The Bush Decision

On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush came to the NASA auditorium to announce his “Vision for Space Exploration.” NASA, he said, was going back to the Moon by 2020. It would eventually go on to Mars and beyond. It would go first with robots, then humans. NASA would retire the Space Shuttle in 2010 and bring on a successor in 2014. “The vision I outline today,” Bush said, “is a journey, not a race.”36 He indicated that NASA would get a significant increase in funding to jump-start the initiative. The Bush “Vision” appeared to augur well for the robotic Mars program.

The immediate reaction to Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration was gener­ally positive, mixed with concerns about funding. The political mood favored getting out of near-Earth orbit and back to exploration as NASA’s central role in human spaceflight. If America was going to risk lives, it had to be about a goal worth the risk. That was the message of CAIB and subsequent media and congressional importuning. It was also the message of the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Studies Board. Len Fisk, one-time NASA science associate administrator, was now chair of this body. He strongly believed that it was im­perative for NASA to get human spaceflight out of Earth orbit, while also fully supporting space science and applications. Under his leadership, the NAS SSB produced a report that was released on the same day as Bush’s address. There was “synergy” between the report and Bush’s vision, said Fisk.37

O’Keefe had carefully crafted a budget strategy that avoided the sticker shock that had killed the Moon-Mars program of George H. W. Bush in 1989. The strategy was to emphasize the Moon first, as a stepping stone, and the lunar goal seemed manageable the way O’Keefe explained it. Mars—and its prodi­gious expense—was downplayed and pushed for future discussion in regard to human exploration. Conversely, robotic Mars exploration was emphasized for precursory missions. The term “exploration” was inclusive insofar as rhetoric was concerned.

But not everybody believed the NASA rhetoric or budget numbers for the first five years, certainly not everybody in Congress (or at NASA). And even if the numbers were “right,” they required NASA to reprogram money to make resources available for a new mission. There was worry on the part of scientists who did not do lunar or Mars research that they would be losers as NASA re­focused. Weiler tried to calm such fears. “This is not a flags-and-footprint pro­gram,” he said. “NASA intended the Moon as a stepping stone, and scientists are excited about going to Mars,” Weiler declared. So was the president, he added.

What Weiler understood, as did Fisk, was that the vision could be good for NASA as a whole if the necessary resources were forthcoming. Also, it was critical that the scientific community support the vision for it to have a chance to succeed.38 What sent a shock wave through the scientific community, and seemed to belie the reassuring words of the vision rhetoric, was the news on January 15, the day after the Bush announcement, that O’Keefe was killing a planned shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. The information came via an in­advertent leak and appeared in a Washington Post story about the Bush vision.

The decision was about safety, not budget, as far as O’Keefe was concerned, but was interpreted by many astronomers as a trade-off with Moon-Mars. “This is a kick in the teeth,” said one. Hubble became a major distraction as O’Keefe tried to promote the new mission to NASA’s various constituencies in 2004.39 While the selling of the new human space program got off to a rocky start, the robotic Mars program continued to shine amidst the uncertainty and scientific controversy. Moreover, O’Keefe gave it a priority as he dealt with the NASA budget, too much so in the view of O’Keefe critics—Mars’s rivals for space funding.

On January 24, at 9 p. m. (PST), the second Mars rover, Opportunity, en­tered the Red Planet’s atmosphere, beginning the complicated set of procedures that would enable it to land safely. Opportunity aimed at a Martian plain called Meridiani. Once again, O’Keefe and other top NASA officials were present at JPL. So also were former vice president Al Gore and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver. Mission controllers ate traditional “lucky peanuts” as they intensely watched the telemetry. Six min­

utes after starting its descent at 12,000 miles per hour, Opportunity reached the surface. When the signal was returned to Earth that Opportunity had come to rest at a final place, safely, the landing chief at JPL announced, “We’re on Mars, everybody!” Everyone in the room erupted in applause, backslaps, and hugs. As before, O’Keefe got out the champagne. He lauded the Mars science team as “the best in the world.” NASA and its partners had known that the stakes were high. They had put in an “extraordinary effort,” and it had paid off.40