Adding "Humans to Mars" as a Space Task Group Goal

From Paine’s perspective, there were several reasons for adopting a Mars goal. NASA’s continuing attempts to gain support for a space station pro­gram on the basis of its being the next logical step in developing human space flight capability or its use as a scientific laboratory had gotten little support from other STG members. By picturing it as a necessary precursor to a human mission to Mars, Paine hoped to present a convincing rationale for early station development. Not only the space station but also develop­ment of the space shuttle, space tug, and nuclear rocket stages and continued production of the Saturn V had to happen in the 1970s if a Mars landing in the 1980s were to be adopted as a national goal. Emphasis on Mars was also based on a rationale for the U. S. space program that went beyond advancing technological capability and applying that capability to provide tangible ben­efits on Earth. The Mars emphasis recognized exploration for its own sake as a legitimate goal of space activity.

Paine’s own personality was such as to find the Mars focus attractive. His basic strategy during the STG deliberations had been to “err on the bold, bold, bold side.” He thought that in the wake of the successful launch of Apollo 11 chances for approval of a major new space goal were as great as they were ever likely to be. Paine saw the Mars mission as an “offer” that NASA should make to the country, an offer to undertake another tremendously challenging but very exciting national enterprise like Apollo. Paine judged that it was “worth the effort to at least hoist the banner and see if anybody would rally to it.”25

Paine undoubtedly was influenced in his willingness to have NASA iden­tified with the Mars focus by the repeated requests by Vice President Agnew during the STG deliberations and elsewhere for an “Apollo for the seventies” and by Agnew’s now public support for Mars as that goal. Paine may also have thought that the vice president’s support would have significant influ­ence on President Nixon’s space decisions. That judgment turned out to be deeply flawed. Spiro Agnew had even less influence on White House policy choices than most vice presidents.

Paine had by the day after the Apollo 11 launch, July 17, decided to develop a proposal for an early human mission to Mars for presentation to the STG. He ordered his planners to come up with a “very strong, very far out, but down-to-earth technical presentation” which would “substantially shake up” the STG. Such a presentation would necessarily minimize the many techno­logical uncertainties associated with sending astronauts on the months-long Martian journey. The decision to add the Mars focus to Mueller’s already ambitious integrated plan was essentially Paine’s; Mueller “would have been more conservative.” It is unlikely, given the tone of STG deliberations to date and the signals regarding budget constraints that NASA was already getting from the White House, that Paine believed that a crash program to send humans to Mars as soon as technically feasible would actually gain political support. Rather, by presenting an accelerated Mars effort as doable, Paine hoped that a program leading to a Mars landing later in the 1980s might not seem too ambitious, and thus be acceptable to the other STG members and ultimately to the president.26

The possibility that NASA would propose an early Mars mission to the STG evoked early skepticism of the mission’s technical feasibility. At a July 15 meeting of the STG Staff Directors Committee, Russ Drew of OST indicated that he thought that sending people to Mars “was not technically feasible in this century, let alone in the 1980s.” One of the NASA representatives at the meeting, Milton Rosen, found Drew’s perspective “incredulous.” Rosen pointed out “that NASA was within days of putting men on the moon after eight years’ work starting from scratch.” He added that “the preliminary design of a Manned Mars launch vehicle, based on nuclear propulsion, was completed” and that “program plans were well advanced for putting men on Mars in the 1980s.”27 Rosen’s views were typical of the technological hubris of the NASA leadership as Apollo H sat on the launch pad.