroughly examined with regard to its fiscal and political feasibility. In retrospect, it is unclear what necessi­tated this rushed process. After the speech, this perceived need for speed carried over to the 90-Day Study. An examination of the historical record does not reveal any clear rationale for conducting the study in three months, except to include fund­ing for SEI in the fiscal year 1991 budget request. Regardless, the result was that the TSG did not have time to adequately evaluate a range of strategic architectures with different cost profiles. The NRC study team that reviewed the report criticized this quick turnaround as the proximate cause for the lack of real alternatives. This outcome virtually eliminated any chance for SEI’s approval.

During the second half of the 20th century, there were a number of seminal moments in American space policy. These included the creation of NASA, President Kennedy’s Moon decision, and the Space Shuttle and Space Station decisions. Due to its influence on the space program’s future course, SEI rightfully belongs on this list. It is an anomaly in some respects because it was a failed initiative. Combined with the Hubble Space Telescope flaw and Space Shuttle fuel leaks, its demise led to significant changes at NASA. Perhaps the most important was the appointment of Dan Goldin, the most change-oriented administrator since James Webb.[358] The most important change he wrought was forcing NASA to face budgetary reality and focus on evolutionary advancement. This arguably wouldn’t have happened absent the extraordinary budgetary requirements of NASA’s SEI reference approach and the eventual downfall of the initiative.

The demise of SEI was a classic example of a defective decision-making process. The decision to conduct the agenda setting process in secret made it difficult to gen­erate support within Congress or the space policy community. The Space Councils inability to provide high-level policy guidance, combined with NASA’s failure to independently consider critical fiscal constraints, derailed the initiative before it really got started. Finally, the failure of the Space Council to initiate a competi­tion of ideas after President Bush’s announcement speech removed any possibility of gaining congressional support after the devastating release of the 90-Day Study. It is far from obvious that the failure of SEI was predetermined given the existing budgetary crisis facing the nation in 1989. What is clear, however, is that its failure was ensured because options that may have been politically feasible were not con­sidered during a deeply flawed policy process. While this had the benefit of forcing some level of change within NASA, it also badly damaged the agency’s reputation as a world-class technical organization. To ensure the success of future efforts to send humans to Mars, current and future policy makers must learn the lessons of SEI. This alone is why its history is so fundamental to understanding what is required to gain support for large human spaceflight initiatives.

[1] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 20 July 1989, Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing [http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/] (accessed 18 May 2002).

[2] Dwayne A. Day, “Doomed to Fail: The Birth and Death of the Space Exploration Initiative,” Spaceflight (March 1995), pp. 79-83; John Pike, “But what is the True Rationale for Human Spaceflight?,” Space Policy (August 1994), pp. 217-222.

[3]John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1995).

[4] Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Polities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 3-24.

[5] Wayne Parsons, Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1995), pp. 193-207.

1:1 Michael Cohen, James March, and Johan Olsen, “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,” Administrative Science Quarterly (March 1972), pp. 1-25; Parsons, Public Policy, pp. 192-193.

[7] John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1995), pp. 86-89.

[8] Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 3-24.

5 Ibid., pp. 39-55.

[10] William Sheehan, The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discover (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp. 1-8; John Noble Wilford, Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure in Space (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 3-17.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Sheehan, The Planet Mars, pp. 9-15; Wilford, Mars Beckons, pp. 3-17.

[14] Sheehan, The Planet Mars, pp. 16-22; Wilford, Mars Beckons, pp. 3-17.

[15] Sheehan, The Planet Mars, pp. 23-30.

[16] Wilford, Mars Beckons, pp. 23-24.

[17] William Graves Hoyt, Lowell and Mars (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976), p. 12.

[18] Wilford, Mars Beckons, pp. 24-30.

1!> Ibid.

[20] H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds (1898; reprint, New York: Tor, 1986).

[21] Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (1917; reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1990).

[22] Robert Heinlein, Red Planet (New York: Ballantine Books, 1949).

[23] Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (New York: Doubleday, 1950).

[24] One of the two most prestigious awards for accomplishments in science fiction—the other is the Nebula Award.

[25] Robert Heinlein, Double Star (New York: Ballantine Books, 1956).

[26] Wilford, Mars Beckons, pp. 53-56.

[27] A myth developed by flight engineers after earlier missions to Mars failed, which lives on today.

[28] Including a magnetometer and a trapped-radiation detector.

[29] Sheehan, The Planet Mars, chapter 11.

[30] About every 26 months, Mars and Earth reach a position in their respective orbits that offers the best trajectory between the two planets. During this time period, the Mariner missions were launched to take advantage of these launch windows.

[31] Wilford, Mars Beckonsy pp. 60-61.

[32] Sheehan, The Planet Mars, chapter 12.

[33] Wilford, Mars Beckons, pp. 86-90.

[34] Some astrobiologists believe that the Viking Lander’s Labeled Release (LR) experiment proved that primitive life does exist on present-day Mars. The LR experiment dropped liquid nutrients onto a sample of Martian soil, then measured the gases that were released by the mixture. If Martian bacteria had consumed the nutrients and had begun to multiply, certain gases would have been released. When the LR experiment was conducted on both Viking Landers, some of the gases emitted seemed to suggest that microbes were ingesting the released nutrients. But, overall, the results were ambiguous. Many in the scientific community believe that the LR results can be explained non-biologically. One such explanation is that the LR experiment showed the surface of Mars to contain oxides. When the nutrients mixed with the oxides, a chemical reaction, not a biological one, occurred. Moreover, these oxides would actually prevent life from forming on the Martian surface. This remains an open debate within the scientific community, although the prevailing belief is that the Viking LR readings did not provide evidence of life on Mars. [Staff Writer, “The Viking Files,” Astrobiology Magazine (29 May 2003)]

and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian

[36] German engineer who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany (he led the V-2 rocket program) and, after World War II, in the United States. After working for the U. S. Army, von Braun became Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle. He began developing ideas for Mars exploration as early as 1947, while working at White Sands.

[37] Wernher von Braun, The Mars Project (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1962); Erik Bergaust, Wernher von Braun (Washington, DC: National Space Institute, 1976), pp. 153-159; David S. Portree, Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000 (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 2001), pp. 1-4.

[38] John Kingdon defines “softening up” as a process to pave the way in preparation for opening a policy window. In this process, the policy entrepreneur must ask who must be softened up: the general public, some specialized public, or the policy community itself. Among the means of softening up or educating is conducting and releasing studies or reports relating to the policy, which was the method chosen by von Braun (and others) during the 1950s. [John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1995), pp. 127-131.]

[39] Portree, Humans to Mars, pp. 1-4; Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, pp. 53-59; Wernher von Braun with Cornelius Ryan, “Can We Get to Mars?” Colliers, 30 April 1954, in Exploring the Unknown: Organizing for Exploration, ed. Logsdon, et al. (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1995, NASA SP-4407, Volume 1), pp. 195-200; Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun, The Exploration of Mars (New York: Viking Press, 1956).

[40] Mike Wright, “The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration” in Selected Papers fi-om the 1993 Southern Humanities Conference, ed. Daniel Schenker, Craig Hanks, and Susan Kray (Huntsville, AL: Southern Humanities Press, 1993).

[41] McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination, pp. 29-82.

[42] Portree, Humans to Mars, pp. 5-6.

[43] Portree, Humans to Mars, pp. 6-8; David S. F. Portree, “The Road to Mars… Is Paved With Good Inventions,” Air & Space, February/March 2000, pp. 67-71.

[44] Portree, Humans to Mars, pp. 11-22; Portree, The Road to Mars, pp. 67-71.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Charles Townes, et al., “Report of the Task Force on Space,” 8 January 1969, in Exploring the Unknown: Organizing for Exploration, ed. Logsdon, et al. (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1995, NASA SP-4407, Volume 1), pp. 499-512.

[48] In fact, Agnew had little influence within the Nixon White House; his strong support for an ambitious post-Apollo program was potentially a liability for NASA, not an asset.

[49] Joan Hoff, “The Presidency, Congress, and the Deceleration of the US Space Program in the 1970s,” in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, ed. Roger D. Launius and Howard McCurdy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), pp. 92-132.

[50] Richard Nixon, “Memorandum for the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Acting Administrator, NASA, and the Science Advisor,” 13 February 1969, in Exploring the Unknown: Organizing for Exploration, ed. Logsdon, et al. (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1995, NASA SP-4407, Volume 1), pp. 512-513.

[51] NASA History Division, Compilation of Historical Polling Data, Excel spreadsheet provided to author.

[52] Hoff, “The Presidency, Congress, and the Deceleration of the US Space Program in the 1970s,” pp. 92-132.

15 John M. Logsdon, “The Policy Process and Large-Scale Space Efforts,” Space Humanization Series (1979): pp. 65-79.

[54] Ibid.

[55] John M. Logsdon, “The Evolution of US Space Policy and Plans,” in Exploring the Unknown: Organizing for Exploration, ed. Logsdon, et al. (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1995, NASA SP-4407, Volume 1), pp. 383-386.

[56] Space Task Group, “The Post-Apollo Space Program: Directions for the Future,” September 1969, in Exploring the Unknown: Organizing for Exploration, ed. Logsdon et al (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1995, NASA SP-4407, Volume 1), pp. 522-525.

[57] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1970 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 250-253.

[58] Hoff, “The Presidency, Congress, and the Deceleration of the US Space Program in the 1970s,” pp. 93-95.

[59] Logsdon, “The Policy Process and Large-Scale Space Efforts,” pp. 74-75.

[60] The process of modifying a planet, moon, or other body to a more habitable atmosphere, temperature or ecology.

[61] Alcestis R. Oberg, “The Grass Roots of the Mars Conference,” in The Case for Mars, ed. Penelope Boston (San Diego, CA: American Astro nautical Society, 1984), pp. ix-xii; Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 70-74; Amy Reeves, “Space Oddities: Local Members of the Mars Underground Have Come Up for Air,” The Sun, 25 August 1999.

[62] Ibid.

23 Ibid.

80 Penelope J. Boston, et al., “Conference Summary,” in The Case for Man, ed. Penelope Boston (San Diego, CA: American Astronautical Society, 1984), pp. xiii-xxi.

[65] Ibid.

Ibid.

[67] John M. Logsdon, “The Evolution of US Space Policy and Plans,” p. 392.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAulliffe.

[70] National Commission on Space, Pioneering the Space Frontier: An Exciting Vision of Our Next Fifty Years in Space (New York: Bantam Books, 1986).

[71] Ibid.

[72] Ibid.

33 Ibid.

[74] Ibid.

[75] John Noble Wilford, Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure in Space (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 145-150.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Sally Ride, Leadership and Americas Future in Space: A Report to the Administrator, (Washington, DC: NASA, 1987).

[78] Ibid.

[79] Ibid.

[80] Howard E. McCurdy, The Decision to Send Humans Back to the Moon and on to Mars (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, March 1992); Lyn Ragsdale, “Politics Not Science: The US Space Program in the Reagan and Bush Years,” in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, ed. Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 161.

[81] Office of Exploration, Beyond Earth’s Boundaries: Питан Exploration of the Solar System in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: NASA, 1988); John Aaron, “NASA Press Conference Prepared Statement,” 19 December 1988.

[82] National Security Council, “National Security Decision Directive Number 42: National Space Policy,” 4 July 1982.

45 National Security Council, “Presidential Directive on National Space Policy,” 11 February 1988.

[84] Howard McCurdy interview via electronic-mail, 16 April 1999; John Logsdon interview via electronic-mail, 18 April 1999; Marcia Smith interview via electronic-mail, 19 April 1999.

[85] James Michener, testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, U. S. Civilian Space Policy: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, 96th Cong., 1st session, 1979.

[86] John Robert Greene, The Presidency of George Bush (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press,

2000), pp. 11-26.

11bid.

[88] Ibid.

[89] George Bush, “Remarks for the Space Shuttle Challenger Dedication,” 21 March 1987, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[90] Although Vice President Bush had no formal role in space policy making, he had been involved in this issue area in the months after the Challenger accident. One can also conjecture that the briefing

was intended to gain support for NASA programs from the likely Republican nominee in the following year’s presidential election.

[91] James Fletcher, “Briefing for the Vice President of the United States,” 10 August 1987, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[92] Ibid.

5 George Bush, “Excerpts of Remarks at George C. Marshall Space Flight Center,” 29 October 1987, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[94] George Bush, “Excerpts of Remarks at Redding, California,” 3 October 1988, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[95] James P. Pfiffner, “The Bush Transition: Symbols and Substance,” in Presidential Transitions: The Reagan to Bush Experience, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 62-72.

[96] Robert M. White and Frank Press to George Bush, December 1988, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, Toward a New Era in Space: Realigning Policies to New Realities (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1988).

[97] Ibid.; NASA Transition Office Contact Team, “Briefing Report to the NASA Administrator – Designate,” 20 January 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[98] NASA Transition Office Contact Team, “Briefing Report to the NASA Administrator-Designate,” 20 January 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[99] In 1988, Congress included language in NASA budget authorization that required the President to establish a National Space Council. The President was required to submit by 1 March 1989 a report that outlined the composition and functions of the Council, which was to employ not more then seven persons (including an executive secretary appointed by the President).

[100] NASA Transition Office Contact Team, “Briefing Report to the NASA Administrator-Designate,” 20 January 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[101] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 9 February 1989, Address on Administration Goals Before a Joint Session of Congress, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 18 May 2002.)

[102] Senator Jake Garn to President George Bush, 16 February 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

15 Former Texas Sen. John Tower was tapped by President Bush to become defense secretary, but the nomination quickly ran into trouble as opponents questioned Tower’s business dealings with defense contractors. The confirmation hearings also brought Tower’s personal life squarely into the public eye, with some critics alleging he drank excessively. At one point, Tower pledged to quit drinking entirely if confirmed, but his appointment was rejected 53-47 by the Senate in March 1993.

[104] Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), p. 239.

[105] Sharen Shaw Johnson, “Capital Line,” USA Today, sec. 6A,3 March 1989.

[106] Stephan Kohashi interview via electronic mail, Washington, DC, 16 November 2004.

’ Kathy Sawyer, “Concern Rises Over Space Council’s Direction,” The Washington Post (9 March 1989): A23.

[108] Eliot Marshall, “An Arbitrator for Space Policy,” Science (10 March 1989): p. 1283.

[109] Press Release, White House Office of the Press Secretary, 1 March 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Dwayne A. Day, “Doomed to Fail: The Birth and Death of the Space Exploration Initiative,” Spaceflight (March 1995): pp. 79-83; “National Space Council Director Named, Report Sent to Congress,” Aerospace Daily (3 March 1989); Sawyer, “Concern Rises Over Space Council’s Direction,” A23; Dan Quayle, Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 179.

[110] Letter, James C. Fletcher to President George Bush, 9 March 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Memorandum, Joseph Hagin to Brent Scowcroft, 3 April 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[111] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 16 March 1989, Remarks at a Luncheon Hosted by the Forum Club in Houston, Texas, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 19 August 2003.)

[112] Eight days later this theme was confirmed when the White House hosted the crew of STS-28,

which had successfully landed the shuttle Discovery the previous week at Edwards Air Force Base in California—the primary task of the mission had been the deployment of Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-4 (TDRS-4). In congratulating the crew, President Bush stated that “the story of Discovery is as… timeless as our history… it says that to Americans—nothing lies beyond our reach.” In his brief remarks, the President reaffirmed his commitment to the shuttle program, space science, and construction of the Space Station Freedom. He did not, however, mention human exploration beyond Earth orbit as one of the goals of his administration. [Press Release, White House Office of the Press Secretary, 24 March 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.]

25 John H. McElroy and Brent Scowcroft, A More Effective Civil Space Program (Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1989).

[114] Mark Albrecht interview, tape recording, Arlington, VA, 3 July 2003; “Quayle Puts Damper on Manned Mars/Moon Mission Prospects,” Defense Daily, 5 April 1989, pp. 22-3; Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 177-190.AQ4

[115] Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 177-190; Albrecht interview.

[116] Ibid.; Frank J. Murray, “Putting Man on Mars May be Bush’s Goal”, Washington Times, 20 July 1989, sec. A1; Howard McCurdy, The Decision to Send Humans Back to the Moon and on to Man (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1992), pp. 4-13; Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 181.

[117] Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 181.

[118] Albrecht interview.

[119] Press Release, White House Office of the Press Secretary, 12 April 1989, Bush Presidential Records, Bush Presidential Library; Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 181; Albrecht interview; Kathy Sawyer, “Bush Taps Truly to Head NASA: Former Astronaut Popular on Hill,” The Washington Post (13 April 1989).

[120] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 20 January 1989, Remarks Announcing the Nomination of Richard Hatrison Truly To Be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 18 May 2002.)

[121] Richard Malow interview via tape recording, Washington, DC, 25 October 2004.

[122] Kohashi interview.

[123] Kathy Sawyer, “Bush Taps Truly to Head NASA: Former Astronaut Popular on Hill,” The Washington Post, 13 April 1989; Warren E. Leary, “Bush Chooses Former Astronaut to Head NASA, in a First,” The New York Times, 13 April 1989.

[124] On 23 June, the U. S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Admiral Truly. Along with the confirmation vote, the Senate passed S. 1180, legislation that would allow him to retain his status, rank, and grade as a retired military officer and guaranteeing his retirement benefits from his Navy service after he retired from civilian life. The bill also provided that Admiral Truly, as the NASA Administrator, shall be “subject to no supervision, control, restriction, or prohibition (military or otherwise) other than would be operative… ” if he were not a retired Navy officer. Six days later, OMB Director Darman sent a memorandum to President Bush recommending that the latter authorize the appointment of Admiral Truly and sign S. 1180—the next day James Cicconi of the Office of Personnel approved that recommendation and sent the bill to President Bush for his signature, which was affixed in the normal course of business before the deadline of 10 July 1989. [Memorandum, Richard Darman to President Bush, 29 June 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.]

[125] On 15 March, the Office of the Vice President had submitted to OMB Director Richard Darman a proposed Executive Order for establishing the National Space Council. The draft executive order stated that the goal of the space council was to "provide a coordinated process for developing a national

space program and for overseeing the implementation of national space policy and related activities______ ”

The Vice President, who would act as the primary space policy advisor to the President, would chair the council. The remaining members of the body would be the: Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Transportation, OMB Director, White House Chief of Staff, National Security Advisor, Director of Central Intelligence, and the NASA Administrator. Upon the request of the Vice President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Presidential Science Advisor, and heads of other executive departments and agencies could also be called upon to participate in meetings. The executive order also provided for the creation of the Vice Presidents Space Policy Advisory Board. This committee would be composed of private citizens appointed to advise the Vice President on national space policy issues. Vice Presidential Counselor Diane Weinstein wrote Darman that “given the urgent need for the Council to begin exercising its critical responsibilities as soon as possible…[the] Vice President recommends that the President sign the enclosed proposed Executive Order establishing the National Space Council.” A week later, Darman received a memorandum from Bonnie Newman, Assistant to the President for Management and Administration, concurring with the OMB Directors recommendation to provide funding to the National Space Council under the auspices of Public Law 100-440, which provided budget resources to the Executive Office of the President for “Unanticipated Needs.” Darman forwarded the memorandum to President Bush recommending an allocation of $181,000, which would allow the Space Council to begin operations in fiscal year 1989. [Letter with an attached draft Executive Order, Diane Weinstein to Richard Darman, 15 March 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Memorandum, J. Bonnie Newman to Richard G. Darman, 22 March 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Memorandum, Richard G. Darman to President George Bush, 23 March 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.]

[126] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 21 April 1989, Remarks on Signing the Executive Order Establishing the National Space Council, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 18 May 2002).

4:1 The actual executive order had been amended somewhat since its original submittal to OMB the previous month. There were two additions made to the full membership of the council—the Secretary

of the Treasury and the President’s Science Advisor. The functions of the council were also fine tuned, and were listed in the final order as follows:

A. The Council shall advise and assist the President on national space policy and strategy…

B. The Council is directed to:

[128] Review United States Government space policy, including long-range goals, and develop a strategy for national space activities;

2. Develop recommendations for the President on space policy and space-related issues;

3. Monitor and coordinate implementation of the objectives of the Presidents national space policy by executive departments and agencies; and

4. Foster close coordination, cooperation, and technology and information exchange among the civil, national security, and commercial space sectors…

C. The creation and operation of the Council shall not interfere with existing lines of authority and responsibilities in the departments and agencies.

The rest of the document was substantively the same as the draft order—including provisions detailing: the responsibilities of the chairman, the national space policy planning process, the establishment of the Vice Presidents Space Policy Advisory Board, and the requirement to “submit an annual report setting forth its assessment of and recommendations for the space policy and strategy of the United States Government.” [Executive Order Establishing the National Space Council, 21 April 1989, Bush Presidential Records, Bush Presidential Library.]

44 One could argue that Admiral Truly was not actually a committed policy entrepreneur for human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit, and that in fact he worked against the program. Regardless, he became one of the key players in the SEI process and was heavily involved in assembling the administration plan and trying to sell it on Capitol Hill. It seems that this qualifies him as a policy entrepreneur for the purposes of this manuscript.

[129] McCurdy, The Decision to Send Humans Back to the Moon and on to Mars, pp. 12-13; Albrecht interview; Frank Martin interview by Howard E. McCurdy, in The Decision to Send Humans Back to the Moon and on to Mars (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1992).

[130] Ibid.

[131] Douglas O’Handley interview via electronic mail, Morgan Hill, CA, 22 November 2004.

[132] Aaron Cohen interview via electronic mail, College Station, Texas, 9 December 2004.

45 Martin interview.

[134] Ibid.

[135] Frank Martin interview by Howard E. McCurdy, in The Decision to Send Humans Back to the Moon and on to Mars (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1992); Mark Craig, interview by Howard E. McCurdy, in The Decision to Send Humans Back to the Moon and on to Mars (Washington, DC: NASA History Division, 1992).

[136] O’Handley interview.

[137] Ibid.; Mark Craig, “A Scenario For Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars,” presented to Admiral Richard Truly on 13 June 1989.

[138] Shuttle-C was a 1980s proposal to use the Shuttle s infrastructure to create a heavy launch vehicle. This vehicle would have used the Space Shuttle s solid rocket boosters, external tank, and main engines. Instead of a crew-carrying orbiter, however, it would have used an expendable cargo carrier.

[139] Craig, “A Scenario For Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars.”

[140] O’Handley interview.

[141] Ibid.

[142] O’Handley interview.

[143] This budget estimate had been calculated by OMB cost analyst Norine Noonan, in consultation with NASA.

[144] Martin interview; Craig interview.

[145] Martin interview.

[146] O’Handley interview.

Martin interview.

[148] NASA, “Civil Space Exploration Initiative,” presented to Vice President Dan Quayle on 15 June 1989.

[149] Ibid.; Craig interview; Albrecht interview.

[150] Martin interview.

[151] Craig interview.

[152] O’Handley interview.

65 Ibid.

[154] Bob Davis, “Quiet Clout: How a House Staffer Wields Great Power Over Policy Decisions,” The Wall Street Journal (30 June 1989), p. 1.

[155] Ibid.

[156] Malow interview.

[157] Martin interview.

4 Kohashi interview.

[159] Martin interview.

[160] Malow interview.

[161] Ibid.

[162] Martin interview.

[163] Albrecht interview; Karen Hosier, “Bush Unveils Moon, Mars Plans But Withholds Specifics,” The Baltimore Sun, 21 July 1989-

[164] Ibid.

[165] Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 177-190.

[166] Craig Covault, “Manned Lunar Base, Mars Initiative Raised in Secret White House Review,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (17 July 1989), pp. 24-26; Michael Mecham, “House Panel Proposes $1-Billion Cut for NASA,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (17 July 1989), p. 26.

[167] Public Papers ofthe Presidents of the United States, 20 July 1989, Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 18 May 2002.)

[168] Press Briefing, Admiral Richard H. Truly, 20 July 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[169] Ibid.

88 Ibid.

[171] Residence Event Task Sheet, Barbecue to Commemorate the 20 th Anniversary of the Landing on the Moon, 7 July 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Menu, Barbecue Lunch: 20th Anniversary of the First Moon Walk, 20 July 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[172] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 20 July 1989, Remarks at a White House Barbecue on the 20th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landings http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 6 June 2002.)

[173] Bernard Weinraub, “President Call for Mars Mission and a Moon Base,” The New York Times, 21 July 1989, sec. A1.

[174] Ibid.

[175] David C. Morrison, “To Shoot the Moon, and Mars Beyond,” Government Executive (September 1989), pp. 12-22.

[176] Weinraub, “President Call for Mars Mission and a Moon Base.”

[177] Ibid.; Karen Hosier, “Bush Unveils Moon, Mars Plans But Withholds Specifics,” The Baltimore Sun, 21 July 1989.

[178] Morrison, “To Shoot the Moon, and Mars Beyond.”

[179] Roy Harris Jr., “Firms Rejoice Over Reborn U. S. Space Program,” The Wall Street Journal, 24 July 1989.

[180] O’Handley interview.

[181] Cohen interview.

[182] O’Handley interview.

[183] Morrison, “To Shoot the Moon, and Mars Beyond.”

[184] Albrecht interview; Cohen interview.

[185] Albrecht interview.

[186] Martin interview.

[187] James Fisher and Andrew Lawler, “NASA, Space Council Split Over Moon-Mars Report,” Space News (11 December 1989), p. 10.

[188] Ibid.

[189] Press Release 89-126, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 27 July 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[190] Wendell Mendell interview via electronic-mail, 15 September 2003.

15 Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), p. 240.

[192] Albrecht interview.

[193] Cohen interview.

[194] Mark Craig interview via electronic-mail, 12 September 2003.

[195] Martin interview.

[196] O’Handley interview.

[197] Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly, p. 240.

[198] Malow interview.

[199] O’Handley interview.

[200] Ibid.

23 Ibid.

70 Craig interview, 12 September 2003; Cohen interview, 9 December 2004.

[203] Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 20 November 1989, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Historical Archives, 2-2 to 2-5; NASA Administrator Richard Truly to Vice President Dan Quayle, 5 September 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Craig interview, 12 September 2003; O’Handley interview.

[204] O’Handley interview.

[205] Ibid.

[206] On 2 November, President Bush signed National Space Policy Directive 1—a slight revision of the policy issued by the Reagan Administration 20 months earlier. The expansion of human presence and activity “beyond Earth orbit into the solar system” remained one of the nations primary goals in space. Considering the administrations desire to have SEI provide a long-term direction for the American space program, however, the document didn’t place a great deal of emphasis on the new initiative. Within the section dealing directly with civil space policy, human exploration was relegated to the bottom of a list of stated objectives for NASA—with Earth science, space science, technology development, and space applications at the top of the list. Even when addressing human exploration more specifically, the policy highlighted completion of Space Station Freedom and downplayed human missions beyond Earth orbit. Finally, the directive provided no specific guidance with regard to implementing the Moon-Mars initiative. [National Space Policy Directive 1, National Space Council, 2 November 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 16 November 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library ]

[207] It was not officially released until 20 November 1989.

[208] Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 20 November 1989, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Historical Archives, cover letter.

[209] Ibid., Preface.

[210] Ibid., section 3, The Human Exploration Initiative.

[211] Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars, section 3, The Human Exploration Initiative.

[212] Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars, section 3, The Human Exploration Initiative.

[213] For cargo flights, an integrated configuration of two excursion vehicles is launched. Upon approach to Mars, the two vehicles separate and enter Mars orbit using aero-brakes. The first cargo flight in the Mars outpost mission sequence delivers the habitat facility to the outpost site.

[214] Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars, section 3, The

Human Exploration Initiative.

[216] The Advanced Launch System (ALS) emerged in the mid-1980s as the rocket that would be used to deploy the space-based elements of the Strategic Defense Initiative program. However, by late 1989, it had become increasingly apparent that the requirements for the ALS program had largely disappeared. The initial phase of SDI would be deployed using existing Titan 4 and Atlas 2 rockets, and the launch requirements for subsequent phases of SDI deployment were too vague to require immediate development of ALS.

[217] Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars, section 3, The Human Exploration Initiative.

[218] Ibid.

[219] Ibid., section 4, Reference Approaches.

[220] Ibid., Cost Summary.

[221] Ibid.

[222] Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly> p. 241.

[223] Albrecht interview.

[224] Warren E. Leary, “Plans for Space Are Realistic, Official Says,” New York Times (17 December 2003).

[225] O’Handley interview.

5:1 Cohen interview.

[227] Ibid.

[228] Ibid.

[229] Talking Points, NASA Moon/Mars Database Report, National Space Council, 14 November 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Albrecht interview.

[230] Ibid.

[231] Albrecht interview.

55 Kathy Sawyer, “Quayle to Give NASA Competition on Ideas for Space Exploration,” The Washington Post (17 November 1989).

[233] Ibid.

[234] O’Handley interview.

[235] Senior Administration Official interview via electronic-mail, 5 November 2003.

James Fisher and Andrew Lawler, “NASA, Space Council Split Over Moon-Mars Report,” Space News (11 December 1989), p. 10.

[237] On 4 December, Vice President Quayle sent a letter to Dr. Frank Press, Chairman of the National Research Council (NRC), officially requesting that his organization conduct a review of the 90-Day Study. Quayle requested that the NRC consider alternative approaches, or a range of options, for human exploration of the solar system. He included a list of questions that he hoped the NRC would address in its review, focusing on whether the 90-Day Study addressed the widest range of technically credible approaches for implementing SEI. The letter concluded by requesting that the NRC complete the review by the end of February 1990. [ Vice President Quayle to Dr. Frank Press, 4 December 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.]

[238] Albrecht interview.

[239] Malow interview.

87 Ibid.

[241] Kohashi interview.

65 Admiral Richard Truly to Richard G. Darman, 27 November 1989, Library of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chief Financial Officer.

[243] National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Budget Estimates: Fiscal Year 1991, Volume 1,” Library of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chief Financial Officer.

[244] Albrecht interview.

[245] Schedule Proposal, Mark Albrecht to CeCe Kramer, 9 November 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Memorandum, Mark Albrecht, 30 November 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Andrew Lawler, “Panel: Rationale Missing for Moon-Mars Proposal,” Space News (11 December 1989); Brad Mitchell to Andy Card, 4 December 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[246] Ibid.

[247] Kathy Sawyer, “En Route to Space Goal, Groups Diverge: Friction Between NASA and Quayle s National Council Erupts in “Mars Wars,”’ The Washington Post (11 December 1989).

[248] James Fisher and Andrew Lawler, “NASA, Space Council Split Over Moon-Mars Report,” Space News (11 December 1989).

[249] Simon P. Worden to the National Space Council, “Strategic Planning for the Space Exploration Initiative: The How, What, and When?” 14 December 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[250] Courtney Stadd to Brad Mitchell, Ed McNally, and Joe Heizer, “Space Exploration Initiative,” 18 December 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[251] Vice President Quayle to Admiral Richard Truly 19 December 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

75 Press Release 89-185, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 21 December 1989, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; William J. Broad, “NASA Losing 30- Year Monopoly In Planning for Moon and Mars,” The New York Times (15 January 1990).

[253] Admiral Truly did not formally reply to the White House direction until 31 January 1990. In a letter to Vice President Quayle, he provided details of a process for soliciting outside strategic approaches for SEI implementation. This process would include the release of a NASA Research Announcement. The space agency would specifically seek inputs from professional societies (including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics—AIAA) and other federal agencies. The plan also envisioned a national conference that would be jointly sponsored by NASA and AIAA. All of these efforts would be coordinated through a newly created Office of Aeronautics, Exploration, and Technology. [Admiral Richard Truly to Vice President Quayle, 31 January 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.]

[254]A few years later, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, who would become the second administrator appointed by the Bush administration, made “faster, better, cheaper” the mantra of NASA. The concept emerged earlier, however, as the administration was trying to “infuse that kind of SDI mentality” into the SEI alternative generation process. [Albrecht interview]

[255] Talking Points, Meeting with Republican Members of House Science Committee, National Space Council, 22 January 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[256] White House Office of Management and Budget, “Budget of the United States of American, Fiscal Year 1991,” 29 January 1990, pp. 49-82.

[257] “NASA Budget Press Conference: Statement of Richard H. Truly, NASA Administrator,” NASA News (29 January 1990); John Noble Wilford, “Budget for the Space Agency Sets Broader Course in Exploration,” The New York Times (2 February 1990), p. 19.

[258] Ibid.

[259] Committee on Human Exploration of Space, Human Exploration of Space: A Review of NASA’s 90- Day Study and Alternatives (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1990); Press Release, National Research Council, 1 March 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[260] Ibid.

[261] Albrecht interview.

88 O’Handley interview.

[263] John Robert Greene, The Presidency of George Bush (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000), pp. 89-106.

[264] Albrecht interview.

[265] Mark Albrecht to National Space Council, 16 January 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Mark Albrecht to National Space Council, 2 February 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[266] Presidential Decision on the Space Exploration Initiative, National Space Council, 21 February 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 8 March 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; “Cold Water on Mars, The Economist (10 March 1990), pp. 94-95; “Bush Calls for Two Proposals for Missions to Moon, Mars,” Aviation Week and Space Technology (12 March 1990), pp. 18- 19; Memorandum, Mark Albrecht to Ed Rogers, 13 March 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[267] Albrecht interview.

[268] Malow interview.

[269] “Bush Seen Cooperating with Soviets on Moon-Mars Project,” Dow Jones News Service (18 January 1990).

[270] “International Cooperation in the President’s Space Exploration Initiative,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 30 March 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

5 William J. Broad, “Bush Open to Space Voyages with Soviet Union,” The New York Times (3 April 1990), sec. C2; Craig Covault, “White House Approves Soviet Talks on Moon/Mars Exploration Initiative,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (9 April 1990), p. 24; James R. Asker, “NRCWarns U. S. Against Joint Missions to Mars With Soviets,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (23 April 1990).

[272] House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, “Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations for 1991,” in Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, One Htmdred First Congress, Second Session: Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies—Part IV: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 50-57; pp. 136-143.

[273] Andrew Lawler, “Space Summit Set for May: Bush, Quayle Invite Members of Congress to Talk Space,” Space News (23 April 1990), p. 1.

[274] Mark Albrecht to Fred Mcclure, 16 April 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Jim Cicconi to President Bush, 30 April 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[275] In 1986, Senator Matsunaga wrote The Mars Project, Journey Beyond the Cold War, an unabashed call for a wide-variety of joint space missions with the Soviet Union and other nations. Matsunaga was one of the U. S. Senate’s most outspoken proponents of outer space development.

[276] The congressional participants included: Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS), Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR), Senator John Danforth (R-MO), Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Senator Jake Garn (R-UT), Senator Howell Heflin (D-AL), House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-WA), House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO), House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Representative Silvio Conte (R-MA), Representative Robert Traxler (D-MI), Representative Bill Green (R-NY), Representative Robert Roe (D-NJ), and Representative Robert Walker (R-PA).

[277] The White House participants included: Chief of Staff John Sununu, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Deputy Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Cicconi, Communications Director David Demarest, Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, NSC Executive Secretary Mark Albrecht, and Chief of Staff to the Vice President Bill Kristol.

[278] Talking Points for the President, Congressional Leadership Meeting on Space, 27 April 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[279] Ibid.; Albrecht interview.

[280] Senior Congressional Aide interview via electronic mail, Washington, DC, 15 December 2004.

[281] Albrecht interview.

[282] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 11 May 1990, Remarks at the Texas Acrl University Commencement Ceremony in Kingsville, Texas, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 2 January 2003).

[283] Janet Cawley, “Bush Goal: Man on Mars by 2020,” The Chicago Tribune (12 May 1990); James Gerstenzang, “Bush Sets 2019 for Mars Landing,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (12 May 1990).

[284] John Noble Wilford, “Bush Sets Target For Mars Landing: He Seeks to Send Astronauts to Planet by Year 2020,” The New York Times (12 May 1990).

[285] Kathy Sawyer, “Bush Urges Mars Landing By 2019: Democrats Point to Money Problems,” The Washington Post (12 May 1990).

[286] Malow interview.

[287] O’Handley interview.

[288] Editorial Board, “Empty Rhetoric Fuels Mars Talk,” The Statesman Journal (16 May 1990).

[289] Нешу Gay, “Reaching For Stars, Er, Mars,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (24 May 1990), sec. A15.

[290] Maria S. Barth to President George Bush, 24 May 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[291] Mark Albrecht to Vice President Dan Quayle, “Meeting with Lt. General Tom Stafford,” 31 May 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Fact Sheet, “Space

Exploration Initiative Outreach Program,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 31 May 1990, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Historical Archives; “Chronology of the President’s Space Exploration Initiative,” National Space Council, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[292] J – Sebastian Sinisi, “Forum Delegates Confident,” Denver Post (11 June 1990), sec.4B.

[293] James Gerstenzang, “Bush Denounces NASA Fund Cuts,” The Los Angeles Times (21 June 1990),

p. 28.

[294] Briefing, “White House Briefings on the Space Exploration Initiative,” 8 May 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Charles Bacarisse and Sihan Siv to Fred McClure, “Briefing for Key Congressional Staff on NASA’s Space Exploration Initiative,” 10 May 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Charles Bacarisse to Bob Grady, “Briefings for Key Constituent Groups on the Space Exploration Initiative,” 5 June 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Charles Bacarisse and Sichan Siv to Cece Kramer, 23 May 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[295] “Tour of Hubble Space Telescope Orbital Verification Engineering Control Center,” Ede Holiday, 20 June 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[296] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 20 June 1990, The President’s News Conference in Huntsville, Alabama, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu/papers/ (accessed 2 January 2003).

– Mark Albrecht to Jim Cicconi, “Background Materials, June 20 Marshall Space Flight Center Event,” 19 June 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

>b Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 20 June 1990, Remarks to Employees of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, http://bushlibrary. tamu. edu /papers/ (accessed 2 January 2003).

[299] Earlier in the week, Roll Call had dedicated an entire issue to the space program, with opposing views expressed on SEI from Senator Jake Garn (pro) and Senator AI Gore (con).

[300] A radio actuality is a group of sound bites sent out to radio stations to be used in news reports.

35 “Moon/Mars Initiative,” 19 June 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[302] O’Handley interview.

[303] Warren E. Leary, “Hubble Telescope Loses Large Part of Optical Ability: Most Complex

Instrument in Space is Crippled by Flaw in a Mirror,” The New York Times (27 June 1990), sec. Al; Bob Davis, “NASA Finds Hubble Mirror is Defective,” The Wall Street Journal (28 June 1990).

[304] Joyce Price, “Chief Calls NASA Funding ‘Crucial for U. S. Survival,” The Washington Times (3 July 1990).

[305] John Burgess, “Can U. S. Get Things Right Anymore? Hubble Telescope, Space Shuttle Problems Raise Questions About American Technology,” The Washington Post (3 July 1990).

[306] Malow interview.

[307] U. S. House of Representatives, 101st Congress, 2d sess., “Report 101-556: Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill, 1991,” 26 June 1990; U. S. House of Representatives, 101st Congress, 2d sess., “H. R. 5158,” 26 June 1990.

[308] Dan Morgan, “Panel Boosts NASA Funds 17 Percent: Moon-Mars Mission Cut $300 Million, Higher-Priority Items Backed,” The Washington Post (27 June 1990), sec. AA.

[309] James W. Brosnan, “Senate Panel Cuts Funds for Mars Trip From NASA Budget,” The Commercial Appeal (28 June 1990), sec. A12.

[310] Albrecht interview.

[311] Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 184.

[312] Mark Albrecht to Vice President Quayle, “Meeting on Air Force II with Space Experts”, 10 July 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Mark Albrecht to Vice President Quayle, 13 July 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Press Release, The White House, Office of the Vice President, 16 July 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; “White House Considers Inquiry Into NASA: Spokesman Says Panel May Redirect Agency,” The Washington Post (15 July 1990); Press Release, The White House, Office of the Vice President, 25 July 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Mark Albrecht to Arnold Kanter, 25 July 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[313] U. S. Senate, 101st Congress, 2d sess., “Report 101-474: Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill, 1991,” 26 September 1990; David Rogers, “Senate Panel Cuts Most New Funding for NASA Project,” The Wall Street Journal (14 September 1990), sec. A16; Helen Dewar, “Budget Vote Disappoints Space Backers,” The Washington Post (26 September 1990), sec. A10.

[314] U. S. House of Representatives, 101st Congress, 2d sess., “Report 101-900: Making Appropriations for the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and for Sundry Independent Agencies, Commissions, Corporations, and Offices for Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1991, and for Other Purposes,” 18 October 1990.

[315] Ibid.; ‘High Hopes Plunge Under an Onslaught of Budget Cuts,” The Associated Press (23 December 1990); Malow interview.

[316] Kohashi interview.

[317] U. S. Senate, 101st Congress, 2d sess., “Public Law 101-611,” 16 November 1990.

[318] David S. Broder and Bob Woodward, “When the Vice President is Chairman: Debating Direction of Space Programs,” The Washington Post (9 January 1992), sec. A16.

[319] Report of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the US. Space Program (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990); Mark Albrecht to Vice President Quayle, 7 December 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[320] See note above.

[321] Talking Points, “Augustine Committee Press Conference,” 10 December 1990, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[322] Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 185-186.

[323] Albrecht interview.

[324] Malow interview.

[325] Mark Carreau, “Panel Wants to Phase Out Space Shuttle: White House Backs Changes That Will Transform NASA,” The Houston Chronicle (11 December 1990), p. 1.

[326] Robert C. Cowen, “Manned Space Programs Ger Message: Throttle Back,” Christian Science Monitor (19 December 1990), p. 1.

[327] America at the Threshold: America’s Space Exploration Initiative, Report of the Synthesis Group on Americans Space Exploration Initiative,” May 1991; David S. E Portree, Romance to Reality: Moon and Man Plans, available from members. aol. com/dsportreeVHl l. htm (accessed 10 February 2003).

[328] Warren E. Leary, “Panel Says Much Research is Needed Now to Reach Mars by 2014,” The New York Times (12 June 1991), p. 25; Kathy Sawyer, “Build Nuclear-Powered Rocket for Mars Mission, Panel Urges; Experts’ Report Offers NASA ‘New Approaches,’” The Washington Post (12 June 1991), sec. A2; Edwin Chen, “U. S. Mars Visit by 2014, Station on Moon Urged: Presidential Panel Unveils a Controversial Program that Includes Nuclear-Powered Rockets,” The Los Angeles Times (12 June 1991), p. 1; Paul Hoversten, “Panel Proposes Paths to Moon, Mars,” Gannet News Service (11 June 1991).

[329] Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), pp. 239-243.

[330] Ibid.

6? Richard H. Truly to President George Bush, 10 February 1992, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; President George Bush to Richard H. Truly, 12 February 1992, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library; Kathy Sawyer, “Truly Fired as NASA Chief, Apparently at Quayle Behest: Ex-Astronaut Feuded With Space Council,” The Washington Post (13 February 1992), sec. Al; William J. Broad, “NASA Chief Quits in Policy Conflict,” The New York Times (13 February 1992), sec. Al; Craig Covault, “White House to Restructure Space Program: Truly Fired,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (17 February 1992), p. 18.

[332] Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir, pp. 243-245; W. Henry Lambright, Transforming Government: Dan Goldin and the Remaking of NASA (Arlington, VA: PriceWaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government, 2001), pp. 14-15; Albrecht interview.

[333] Ibid.

[334] Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir, pp.243-245; Lambright, Transforming Government: Dan Goldin and the Remaking of NASA, pp. 14-15; Kathy Sawyer, “NASA Nominee Praised at Confirmation Hearing: Committee Members Warn Goldin About Likely Budgetary, Political Problems Ahead,” The Washington Post (28 March 1992), sec. A6; Ede Holiday to President George Bush, “Swearing-in Ceremony for NASA Administrator Dan S. Goldin”, 1 April 1992, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library.

[335] Lambright, Transforming Government: Dan Goldin and the Remaking of NASA, p. 17.

[336] Panetta had been trying to cancel the station program for years while serving in the House of Representatives.

[337] Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Miry pp. 262-264.

[338] Ibid.

[339] Lambright, Transforming Government: Dan Goldin and the Remaking of NASA, p. 20.

[340] The White House, National Science and Technology Council, “Fact Sheet: National Space Policy,” 19 September 1996; Brian McGrory, “Clinton Curbs Mars Project: Drops Manned Mission, Backs Robotic Probes,” The Boston Globe (20 September 1996), sec. A25; Kathy Sawyer, “White House Releasing New National Space Policy: Robots, Not Astronauts, May Travel to Mars,” The Washington Post (19 September 1996), sec. A29.

[341] Parsons, Public Policy, pp. 193-207.

[342] These interviews were conducted in an attempt to better understand policy making within two issues areas, health care policy and transportation policy.

[343] Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, pp. 231-240.

[344] The New York Times Index was also used to provide supplemental data.

[345] Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, pp – 253-259-

? Polls are designed to provide interested parties with information estimating how the mass public would respond to specific closed-ended options, such as “should the government fund human trips to Mars?” The fundamental principle of polling is that a sample population can represent the entire population if there is a sufficient sample size and the chosen methodology ensures a randomly selected sample. Opinion polls are utilized to measure: values, basic beliefs held by individuals that are relatively immune to change and perform a vital role in individuals’ lives and choices; opinions, judgments about current issues and policy alternatives; and attitudes, a category between values and opinions representing well thought out views utilized to evaluate new issues and alternatives. While polls measuring values and attitudes are useful because they provide information regarding long-term beliefs, the vast majority of polls relevant to policy makers assess opinions regarding contemporary policy issues. [Mathew Mendelsohn and Jason Brent, “Understanding Polling Methodology,” ISUMA (Autumn 2001): pp. 131-136.]

[347] Baumgartner and Jones found that the new CD-ROM format of the CIS annual permitted for efficient searches of policy issues—primarily because hearings are cross-referenced, reducing the possibility of double counting specific hearings, and streamlined selection of keywords. The dataset that was produced included a wide variety of information including the year of the hearing, the committee holding the hearing, and a summary of the topics discussed.

[348] Bryan Jones, John Wilkerson, and Frank Baumgartner, “Policy Agendas Project,” Center for American Politics and Public Policy, available from depts. washington. edu/ampol/navresearch/ agendasproject. shtml; (accessed 18 December 2001.)

[349] In 1957, the Public Papers series was created to provide an official compilation of Presidential letters, addresses, speeches, proclamations, executive orders, and other publicly issued materials. Volumes dealing with the Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations are incorporated into the series. In addition, the Clinton papers are now available online and there are plans to expand online coverage to include all presidential papers. The information included in the Public Papers is indexed in two ways: by subject and by name. The index entry for each subject contains a word or phrase that identifies the topic and one or more page numbers.

[350] Measured by tabulating the number of space-related addresses and speeches delivered (and catalogued in the Public Papers of the President series) by the president in a given year.

[351] Measured by tabulating the number of space-related Congressional hearings held (and catalogued by the Congressional Information Service) in a given year.

[352] This database also included a few studies conducted by national commissions (e. g. National Commission on Space), academic institutions, and interest groups.

[353] Portree’s goals for the Romance to Reality site were fourfold: to educate interested parties about the challenges and opportunities of exploring the Moon and Mars; to make the ideas of engineers and scientists widely available to the mass public; to provide an exciting glimpse of possible futures by looking into the past; and to foster the construction of a future that includes human activity on both the moon and Mars.

[354] Since this analysis was conducted, Portree has changed the format of the Romance to Reality: Moon and Mars Plans website. Thus, my results are based on data taken from the website as it existed in March 2002.

[355] President Reagan’s 1984 State of the Union, where he announced his decision to approve the Space Station Program, was the clear exception.

[356] On 14 January 2004, President George W. Bush proposed a long-range plan for the American space program that included phasing out the aging Space Shuttle, redefining a partially constructed Space Station, and developing a crew exploration vehicle to return humans permanently to the Moon.

[357] Malow interview.

[358] W. Henry Lambright, Transforming Government: Dan Goldin and the Remaking of NASA (Arlington, VA: Price WaterhouseCoopers, 2001), p. 11.