Category Mars Wars

In 1898, just three years after Percival Lowell popularized the vision of a Mars threaded by canals and peopled by ancient beings, the first great Martian science fiction book was published. The War of the Worlds, written by H. G. Wells, is hailed as the greatest alien invasion story in history. The book began with a Martian assault just outside of London. While the Martians at first seemed helpless in the heavy Earth gravity, they quickly exposed their advanced technology in the form of huge death machines that began destroying the surrounding countryside, forcing the evacuation of London. The saving grace for the badly overmatched humans turned out to be common bacteria that the Martians had no immune system to fight off. In 1938, the book was famously adapted for radio by Orson Welles. The retelling of the story, portrayed as a news program about a Martian landing in rural New Jersey, was so believable that millions of Americans actually thought that Earth was being invaded.[20]

Starting in 1917, author Edgar Rice Burroughs began a highly popular series about Mars exploration with the publication of A Princess of Mars. In subsequent years, he wrote ten more books tracking the adventures of Captain John Carter on Mars. The series was first published as a longer sequence of serials printed in All – Story Magazine, which represented a common strategy for the publication of science fiction novels during that period. The Carter books were considered to be more fantasy than hard science fiction, which was exhibited by the lack of detail regard­ing how Carter actually got to the red planet—he was magically taken there in the book.[21]

During the Great Depression and the Second World War, there was a conspic­uous absence of popular books regarding Mars exploration. The lull was broken when author Robert Heinlein wrote Red Planet. Published in 1949, the book fol­lowed teenager Jim Marlowe, his friend Frank, and his Martian “roundhead” pet Willis on their travels across the planet to warn a human colony that was the target of a conspiracy by the Martians.[22] A year later, Ray Bradbury authored his famous book entitled The Martian Chronicles. The book was actually a compilation of relatively unrelated short stories about an ancient, dying Martian race. Along with Heinleins Red Planet, the book borrowed heavily from the observations and theories of both Schiaparelli and Lowell—planetary canals were a central accomplishment of the Martian civilizations in both books. These were early examples of how scientific research pushed science fiction novels.[23] In 1956, Robert Heinlein wrote Double Star, the most critically acclaimed Martian novel during this time period. The book, which won the Hugo Award,[24] centered on the emotional predicament of an out of work actor, Lorenzo Smythe, who was asked to stand in for an important politician who had been kidnapped. His trouble began when he was forced to take part in an important ceremony on Mars despite the fact that he hated Martians. The book was an interesting rendering of the civil rights struggle going on in the United States at the time.[25]

During this same period, a large number of popular films featured adventures involving the red planet. In 1938, Flash Gordon: Mars Attacks the World premiered as a feature-length film. In the movie, Flash Gordon blasts off for Mars to destroy a mysterious force sucking the nitrogen from Earths atmosphere and foil a plot by Ming the Merciless to conquer the universe. This was followed in the post-War period with the 1950 film Rocketship X-M, the story of five astronauts that set off to explore the moon but due to a malfunction ended up on Mars—where they find evidence of an advanced civilization nearly destroyed by an atomic holocaust. The next year, Flight to Mars chronicled the adventures of a team of scientists and a newspaper reporter that fly to Mars and thwart a plan by the Martians (who look identical to humans) to conquer Earth. In 1953, Invaders from Mars told the tale of small town where all the adults begin acting strangely shortly after young David MacLean sees strange lights settling behind a hill near his home. That same year, Gene Barry starred in a film adaptation of War of the Worlds. Finally, in 1959, The Angry Red Planet followed a group of astronauts that land on Mars and battle aliens, a giant amoeba, and the dreaded “Rat-Bat-Spider thing.” By the late-1950s, the combination of these best selling books and feature-length films had fixed human exploration of the Mars (and the likely inhabitants of that planet) in the popular culture of the nation.

"We are going to return to the Moon and journey to Mars because we must, because the United States needs to challenge itself in order to be ready for the new world of the 21st century, now just over ten

years away. ”

NASA Administrator Richard Truly, 26 October 1989

The public reaction to President Bush’s announcement of SEI was swift, and not altogether positive. The following day, the headline on the front page of The New York Times read, “President Calls for Mars Mission and a Moon Base: Critics Cite High Costs—Bush Offers No Timetable or Budget for Plan, Leaving That to Space Council.” The article stated the speech set the stage for “the first full-scale debate in years on the nation’s troubled space program.” The piece cited expert opinions predicting the initiative would cost at least $100 billion, and could rise to as much as $400 billion.1 The reaction from the Democrat-controlled Congress was largely critical. Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Technology, stated that “by proposing a return to the Moon and a manned base on Mars, with no money, no timetable, and no plan, President Bush offers the country not a challenge to inspire us, but a daydream.” His fellow senator from Tennessee, James Sasser, concurred, stating “the President took one giant leap for starry-eyed political rhetoric, and not even a small step for fiscal responsibility. The hard fact is this administration doesn’t even have its space priorities established for next year, much less for the next century. We have numerous space and science – [173] related programs already on the table, all of them worthy, all of them high-ticket and all of them competing for scarce dollars.”[174] House Budget Committee Chair­man Leon Panetta was quoted saying, “The budget deficit is stealing the resources we need to…resume our nation’s mission in space. When this President is ready to recognize that we can’t do all he would like to do even on this planet without new revenues, then perhaps we can talk about Mars.”[175] Even fellow Republicans were wary. Representative Bill Green of New York, the ranking minority member on the subcommittee with oversight of the NASA budget, stated that “given the federal budget deficit and earthly demands, I don’t see how we can afford expensive manned programs in space in the near future.”[176]

The Baltimore Sun captured the mood very well, writing that the announcement of a human mission to Mars “was tempered by the financial worries that took much of the thrill out of America’s romance with outer space after the historic flight of Apollo 11 .”[177] For this very reason, the American public was not terribly supportive of the new initiative. A Gallup Poll released shortly after the announcement suggested that only 27% of Americans believed space spending should be increased, and only 51% thought being the first nation to land a human on Mars was a meaningful goal.[178] [179] Not surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal reported support from the aerospace industry for SEI, although many executives believed a strong lobbying effort would be required to get Congressional approval for the expensive undertaking. In a pre­pared response, Martin Marietta Chairman Norman Augustine stated, “we applaud the president’s call for renewed vigor in pursuit of the space frontier and the many benefits it implies.” Despite similar supportive statements flowing from other aero­space giants, there remained a sense of pessimism within most corners of the indus­try—the result of looming questions regarding the source of the billions of dollars needed to carry out the ambitious plan. “It’s not the same clarion call that President Kennedy gave when he set a moon-landing [goal],” said aerospace analyst Wolfgang Demisch.

There were somewhat diverse opinions regarding President Bush’s speech amongst NASA’s senior leaders. On one hand, many were impressed that Bush was able to depart from the written text during his speech, which they felt proved that Vice President Quayle really understood NASA’s plan and had effectively briefed the president. Douglas O’Handley recalls that this was probably the most positive thing ever said about Quayle by NASA officials.[180] On the other hand, some agency officials believed the address laid the foundation for a ruinous relationship between the Space Council and NASA. Aaron Cohen felt this was the case because neither organiza­tion was paying attention to what the other was saying. Top NASA leaders thought the speech was a Kennedyesque declaration calling for a large-scale national effort to build a lunar base and send humans to Mars. Quayle and Albrecht, in contrast, wanted to introduce a new way of doing business within the space program—one that involved smaller budgets and more aggressive technology development (which they believed would lead to large cost efficiencies). Cohen recalled, “the day that the initiative was announced was a day of great elation [at NASA]. It took everyone back to the days of Apollo.”[181] For a White House that wanted to change the Apollo paradigm, this was not the desired reaction from the space agency.

After the euphoria of the announcement died down, Douglas O’Handley argues “Frank Martin and Admiral Truly realized that they needed to back up the skel­etal AHWG studies.”[182] This effort would include validating data that had been presented to the Space Council and assessing the technology readiness levels for the equipment needed to carry out the initiative—this review became known as the 90-Day Study. Mark Albrecht remembered later that NASA “stepped forward and almost demanded to lead this effort, which indicated the beginnings of a little friction” between the space agency and the Space Council staff. From the NASA perspective, however, the study was initiated because President Bush’s speech had provided the agency with a charter to develop a plan for a lunar base and human mission to Mars. There was a fundamental belief among senior leaders at the agency that this was exactly what the Space Council wanted. In fact, some of Albrecht’s public statements at the time seemed to indicate this was the case. He was quoted in Government Executive magazine saying that now that a national space policy goal had been set, the council would “leave it to the departments and agencies to decide how they’re going to achieve that. Once they’ve made that determination, we’ll review that to see whether or not it comports with national policy, or whether it’s realistic or plausible. But in terms of getting into their programs and plans for the purposes of ‘We know a better way,’ that’s just not what we’re here to do.”11 Later in the process, however, the White House had changed its tune, and both Albrecht and Vice President Quayle were arguing that they never wanted NASA to conduct the 90-Day Study. Aaron Cohen argues this problem arose because the Council didn’t have its own ideas regarding how to start the process. Although it had announced the initiative, the administration didn’t have a good sense regarding how to proceed after the speech. He contends this was the main reason problems emerged between the two organizations.[183] [184]

In the end, Albrecht asked NASA to provide “a variety of different approaches… we want a variety of time frames, we want a variety of cost profiles, we want a variety of technologies, so the President can choose among different options rather than being told ‘this is how to do it.’”[185] This was not the method, however, that Admi­ral Truly favored. The Administrator simply wanted to pull together the wealth of data that had been generated during the preceding five years and draft a report that would be ready within three months.[186] Over the coming months, Truly was warned during two meetings of the full Space Council that his plan “was not the approach most members wanted to pursue.”[187] The Council members wanted NASA to develop options based on innovative new technologies that could potentially offer reduced long-term costs.[188] Admiral Truly essentially disregarded this direction from the Council. At the same time, by allowing the space agency to pursue its own course, the Council in effect delegated the authority granted to it by President Bush to conduct a review of options for implementing SEI.

A week after President Bush’s speech, Admiral Truly assigned Aaron Cohen to lead an agency-wide effort to fashion a plan for establishing a lunar base and explor­ing Mars, drawing upon existing NASA planning documents. During the remain­der of the year, the space agency never wavered from this approach.[189] Although he was asked to examine both technical and management issues, Cohen chose to ignore questions regarding changes in NASA’s management culture. Some believed this decision was fueled by his view that the new initiative was laying out another Apollo program—in essence, a reinstitution of Kennedy’s mandate.”[190] As a result, there was no need to change the management culture that had successfully landed humans on the Moon. The only task was to define an aggressive program to meet President Bush’s new mandate. In his book Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir, author Bryan Burrough detailed a revealing conversation between Albrecht and Cohen after the latter had been named to lead the 90-Day Study:

“Most of all we want alternatives, plenty of alternatives,” Albrecht told Cohen.

“What do you mean, alternatives?” Cohen asked. From the blank look on the JSC director’s face, Albrecht could tell he wasn’t getting through.

“Alternatives,” Albrecht repeated. “I mean, there has to be more than one way to do this. Give us a Cadillac option, then give us the El Cheapo alter­native, with the incumbent risks. Talk about all the different technologies that could be learned.”[191]

Albrecht believed this interaction, and NASA’s reaction over the coming months, was the beginning of a never healed rift between the Space Council staff and NASA.[192] Cohen later recalled the conversation differently. Although he remembered Albre­cht asking for several options, he has no recollection of being asked to provide alternatives with significantly different cost profiles. Without this direction, mission planners at JSC felt the only course of action was to develop a program plan based on the President’s speech.[193]

Frank Martin believed the cause of this burgeoning conflict was the differing approaches of the two organizations. The Space Council staff, with backgrounds largely in the national security space sector, wanted NASA to develop alternatives starting “with a clean sheet of paper.” The JSC view was that it would be a shame not to take advantage of the research that had been conducted during recent years. In fact, Mark Craig remembered later that “there were never any debates about using a clean sheet.’ Our goal was to find the best approach to meet a set of requirements, not to just find something new for its own sake.”[194] In the end, NASA employed the JSC methodology and began developing an SEI strategy that was highly dependent on past studies and didn’t consider multiple alternatives with different budgetary requirements.[195] Douglas O’Handley contends, “this is where the initiative fell apart, when it was taken over by the Johnson Space Center.”[196]

While there was substantial progress made in telescope technology during the 70 years after Lowell’s sensational observations, it was still beyond the abilities of astronomers of the time to unequivocally disprove his theories. In fact, during this period there was little sustained interest in planetary astronomy, and as a result, few new discoveries were made. In 1957, the Soviet launch of Sputnik opened vast new opportunities for scientific investigations. Once the concept of robotic planetary exploration was conceived during the coming years, it was taken for granted that missions to Mars would be a priority. Several failed attempts by both the Americans and Soviets to send spacecraft to Mars during the early 1960s, however, delayed the first close up examination of the red planet.[26]

On 28 December 1964, NASA launched Mariner 4 on a mission to explore Mars. About halfway to the planet, the spacecraft experienced technical difficulties that greatly concerned ground controllers. The “Great Galactic Ghoul,”[27] however, was unsuccessful in its efforts at crippling the probe. On 14 July 1965, Mariner 4 made a flyby to within 6,118 miles of the planet’s surface. It was able to relay 22 images back to Earth with its single camera before passing out of range. The data that was obtained from those images, as well as from the spacecraft’s other instru­ments,[28] were nothing less than stunning. Instead of the living planet that Lowell had envisioned, Mariner 4 discovered a surface that was apparently devoid of life and seemingly unchanged for billions of years. In addition, results of an S-band radio occultation experiment found that the Martian atmospheric density was con­siderably lower than expected and that its makeup was approximately 95% carbon dioxide. Finally, it was discovered that the planet had no discernible magnetic field. The information returned by Mariner 4 resulted in a complete revision of human thinking about Mars, ending forever Lowellian theories regarding vegetation and intelligent beings.[29]

During the early months of 1969, the Americans and the Soviets each sent two more spacecraft towards Mars.[30] While the Soviets continued their string of failures, both Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 were successful. These spacecraft, like Mariner 4, were designed as flyby missions, but they were capable of photographing the planet at much greater distances. Mariner 6 sent 75 images earthward, while Mariner 7 produced 126 photographs. In total, the two probes, which passed within 2,120 miles of the planet, returned data about approximately 20% of the surface. Once again, the information obtained showed a largely cratered landscape, although it also showed large expanses that were like an exceedingly dry and cold desert.[31]

As chance would have it, the first three Mariner missions explored some of the most geographically lackluster areas of Mars. Launched on 30 May 1971, Mari­ner 9, the first successful orbiter to reach Mars, finally revealed the topographical diversity of the red planet. When the spacecraft arrived in November, however, the planet was obscured for weeks by a massive dust storm. Two Soviet landers, Mars 2 and Mars 3, were lost in the storm, because they were not capable of waiting in orbit for it to clear. They did, however, become the first machines to reach the Mar­tian surface. A month after Mariner 9 reached orbit, the dust finally cleared, and it was able to begin mapping the planet. The first features that were discovered were a series of gigantic shield volcanoes—the largest being Olympus Mons, the largest known mountain in the solar system. The second major finding was the immense Valles Marineris system, which dwarfed the Grand Canyon and stretched one-quar­ter of the way around the planet. Finally, the spacecraft detected wide channels (reminiscent of river valleys) and the hummocky terrain that is characteristic of the south polar regions. In October 1972, when the probe ran out of fuel, it had taken 7,239 photographs and revealed a truly unique planet.[32]

After the success of the Mariner program, the next step in the exploration of Mars involved sending robotic vehicles to conduct in situ experiments. In the late summer of 1975, Viking 1 and Viking 2 were launched to the red planet to carry out a search for Martian life, among other scientific objectives. Each spacecraft actually had two separate components—an orbiter based on Mariner 9 technolo­gies and a lander equipped with various scientific instruments. On 20 July 1976, about a month after it had entered orbit and seven years after the first human land­ing on the moon, the 1,300-pound Viking 1 lander settled onto the western slopes of Chryse Planitia—it was the first probe to safely reach the planets surface. The lander quickly began photographing its surroundings, including a stunning 300- degree panorama that showed sand dunes, a large impact crater, low ridges, scattered boulders, and a pink sky.[33]

The Viking 1 lander was outfitted with a large array of sophisticated equipment, including: antennas for communicating with ground controllers on Earth; cam­

eras capable of transmitting photographs in black and white, color, and infrared; a mechanical arm capable of scooping soil for examination; and a meteorology boom for assessing atmospheric humidity, temperature, and wind speed. Eight days after landing, the mechanical arm went into action and scooped up its first sample of Martian soil. The soil was released through a funnel that automatically separated it for chemical and biological analysis. While the findings of the landers various experiments were initially ambiguous, it is the widely held opinion of most of the scientific community that they revealed no signs of Martian life.[34] The Viking 2 lander, which touched down on Utopia Planitia on 3 September 1976, similarly

revealed a Mars with no visible signs of living organisms. Despite the conclusions drawn by mission scientists that Mars was lifeless, however, there is still active debate regarding the possibility that the red planet once harbored life. When the durable Viking 1 lander finally ceased operations in November 1982, the first phase of robotic exploration of the planet officially came to an end. Although many of the beliefs that had endured during the first two-thirds of the 20th century had been disproved by robotic probes, there remained considerable interest in future journeys to Mars. The question at that time was whether this second phase of discovery would be centered on robotic or human exploration.

The ensuing chapters will examine the events leading up to the announcement of SEI, including an effort by NASA to garner political support for a crewed mission to Mars during post-Apollo planning. The central focus of this story, however, will be a detailed account of the agenda setting process that placed SEI on the govern­ment agenda and the intense political battles that virtually guaranteed that an actual program would not be adopted. Finally, the manuscript will investigate the lessons learned from this failed policy process in an effort to provide a tool to current and future policy makers attempting to garner continued political and public support for human exploration beyond Earth orbit.

By late August, the White House was getting gradually more worried about the progress NASA was making on the 90-Day Study. Mark Albrecht was concerned with the weekly status reports he was receiving from the Technical Study Group (TSG), which was the JSC-led team tasked with carrying out the study. “We didn’t like the reaction we got from NASA,” he remembered. “It had an uh oh’ quality to it. NASA reports seemed to be full of lofty verbiage but few technical outlines or alternatives for what a lunar base and a Mars mission would actually look like.”[197] Throughout this period, Albrecht kept emphasizing that the President wanted to see a lot of technical and budgetary options. Based on the space agency’s responses, however, the council staff was beginning to get the strong feeling that it wasn’t going to get any alternatives. Although Congress wasn’t heavily engaged during this period, there was rising concern because of the increasingly frayed Space Council – NASA relationship. The feeling on Capitol Hill was that this strain was caused largely because NASA was “running their own plan, which wasn’t the same as the White House’s plan.”[198]

As time went on, these stressed relations escalated into an all out war between the TSG and the Space Council. NASA’s Douglas O’Handley had actually made a few friends among the Space Council staff, and they were pleading with him to provide assistance. In the end, however, he was not able to provide any support because Admiral Truly and the TSG controlled all information relating to the 90-Day Study. Things got so bad that every time senior NASA officials returned from a White House meeting, there was another story about “those dumb [expletive] on the Space

Council. I have often thought,” O’Handley stated later, that the conflicting “per­sonalities caused many of the problems. If, instead of fighting with the Space Coun­cil, we had tried to work with them, the outcome might have been different.”[199]

While this external battle was being waged between the Space Council and NASA, there was another internal battle being waged within the agency. There was rising apprehension regarding JSC’s control of strategic planning for the initiative. Although the TSG was to a degree soliciting advice from other field centers, there was a feeling that the JSC leadership didn’t really take outside advice very well. Douglas O’Handley argued later, “I absolutely think a wider net should have been cast within NASA, but JSC deprived the other centers an opportunity to contribute to the initiative.”[200] The aerospace industry also wanted to play a role in the mission development, but weren’t heavily involved. Although there were numerous techni­cal concepts and architectural options floating about, the TSG essentially ignored them. JSC became “Fortress NASA” and outside ideas were not welcome.[201]

Despite ongoing problems between the Space Council and NASA, and misgiv­ings about the initiative on Capitol Hill, the TSG was allowed to continue compil­ing the 90-Day Study. The study group was staffed with about 450 people led on a day-to-day basis by Mark Craig, with an average of 250 people working directly on the study on any given day—although the core team was formed by the members of the AHWG.[202] The study began by decomposing the President’s objectives into top level technology requirements. These requirements were then used to develop an end-to-end architecture, which included the following features:

• Characterize the environment in which humans and machines must function with robotic missions

• Launch personnel and equipment from Earth

• Exploit the unique capabilities of human presence aboard the Space Station Freedom

• Transport crew and cargo from Earth orbit to lunar and Mars orbits and surfaces

• Conduct scientific studies and investigate in-situ resource development

The TSG assumed the agency would utilize the Space Shuttle and Space Station Freedom to implement SEI. This, in essence, meant the group never considered whether leveraging these systems was feasible or desirable given the existing fiscal environment. The inclusion of the two systems was almost a foregone conclusion because JSC wanted to protect the Shuttle and continue Station development—in the near term, this meant the ultimate success of SEI was not necessarily the agency’s top priority. From the agency’s perspective, completion of an orbital station was part of a serial progression that started with the shuttle and would eventually end with a human mission to Mars—an idea that dated back to post-Apollo planning. This viewpoint was directly influenced by Admiral Truly’s decision to base the 90- Day Study’s technical analysis on past NASA studies. Douglas O’Handley argues, “this is where the Space Council and the agency were on a collision course. NASA was documenting the past and the Space Council wanted options and innovative thinking. None of the NASA principals knew how to go about” providing those alternatives.[203]

The 90-Day Study alternative generation process was far from optimal. Because the TSG was so JSC-centric, technical and architectural concepts from other seg­ments of the space policy community were not solicited. Perhaps more importantly, the group considered budgetary constraints last. This should have been the first thing that was evaluated, with all programmatic options tailored to the fiscal reali­ties. Instead, the TSG put together a virtual ‘wish list’ for human exploration with­out taking into account the existing political environment. This eventually became an even greater problem because the group never paid “much attention to lowering the initiative’s costs by using emergent technologies.”[204] There is some indication that part of the reason for this was because NASA had been directed to virtually guarantee the safety of the astronauts. Based upon the Apollo experience and a con­temporary understanding of the life science challenges, the TSG had calculated that one member of a seven-person crew may not return. The Space Council staff told agency planners they wanted ‘seven out and seven back.’[205] This would have required 99-9999% mission reliability. As much as anything done by the space agency, this

White House decision drove costs up enormously.[206]