Voyage (18 page)

But the Shuttle program had quickly become a mess. It was obvious, Josephson thought, that the final, low-cost Shuttle design was a bastardized compromise, put together by committee to satisfy conflicting interests. And Michaels wasn’t above drafting in his predecessor, Paine – a great lover of the Mars option whom Michaels had replaced in September – to point out the Shuttle’s strong military flavor: it was no accident that the low, hundred-mile orbits which were all the Space Shuttle was capable of, and its wide-ranging flyback capabilities, were ideally suited to Air Force missions.

The Space Shuttle would be cute technology, with nowhere to go except low Earth orbit reconnaissance missions. In an era in which detente was becoming the fashion, the military taint of the Shuttle was unpalatable. And besides, Kennedy and others never ceased to remind the public, there was nothing
heroic
about it.

So Josephson had watched, not unhappily, as the Shuttle quietly faded from Nixon’s thinking. The next generation of launch vehicles for manned flight, instead, would probably be a series of upgraded Saturns.

It looked as if there would be no elaborate space station modules, either, as the Space Task Group had proposed; just an extended series of Skylabs, improvised from Saturn fuel tanks. The engineers inside NASA screamed like hell at this, especially Mueller and his space station lobby. But it all brought the cost profile closer to something the White House might be able to endorse.

Of course, contained in the final program there would be tradeoffs. Rockwell had been hot favorites as lead contractors for the
canned Shuttle. And now it looked as if their big rivals Boeing were going to get the largest piece of the new space booster pie, because Boeing, manufacturers of the huge Saturn S-IC first stage, were going to be lead contractors in the new enhanced Saturn project. Boeing had all sorts of ideas for reducing the costs of the Saturn V system, for instance by adding strap-on reusable rockets to it, and even making the S-IC itself recoverable, including wings, parachutes, hydrogen-filled balloons, drag brakes, paragliders, and rotary systems of spinning parachutes.

So Rockwell – manufacturers of Apollo – looked, to everyone’s surprise, like being left with very little out of all this. They were offered a consolation: they would be allowed to proceed with a program to turn the S-II, their hydrogen-fueled Saturn second stage, into a heavyweight interplanetary injection engine. But this, of course, was the job that NERVA would perform, so strictly speaking the S-II program was redundant before it started, and questions were already being asked about its requirement and viability.

Still, Josephson thought wryly, Rockwell were bound to pick up other compensations along the way. Already they were hot favorites for the one big new start-up spacecraft program to emerge from today’s decision, even before it had been announced …

Meanwhile the military had been bought off, to Josephson’s way of thinking, with a promise of a presence on the new long-duration Skylabs, a restoration of their old Manned Orbital Laboratory mission objectives.

The new space program, then, was going to be a balance of forces, a compromise among the warring factions lobbying the White House and Capitol Hill. Thus, Josephson thought, as it always was.

But it wouldn’t have come together without Michaels’s string-pulling and favor-calling, exploiting the web of political alliances he’d built up over the years. A less astute Administrator – Thomas Paine, for instance – wouldn’t have had a prayer of delivering this. And yet Josephson knew that Michaels’s work was only just beginning. Michaels had worked to obtain the initial commitment to a new program; the challenge now would be to keep that commitment in the long, wearying years ahead.

Fred Michaels had known Nixon all the way back to the Sputnik days, when he’d been Eisenhower’s veep. Michaels believed that Nixon was a man who grasped the symbolism of the space age, right from the beginning. ‘Politics is frankly more important than science,’ Michaels had told Josephson, and Josephson repeated it
now into his tape recorder. ‘The real motive for space is prestige. Nixon understands that. He’s the right clay to be shaped. I tell you, Tim; I’m not so surprised at the way all this has turned out. All he needed was the right argument …’

Maybe, Josephson thought. But Nixon was also pragmatic, highly intelligent, a man who saw space as fairly low down his priority list.

He might have chosen to shut down the manned program altogether.

And yet, and yet …

And yet there was dear old Jack Kennedy, speaking like a ghost from his study in New England, quietly telling Americans that they were better than their pessimistic visions of themselves: that they had, after all, succeeded in landing men on the Moon, and in the full view of the world; that they should not pause now, but should go on, endlessly reinventing themselves in the light of the fiery dream that was space travel, a dream of which Kennedy had become the living embodiment …

It had come to a head, at last, today. Michaels had been asked to a meeting with Agronski, other Presidential aides, and representatives of the Office of Management and Budget.

Agronski, Michaels told Josephson, had opened the meeting briskly. ‘You’re going to get your Mars boondoggle, Fred. Against my better judgment.’

‘The President’s approving the program.’

‘Yes.’ Agronski shuffled papers. ‘There are still some decisions to be made about size and cost …’

Michaels grunted. ‘What decided him?’

‘A number of factors. The point that we can’t afford to forgo manned spaceflight altogether, for our prestige at home and abroad.’ He sounded rueful. ‘We’re stuck with you, Fred. That the Mars mission is the only option we have that is meaningful and could be accomplished on a modest budget. That we were only thinking of cutting NASA anyway because we could. That not starting the program would be damaging to the aerospace industry …’

Michaels had understood, and Josephson wasn’t surprised. Kennedy’s lobbying, and his own machinations, had swung public opinion just enough. And 1972 was going to be an election year; unemployment queues in states heavily dependent on aerospace – California, Texas, Florida – wouldn’t look good for Nixon.
But we were damn lucky to find an ally in Cap Weinberger
. Without Cap’s
lobbying inside the Administration, Josephson knew, the manned program could have been lost.

The meeting had started haggling over details, the wording of a Presidential announcement. But the decision was made.

Mars
.

Josephson, through his weariness, felt a deep satisfaction growing inside him. It was like the feeling of having enjoyed a fine meal, brandy and cigars.

It was actually unfortunate for Nixon, Josephson thought. Nixon’s thinking had been sensible, really; he’d wanted an affordable program with more than just one goal, a program which would lay a more solid foundation for the future. But it looked like he was going to end up with another footprints-and-flags extravaganza. And Jack Kennedy – or maybe Ted, drawing on the credit of one assassinated and one crippled brother, now making his own way to the White House – was going to get the credit.

Anyhow, thus, in a crucible of social, political, economic and technical forces, wielded by men like Michaels and Nixon and Kennedy, the decision had emerged. And, incremental and contingent though it might be, it was – against all the odds – a decision to send Americans to Mars.

A cleaning woman knocked and entered, towing a heavy vacuum cleaner. Josephson turned off his tape recorder. Millie Jacks grinned at Josephson; she was used to seeing him work as late as this.

‘I hear we’re going to Mars, Dr Josephson?’

‘Looks like it, Millie.’

‘Hoo!’ Millie chortled her disbelief. But then, she’d been shaking her head over everything NASA had done since 1966; Josephson sometimes wondered if she actually believed that men had been to the Moon, that it wasn’t all some kind of stunt.

Of course, what would be unbelievable – what would really make Millie shake her head – would be if we got a few black faces, even female ones, among the Mars crews
.

Maybe it will change. Maybe it will be a different world, when we fly to Mars in 1982
.

… I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of systems and technologies designed to take American astronauts on landing missions to Mars. This system will center on a new generation of rockets, exploiting nuclear power, which will revolutionize and routinize long-haul interplanetary flights.

The new year 1971 was a year of conclusion for America’s current series of manned flights to the Moon. Much was achieved in the three successful landing missions – in fact, the scientific results of the third mission have been shown to greatly outweigh the return from all earlier manned spaceflights, to Earth orbit or the Moon. But it also brought us to an important decision point – a point of assessing what our space horizons are as Apollo ends, and of determining where we go from here.

In the scientific arena, the past decade of experience has taught us that spacecraft are an irreplaceable tool for learning about our near-space environment, the Moon, and the planets, besides being an important aid to our studies of the sun and stars. In utilizing space to successfully meet needs on Earth, we have seen the tremendous potential of satellites for international communications and world-wide forecasting, and global resource monitoring.

However, all these possibilities, and countless others with direct and dramatic bearing on human betterment, will not be achieved without a continuation of the dream which has carried us so far and so fast: I mean the dream of exploration, of American and human expansion into space, the greatest frontier of all. In my decision today, I have taken account of the need to fully encourage and sustain that dream.

NASA and many aerospace companies have carried out extensive design studies for the Mars mission. Congress has reviewed and approved this effort. Preparation is now sufficient for us to confidently commence a new development program. In order to completely minimize technical and economic risks, the Space Agency will continue to cautiously take an evolutionary approach in the development of this new system. Even so, by moving ahead at this time, we can have the first components of the Mars spacecraft in manned flight test by the end of the decade, and operational a short time later. But we will not set arbitrary deadlines, as some have called for; we will make decisions as to the pace of our program in the fullness of time and with the wisdom of experience.

It is for the reason of technological robustness that I have decided against the development of the reusable Space Shuttle at this time; despite the manifest economic benefits of such a launch system if available, I am not convinced that our technology is so mature that we are ready yet to confidently tackle the huge problems posed by the project without cost overruns and delays, and many of its economic benefits should in any case be realizable from enhancements to our existing ‘throwaway’ platforms.

It is also significant that this major new national enterprise will engage the best efforts of thousands of highly skilled workers and hundreds of contractor firms over the next several years. The continued preeminence of America and American industry in the aerospace field will be an important part of the Mars mission’s payload.

We will go to Mars because it is the one place other than our Earth where we expect human life to be sustainable, and where our colonies could flourish. We will go to Mars because an examination of its geology and history will reflect back a greatly deepened understanding of our own precious Earth.

Above all, we will go to Mars because it will inspire us to clearly look beyond the difficulties and divisions of today, to a better future tomorrow.

‘We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,’ said Oliver Wendell Holmes, ‘but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.’ So with man’s epic voyage into space – a voyage the United States of America has led and still shall lead. Apollo has returned to harbor. Now it is time to swiftly build new ships, and to purposefully sail further than our ancestors could ever have dreamed possible …

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1972 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1972)

… As indicated in the President’s statement, the studies by NASA and the aerospace industry of the Mars mission have now reached the point where the decision can be made to proceed into actual development of mission components. The decision to proceed, which the President has now approved, is consistent with the plans presented to and approved by Congress in NASA’s FY1972 budget.

The Mars mission will consist of a pair of ships assembled in
Earth orbit. The ships will be clusters of several nuclear-rocket propulsion modules, launched by chemical vehicles based on our proven Saturn V technology. The spacecraft will be designed in this modular form to enable different configurations to be assembled speedily: for example, to complete missions to other planets or to the asteroids. The crew will inhabit modules developed from the first ‘dry fuel tank’ Skylab space stations we intend to fly from next year. The crew will ride a new landing craft to the Martian surface.

As the President indicated we are not going to work to a set timetable. However we hope to fly our first mission to take advantage of Mars’s opposition with Earth in 1982. This first mission will be preceded by an intensive development program including flight phases in Earth orbit. The program will include the full development of the new nuclear technology, of life support for long-duration missions, of interplanetary communications and navigation techniques, of the increased reusability and reliability of systems, and of Mars entry and landing systems. Calls for recruitment of astronauts for the new program will shortly be issued.

To survey landing sites for the eventual manned mission a new series of Mariner unmanned photographic orbiters will be sent to Mars. These flights will replace the previously proposed Viking science platforms, which are now canceled, and so will take place within the envelope of current funding levels.