Toward Mars

NASA’s long-term direction is toward Mars. Mars exploration advances best as advocates move it to a NASA priority, and as NASA leaders themselves become champions in national policymaking. For better or worse, NASA is the power locus within the U. S. government behind Mars exploration. To move Mars ex­ploration forward, NASA integrates often conflicting scientific, technological, and political pressures to forge a program. The advantage Mars advocates have in comparison with rivals is the long-standing public interest in Mars. Among planets, Mars has the broadest public constituency. The interest of that con­stituency may not be deep, but it is abiding. That reality has helped keep Mars on NASA’s agenda since its founding, sometimes at the forefront, sometimes on the back burner, but always there.

To continue the journey from past to present to future, external advocates and NASA must combine science, technology, organization, politics, and faith. Science provides ends, technology and organization means, and politics funding to keep going in the face of adversity. There is also a faith on the part of many that at the end of the journey will be a prize worth all the sacrifice. Without all these factors, a multigenerational quest cannot be sustained. The task of leadership in advocacy and decision making in government is to unite the many stakeholders who might want to go to the Red Planet, neutralize or conciliate those who do not, and keep the agency moving forward, “in motion, in a desired direction.”10

The political and policy history of Mars exploration is traced in succeeding chapters, from Mariner to MSL and beyond. It has been a long and winding process. Borrowing from evolutionary theory in the natural sciences, many ana­lysts use the concept “punctuated equilibrium” to explain stability and change in long-term decision making.11 In times of stability, Mars policy is forged largely by a limited number of actors in a subsystem (i. e., space sector) of the larger national policy setting. Specialists in the scientific community, NASA, congres­sional committees, and other groups reach agreement on a course of action which sustains a program over time. Change is incremental. The agency imple­ments within a policy consensus.

But events or particularly influential people can upset the consensus, jar the

subsystem loose, and foment significant change. These triggers for change can come from sources within, such as a NASA Administrator; they can emanate from outside the space sector, such as a president; and they can arise from Mars advocates or opponents. These forces produce important shifts in the evolution of Mars exploration, creating decision points in Mars policy.

The various conflicts within the space sector or between that subsystem and macropolicy issues drive a program forward or hold it back. Dan Goldin, NASA Administrator, told a group of scientific advisors in 1996, amidst excitement about the Mars meteorite, that scientists can set the direction for a program, but politics determines its pace.12 Mars exploration is not a dash, in the manner of Apollo; it is a marathon, and the pace can vary, with zigs and zags along the way. The consensus has to be worked and reworked as the advocacy coalition enlarges or contracts. That is why there is not one fixed program, but a sequence of programs separated by reformulations of policy.

These reformulations are significant. They represent changes in scientific and political strategy, give rise to alterations in approach, and constitute big decisions. One shifted Mars exploration from an individual or “one-up” design to an integrated sequence of FBC missions in the 1990s. Another moved Mars exploration into a follow-the-water mode for the early twenty-first century, building on the program that had gone before. Their coherence and narratives communicated purpose to the outside world. They won political support that undergirded Mars exploration for two decades, enabling the MSL Curiosity’s landing and discoveries and setting the stage for what can follow.

Paradoxically, these program reformulations were triggered by failures. As failure revealed miscalculation, so responses showed rethinking and resolve. There are lessons to be drawn from the Mars exploration experience for the leadership of long-term technical programs in American democracy in general.

The saga of Mars exploration illuminates the frustrations, failures, joys, and triumphs that surround all attempts to advance on a new frontier. Mars calls, and human beings respond as best they can. They discover through sci­ence, build “exploring machines” through technology, and organize programs through agencies like NASA.13 In doing so, they strive to turn dreams into real­ity. They seek answers to age-old questions, such as, are we alone? Robots have gone first to the Red Planet. Someday, human beings will follow. What ensues in succeeding chapters is a political and policy history of NASA’s robotic effort, a government program whose purpose is to pioneer.