Tampa Tribune (Florida) January 14, 2004
Bush's Space Initiative Follows Father's Footsteps
By Gil Klein
EXPERT SAYS 1989 PLAN WAS "DEAD ON ARRIVAL'
WASHINGTON - Today, when President Bush proposes a space mission to return Americans to the moon and launch a manned expedition to Mars, he will echo his father.
On July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin's moon walk, the elder Bush stood on the steps of the National Air and Space Museum and committed the nation to "a sustained program of manned exploration of the solar system."
He promised that in the first decade of the 21st century Americans would be "back to the moon to stay." From that lunar station, the United States would launch a mission to Mars.
Nothing came of it.
"It was dead on arrival," said John E. Pike, who was a space specialist with the Federation of American Scientists in 1989 and now directs defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org.
Democrats, who controlled Congress, refused to fund it, he said. Bush gave the project to Vice President Dan Quayle, who was named head of the National Space Council. Congressional Democrats were even less likely to help Quayle.
"It was not politically feasible," Pike said. "Bush could never explain why he wanted to do it."
Not A NASA Priority
NASA didn't want to do it, said John Logsdon, a space policy professor at George Washington University and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was not part of the planning before the 1989 announcement. NASA Administrator Richard Truly told reporters he had "learned this morning what his direction was."
The space agency already believed it was doing all it could to keep the shuttle flying and develop the International Space Station, Truly said. It did not want to add the moon and Mars missions.
"When someone in NASA said the project would cost $400 billion or more, that killed it," Logsdon said.
Space industry sources say the public could never handle the sticker shock of sending a manned expedition to Mars if the project were rushed like the 1960s race to the moon. Going to Mars would have to be done over decades.
NASA must have a defining principle such as the Mars mission if it is going to survive, said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Tallahassee, who flew on a shuttle mission in 1986 and chaired a House space science subcommittee when the elder Bush proposed his plan.
"You have to have a major goal you're working toward, otherwise NASA goes into drift, where it has been for the last decade," Nelson said.
More Help In Congress
Many things are different now from 1989, space authorities said.
Congress is controlled by Republicans, who are going to want to help the president. After the Columbia disintegrated last year, many reports said NASA needed a new mission. Instead of fighting the proposal, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has taken the lead.
"NASA has been central to the development of this initiative," Logsdon said. "It has spent the last three or four months putting some meat on this."
No one yet has put a price tag on the Mars plan. Raising NASA's budget by 5 percent annually will do it, Bush administration officials say. With NASA planning to reduce the size of the space station to complete it and the shuttle heading for mothballs, the agency may be able to direct money to the new project.
Money is not the only limiting factor. NASA scientists would have to find ways for astronauts to survive the radiation bombarding their spacecraft during an eight-month flight to Mars. They would have to overcome the effect of weightlessness on muscle and bone mass.
Pike said the project would be affordable if developed over 25 years, perhaps with the help of the Chinese.
Still, the cost is going to be high, he said, and the political pressure in the face of half-trillion-dollar annual deficits will be intense.
"The president has to put his full weight behind this, stick to it and provide the resources," Nelson said.
Today it's up to the president to provide the rationale for the Mars mission that his father failed to do, Pike said.
© Copyright 2004, The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune
