Searching for Life

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.