Why Mars: NASA and the Politics of Space Exploration

Chapter Three. Leaping Forward

chapter three 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 Leaping Forward 35 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. Adopting Voyager In December 1964, following preliminary studies by NASA, JPL, and industry, NASA’s Science Directorate, the Office of Space Science and Applications, of- ficially established Voyager as a flight program. Like Mariner, it was conceived as a program, not a single project. OSSA projected a mission to launch the first Voyager spacecraft as early as 1971, with successor flights at later two-year Mars opportunities. Webb, who could deal with LBJ on a one-on-one basis, obtained President Johnson’s assent to include modest definitional start-up funds in the budget Johnson sent to Congress in early 1965. By the end of 1965, buoyed by Mariner 4’s success, Congress approved Voyager. NASA started with strong scientific support for Voyager. The National Academy of Sciences Space Science Board declared in 1965, “The biological exploration of Mars is a scientific undertaking of the greatest validity and significance. Its realization will be a milestone in the history of human achievement. Its importance and the consequences for biology justify the highest priority among all scientific objectives in space, indeed, in the space program as a whole.”1 Mariner 4 findings seemed to have made it all the more imperative for Mars advocates with an interest in finding life to have a lander program. They saw no other way to answer their questions. However, while Congress went along with the initiation of Voyager, the schedule and longer-term prospects were uncertain. The political and funding 36 Why Mars environment of NASA began to change rapidly for the worse. NASA budgets peaked in 1965–1966. The Vietnam War and Johnson’s Great Society began to place increasing burdens on the overall federal budget. NASA was clearly catching up to the Russians in the race to the Moon, and some of the urgency behind NASA was ebbing. NASA was still a national priority, but...