The Case for Mars (47 page)

In short I believe, and there is every reason to believe, that if an American leader stood up (like J.F.K re the Moon) and called for a humans-to-Mars program, and then stood by his guns to fight for the program and
rally support, he would find himself leading a growing political juggernaut, just as Kennedy did in the early 1960s. The Mars program proposed would have to be technically and politically sound. A $450 billion price tag coupled to a thirty-year timeline can turn any proposal into a political albatross, but as we’ve seen, using a plan like Mars Direct, we can get to the Red Planet much cheaper and much quicker.

That said, there are at least three very different models on how a humans-to-Mars program could be accomplished. I call these models the J.F.K. model, the Carl Sagan model, and the Newt Gingrich model. Each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. Let’s talk about them in turn.

THE J.F.K. MODEL

The first, and most widely understood, of all the three main approaches for a humans-to-Mars program is what I term the J.F.K. model. It’s the most widely understood because it’s the only one that has been done—it’s how we reached the Moon. In the J.F.K. model, the President of the United States stands before the people and calls upon the nation to meet the challenge of the future. When I reread Kennedy’s Apollo speeches, a sense of his greatness comes through that is unmatched by any twentieth-century orator except perhaps Winston Churchill.

“We choose to go to the Moon!” Kennedy said, his voice ringing with destiny. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are
hard
.... Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our abilities and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win!” J.F.K. was openly visionary. While it would create new technologies, new jobs, and new knowledge, going to the Moon was fundamentally “an act of faith and vision, for we do not know what benefits await us.” Few people hearing these speeches could fail to recognize they were standing in the presence of history being made.

John Kennedy’s Apollo
program did more than just land men on the Moon—it set in place a paradigm, both political and technical, of how space programs should be launched. First and foremost, vigorous, clear, and visionary presidential support will lead any successful effort. Kennedy did not try to sneak his program through the political process. Instead, he stood in the well of the House of Representatives and announced his intentions to a special joint session of Congress. Secondly, it was an American program. Coming during the height of the Cold War, Apollo was a grand way for America to flex its political, social, and scientific muscle on the world stage. Going to the Moon, landing men there, and bringing them back seemed on par with climbing Olympus to share the nectar with the gods. Lastly, there was money. Kennedy was forthright about the amount it would cost and, together with Lyndon Johnson, a political powerhouse in his own right, did what was required to fund it—and then some.

Can the J.F.K. approach be taken again, this time to Mars? While the foreign policy imperatives of the Cold War are now just a memory, a successful American program of Mars exploration would still have enormous impact around the world. The first nation to step foot on Mars will undoubtedly go down in history as the nation, the people, that opened the door to humanity’s next great step into the future. It would show to the world and, perhaps more importantly, to us, to each and every citizen of the United States, that we still have “the right stuff,” that we are still a nation that accepts no limits. Is that worth $50 billion? I think so, and more.

To hear some people talk, you would think that a $50 billion space program translates into a booster simply rocketing $50 billion in large bills to the Sun’s interior—big money going nowhere. The fact is, though, that funds spent taking us to Mars remain tightly bound to communities here on Earth. They are an engineer’s paycheck, a welder’s take-home pay, a scientist’s research funds, a graduate student’s stipend; they pay for innovations and inventions that will remain part of the nation’s intellectual capital and that may lead to new businesses or products for earthly use; they pay for all the mission hardware required from the lowliest rivet to the latest high-tech electronics. Beyond all this, the funds spent on a human-to-Mars program would pay for an invitation to every youth in the nation to join in a great adventure
by developing their minds—the true source of all our future wealth.

In fact, the downturn of U.S. space spending at the end of Apollo was followed by a slowdown of the U.S. economy, which has remained comparatively sluggish ever since. During the decade of the 1960s, NASA spending averaged a bit more than 2.25 percent of federal spending (it peaked at nearly 4 percent of federal spending in 1964). During the same years, the U.S. economy in GDP constant dollars grew on average about 4.6 percent a year. During the early 1970s, NASA’s share of the federal budget dropped to below 1 percent of federal spending, where it has remained ever since. Simultaneously, the GDP growth rate has dropped to less than 2 percent.

The J.F.K. model is a proven success; successful both at realizing an impossible dream of getting humans to the Moon and in generating the greatest period of economic growth in the United States’ post-war economic history. Today, however, the question may well be asked if the nationalistic foundations that supported Apollo exist in the current era. Instead of demonstrating American superiority, wouldn’t it perhaps be better for a humans-to-Mars program to promote international cooperation? This brings us to an ternative approach to human missions to Mars, which I call the Sagan model, after its most consistent, eloquent, and vocal spokesman.

THE SAGAN MODEL

Carl Sagan has perhaps been one of the strongest and most public voices promoting an international approach to Mars exploration, and has been advocating such an approach in one manner or another for more than a decade. His original call for international human Mars exploration focused on United States/Soviet Union collaboration. He saw an American/Soviet Mars program as a way to bind two adversarial nations together in a common, historic undertaking. The energies of both nations’ top engineers and scientists would be directed toward developing the aerospace, electronic, and rocket technologies necessary for an expedition to Mars and, in so doing, would use the scientific talents of both nations toward ends other than enlarging their nuclear stockpiles. A mixed crew journeying to Mars was to be seen as a micr
ocosm of the home planet, a small world where the two great powers of the world worked together.

Sagan was certainly not alone in his calls for international partnerships in space exploration. Nearly every “blue-ribbon” panel anointed by NASA or the president (and there have been many) over the past twenty years has called for collaborative projects in space. While the current notion may have been outpaced by political events, there remains an obvious economic benefit: more partners means more pockets. What one nation might not be able to afford, perhaps two or more, together, can. The European Space Agency’s collaborative efforts have not only built a robust European program of space science, but have developed one of the most successful launch vehicles currently flying, called the Ariane. Technologies as well as costs can be shared, with potentially great benefits for all. Currently, the United States lacks a heavy-lift launch vehicle with enough power to launch a Mars Direct-style initiative. Russia, on the other hand, does have one, in the form of the Energia, which with its 100-tonne-to-LEO capability, is currently the most powerful rocket on the planet. Energia has flown just twice, in part because it has lacked a mission. A humans-to-Mars program would fit the bill nicely. Likewise, the current (and allegedly final) design of the international Space Station uses several Russian modules as core components of the orbital lab.

While there are obvious benefits to undertaking a Mars initiative with an international cast, there can be serious costs as well. By definition, any time a nation joins a collaborative effort, it loses control of a project. It can maintain partial control, perhaps, one vote among equals, but if the effort is truly collaborative, it will not be able to flatly declare what will or won’t be. The United States’ European and Japanese partners on the Space Station have had to sweat through several redesigns of the station ordered by the U.S. Congress. There was little any of the partners could do, as Congress was driving the downsizing of the project. Likewise, NASA has recently had to face the fact that our major partner in the Space Station, Russia, is struggling to honor its commitments. Late last year, the Russians suggested that parts of their current space station
Mir
be used as core modules of the Space Station, as the funding for new modules would be hard to come by. In g
eneral, decision making is slowed down in international programs, which tends to increase costs.

Politics aside, there are plenty of technical obstacles that can arise when undertaking an enormous collaborative effort: What if one of the partners signs on to develop a technology, and then, for whatever reason, fails to do so? What if a key partner ps out of the program entirely? What if international relations change, and a friendly partner nation should become a foe? Such events can completely destabilize the program schedule, and delays in projects as large as Apollo, the Space Station, or a Mars program tend to cascade, creating potentially disastrous consequences for the project.

When I first heard about Sagan—s scheme for a joint American/Soviet mission to Mars back in the 1980s, I did not think the proposal practical. The United States was in the middle of its “Star Wars” and Pershing missile buildups, the Soviets were waging war in Afghanistan, and both were waging proxy wars with each other in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. In 1980 the United States and Soviet Union had been unable to participate jointly in Olympic sports competitions. The idea that we could conduct a joint Mars program over a period of years seemed chimerical. Furthermore, from a crew selection point of view, there could be few worse choices than Sagan’s proposal for a mixed crew of U.S. astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts—two groups of ex-fighter pilots with years of prior training in methods of killing each other and indoctrinated with reasons for doing so. While Sagan argued that the process of collaboration itself would serve to bring the opposing nations together, I thought it more likely that conflicts between the two nations would tear the collaboration apart.

Today, however, there is a new rationale for U.S./Russian collaboration in space. Instead of using it to try to make peace with a foe, it could be used to stabilize a nation that is trying to be a friend. Russia today is a defeated superpower with an unstable economy and a dangerous growing revanchist movement—all in a nation possessing 10,000 warheads that could be misappropriated by illegal operators or retargeted at the United States if nationalists or extremists came into power. It is thus in the self-interest of the United States to help stabilize Russia both politically and economically. Propping up the Russian ec
onomy with cash payments for space hardware is one way of doing this. Of course, proceeding in such a manner means that much of the “cost sharing” justification for collaboration falls by the wayside, but from the U.S. taxpayer’s point of view, money could still be saved because Russian space hardware is much cheaper than Western material.

Some say supporting the Russian space infrastructure in this way would be a mistake, since the capabilities we save may be turned against us should that country’s nascent democracy collapse. This argument overlooks the fact that most of the space industries supported by a joint Mars program would be those manufacturing hardware like liquid-fuel propulsion systems, heavy-lift launch vehicles, and in-space life-support systems, all of which are of comparatively low military use.

In other words, in the context of today’s international political realities, Sagan’s proposal for a joint U.S./Russian humans-to-Mars program may have a good deal of merit. Its fundamental problem remains the programmatic risk involved—it makes the Mars program a hostage to stability in Russia or elsewhere. But perhaps peace and stability are worth the chance.

THE GINGRICH APPROACH

There is a third approach to getting humans to Mars, which has not yet provoked much discussion because it is new. I call it the Gingrich approach because I came up with it under the prodding of the Speaker of the House, and because it is in line with principles that Mr. Gingrich has supported for some time.

Here is the story behind the idea. In the summer of 1994 I was invited to come and have dinner with Congressman Newt Gingrich (RGA) and some of his staff, to tell them about my ideas about Mars exploration. I explained the Mars Direct plan for a near-term, low-cost humans-to-Mars program. Gingrich was enthusiastic about the possibilities. “I want to support this with legislation,” he told me, but he wanted to do it “in a more free-enterprise kind of way than just gearing up the NASA budget to go to Mars.” He invited me to come on his TV show to talk more about it, which I did, and then directed me to get
together with Jeff Eisenach, president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, Gingrich’s D.C. think-tank.

I met with Eisenach several times, and what we came up with was the idea of a Mars Prize bill. Here’s how it would work. The U.S. government would post a $20 billion award to be given to the first
private organization
to successfully land a crew on Mars and return them to Earth, as well as several prizes of a few billion dollars each for various milestone technical accomplishments along the way.

This is, to say the least, a novel approach to human space exploration, which up till now has been entirely government run. But it has a number of remarkable advantages. In the first place, this approach renders cost overruns impossible. Not a penny will be spent unless the desired results are achieved, and not a penny more will be spent beyond the award sum agreed upon at the start. Success or failure with this approach depends solely upon the ingenuity of the American people and the workings of the free enterprise system, not upon political wrangling. The tactic not only guarantees economic results, but it also promotes quick results and smart results. When people have their own money at stake, it’s a lot easier to find and settle on practical, no-nonsense solutions to engineering problems than is ever the case in the complex and endless deliberations of a government bureaucracy. Readers may recall that when Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, he did not do it as part of a government-funded program, but in pursuit of a privately posted prize. There were many such prizes offered for breakthrough technical accomplishments in aviation’s early years, and collectively they played a major role in raising the art of flight from its infancy to a globe-spanning transportation network.