Category Why Mars

In the 1950s, a former German rocket engineer, working on missiles for the U. S. Defense Department, began writing about and advocating human spaceflight to Mars. To be sure, there would be gradual steps to Mars, said Wernher von Braun in a series of articles in Colliers, a high-circulation magazine at the time. He painted a sequence of technical developments over years. Between 1952 and 1954, von Braun proclaimed that there would first be a spaceship, then a space station, and then a trip to the Moon. But Mars was the ultimate destiny for human spaceflight, although such a voyage might not come for many decades. Von Braun, an engineer, whose brilliance was matched by his passion for ex­ploration, believed that advances in rocketry would someday make extending human life to Mars possible. Von Braun’s stepping-stone approach to Mars was called by some “the von Braun paradigm.”4

Von Braun subsequently expanded the articles into four books. In his 1956 book (coauthored by Willy Ley) he assumed that plant life would greet visitors from Earth. However, it was not life on Mars that most interested von Braun; it was developing technology to take human beings to Mars that he craved.5 For scientists and engineers who wanted to know if life existed on Mars or humans could get to Mars, there was a barrier before 1957. Technology to escape Earth’s gravity did not exist—or at least had not been demonstrated—prior to Sputnik. The Soviet Union in 1957 opened the space frontier in a move that shocked the United States and the world. All of a sudden, dreams about space exploration came closer to reality.

All the same, the two motivations to explore Mars proved a double-edged sword for Mars advocates. The von Braun approach was pursued initially by engineers who emphasized developing technology to take humanity into space. The intellectual descendants of Lowell were scientists interested in discovering life through robotic means. The scientists were mainly users of space technol­ogy, not developers. The relation between the robotic program and the human spaceflight advocates was problematic from the outset. The engineers behind human spaceflight wanted to go to the Moon. They wanted to go to Mars too, but the Moon came first, since getting there was their immediate interest, and the von Braun stepping-stone approach was a method to which they subscribed. Many scientists did not find the Moon particularly interesting, especially those anxious to discover extraterrestrial life. They looked to explore Mars via robotic means for quicker answers to the question, are we alone? The interests were different, and so were the priorities of the two advocacy communities.

Thus, there was a long dual legacy of fascination with Mars. But to get started in answering this call required going beyond scientists and engineers, to politi­cians. Exploration required a strong additional stimulus, because government

would have to get involved in a substantial way and spend a great deal of money. Just to take an initial step in the Red Planet’s direction would require political will, organization, and the push of a large program. What would get politicians aboard? Which agency in government would take the lead in managing space policy?

As Mariner 9 brought enthusiasm to NASA’s space science program, Fletcher was about to obtain what Webb and Paine could not: a post-Apollo human program that would end the steady decline in budget and sustain the agency for the long haul—and make a big science effort like Viking possible. It had been a struggle. OMB staff in the summer of 1971 had proposed to reduce NASA’s budget below $3 billion, denying it the Space Shuttle, further eliminating spe­cific Moon flights, and making cuts in a host of other programs. Viking certainly would have been affected adversely.

On August 12, 1971, however, Caspar (Cap) Weinberger, deputy director of OMB, wrote Nixon that the cuts were going too far. He pointed out that “there is real merit to the future of NASA, and to its proposed programs.” To keep cutting NASA would give comfort to those “at home and abroad” who say “our best years are behind us, that we are turning inward. . . and voluntarily starting to give up our super-power status, and our desire to maintain world superiority.” The United States, he argued, should “be able to afford something besides increased welfare, programs to repair our cities, or Appalachian relief and the like.”47

Nixon wrote a note on Weinberger’s memo: “I agree with Cap.” Subsequently, George Shultz, now the budget director, was informed that “the president ap­proved Mr. Weinberger’s plan to find enough reductions in other programs to pay for continuing NASA at generally the 3.3-3.4 billion dollar level, or about 400 to 500 million dollars more than the present planning target.”48

Fletcher did not know about the exchange, nor did OMB staff, and they continued to fight the remainder of the year, with Fletcher forced more and more to couch the shuttle’s rationale in cost-benefit terms, striking deals with the Department of Defense as a shuttle user, and making various technical com­promises to save money. But by the end of the year, it was clear that NASA was being “stabilized” in line with the Weinberger-Nixon-Shultz exchange. On January 5, 1972, Fletcher and Low flew to meet Nixon at his western White House in San Clemente, California. There, Nixon told them that “space flight is here to stay” and publicly announced that NASA was going to develop a reusable space shuttle. This was a multibillion-dollar, long-term commitment.49

Without question, this decision saved human spaceflight, and possibly NASA as an independent agency. The shuttle decision was “the central space choice of the 1970s.” It meant that for the remainder of the decade “the United States would carry out those space missions that could be afforded within a fixed NASA budget after Shuttle development costs had been paid.”50 While essen­tial to NASA, the shuttle decision was a mixed blessing. It secured a measure of agency stability overall, but it constrained all other programs. Also, the shuttle provided services to low-Earth orbit. It was not about exploration of deep space. The exploration missions now became the sole prerogative of the robotic sci­ence program.

The Viking project in particular emerged as the de facto flagship for NASA’s exploration effort in the first half of the 1970s. To be sure, there were other mis­sions to the planets in effect or on the drawing board. But Viking stood out in this period as an exploration priority in scale and purpose. Viking was exciting to scientists and also a magnet for the media and public because of its search for life. Thanks to Mariner 9, there was a new anticipation for the quest. And thanks to the shuttle decision, NASA had a fighting chance to get the resources to make it possible.

The problem was that Carter’s budget, released at the beginning of 1979, had no money for any new planetary missions. Although holding back on Mars—about which there was still division as to what to propose in the near term—NASA had hoped to begin work on a mission to Venus, as well as one to Halley’s Comet. The Halley’s Comet mission was seen as an opportunity to take advantage of Halley’s once-in-a-generation return to Earth’s vicinity. When Carter elimi­nated any new start in planetary science, NASA had to accommodate Venus, Halley’s Comet, and Mars within a budgetary category allowing discretionary spending for exploring possible future work. That category now was taxed to the full and then some. Hinners and Murray had to decide on priorities, and Mars gave way to Venus and Halley’s Comet.33

Abruptly, almost all work was cancelled at JPL on Mars. “We are not cutting back on Mars work because of diminishing interest in Mars or in the follow-up [to the Viking] mission,” said Geoffrey Briggs, who had taken over as acting director of the Office of Space Science and Applications’s Planetary Division. “Although the planning and design of a new Mars mission is being reduced to a fairly low level, we will be maintaining to a much higher level the analysis of Viking Mars data we now have.”34

Steve Squyres, a recent Cornell PhD, who had been inspired by Sagan and other Viking researchers, ran into contrary advice from various senior plan­etary scientists. “Don’t focus on Mars,” he was told. It was a career “risk,” they said.35 The atmosphere at JPL was such that many scientists were discouraged from pursuing Mars work. John Beckman, planetary program manager at JPL, declared, “Our knowledge of Mars now vastly outreaches our knowledge of Venus and other planets, and it’s time to even up our knowledge and balance our approach.” He said he doubted NASA would get back to Mars until the 1990s.36 Daniel McCleese, a young scientist at JPL, recalls that when he talked up Mars, “I ran into a very, very strong pushback from NASA, along the lines of ‘We’ve gone to Mars with Viking. It is a dead planet, no longer very interesting to NASA, and we are headed for the outer planets.’ ”37

At the end of 1979, Carter’s OMB called for no new starts in planetary science for a second year in a row. This was a decision that had implications not only for Mars but extending to other robotic science programs as well. Frosch appealed to Carter, who forced Frosch to choose among various projects that might get a go-ahead. Frosch was not about to sacrifice an astronomy mission, the Gamma Ray Observatory, for a Halley’s Comet project, the priority for Murray and other solar system researchers. The president said he also favored the Gamma Ray Observatory because of his interest in black holes, about which he had been reading of late.38 Planetary exploration was put in a position secondary to astronomy missions aimed at the cosmos. The mission to Halley’s Comet was not going to happen, at least one led by the United States. There was a sharp disconnect between Carter’s avowed personal excitement about space explora­tion and his spending decisions.

Whatever potential NASA had for a Viking follow-on was lost in the transi­tion from Ford to Carter and NASA’s continuing ambivalence about what to do next. The ambivalence arose from the fact that most Mars advocates wanted to

take the next steps beyond Viking—a rover and then MSR. But NASA leaders also knew they could not possibly sell such an ambitious mission in the political environment the agency faced.

As it became obvious in succeeding weeks that Mars Observer was hopelessly lost, Goldin established a panel to determine what had gone wrong. Eventually, the panel held that the immediate culprit behind the demise of Observer was most likely a “massive rupture in its propulsion system.”26 More broadly, NASA was seen to have erred in thinking that the technology it used successfully in Earth orbiting would be easily adapted to Mars. The differences in require­ments were much greater than anticipated.27 Meanwhile, Goldin established another panel to chart where NASA would go next in Mars exploration. He put Charles Elachi, assistant director of JPL, in charge. He also appointed Sagan to this panel.28

Goldin turned to Sagan, as one true believer turned to another, for advice and encouragement. Sagan felt as did Goldin and Huntress—that NASA should go to Mars at every opportunity, meaning every 26 months. He also pressed Goldin to revive the search for life on Mars and elsewhere in the universe. Within NASA, Goldin consulted especially with Huntress. Right after the fail­ure, they huddled over how to deal with the media and then how to persevere in their goals. “Goldin didn’t beat me down,” Huntress remembered. “His ques­tion was: ‘What are we going to do? We need to fix this program. We can’t go back on our commitment to Mars.’ ”29

There was no thought by Goldin to abandoning Mars, as had happened after Viking. Goldin told his agency and the Mars community not to be depressed. The accident could be an opportunity, he said. Goldin stressed to the media and virtually everyone else that NASA would go back to Mars, and do so as soon as possible, but in the “right” way, meaning FBC. Here was the chance to show­case what his approach could mean, and to do so on the most important and visible stage, namely, that of Mars.30 Not long after Observer’s failure, he went to Arizona State University. He addressed a group of scientists and graduate students who were depressed in feeling years of work had been obliterated in the Mars Observer demise. Don’t be glum, an upbeat Goldin told the gathering. He called the loss of Observer the best thing ever to happen to the Mars program. He proclaimed that it marked the dawn of a new era in Mars research.31

For NASA and the Mars community, the instruments on Mars Observer were seen as vital to building on Viking and setting the stage for what came next. As advisors went through various options, Goldin and Huntress settled on replacing the proposed MESUR network of landers with a new Mars Surveyor Program. In this program, instruments that had been grouped together on Mars Observer would be separated and flown on a series of FBC—that is, smaller— spacecraft.32 As it evolved, the planned Mars Surveyor Program “would send two low-cost spacecraft—an orbiter and a lander—to Mars every 26 months over the course of ten years.” Each mission would be capped at a cost of $175 million and be limited to three years in development. It “would address science objectives centered on understanding Mars’ climate, resources, and the search for water and life.” The agency hoped eventually to send a robotic envoy to the surface which would be capable of collecting samples of Martian terrain and returning them to Earth.33

Goldin and Huntress sold this “program line” to OMB. Discovery was a model and precedent. They stressed the importance of continuity in Mars ex­ploration. Also, Huntress commented, “We sold it to OMB on the grounds we could get more science done in a less costly way.”34 Rather than fretting over Mars Observer, NASA leaders used the accident to build momentum for a new Mars program that carried the FBC stamp.

In selling the Mars Surveyor Program, it was in their interest to emphasize the contrast with Mars Observer. A mission can be priced at different amounts, depending on what is included, ranging from a low cost for only development of the spacecraft to a high “lifetime” cost including launch and operations. As Fisk saw it, now sitting on the sidelines at the University of Michigan, Mars Observer was a $500 million mission. Including virtually everything, the cost went up to $980 million. “But it was called a $1 billion failure to help Goldin sell faster, better, cheaper,” emphasized Fisk. It was, he said, “one of those rare situ­ations when an agency uses failure and a cost-overrun to advantage, and makes the overrun seem worse than it was.” The $1 billion cost, repeated continually, stuck.35

Age 52, Scott Hubbard was a longtime NASA official. With degrees in physics and astronomy, he had risen through the ranks of NASA-Ames and was associate director of that laboratory at the time he got his call from Goldin. A week after NASA announced Hubbard’s appointment, Stone at JPL reluctantly named Fir – ouz Naderi to be his counterpart as the single point of contact on Mars. Stone had wanted Naderi for a different assignment, but headquarters prevailed. It was made clear by Weiler’s deputy, Earle Huckins, that “Dan Goldin wanted the very best talent applied to fixing the Mars program.”49 Like Hubbard, Naderi was a veteran scientist-manager but had not been directly connected with the two Mars failures. The two men—Hubbard and Naderi—did not know one another, but they “clicked.” Hubbard, however, kept reminding Naderi that he was a “NASA-man,” not a “JPL-man.” Naderi went out of his way to come across in that way in his dealings with Hubbard—and JPL. There was much anxiety on Stone’s part that JPL would be punished for the failures and lose its prized position as lead center for planetary missions.50 He had reason to be worried, as there were severe critics ofJPL in NASA Headquarters. One senior official urged Goldin to replace JPL top management.51

The third key member of the recovery team was James Garvin. Garvin was a scientist at NASA-Goddard who had been a graduate student at Brown under Tim Mutch, the Viking investigator and briefly NASA associate administra­tor for science. Garvin had worked on Mars Observer and had been leading the Decadal Planning Team for Goldin on NASA’s long-term future. Goldin himself asked Garvin to join Hubbard and Naderi. Garvin was to play a major role in developing a strong connection between the team and the broader Mars technical community.52 Hubbard wanted to reach beyond NASA and its vari­ous elite advisors to Mars investigators generally. Garvin was to help assemble a series of workshops with Mars scientists who thereby would provide input to the recovery team’s decisions. These workshops would evolve into a novel mechanism, the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), which would become an ongoing connection between NASA and the broader Mars research community.

Finally, Hubbard asked two Viking veterans, Jim Martin and Gentry Lee, to serve as advisors. They would be the core of Hubbard’s “kitchen cabinet.” Weiler had already set some guidelines for the new program, but it would be up to Hubbard and his team to determine pace and specific missions. The quest for life—past or present—was still the ultimate goal of the robotic program. Getting to it, however, would be through a different strategy.

There were two Mars decisions that came up almost immediately in April for NASA which were important to recovery. One was forced on NASA by the schedule. The other was one Hubbard personally pushed to help free his team to develop a restructured program.53

Weiler took the lead on the first.54 Under the now-suspended Mars Surveyor Program, NASA was to launch an orbiter and lander every two years. The next window was coming up very quickly—2001. JPL and contractor Lockheed Mar­tin were building the spacecraft. What was to be done?

Weiler reasoned that the orbiter had failed in 1999 owing to the bizarre mis­take in communication between contractor and JPL over metric/English navi­gation units. The orbiter had been technically sound as far as anyone knew. On the other hand, the lander, which had crashed, required significant modification.

After getting advice from Hubbard and others, Weiler gave a go-ahead to develop the orbiter and cancelled the lander. The termination decision did not please Lockheed Martin or JPL, but served to send a message Weiler wanted to transmit—that he was taking more authority over the program.55 The days when decision making was largely delegated and headquarters stood back, downsizing as it did so, were over. Weiler was intent on building up a more robust Science Mission Directorate, and he did not intend to be a passive manager. The 2001 orbiter mission was called Odyssey, in honor of Arthur C. Clarke’s book and screenplay for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The next decision was the indefinite postponement of the MSR mission. Weiler had indicated that it was coming, but Hubbard made sure it came right away. An early MSR had driven decision making on Mars since the program reorientation following the meteorite excitement. Hubbard did not want it to drive the recovery effort. When would MSR come? Hubbard believed that MSR was the right goal for the robotic program—but it had to come only when “ready,” and that would probably be beyond the 10-year program he and his associates were designing. Naderi called the proposed accelerated MSR mission “science fiction.”56 Hubbard detected at least four significant technological bar­riers to MSR success. He went to JPL and confronted MSR’s project manager, O’Neil. He pointed out the technical challenges. He asked, “What makes you so sure you can overcome these problems?” In addition, Hubbard challenged the MSR cost estimate. Then at $750 million, it was hopelessly low in his view.57

Hubbard subsequently went to a large workshop of Mars scientists, armed with a new sample return estimate. There may have been 65 to 80 people there, as he recalled. Most of them fervently embraced MSR as a goal as soon as pos­sible. But Hubbard posed this question to the group: “The current estimate we have is that MSR will cost $2 billion plus. Where do I go to get a sample worth that?” No one in the audience had an answer.58

The next step for Hubbard was to go to Weiler, who agreed with his position to put MSR on indefinite hold. Finally, Hubbard and Weiler met with Goldin, who had been the champion of the accelerated MSR mission. Before we go for MSR, Hubbard told the administrator, “you’ve got to have scientific under­standing.” But, he emphasized, the Mars community, including the astrobiolo – gists, did not have that understanding. Moreover, to get scientific answers would take the development of “four missing technologies.” There simply wasn’t the knowledge or time to make an early launch. MSR would have to be deferred for some years, he explained. Typically, Goldin responded to statements about dif­ficulties with “You’re not trying hard enough,” But not this time. Goldin could not have liked what he heard, but he did not object. The message subsequently went to Stone: “You must go along!”59 The MSR project was cancelled.

It fell to Hubbard to break the news about MSR to the French. Goldin had enlisted them in planning for an MSR mission. The French were not happy,

nor were other potential international partners. Hubbard left the door open to possible later participation, but not in the near term.60

Griffin got off to a rapid start, making a series of decisions, technical and orga­nizational, relating primarily to human spaceflight. He was determined to nar­row the four-year gap between the shuttle and its successor to one or two years and took close control of decision making regarding that front. He ordered relevant officials to plan in accord with the Moon-Mars priority, including the head of the Science Directorate. Although he said he would review O’Keefe’s Hubble servicing termination and ultimately reversed O’Keefe on this matter, he gave the science enterprise far less attention than he did human spaceflight. However, he did listen to what he had heard from critics of the O’Keefe-Diaz “strategic” approach.

As the Griffin-led review process of NASA programs proceeded in Washing­ton, NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity continued to perform remarkably well on Mars. They were already well beyond their 90-day prescribed lifetimes and still going strongly. They were traveling further and reaching higher than expected. They were viewing scenes never before observed and sending these images back to Earth for scientists to analyze and the general public to witness.

Spirit’s and Opportunity’s achievements were based on decisions made years before. There is a long latency between decisions and their execution in space policy. Thus, decisions made at NASA years before would influence what Grif­fin could or could not do in his tour. In May, in his characteristically direct and laconic way, he said that NASA “can’t afford to do everything on its plate.” Looking for efficiencies, he sent a document to Congress on May 11, describ­ing sweeping changes affecting most NASA programs. He told Congress that human space exploration would trump the science budget only “under the most extreme budget pressure.” At a Senate hearing the next day, he stated, “We have tried to be sensitive to the priorities of the affected research communities and have listened carefully to their input.” He said NASA had responded accord­ingly.5 The overall spending level for space and Earth science was unchanged. However, he said there would be shifts within the science envelope.

What the “shifts” to which Griffin alluded meant for Mars became clear in July. Figueroa had “filled out” the 10-year MEP with a 2009 telecommunica­tions satellite. NASA now killed plans for that satellite. McCuistion explained the decision as driven by a diminished need for a dedicated relay at Mars and enlarged funding requirements of astronomy, Earth science, and planets other than Mars. The “core” program that Hubbard and his team had designed in the era of Goldin remained. But the “augmented” program that came with Bush’s human exploration initiative under O’Keefe was deferred. The “safe on Mars” element that linked robotic with human spaceflight died. The funding wedge O’Keefe had instituted for the Mars program to reach $1 billion in 2010 was cut 50%. Diaz made the cuts under Griffin’s direction.6

Joseph Alexander, staff director of the NAS SSB, applauded the rebalancing decision. He pointed out that Mars exploration had long commanded a large share of NASA’s space science spending and said he was pleased to see Griffin’s restoration of balance to the science program. “In the grand scheme of things there were people who felt that the emphasis on Mars was starting to come at the expense of other areas,” Alexander noted.

The Planetary Society’s Friedman was not happy with the downplaying of Mars. He protested that “taking Mars out of the exploration program, as was done in the budget cuts, and pulling back on the infrastructure for the eventual Mars outpost, could create another dead-ended program with no destination and no public support.”7 What Griffin was doing was sacrificing the longer-term Mars requirements for more immediate needs of other science programs. Mars Sample Return, for example, was pushed farther into the indefinite future.

Even as decisions went against more distant Mars interests, Mars spaceflights already scheduled moved ahead. Due up in August was the Mars Reconnais­sance Orbiter. “It’s the most powerful suite of instruments ever sent to another planet,” said McCuistion. “The MRO spacecraft is many things,” commented Richard Zurek, the JPL primary scientist for the mission. “It’s a weather satel­lite, it’s a geological surveyor, and it’s a scout for future missions.” James Garvin, now NASA’s chief scientist at headquarters, called the August 12 launch “utterly stupendous.” However, while excited about MRO, Mars advocates could not help but express regret that MSR was “still only a dream.”8

Weiler’s first task was to consider any changes in managing MSL, delayed two years. Naderi, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars director, had been suc­ceeded a few years earlier by Fuk Li. The consensus in NASA was that Li was hamstrung in overseeing MSL by Stern.2 Indeed, JPL and the Mars science community pointed fingers at Stern for many of MSL’s problems. The conse­quence was that the only significant personnel change Weiler made was to move the JPL project manager, Cook, to a deputy slot. Pete Theisinger, the project manager for Spirit and Opportunity, and one of JPL’s most respected managers, was put in charge. The fact that Cook remained attested to the fact that NASA and JPL held him in high regard and believed that his expertise was essential. But NASA leaders also wanted to show Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and others that it would not tolerate cost overruns.3

Cook soon developed a plan for Theisinger, JPL, and NASA showing how the various technical issues that had led to delay could be mitigated. The plan was approved up the line, and additional organizational and personnel adjust­ments made. Then, JPL got to work in making the technical improvements. Actuators were the prime culprit, but so also were avionics, sampling instru­ments, and other technologies. As Cook reflected in a paper he subsequently wrote, “As the project got bigger and more complex, the problems grew not linearly, but geometrically.”4

It was not long before NASA and JPL began feeling fortunate that the deci­sion to delay was made. But the cost increases in MSL went beyond the $400 million calculated at the time the decision was announced in December 2008. Soon MSL was up to $2.5 billion in total costs. The good news was that some of MSL’s harshest critics, such as Lee at JPL, were seeing MSL as viable for a 2011 launch.5

As Weiler saw the prospects of MSL improve, he put more money into the Mars program. He tried to replenish it after years of cutbacks. But he needed

to plan for the post-MSL future and how to pay for it. He saw a Mars Together strategy as imperative.

The Mars scientific community, led by the Planetary Society, American Geo­physical Union, and American Astronomical Society, reacted sharply to the budget cuts. They focused on Congress and the White House to try to restore the money taken from planetary science in general and Mars in particular. The Planetary Society called its campaign “Save Our Science.” It generated thou­sands of signatures on petitions and e-mails of protest. The Society’s leader, Bill Nye, personally went from California to Washington to speak to key congres­sional staffers and lawmakers.8 Congressman Schiff, representing the district including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was active lobbying his colleagues on the House appropriations subcommittee responsible for NASA’s budget.

On February 29, congressional hearings were held to consider the president’s budget request for NASA. The House appropriations subcommittee, on which Schiff served, was critical. Schiff was a Democrat, but a bipartisan alliance at­tacked the Mars cuts. Obama’s science advisor Holdren, testifying before the subcommittee, endured a fierce grilling. He explained that the White House and senior members of Congress (primarily Senate Democrats) had reached agreement on NASA priorities. These were the heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and its companion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Commercial Crew Program for independent access to the International Space Station by 2017. With a proposed NASA budget less than the current fiscal year, something had to give, he explained, and it was the plan­etary program, especially Mars. The lawmakers were not sympathetic.9

When Bolden came before the subcommittee, he was similarly lambasted.

Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) had a solution for the Mars problem: transfer money from an administration priority, commercial crew, to Mars. Wolf was an avid critic of commercial crew. Bolden resisted such an argument and empha­sized that NASA was still aiming for Mars, but in a different way.10

The White House was defensive and allowed two major Office of Manage­ment and Budget officials involved with NASA oversight to meet with NRC planetary scientists. The administration wanted to make it clear OMB was not against big science flagships, as was being alleged. Paul Shawcross, branch chief for science and space, and Joydip Kundu, who handled NASA’s science budget, told a joint meeting of the NRC’s Space Studies Board and its Aeronautical and Space Engineering Board that OMB had no bias against flagships. They did not draw the line at $1 billion. OMB looked, rather, at budget coherence.11 That reassurance did not particularly ameliorate scientists’ feelings.

The House subcommittee subsequently provided a modest increment in Mars funding, as did its Senate counterpart. The House panel also required the NRC to certify that the new Mars program would lead to MSR. Other­wise, it said, the money should go for a Europa mission (NRC’s second priority for a flagship mission). The congressional moves were part of a larger political struggle between Congress and the president in setting space priorities. But given the political dynamics of the time, there was no way of knowing when Congress would pass a budget and whether additional funds recommended for Mars would survive the larger legislative process.

When the Soviet Union put Sputnik into space in 1957, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a protracted Cold War struggle. The issue was which political/economic system was superior and constituted the wave of the future which other nations would follow. Technology was a symbol of national capacity to lead. It was emblematic of national power.6 Sputnik came as a great psychological victory for the Soviets, even though President Eisenhower down­played its military significance. But to most observers it seemed to indicate not only rocket-lifting capacity but national power generally—not only in military missiles, but also in scientific and technical education. Even fellow Republicans were angered that the Eisenhower administration had not been sufficiently vigi­lant and had let Sputnik happen. It grated that the Soviet Union was the first nation in space. America’s pride was bent and its prestige tarnished.

Eisenhower appointed a science advisor and science advisory committee in part to help him establish America’s course in space. Although Eisenhower did not want to engage in a “race,” he wanted the United States to be competitive, and that would take some time. The Soviet Union followed up Sputnik with other successes, while the U. S. effort floundered. There was no existing space agency. To the extent that there was space-related activity at all, it was found in only a few places in government and was an uncertain priority in all.

One place was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), an old agency that went back to World War 1 and housed a number of research laboratories to advance the field of aeronautics. Another place was the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD). There was a scientific group in the Navy (Naval Re­search Laboratory) active in space research and poised to launch an American satellite as part of a large international science undertaking at the time called the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Another body in DOD consisted of von Braun’s German rocketeers, who were working for the army on mis­siles. Also active was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which served the army via management by the California Institute of Technology. The political consensus that emerged in late 1957 and 1958 was that the American space effort was too fragmented and low priority and a new agency for which space science and technology was the mission had to be established.

Eisenhower was strongly influenced by his science advisors, as well as his own predilections, to establish a civilian space agency. The scientists feared that if DOD became the de facto space agency, it would concentrate space research on strictly military missions, and secrecy and classification would be the rule. The scientists immediately saw tremendous opportunities for space research in an agency with a nonmilitary orientation. Indeed, they wanted an agency with an agenda scientists could influence. Eisenhower, feeling pressures for space-oriented weapons which eventually helped compel him to warn against a “military-industrial complex,” agreed that a civilian agency was best for the country.

The NACA, with its 8 ,ooo-person civil servant staff, was selected to be the core of the new agency. NACA brought with it three major laboratories, or field centers: Ames in California, Lewis in Ohio, and Langley in Virginia. Other facilities would be grafted onto the new agency from DOD. These would in­clude JPL, the von Braun team, and a naval science group. Von Braun and his associates would form the nucleus of the new Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The navy group would be the keystone for the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

As the White House and Congress worked on enabling legislation for the new agency, they decided that the new entity would have to have a broad charter in science and technology which would give it unusual flexibility. Space was seen as a new frontier, and no one was sure what it would entail. What was clear was that everyone wanted the agency to move quickly and begin competing with the Soviets as soon as possible. There was a general feeling that NACA was sluggish and bureaucratic.

Hence, there was attention paid, directly and indirectly, to the question of bureaucratic power. This was exemplified most clearly in giving the new agency a single leader. NACA was led by a committee and director under the commit­tee. The other leading technical agency of the time was the Atomic Energy Commission. Again, there was plural leadership. The political architects draft­ing legislation wanted an individual to be in charge, one clearly responsible and accountable. The original bill created a National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). The word “Agency” was changed to “Administration.” The head would be called not a “director,” as originally written, but an “Administra­tor.” “Administration” and “Administrator” seemed to the political founders more substantial terms for an agency that would be charged with leading the U. S. drive against the Soviets, and which would have to work with formidable bureaucratic rivals, such as DOD.7

There was no question that NASA was going to have a strong robotic science emphasis, even if the human spaceflight side of the agency came to be dominant. Eisenhower’s science advisors and other scientists who testified during hear­ings leading up to the NASA bill pressed hard to have a science mission that was explicit in NASA’s legislative charter. That it did, the charter saying simply that the new agency should carry out “the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.” The legislation moved into law with relative ease, given the sense of urgency. On October i, 1958, NASA officially opened for business. The generality of the legislation and anxiety of the country meant that the first NASA Administrator, T. Keith Glennan, would have a lot of discretion in how he went about his job and organized NASA.

The shuttle decision provided a measure of stability for the agency. However, there were still annual budget fights between NASA and the Office of Man­agement and Budget, and Fletcher was clear about his need to protect Viking, NASA’s top priority after the shuttle.1 Fletcher’s personal interest in Viking was symbolized by a globe of Mars he featured prominently in his office.2 He was willing to move money from lesser NASA priorities to Viking to assure success and personally looked into technical matters affecting development.

The approach NASA took with Viking was “Apollo-style.” Murray, a con­tinuing critic, called this method the “great leap forward” strategy. It was a “technology-forcing” approach, he charged. Murray preferred the steadier, gradual, “evolutionary” style of Mariner. Sagan, for one, argued that the incre­mental strategy was not ambitious enough. The reason was that the end—to find extraterrestrial life—justified the means. NASA’s strategy could be even bolder than it was in his view.3 For Sagan and others in the exobiology camp, Viking, not the shuttle, was NASA’s most important project.

Fletcher saw Viking as the beginning of a program of robotic Mars landers, each more sophisticated than the next, leading to the return of a Martian soil and rock sample. In May 1972, Deputy Administrator Low told Naugle that Fletcher wanted Naugle to brief him on the state of NASA’s thinking about Mars Sample Return. In August, following the briefing, Naugle established a

study group to start a planning process.4 Fletcher was looking ahead, with a multiproject Viking program in mind. However, there was no approved Mars mission beyond this Viking mission. It had to succeed in its search for life, or NASA’s Mars program would face a crisis. This crisis would be in maintaining cohesion among Mars advocates, much less sustaining political support within the space policy sector and among national policymakers.