Leaping Forward

In 1965, even as NASA and its Mars constituency celebrated the success of Mari­ner 4, they thought ahead to what would come next. “Next” meant not only next in the line of Mariner projects, but the beginning of a new program called Voyager. Not to be confused with an interplanetary Voyager, launched in the late 1970s, this Voyager—a Mars lander with an automated biological laboratory payload—was conceived in the early 1960s at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the encouragement and involvement of the exobiology community. It was seen as the natural successor to Mariner, which featured flybys and orbiters. From the beginning, advocates knew that it was unusually challenging, but the challenge attracted top engineers at JPL. Also, the exobiologists who wanted to look for life knew they would have to develop experiments and unprecedented life-detecting equipment. NASA leaders zealously aimed to surpass the Soviet Union in the space race, and that race encompassed robotic Mars missions. For NASA, the program was also precursor to human Mars flight. Hence, in the 1960s there was relative unity within NASA and among various interests—planetary scientists, exobiologists, engineers, and administrators—about the rationale and direction of robotic Mars exploration. All three drivers for the Red Planet operated: life on, life to, and international competition.

But NASA Administrator Webb belatedly added another reason for Mars Voyager—keeping the Saturn 5 rocket alive. This use of the giant Moon rocket

raised the potential cost of Voyager tremendously, ultimately making it politi­cally unacceptable. When Congress killed Voyager, NASA substituted Viking. NASA made Viking’s purpose clear: to search for life. With its budget declin­ing, NASA felt that it had to recapture public support. It decided to put most of its planetary program energy and money behind Viking. Tom Paine, Webb’s successor, raised the stakes by augmenting the complexity and costs of Viking. While planning and selling Viking, NASA landed on the Moon. Surely, if NASA could succeed with Apollo, it could succeed with Viking! Technological opti­mism reigned. The political consensus in the space sector and between space policy and national policy which had operated in the Apollo/Mariner era gave way to discord over Mars Voyager. What happened to the robotic program de­pended in large part on what happened to NASA. Eventually, the president and Congress settled the question of NASA’s future via the shuttle decision. Mean­while, a new consensus and equilibrium among NASA, scientists, the White House, and Congress were forged around Viking.