Category Why Mars

As Viking got under way, Nixon became president, on January 20, 1969. He retained Paine and eventually appointed him NASA Administrator, but he gave him little or no access to advocate his post-Apollo vision. Paine wanted to advance a comprehensive post-Apollo program, the central element of which would be human spaceflight to Mars. It would feature also a space station, a space shuttle, and a lunar base.27

In July, NASA launched Apollo 11 to the Moon and Neil Armstrong took “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a remarkable moment that brought the world’s people briefly together. It was an epic mile­stone in human history. However, the euphoria over Apollo did not transfer to post-Apollo. When Nixon and Paine flew to meet the returning astronauts, Nixon—in one of his few conversations with Paine—stressed that he supported NASA, but money was tight given the continuance of the Vietnam War and domestic economic troubles.28

Paine tried hard to use Apollo 11 to generate public enthusiasm for a post – Apollo human Mars mission. But winning the race to the Moon removed much of the competitive urgency space had. Paine hoped the 1969 Mars flybys (Mari­ners 6 and 7) would help his cause. Instead, they actually hurt to some extent. These flybys, which went up in late July and August, provided the best view yet of Mars, but like Mariner 4, they revealed a planet hostile to life. The media praised the twin probes, but some commentators asked why Paine would want to send astronauts to such a desolate planet. Indeed, critics said that robotic flight could do Mars reconnaissance relatively cheaply, and hence human flight was not necessary.29

Getting Congressional Support

While Paine labored to promote the goal of human exploration of Mars, it was left mainly to Naugle to sell Viking politically. He had been working the scien­tific community. He negotiated with the Bureau of the Budget (BOB), renamed Office ofManagement and Budget (OMB) in 1970. He now looked to Congress. Paine’s decision to go for the most ambitious Viking option more than doubled the cost. Project Manager Martin told Naugle in August 1969 that the cost would be over $600 million. Naugle then added $150 million as a contingency from his own reserves and went to see Rep. Joseph Karth (D-MN). Karth was chair of the House subcommittee that had authorized Viking, and he was the project’s most influential champion in Congress.

When Naugle told Karth that the project originally sold for $364 million was now $750 million, the lawmaker exploded. He accused NASA of “low-balling the cost to get Viking’s ‘feet in the door.’ ” He gave Naugle “a very rough time,” as the NASA official had anticipated. Naugle responded that NASA was just getting started on the project, and if Karth felt strongly, he should cancel it now, before major development costs were incurred.

Naugle had lived in Minnesota for 10 years and understood Karth’s problems in justifying space expenditures to his fiscally conservative district. However, the Soviet competition for Mars loomed large for Karth. Naugle recalled that he knew that Karth would not want to be the one who cancelled Viking and let the Soviet Union be the first to soft land on Mars. Viking stayed in the NASA bud­get.30 With Karth leading the charge in Congress, NASA had sufficient allies on the Hill to keep Viking going. The political environment, however, was harsh, and Paine was not doing well with his campaign for human flight to Mars with Nixon. Viking’s fate could not be separated from NASA’s future.

Viking had failed! At least that was what many critics believed. NASA knew better. There was much that Viking contributed in new knowledge about Mars. But the agency and the Mars community were deeply disappointed on the life front, the central purpose of the mission. In the wake of Viking, NASA debated intensely how Mars fit into its future. NASA was getting desperate for “new starts.” Hinners, associate administrator for science, warned Congress that without starting new flight projects in the pipeline NASA’s planetary program was on a “going out of business” trajectory.[1] NASA had geared much of its strategy to Mars, in hopes that Viking would yield evidence of life. NASA had believed that it had ample reason to do so. It did not have firm plans as to what it would do if it did not find life.

After internal debate, NASA decided it needed to go beyond a lander to a rover, what it called Viking 3. But that would cost over $1 billion at a time when NASA had on its agenda the Hubble Space Telescope and an outer-planet mis­sion, Galileo. NASA deferred a Mars decision, and Mars went on the agency’s back burner. Outside advocates subsequently lobbied for renewing the Mars dream, but it took eight years, from 1976 to 1984, for NASA to launch a new start to the Red Planet—Mars Observer. The design and objective of the new mission were vastly different from the Viking 3 vision. NASA lowered its ambi­tion to what it could get its political masters to accept. The Mars advocacy coali­

tion was weakened by Viking’s results after so much talk about life. Moreover, there was ample opposition to Mars from those favoring other space priorities.

Ford: What Next for Mars?

In telephone calls congratulating NASA for Viking 1 and then Viking 2’s suc­cessful landings, President Gerald Ford twice asked senior agency officials about future Mars efforts. Naugle, after Viking 2, explained that NASA had been wait­ing on what Viking produced before defining and proposing a follow-on project. Naugle said there were three options NASA was considering. One was a Viking with wheels that could rove rather than be stationary. Another was to go back with better instruments to unravel the surface chemistry puzzle. A third was to bring a sample of Mars soil back for analysis in Earth based-laboratories. Ford replied that he assumed he’d be hearing from Fletcher at some point on NASA’s plans.2

There were opportunities for Mars launches in 1981 and 1984, and decisions had to be made soon to take advantage of them. Could Viking (a single project) be turned into a multimission Mars program? Should it be? Martin was actively promoting the idea of a mobile Viking, not just to superiors up to Fletcher, but externally. At a news conference preceding the Viking 2 descent early in Sep­tember, Martin declared, “We believe it is possible to make a mobile lander. We believe it is possible to launch by 1981, if such a program is approved.” Martin said that “we have learned very exciting things from the surface of the planet and I believe we need to now take advantage of that knowledge.” When asked about Martin’s comments, Naugle stated that NASA and the Office of Management and Budget were negotiating next-year budget proposals and no decisions had been made, but the agency was “looking hard” at the rover issue. Martin was putting the price of a Viking 3 between $350 and $450 million plus launch costs.3 Outside NASA, Sagan argued for a rover. As he later wrote, I

Not all Mars scientists agreed that a rover was the logical follow-on mis­sion. Tim Mutch, the geologist from Brown University who had directed Viking lander camera activity, was not so sure this rover approach was the best next step in Mars research. Klein, NASA’s chief biologist, was sure it was not a fruit­ful approach. He said he felt he had to “speak out against the rover concept.” Traveling around Mars taking biological samples would not necessarily resolve the question of life there, he told the media.5

By mid-September, NASA had settled its internal debate in favor of a rover mission as a Viking follow-on. It did not want to repeat the existing Viking mis­sion, but go beyond, to take the next step in exploration. The rover would make measurements, take photographs, and collect Martian soil samples that would be returned to Earth through a later Mars Sample Return mission. Naugle said that NASA was thinking in terms of an MSR mission that would launch as early as 1986.6 The rover might well be nuclear powered to assure it longevity and range. The disappointing results from the Viking soil experiments were coun­tered to some extent by Viking 2 orbiter findings that indicated that the perma­nent northern polar cap of Mars was composed entirely of frozen water. If that was indeed the case, there might be water elsewhere, maybe in the permafrost. Where there was water, there was the potential for life.7

Proponents of Viking 3 were calling for use of the 1981 opportunity, but this would depend on NASA’s getting adequate money in its FY 1978 budget. Fletcher made it known that NASA was considering a Viking 3. “We must go with what is going to sell [to the public] in addition to what is popular with sci­entists,”8 he declared. Fletcher said he might discuss Viking 3 with White House officials or at least during the budget dealings under way with the administra­tion. A possible complication in managing a Viking 3 project had been resolved with decisions about center roles made recently.

These decisions made the Jet Propulsion Laboratory lead center for future planetary missions, assigning Langley other tasks. Pickering had recently waged a determined campaign to get this designation for JPL prior to his retirement in 1976.9 Langley did not strongly contest the matter, as Cortright had retired in 1975 and many in the institution had found Viking the “tail that wagged the dog” of Langley’s historic aeronautics emphasis.10 Although he remained a strong advocate for Viking 3, Martin was now uncertain about his own role in view of the assignment of lead center for planetary exploration to JPL.11

The problem for NASA was that by October 1976 it was clear that a Viking 3 rover mission would be another $1 billion project, and NASA officials were admitting that “in the absence of the spectacular selling point of life on Mars, it would be difficult to persuade Congress to finance such a project.” “If we had found life, or even a reasonable hint, we would have gone berserk,” Naugle re­called. “We would have sent landers at every opportunity.”12 Even Fletcher was now expressing disappointment and a sense of lost opportunity. “If you found life,” he declared, “you might be making a manned mission to Mars before too long. But we weren’t that lucky.”13

With the November 9 Viking news conference and the translation of scien­tists’ “ambiguity” into a public perception of failure to find life, NASA’s chal­lenge in defining and selling a Viking 3 worsened. Its plans for making a plea for additional funds rested primarily on Viking’s exobiology results, and those results had been disappointing to virtually everyone. One NASA official, Oran Nicks, wrote, “It had been a little like waiting for Christmas as a kid, only to find on Christmas morning that Santa did not come through.”14 As the projected spending plan for the succeeding year made its way through the White House budgetary process, NASA was still equivocating about Mars exploration. It did not negotiate with OMB a specific Viking follow-on mission funding in its pro­posed budget as of mid-November.

President Ford would be evaluating the fiscal 1978 budget soon, and NASA would have an opportunity to “appeal” beyond OMB to the president to make last-minute changes before the budget was finalized.15 President Ford was at­tentive to Mars thanks to Viking, and he had virtually invited a proposal from Fletcher for a successor project. But this would be Ford’s last budget, owing to his loss to Jimmy Carter in the November election. The initiative would have to come from NASA, and it had to be a strong case to get more money on appeal.

The conversations about an add-on for Mars took place in the context of a growing scientific pessimism and debate about NASA’s finding life on Mars via a rover. For many scientists, the biological explanation might have won over the chemical explanation of results if the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrom­eter had found organic molecules. Even Murray, longtime doubter, now JPL director, admitted he might have changed his mind. But Sagan opined that too much was being placed on the GCMS experiment. The positive biology experi­ments were “a thousand times” more sensitive than the negative GCMS test. But Lederberg, Sagan’s ally, was not backing him up this time. “Occam’s Razor clearly points toward a chemical hypothesis,” he said.16

Many scientists with outer-planetary and telescope interests worried that pushing too hard for Viking 3 would jeopardize non-Mars science missions.

Mars scientists themselves divided over strategy. Sagan and Gerald Wasserburg, a Caltech geophysicist, attended a NASA science advisory committee meeting, and their altercation illuminated the split among scientists who were advocates of Mars research. They both reported on work with the National Academy of Science’s Space Science Board on Viking follow-on options. Wasserburg argued that NASA should de-emphasize “search for life” in future Mars missions in favor of physical and chemical science. He expressed a “horrible fear” that all future Mars missions would be jeopardized by continued ambiguous biology results. Sagan countered that the SSB panel displayed “differential timidity” in science priorities. The biology instruments could be improved, he argued, thereby strengthening the chances of finding life. Moreover, Sagan complained, the SSB panel was not representative of the exobiology community. Wasserburg disagreed strongly with Sagan, declaring that the SSB body had a full spectrum of views, from conservatives to “fanatics, like yourself.”17

The year 1992 began reasonably well for NASA from a White House budgetary standpoint. The president called for a 4.5% raise for the agency. Space science in particular was augmented, with a 9% increase.1 Congress, however, was less interested in giving NASA more funds and ordered the Science Directorate to cut back on its most expensive programs. Congress made it abundantly clear it would not grant the president’s request to fund his Moon-Mars initiative.

Who would lead NASA? The White House had come increasingly to believe that Richard Truly was not the Administrator it wanted at NASA’s helm. On February 10, days after Bush’s budget was announced, the president called Truly to the White House and forced him to resign. Mark Albrecht, National Space Council executive director, searched for a replacement, someone who would bring an enthusiasm to Bush’s Moon-Mars vision which Truly had not.

The man he found was Dan Goldin, an aerospace executive from California. Goldin turned out to be a NASA Administrator for whom Mars was “the” prior­ity. He might have to emphasize other programs for institutional reasons. The shuttle and especially the space station were utterly critical to NASA. But, in his heart and soul, Mars came first among his personal interests. He also had a personality—vision, self-assurance, drive, intensity—such that he could make a distinctive mark on the agency. Goldin was not an easy man for whom to work. But the science directors he appointed found they could realize their own goals

through him. Finally, it turned out that Goldin would set a record for longevity in the Administrator role. All those factors would make a positive difference for the robotic Mars exploration program. What had been a slow, painful climb up NASA’s agenda for Mars advocates after the Viking disappointment now turned into something quite different. Goldin was a dynamic advocate. Also, he wanted to use Mars exploration to showcase a managerial-technical strat­egy called “faster, better, cheaper” that fit the White House and congressional mood. Goldin intended to lead the agency and nation forward—to Mars. The result was the Mars Surveyor Program, the first program of sequential, inte­grated missions to the Red Planet since Mariner.

The advocacy coalition, for better or worse—and Goldin engendered many critics—had a powerful champion at NASA. He would strive mightily to remake the space-policy subsystem and enlist national policymakers in his quest for Mars.

The next mission came quickly, in line with FBC principles and the require­ments of an accelerated program. Mars Polar Lander was scheduled to land December 3. Although relatively small, MPL carried quite an assortment of equipment: “a pair of basketball-sized probes designed to shoot separately into the planet’s surface, cameras, a weather station, a robotic digging arm, a mini­lab for analyzing soil samples, and the first microphone sent to another world.” Also riding on MPL were NASA’s reputation, schedule, and hopes for an early MSR.21

Goldin, Weiler, and other top officials joined senior JPL managers and the MPL technical team December 3 at JPL. They crowded around computers in a central control room and awaited the signal telling them MPL had landed safely. The atmosphere was tense. Because of the earlier setback, NASA needed a victory to assure itself, the media, the public, and politicians that the MCO accident was an aberration.

At 3:30 p. m. the signal was supposed to come, but there was silence. The NASA officials and technical team waited, “frozen as statues,” as the minutes ticked on. Twenty minutes passed, and finally one NASA manager suggested a “leg stretch.” There would be another window for communication a little later. There was hope yet.

The group convened again for an opportunity beginning at 5:24 p. m. Again, there was silence. The expressions on the faces of those straining to hear some­thing from Mars were grim. After several more minutes, the window closed. There was now little doubt that something had gone terribly wrong. The third opportunity began at 11:08 p. m. that evening and closed at 12:30 a. m. The result was the same as the first two tries.22

The vigil continued episodically over the next several days. Senior NASA officials went back to Washington. After two weeks of repeated attempts to communicate, the agency and JPL admitted that MCO had failed.23 The mis­sion cost $165 million, not much by space standards, but the cost represented the new standard of FBC. There would have to be another board of inquiry. And this one would have to take a very hard look at the FBC approach to space missions.

Goldin had always said that FBC assumed that a small number of missions would fail. With risk and boldness came failure. But most missions would suc­ceed, he predicted, and NASA would thereby push forward the space frontier. But here was a case of two failures in a row, and both had to do with Mars. Mars was special, of maximum visibility to the public. For many in the media and po­litical community, it personified space exploration. For Goldin and many other space advocates, it was the heart of NASA’s mission.

The year 1999 had begun so optimistically with a surge in the Mars program. It ended with the program immobilized.

Just before Thanksgiving, Congress put virtually all spending bills for FY 2005 into a massive omnibus appropriations measure. The Bush administration lob­bied Congress hard to ensure that its priorities would prevail. Where NASA was concerned, the White House and O’Keefe had needed help from two ex­tremely influential legislators. One was Tom DeLay (R-TX), majority leader and representative from the Houston-area district where the Johnson Space Center was located. The other was Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a former O’Keefe mentor.

The result was to hold all discretionary spending not related to Defense and Homeland Security to a collective 1% increase over what the agencies had received in 2004. Other agencies were literally “taxed” to provide the larger increase Bush sought for NASA. NASA rose from $15.3 billion to $i6.i billion in spending. Moreover, the bill was written to provide O’Keefe maximum flex­ibility to reprogram money, to make sure the new mission got off to a strong start. Diaz stated that the new budget was good for his Science Directorate. It would provide for a “very robust science program,” he said.52

O’Keefe was elated with the financial victory and directed his troops to “de­liver.” To his regret, the Hubble controversy still festered, mightily. In December he received an interim report from an NAS panel that strongly urged a shuttle repair mission for Hubble, saying the robotic mission O’Keefe favored was so technically demanding that it was unlikely to be possible before Hubble’s crucial equipment expired. O’Keefe, however, would not be dealing with Hubble—or the Moon-Mars program and alleged “collateral damage.” On December 13, he announced he was resigning, effective in February 2005.53 He was headed for Louisiana State University as its chancellor.

That decision by Griffin to “run for the cliff” meant that additional money had to be spent on MSL to add personnel and their time to make a 2009 launch possible. Exasperated, looking for savings in other projects wherever he could find them, Stern and his planetary director, James Green, sat down and went through a list of SMD expenditures. They started with Mars activities, since the MSL problem was within the Mars program. Green characterized the effort as a way to “sweep” through the budgets of various missions to collect unspent money in the current fiscal year which could be redeployed to speed MSL. Stern saw the exercise as making the innocent pay for the sins of the guilty, a practice Stern believed was unsavory. At the same time, he felt there were projects whose science return was less than others. In Stern’s view, that group of diminishing science return included extended missions for Spirit and Opportunity.96

At Stern’s direction, on March 19, Green sent a letter to JPL ordering it to hold $4 million in unspent money from the MER account. This was money NASA expected not to be used in the current fiscal year and that would carry over to the next fiscal year if unspent. The amount was trivial, but symbolic for Stern in the sense that “Mars should pay for Mars.”97 The letter explicitly stated that the purpose was “to provide additional funds for Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) in fiscal year 2008, while determining if MSL will be able to achieve the established 2009 launch date.”98 Immediately, the letter leaked to the media, causing a firestorm of protest. Squyres declared that the cut, small though it was, would put one rover into hibernation and the other into part-time operation. The congressman whose district included JPL came to Spirit-Opportunity’s defense. This was Adam Schiff (D-CA), who happened to serve on the House Appropriations Committee that funded NASA.99

Griffin heard about the cut from the media, and he reacted quickly and publicly: “Closing down either of the rovers is not on the table.”100 Stern be­lieved Griffin had given him “the keys to the program,” and Griffin had indeed granted him great leeway to make decisions. However, Griffin was not happy with the way Stern had handled decision making on MSL, and he had certainly not helped smooth Griffin’s relation with the scientific community. Most im­portantly, in this Spirit-Opportunity case, he had failed to inform Griffin of a decision with extreme public visibility and political sensitivity—even if out of all proportion to the money involved.

On March 25, Griffin and Stern met in the NASA Administrator’s office, and Griffin, who was known to be “direct,” let Stern know sharply of his displeasure. Stern tried unsuccessfully to defend himself. He also stated, “If you have lost confidence in me, I should go!” Stern then went back to his office. An hour later, Griffin summoned him to return. “I accept your resignation,” he said.101

The same day, NASA released an official statement: “This letter [to JPL] was not coordinated in the Administrator’s office, and is in the process of being rescinded. The Administrator has unequivocally stated that no rover will be turned off.”102 While Spirit-Opportunity was the immediate reason for his leav­ing, Stern attributed the underlying cause to pressure from JPL and the Mars science community. “The knives came out over MSL,” he said.103

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Bolden labored to find money for the United States to participate in a serious bilateral program. Negotiating with Dordain and OMB, he could not come up with the money required. He felt he needed $1 billion, and he did not have it, given all the other priorities with influential constituencies which NASA had to fund.

Bolden was talking with Dordain by phone and negotiating in person with OMB on the FY 2013 budget virtually at the same time. It was clear he could not get the money he needed for ExoMars. He called home the NASA technical team working in Paris with European counterparts. Christmas was imminent, and it was pointless to continue the planning effort.

Within NASA and its overall constituency, certain individuals and organiza­tions stand out as Mars advocates. They press to get Mars exploration high on the agency’s agenda. These advocates, inside and outside the agency, constitute a loose coalition of forces, a set of program champions with shared attitudes. They begin as a minority. They are “first movers” and seek to enlist others. They labor to persuade the associate administrator for science, NASA Admin­istrator, and those around these officials to make robotic Mars exploration a priority and convert NASA into an advocate for policy adoption to the White House and Congress. NASA thus becomes the organizational nucleus for the coalition. They work within, around, and sometimes over NASA to get the agency to forward their goals.

If NASA’s political masters convey legitimacy and resources, through policy adoption, NASA becomes an implementer all the way to possible completion of a mission and consideration of successor ventures. NASA thus is critical to decision making at all stages of policy affecting Mars exploration. This does not necessarily mean NASA gets what it wants in the myriad of trade-offs that result in presidential budgets and congressional appropriations. It means that almost always NASA has to be enlisted itself as an institutional advocate in na­tional policymaking for Mars to achieve broader support. NASA is an object of advocacy by internal and external Mars champions, and when they succeed, NASA becomes an entrepreneurial force for Mars exploration as a national and increasingly international endeavor. The aim of advocates is to create an ever – widening gyre of support and mobilize bureaucratic power behind a sustained Mars exploration program.

Mars advocates are not monolithic. Within the Mars community, there is variance. The physical-science-oriented Mars scientists want to understand the atmosphere, geology, seismicity, and other contextual features of Mars. The biological science community wants resources and instrumentation on flight projects to focus primarily on the life question. The human exploration enthu­siasts emphasize the need for robotic flights to carry “their” sensors to detect ra­diation and other concerns relevant to astronauts. Engineers working at NASA, at its field centers, and in industry see Mars exploration as a way to extend their

technological art to innovate machines never before made. They and scientists emphasize optimal performance, often over cost. Policymakers see Mars explo­ration as a means to advance the high-tech economy (including employment in specific congressional districts), promote national prestige, stimulate young people to go into technical professions, and advance foreign policy goals. The media and public want excitement, drama, and the vicarious adventure of ex­ploration, even if it is with robots. All these constituencies are potentially “pro” Mars. But they view Mars through differing perspectives.

Cohesion among Mars advocates matters. This is because they face oppo­nents. Most participants in policy “support” Mars exploration. Few are “against” Mars. But Mars may get in the way of other worthwhile interests certain par­ticipants prefer. Rivals push back. Mars exploration champions compete with adversaries favoring a range of other priorities in planetary and space research. Who wins and who loses in these contests depends on their respective influence. Influence is based on the relative skill with which advocates make their claims, as well as other resources they can bring to bear. They can use a range of argu­ments, depending on whom they are trying to persuade. Aside from competing scientists, there are opponents in NASA who want to build human spaceflight craft, observe planet Earth, or pursue some other mission. Outside NASA are those in OMB or Congress who oppose Mars spending to save money in general or divert it elsewhere.

Big science, because of its scale, necessitates more than scientific and/or en­gineering commitment. It requires organization, money, and administrative and political will. For some advocates, NASA moves too slowly; for some critics, it moves too fast, or in the wrong direction. There is a recurring tension among advocates between those who want to travel gradually and look comprehensively (the “incrementalists”) and those who wish to accelerate progress to targeted goals (the “leapers”). Whatever the pace, advocacy is essential at every stage of decision making to overcome opposition or sheer bureaucratic inertia.9 Success in advocacy leads to funds for program execution. Success in execution helps advocates make a case for continuing a program. As closure is reached in one project, birth can occur in another. The stages of policy for various Mars proj­ects intersect. NASA is simultaneously seeking funds for a new mission while implementing an existing project. These parallel and intertwining paths reflect the essence of programmatic big science.

Leadership among Mars advocates has usually been shared and has shifted. There have been individual outside advocates in the Mars community over the years who have led and been famous, notably the astronomer and writer Carl Sagan. Most, however, have been unknown to the public, including scientists and engineers in universities and NASA field centers. Frequently, advocacy is organizational, embodied in a particular entity with a special interest in Mars exploration. NASA has io field centers, one of which, JPL, a federally funded R&D center in Pasadena managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has been dominant in robotic Mars exploration over much of NASA’s history. It has fought for Mars missions as a matter of organizational ambition, pride, and survival.

JPL is often in conflict with other centers for Mars missions and roles, es­pecially the Ames Research Center in the San Francisco area, which has carved out a niche in astrobiology. In the important case of the Viking project, JPL was secondary to the Langley Research Center in Virginia, but still strongly involved, contributing the orbiter. Similarly, there are a handful of universities that have been consistent performers of Mars research. The same can be said of certain aerospace firms as hardware builders. Advocacy is borne of self-interest, commitment, and expertise. The technical core to Mars advocacy that has per­sisted over the years has comprised the performers of R&D at NASA centers, especially JPL, and in the academic Mars science community, along with certain key managers in NASA Headquarters. But even with this nucleus of interest and leadership, support has waxed and waned, and opposition by those with other priorities has always been present.

Space policy decisions are made in a context of national policy. Advocates (es­pecially NASA) try to influence national policy. But national policy affects what Mars advocates can do. Every year, NASA contests with OMB over how much is enough. OMB is only one of the contestants in the game of budget politics, but a powerful player. Scientists, industry, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), other executive agencies, the president, Congress, and even foreign nations are involved in Mars politics. When Mars advocates come out on the winning side in budget struggles with rivals and those who seek spending cuts, they are fortunate, especially in hard financial times. Success in specific Mars projects—such as MSL Curiosity—becomes absolutely essential to moving forward. And even then, Mars interests may not prevail. Mars is a program within an agency within a national policy that is interdependent with events around the world which have little to do with space. Big science—par – ticularly the kind distributed over time in programs—is a tempting target for budget cutters. It is somewhat amazing that Mars exploration has done as well as it has.

Paine brought von Braun to Washington to help him promote a large post – Apollo program to Nixon. The charismatic von Braun won some converts on the body Nixon had established to advise him, the Space Task Group (STG). On September 15, STG met with Nixon in the Oval Office and presented three post-Apollo options. The options entailed a shuttle, space station, lunar base, and a human Mars mission. They varied in the aggressiveness by which to pur­sue these goals, especially Mars. The most aggressive would set a date, 1983, for human Mars flight at a cost of $8 billion to $10 billion a year. The least aggres­sive would cost $4 billion to $6.7 billion a year and would put an astronaut on Mars by the end of the century. Nixon listened to the presentation of the three options, thanked the team for its work, but made no decision.31

While waiting for Nixon to say something definite about NASA’s future, the annual budgetary process continued, with Paine battling the BOB. Viking, like all NASA activities, awaited determinations about how much NASA would have to spend, overall, as well as on it in particular. By Christmas 1969, NASA’s prospective budget for the next fiscal year was down to $3.6 billion, a sharp drop from the previous year. The issue became not whether NASA could begin a post-Apollo buildup, but whether it could even implement existing programs, including Viking. Then, just days later, the budget director, Robert Mayo, re­quired NASA to find additional cuts owing to a last-minute decision to close a government-wide gap in funding.

The budget director went over various options with Paine, including two options involving Viking: cancellation, or delay of launch from 1973 to 1975. Mayo said BOB favored delay and so did Nixon. Paine had little choice. He called Naugle, who was at home, and asked him to come in. It was December 31, New Year’s Eve. To save Viking, Paine told Naugle, they would have to set the launch back to 1975. Naugle left the meeting feeling quite depressed, as though “two years of careful planning for Viking” had been wiped out almost in the blink of an eye.32

In January 1970, Paine announced that NASA would have $3.5 billion in the president’s budget. This was a figure Paine had earlier told Mayo was “unaccept­able.” It entailed not only delay in Viking but ending Saturn 5 production and reducing the number of Apollo Moon landings. Those landings were destined now to end in late 1972, and there still was no new major program to keep NASA going to prevent the agency’s continuing decline.33

George Low, Paine’s deputy, tried to soften the blow to Naugle and the Vi­king team, declaring in a memo to Naugle in early February, “Viking holds the highest priority of any project or program in NASA’s Planetary Program. Viking holds a high priority among all of NASA’s programs.”34

That was an important statement about Viking’s priority from Low, because it indicated that NASA leaders would protect Viking, even if they let other projects go. It was not only a science priority but a NASA priority. In March, Nixon issued his first policy pronouncement on space. His message was that NASA would have to live at a far different level than it had in the 1960s. He announced that “space activities will be a part of our lives for the rest of time,” and thus there was no need to plan them “as a series of separate leaps, each re­quiring a massive concentration of energy and will and accomplished on a crash timetable.” Indeed, he said, “space expenditures must take their place within a rigorous system of national priorities.”35

What this meant, beyond the rhetoric, was that he was not endorsing any of the STG options. There was no decision to build a shuttle, no space station, and certainly no human Mars mission. As a consequence, NASA drifted, its future clouded. Low’s memo notwithstanding, the survival of Viking was uncertain. What was absolutely clear was that Viking could not be justified as a precursor to human flight to Mars, since there would not be anything resembling such a project. Indeed, the whole human spaceflight effort was withering away.

In July, Paine announced he was resigning, effective September. In August, von Braun, who would leave NASA in 1972, complained that NASA was “wait­ing for a miracle, just waiting for another man on a white horse to come and offer us another planet, like President Kennedy.” It was not going to happen.36

The policy debates continued within NASA and among NASA, its scientific ad­visors, OMB, and others. There were doubts that a Viking 3 could be developed in time for a 1981 launch and maybe not even a 1984 launch window. NASA kept looking for a “compelling reason” to propose Viking 3 to Ford. The Cold War competition argument no longer worked since the United States had “won” the Mars race. Media reports described NASA as being in a “pressure cooker” on Mars decision making in early December.18 Hinners recalls his feeling at the time that he did not want to put Hubble and Galileo—which OMB had ap­proved for new starts—at risk. He also remembered “a sense that other missions had waited on Mars, and now it was their turn.” Without question, advocates for Hubble and Galileo lobbied hard, and the Mars advocacy coalition was com­paratively splintered and exhausted. In the end, Hinners said, “We decided to wait and digest the knowledge coming out of Viking.”19

The president’s science advisor announced the decision on December 16 in discussing Ford’s last budget (FY 1978). H. Guyford Stever said there was money for “a large, orbiting telescope and a mission to place a photographic satellite in orbit around Jupiter.” But Stever stated that NASA’s budget would not include additional money to begin work on another Viking that would be launched in 1981 and land on Mars. He noted, however, that a launch could be accomplished in 1984, or later, depending on future decisions to be made.20 These would have to be made by a new president, along with a new NASA Administrator.

With the decision to pass up the 1981 opportunity, the bulk of the Viking team disbanded, starting with Martin. With no Viking 3 immediately ahead, and Langley no longer the lead center, Martin decided to leave NASA for a job as vice president for Martin Marietta, the Viking contractor. There would be an “extended mission” to analyze data from Viking, NASA said. That would keep a modest portion of the Viking team busy for a while. But Martin was going, and in a bittersweet farewell visit to Langley in mid-December he stated that Viking would be the highlight of his career. “A lot of people haven’t had this experience and never will,” Martin said. “It would be selfish of us to want more than one. Viking has been tough.” As for the question of life: “We haven’t found ‘life’ on Mars, but we also haven’t found ‘no life’ on Mars. Maybe it’s not like Earth—to me that is possible too.” As for whether Viking was worth $1 billion, Martin was emphatic: “Absolutely.”21