The January 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle accident laid bare many shortcomings of the U.S. space program. NASA, which only 14 years earlier had soared to the moon, had suffered chronic underfunding since the Administration of President Richard Nixon (1969-1974). At the same time, expectations for the Shuttle had grown until, in January 1984, President Ronald Reagan had called upon NASA to use its Shuttle fleet to build an Earth-orbiting Space Station within a decade.
NASA had eagerly encouraged such expectations. The Shuttle, it had promised, would fly cheaply and often. This would enable it to replace all NASA expendable rockets. It would fly so inexpensively that Shuttle astronauts would be able to economically service Earth-orbiting satellites. The Shuttle would reliably launch all U.S. robotic planetary spacecraft, saving so much money that a new era of planetary exploration could dawn. It would help to ensure U.S. national security by conducting secret military missions. It would be safe enough that it could carry non-astronaut passengers - researchers, teachers, journalists, and others. It would also open the door to new space programs. The Space Station, NASA had declared, was "the next logical step" after the Shuttle. That implied that there would be other steps after the Space Station in the late 1990s and beyond.
Even before the Challenger accident called many of NASA's plans into question, Reagan had come under pressure to give the space agency a long-term goal that would provide a clear rationale and direction for its Shuttle and Station programs. In late 1984, Congress mandated that the White House appoint an independent commission to study NASA's long-term options and provide recommendations. The National Commission on Space (NCOS) began its planned year-long study on 29 March 1985. Reagan tapped Apollo-era NASA Administrator Thomas Paine to head up the Commission. The NCOS included among its commissioners such space luminaries as first moonwalker Neil Armstrong, sound barrier breaker Chuck Yeager, and Kathryn Sullivan, the first U.S. woman to walk in space.
The NCOS report, titled Pioneering the Space Frontier, reached the news media in March 1986 and was formally presented to the White House and Congress on 22 July 1986. It called for fully reusable shuttles, heavy-lift launchers, an Earth-orbiting spaceport, a variable-gravity space station for biomedical research, lunar oxygen mines, cycling Mars liners, a Phobos outpost, and a Mars science base. It touched on topics as wide-ranging as self-replicating space factories, submersibles for the hypothetical world-ocean of Uranus, and U.S. involvement in the International Space Year.
Set against the backdrop of the Shuttle accident and NASA's revealed weaknesses, the NCOS program appeared at best grandiose. The Reagan Administration quietly shelved the NCOS report. Concern over NASA's long-term direction had, however, not abated. If anything, it had increased, in part because the Soviet Union had launched its Mir space station (March 1986). Many feared that the U.S. civilian space agency had lost not only its sense of direction, but also its place as the world leader in spaceflight.
On 18 August 1986, NASA Administrator James Fletcher appointed Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, as his Special Assistant for Strategic Planning. He charged her with preparing a new blueprint for NASA's future - one more focused and realistic than the NCOS blueprint - that would emphasize ways that the U.S. could demonstrate leadership in space.
While drafting her report, Ride received input in the form of a three-and-a-half-page report from the NASA Space Goals Task Force, a 12-member group appointed by NASA Advisory Council chairman Daniel Fink and chaired by Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot Michael Collins (image at top of post). The NASA Advisory Council gave the final report of the Collins Task Force its blessing during its meeting of 3-4 March 1987, and Fink submitted it to Fletcher on 16 March.
The Space Goals Task Force declared that a "bold goal, clearly stated" would not only boost public awareness of NASA, it would also help the space agency to "focus and clarify" its programs. Mars, the Task Force declared, stood out as "the one entity most likely to capture widespread enthusiasm and support, while pulling considerable scientific and technical capability in its wake." It called for a public declaration that astronauts "exploring and prospecting on Mars" would henceforth be NASA's "primary goal."
The Task Force then outlined "preliminary steps" that the U.S. would need to take before Americans could land on Mars. First, the Space Shuttle would need to resume operations and new expendable rockets would need to be developed to supplement it and ensure uninterrupted U.S. space access. Research funding would need to be increased to reverse the "serious erosion of our [space] technology base" that had occurred since the 1970s. In addition, an "aggressive" program of robotic Mars precursor missions would be required.
NASA would also need to complete the Space Station as early as possible so that it could serve as a testbed for development of Mars Program technologies and a laboratory for study of long-duration spaceflight effects on human physiology. "The Space Station is an element of human expansion [into space] in its own right," the Task Force declared, "but it is far more important because of its essential role in building the capability to conduct programs that achieve and demonstrate [space] leadership."
When Americans set foot on Mars, the Task Force continued, it was desirable that they do so as part of a "peaceful enterprise done in the name of all humankind." It asserted, in fact, that American Mars explorers should, "[u]nder appropriate conditions," be accompanied by astronauts of other "qualified nations," including the Soviet Union.
The Task Force called for "a realistic schedule" for its Mars Program that would ensure "stable planning and execution of a studied, orderly, progressive series of events." As part of the effort to develop such a schedule, it continued, "a decision on whether the moon should be used as a stepping stone to Mars, or should be bypassed" would need to be made.
It concluded by considering commercial opportunities its proposed Mars Program might create. The Task Force argued that NASA would "pull" commercial space ventures into existence through its revitalized research programs, adding that the "history of this Nation is replete with examples of successful commercial activity stimulated by the technologies resulting from the exploration of new frontiers." "The technical challenges associated with a program of human exploration of Mars are of such a magnitude," it added, that they would "certainly provide many direct and indirect stimuli to American industry."
The Space Goals Task Force report influenced Sally Ride's August 1987 report Leadership and America's Future in Space, though she elected to give equal emphasis to four leadership initiatives (focus on the Earth, robotic Solar System exploration, an outpost on the moon, and humans to Mars). Michael Collins subsequently spoke out in support of the Mars-centered NASA program that his Task Force had recommended. In an article in the November 1988 issue of National Geographic and in his 1990 book Mission to Mars, he called upon NASA to bypass the moon and launch humans to Mars as early as 2004.
References:
Letter with enclosure, Daniel J. Fink to James C. Fletcher, NASA Space Goals Task Force Final Report, 16 March 1987.
"Mission to Mars," Michael Collins, National Geographic, Volume 174, November 1988, pp. 732-764.
Mission to Mars: An Astronaut's Vision of Our Future in Space, Michael Collins, Grove Press, 1990.
Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000, David S. F. Portree, Monographs in Aerospace History #21, NASA SP-2001-4521, February 2001, pp. 68-69.
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