Category Why Mars

In the nineteenth century, Giovanni Schiaparelli, using telescopes of his time, saw features on the Mars surface he called “canali,” or channels, later translated into English as “canals.” Percival Lowell, an American astronomer with consid­erable personal wealth, became intrigued with “Martian canals” and observed them closely with his own telescopes. He hypothesized in a 1906 book, Mars and Its Canals, that these markings were made by Martians. “That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain,” he wrote.1

In Lowell’s mind, Mars was Earth’s sister planet, but she was dying, drought stricken, arid. He could see through his telescopes that the poles of Mars were white. Did it not make sense that Martian engineers constructed giant engineer­ing systems to transport water from frozen poles to arid regions elsewhere?

These explained the canals to Lowell. What Lowell believed many other scien­tists of his day did not. But Lowell held intensely to his views and proselytized them to willing readers and listeners.

Among those who listened were science fiction writers, who took Lowell’s speculations to greater imaginative lengths. In the first half of the twentieth cen­tury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur Clarke found Mars a fruitful subject of writing. Named for the Roman god of war, Mars was always for some a potential threat to Earth. Orson Welles, in 1938, made that threat amazingly real for many. Taking his cue from H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, Orson Welles used the new medium of radio to make an emergency announcement on his evening broadcast that Martians had invaded the United States, with sightings in New Jersey. Terrified, many Americans “bolted their doors and prepared for the worst.”2

Fears of Martians, whether ruthless warriors or benign canal builders, were well at rest by the 1950s. Helped by better telescopes and the observatory Lowell had established in Arizona, scientists in the pre-World War II years learned more and more about the Red Planet. World War II spawned a range of new technologies that proved useful in astronomical research, although not intended initially for this purpose. The Office of Naval Research, in the immediate post­World War II years, supported planetary research at several universities. The U. S. Army and Air Force developed technologies that could be advanced and used potentially in connection with space exploration.

In 1948, Gerald Kuiper of the University of Chicago “used infrared spec­trometry to confirm the presence of carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere” and at the polar caps. American astronomers, as well as those from other coun­tries, created organizations to plan research in planetary astronomy. Mars was a focus of much attention. A “Mars Committee” emerged that enlisted scientists who would “meet annually to share the results of their observations of the red planet.” Growing scientific understanding of Mars, while slow and ambiguous, indicated that Mars was extremely unlikely to have life resembling earthlings. Mars appeared too frigid and too dry for Earth-like beings. But the similarities between Mars and Earth were too intriguing to ignore and rule out possibilities of life in some form.3

In May 1971 NASA launched Mariners 8 and 9. Mariner 8 failed at launch, but Mariner 9 succeeded in moving toward Mars. NASA was fortunate to have had two Mariner launches in 1971. When the Mars program was revived after the Voyager demise, Newell, as NASA associate administrator, argued for spending extra money for a second Mariner. Webb had gone along with this view, as had Paine when he became NASA Administrator.38 Shortly after the Mariner launch, the Soviet Union sent two probes, which it called Mars 2 and 3, toward the Red Planet.39 NASA determined that the USSR spacecraft were much heavier than U. S. probes. That could only mean that they not only were orbiters (as were Mariners 8 and 9) but carried landers, and possibly even biological detection equipment. NASA sought to establish contact with the Soviets to see if there could be some cooperation in the respective endeavors, but the Soviet Union

remained secretive about the objectives of its Mars program. The goal of Mari­ner 9 was well known—to orbit Mars and take photos of as much of the planet as possible. The aim was to scout possible landing sites for Viking—places both safe and promising potential habitability. But if the Soviets succeeded in landing with their probes, they would leapfrog Viking by more than four years.

By November, it was clear that the United States would reach Mars first with Mariner 9. There was considerable speculation and debate among scientists about what Mariner 9 would see. A host of scientists associated with the Mariner program gathered at JPL’s mission control center in Pasadena, California, as the probe approached. Sagan, optimistic as ever, was a principal investigator on the project and eagerly awaited.

On November 12, the evening before Mariner was scheduled to go into orbit, a remarkable panel discussion was held at Caltech, entitled “Mars and the Mind of Man.” There were numerous media representatives there to hear the discus­sion and also interview Sagan and other scientists. The panel was chaired by New York Times science editor Walter Sullivan. In addition to Sagan, the key planetary scientist on the panel was Murray of Caltech. Science fiction writers Arthur Clarke and Ray Bradbury also were on the panel. Both had written of life on Mars.

Sagan and Murray had become prominent antagonists on the Mars life issue. Sagan pointed out that scientists (like Murray) had been too quick to reject the possibility of life-forms on Mars. “There have been excesses in both directions,” argued Sagan. “And one direction was the premature conclusion that there isn’t life on Mars.” While data were incomplete, said Sagan, all the necessary ele­ments of photosynthesis—the life process of plants—existed on Mars: water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. The ice caps, which advanced and receded with the change of seasons, could leave pools of water that could contain life forms.

The science fiction writers were in Sagan’s corner, but Murray dismissed such views. He charged that even good scientists (like Sagan) were deluding themselves. Life on Mars was “wishful thinking.” He attributed such thinking, which made scientists misinterpret data, to a “deep-seated emotional desire” on the part of humanity to find “another Earth” somewhere. Mars was not that Earth.

Privately, Sagan and Murray would debate at length. Andrew Chaikin has written that Sagan’s comments would “make Murray want to roll his eyes.” Sagan was three years Murray’s junior, but they appeared to be on “opposite sides of a generational divide.” They respected one another and would eventu­

ally become friends. But with Mariner 9 in the offing, they simply disagreed strongly. Sagan privately once snapped at Murray, “You at Caltech live on the side of pessimism.” Murray did not respond, but thought, “And you at Cornell, Carl, live on the side of optimism.” Murray, on the panel, told Sagan and the others he accused of “wishful thinking” that Mariner would settle the issue, and he expected it to provide “the observational stick” to force Sagan and his allies to recognize reality.40 For Murray, the absence of evidence proved his point. But Sagan came from a different perspective. As he later wrote, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of evidence.”41

Everyone would have to wait a while, however. The next day, Mariner 9 suc­cessfully moved into Mars orbit. Going into Mars orbit was itself a great first. But a huge dust storm swirled about Mars, obscuring almost totally images of the planet. NASA decided to simply let Mariner 9 go around and around Mars and wait out the storm.

Meanwhile, later in November, the two Soviet probes joined Mariner 9 in circling the Red Planet. The USSR spacecraft did not have the fuel to match that of Mariner 9 and thus wait a lengthy time to see Mars. They soon released their landers. Only one made it successfully to the Mars surface. This landing was indeed a significant first. However, something went wrong and after 20 seconds the probe’s communications ceased. It transmitted no images of Mars.42

The next round of Mars exploration thus depended on Mariner 9, once the waiting was over. In late December 1971 the dust cloud gradually cleared. Sci­entists at JPL saw four dark spots in the northern hemisphere that peered up at them. They thought them to be big craters. But eventually, as views improved, it became obvious that these dark spots were mountains, and in fact gigantic volcanoes. The scientists’ reaction at the time was a collective “Oh, my God!”43 The largest of these volcanoes had to be 15 miles high, three times the height of Mount Everest. The crater at its summit was the size of Rhode Island; its base that ofArizona. Soon they saw an enormous rift valley that extended at the Mars equator region 2,500 miles, as well as a canyon system that was 75 miles wide and 4 miles deep. Moreover, they eventually saw what seemed like channels (the “canals” of Martian lore) that might have been carved by running water.44 Mi­chael Carr, a young scientist on loan from the U. S. Geological Survey, recalled his sheer excitement when he saw the images. Mars “was a wonderland. It had unfolded before us.”45

Humanity’s image of Mars was suddenly transformed. The science fiction writers in the pre-space age had painted a Mars that was like Earth. The Mari-

ners of the 1960s had made Mars into a replica of the Moon. Mariner 9 revealed a unique planet. For the first time, earthlings saw the real Mars, and it was spectacularly different from Earth or the Moon. Murray admitted he was totally surprised. As a geologist as well as planetary scientist, he could detect signs of an extremely active planet in the past. He had himself “been the victim of his own preconceptions about Mars, even as he’d been warning his colleagues and the public not to fall prey to their own.”46 While Murray still did not believe there was evidence of life on Mars, he was now open to the possibility of being yet surprised again. As for Sagan and the exobiology community, they became more convinced that if they looked in the right places in the right way they could find life. For skeptics and optimists alike, the importance of Viking enlarged immensely.

Mariner 9 was a strong catalyst for Viking. But Viking would not succeed if NASA did not survive.

The enigma that was Jimmy Carter in relation to Mars policy was seen vividly in 1978. Carter, a Naval Academy graduate, was unusually technically astute for a politician. He had nuclear engineering training and expressed interest in space. In 1978, Sagan won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Dragons of Eden. Carter invited Sagan in December to give a talk on space at the U. S. Naval Observatory, a talk he and his family, as well as the vice president and his family, would attend. The writer Hugh Sidey wrote that, while being briefed by Sagan about planetary exploration, Carter was fascinated. “Eyes bright with the sense of adventure, [Carter] urged that any new missions to Mars seek out mountains and valleys and old volcanoes instead of staying on the more level or gently rolling surfaces.”31

Sagan biographer William Poundstone also commented on the Sagan-Carter exchange. He wrote that Carter was a space buff whose technical background allowed him an understanding rare among politicians. Carter seemed enchanted with Mars and the possibility of life on Mars. Were scientists certain Viking had not found life on Mars? Carter asked Sagan. Sagan pointed out the ambiguities, and that no life was believed to have been found at the two sites at which Viking landed. Then, Carter asked, why had the two Vikings landed in such boring places? Hadn’t the Viking team heard the old saying, “Nothing ventured, noth­ing gained?” “You know,” Carter told Sagan, “You ought to write a few books to really get people interested in planetary exploration. Then we could do some really exciting missions.” “But Mr. President,” Sagan responded, “You only need to write your name at the bottom of a single sheet of paper and we could have a rover mission to Mars.” The president, according to Poundstone, just smiled.32

Even though he had had to shut down the Exploration (i. e., Moon-Mars) office at NASA and move its associate administrator, Michael Griffin (a later NASA Administrator), to a new role, Goldin wanted to sustain the humans-to-Mars goal. His struggle to save the space station and zeal to reinvent NASA were in fact partly for the purpose of making the agency more capable of leading

America to Mars. With his background in robotic space technology, he saw that he could keep the Mars human spaceflight goal alive through the robotic Mars program.

Goldin had mixed views of Mars Observer. He called it an example of a Battlestar Galactica mission, the kind he eschewed, but it was too far along to change. In fact, it was heading toward Mars, and a lot rode on it. In addition to providing a mass of scientific data to the Mars research community, Observer was a stepping stone toward future robotic trips to the Red Planet. Russian scientists wished to use the maps of Mars that Observer would yield so they would know where to land missions they scheduled for 1994 and 1996. Russian and French researchers were planning to use a relay system on the U. S. Mars Observer to transmit up to 10 times the data that the Russian orbiter to be launched in 1996 could handle. Observer’s results could also feed into MESUR’s design.22 And, longer term, Mars Observer was the beginning of NASA’s return to Mars and eventual human journey. This was the exploration strategy of which Huntress had written in proclaiming a new Mars era.

Of the many scientists and engineers associated with Mars Observer, none waited more expectantly than Mike Malin. His camera was aboard and was central to the mission, thanks to a “command” decision made years before by Associate Administrator Edelson. So committed was Malin that he had left JPL and an academic position to set up a company so he could dedicate himself to building the camera. He thought of it as his eye. And through it, he would soon be looking at Mars.23 Other scientists and engineers at JPL and the universities also had devoted a large chunk of their careers and professional lives to this mission.

At 6 p. m. (PDT), August 21, 1993, Mars Observer was three days away from going into orbit around the Red Planet. Suddenly, JPL lost communication with the probe. As controllers at JPL worked feverishly to reestablish contact, word of the mishap flashed throughout JPL, NASA, and the Mars community. In succeeding days, anxiety mounted, and then gloom. “It’s difficult to work on something for 10 years, and expect to work on something for another 5 years and have it disappear,” said Philip Christensen of Arizona State University, one of Observer’s principal investigators. NASA planetary geologist James Garvin, who worked on the spacecraft’s laser altimeter experiment, said, “Basically, it’s my entire scientific professional career.”24

Garvin’s personal devastation was worsened by an experience soon after when he returned to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Mary­land, where he worked. He went to the mall near Goddard with his wife. Prior to the loss of communication with Mars Observer, those associated with the mission wore “Mars Observer hats” for good luck that never came. “For some reason,” Garvin recalled, he wore his hat to the mall. “Someone came up to me, a stranger. He accosted me. He said: ‘How dare you wear your hat. It is a sign of failure!’”25

On the day after the report came out, a chastened Goldin went to JPL. Sched­uling an address to JPL employees and a press conference for the next day, he went to dinner that evening with Caltech president David Baltimore, Stone, and leaders of the Mars Mission Team. One of the younger men on that team pleaded, “Dan, don’t let us go back to the old ways.”41 The next day he spoke at an assemblage of JPL employees. He took responsibility and stated, “The warning bells are sounding. The trend is very, very sobering, and one we can’t ignore. It says we pushed too hard.” Afterword, he spoke to the media. Again, he took responsibility. “In my effort to empower people,” he declared, “I pushed too hard. And in doing so, stretched the system too thin. It wasn’t malicious. I believed in the vision, but it may have made some failure inevitable.” He told JPL and others he was not going to let the pendulum swing all the way back to the old days, before FBC, but that he was going to provide adequate resources to succeed.42

Stone addressed JPL subsequently. He said that the real motivator for FBC was to go more often to Mars, but that JPL had taken too many risks in trying to take maximum advantage of every two-year launch opportunity. He also told his personnel that downsizing was over at the lab.43

The congressional reaction to the Young report was critical of NASA but stopped short of calling FBC a failed strategy. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, com­mented that the report was an embarrassment to NASA and showed that the agency’s leadership was “missing in action.” He said Congress would have to exercise “more rigorous oversight” of the agency.44 Congressman James Sensen- brenner, chair of the House Science Committee, expressed essentially the same sentiment, as did other lawmakers. The Washington Post issued a common media view, that NASA had to step back and review its actions. However, it advised the agency that it would be “dangerous” to abandon FBC and “swing back toward the old model of sky high budgeting.” It noted that NASA and JPL simply had too many missions under way at once and too few experienced managers to handle all of them. It echoed congressional concerns that senior managers did not exercise proper oversight.45

Goldin, in congressional hearings on the Mars failures, faced “heat but no fire.”46 Again, Goldin took responsibility and admitted pushing too hard. Con­gress, while being critical of Goldin and NASA management, seemed anxious to also show support. The Mars program was popular, and lawmakers, like the president and media, wanted it to continue and succeed, while exercising fiscal constraint. Some Republican legislators blamed the White House for not pro­viding NASA sufficient funding. Meanwhile, Louis Friedman, speaking for the Planetary Society, gave a view shared by many Mars enthusiasts. He cautioned that while NASA had to make program changes, “it is crucial that NASA not overreact and slow down the program too much.”47 Privately, Friedman also used the access he had to Goldin to argue for making the Mars director position a true czar authority, with power over both robotic and human flight. Friedman wanted a Mars focus for the agency, with the Mars program director under Goldin rather than Weiler. However, Goldin was not about to make that move.48

In the wake of the twin Mars failures and Young report, NASA began the arduous work of recovering its credibility and returning to robotic Mars flight. Hubbard was the man chosen to lead the activity, but he was part of a team that was assembled. The members were responsible for what NASA called the “architecture” of the revised program. Goldin wanted the group, which started in April, to complete its work by October, so that its recommendations could be incorporated into NASA’s budget submission for the following year.

As he prepared for his Senate confirmation hearings, Griffin was lobbied by scientists who disagreed intensely with the priorities he inherited from O’Keefe. A total of 17 scientists signed a “manifesto” they delivered to Griffin, and some of them personally spoke to him. “The balance between the two modes of explo­ration, human and robotic, is now threatened,” the manifesto declared. It was not just the balance between human and robotic exploration that worried these scientists. They were concerned also about the balance between Mars and non – Mars robotic science. They called the concept of “exploration” O’Keefe used too narrow. “Should other forms of space exploration be cancelled or curtailed to make this new, but limited, exploration vision possible? We think and hope not,” said the paper.

Among the 17 signers of the petition was Fisk, who was converting the chair­manship of the National Academy of Sciences Space Studies Board into a posi­tion for leadership in opposition to the O’Keefe priorities. Al Diaz, who had the NASA job Fisk once possessed, called the Moon-Mars science orientation a re­sult of “strategic” decision making. Fisk called that kind of thinking bad strategy and warned, “There is a firestorm coming.”2 Griffin tried to put the concerned scientific community at ease at his confirmation hearings on April 12: “We as a nation can clearly afford well-executed, vigorous programs in both robotic and human space exploration as well as aeronautics,” he stated. However, Griffin was also clear about his priorities, which were to return the still-grounded shut­tle to flight, finish the space station, and begin building the technical systems (called “Constellation”) that would take America back to the Moon by 2020. He especially declared his intent to accelerate the transition from the space shuttle to its successor. He regarded the four-year gap he inherited as too long and a challenge he wanted to remedy.3

Griffin was easily confirmed and in office by April 14. In taking command, he was aware of an understanding reached between Bush and the Office of Manage­ment and Budget during the hiatus between February (O’Keefe’s leaving) and April (his arrival) at NASA. This would cut NASA’s five-year projected budget by $2.9 billion as its contribution to deficit reduction during Bush’s second term. Griffin knew that budget games were played constantly in Washington, and he thought he could reverse this move. He believed that Bush was serious about supporting NASA and his vision, and that he could counter OMB. With the original budget projected in 2004, he felt he could deliver a program that could get the Moon-Mars vision off to a sound start while also supporting science and other NASA programs. He wanted “balance” in NASA and said, “There is no inherent conflict between manned and unmanned space programs, save that deliberately promulgated by those seeking to play a difficult and ugly zero-sum game.” But one former NASA Administrator, who was quoted without attribu­tion by Science magazine, predicted, “He’s going to have to choose sides; he can’t make everyone happy.”4

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became president, and Congress tilted more dramatically in the Democrats’ favor than was the case under Bush. With economic crisis at home and wars abroad, Obama had many priorities. Space policy did not appear to rank high on his agenda, although he extolled Apollo as an inspirational event. Obama’s style was consensual, and he conferred with various senators, especially Bill Nelson (D-FL), in choosing a NASA Adminis­trator. It took him a while to find someone.

As the Obama transition got under way in the early months of 2009, and as he waited for a new NASA Administrator to take command, Weiler plunged ahead with his own agenda.1 He had two immediate Mars tasks: one was to reconstitute the Mars Science Laboratory for the next two years, and the other was to develop a robust program for the years after MSL which would get to the long-sought goal of Mars Sample Return. As far as he was concerned, he had inherited no real program beyond MSL. He had problems financially, in part because of MSL and its overruns. But he also saw opportunity if he and the European Space Agency’s Southwood could mount an effort to Mars together. The challenge was to get NASA and the new administration to commit to a long-term program. He and NASA needed a multimission successor as the ex­isting Mars Exploration Program ran its course. The bilateral effort seemed a “win-win” for the United States and Europe. But NASA and ESA were trying to sell this big science program at a time when resources on both sides of the Atlantic were hard to obtain. What worked internationally depended—at least for NASA—on what transpired domestically. Domestically, the space policy subsystem would face upheaval due to the impact of presidential and congres­sional political struggle. The larger conflicts in Washington were mainly about human spaceflight and overall budgets. But robotic Mars policy could not be protected from these macro events.

On February 27, Grunsfeld announced at a Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group meeting that he was creating a Mars Program Planning Group. His aim was to have a mission in 2018, one that would be affordable at $700 million. Grunsfeld called 2018 “a sweet spot,” a time when the Earth-Mars alignment was especially propitious. Squyres followed him at the meeting and made it clear that he would support such a mission only if it conformed to the NRC Decadal Survey and moved the program toward MSR. Grunsfeld said that he was ap­pointing Orlando Figueroa, former Mars czar and since retired, to head this planning team. Grunsfeld, touting the link with human spaceflight, hinted at the possibility of augmenting the robotic budget through this larger and better – financed directorate. Squyres expressed skepticism that that would happen.5

Figueroa, in a subsequent response to reporters, said that whatever NASA did would have to be responsive not only to scientists but also to NASA’s budgetary masters. Various outside-NASA scientists expressed concern about the associa­tion with human spaceflight, comments echoing similar worries within NASA.6 Science’s goals were not necessarily those of human spaceflight, they pointed out. Human spaceflight cared about safety and operational matters. However, veteran scientist Michael Carr pointed out that life was the link, “whether it’s potential Martian life, the effects of Martian dust on humans, or humans’ mi­crobial contamination of Mars.”7

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.