“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
When John F. Kennedy spoke these words to Congress, it had been a mere 20 days after the first American had gone into space — not orbit, as the Soviets had done on their first attempt. Total American manned spaceflight at the time: 15 minutes. Yet Kennedy’s ambition and vision set into motion a set of events that resulted in one of the most intense eras of technical innovation and scientific exploration the world has ever witnessed.
My friend Mike pointed me to a testimony given earlier this month to the Augustine Commission by Dr. Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars Society. The Augustine Commission had been formed by President Obama to review manned spaceflight plans for the United States. Currently we seem to be on a path of returning to the moon by 2020 then Mars at some date in the future. Meanwhile, we will continue to staff and extend the International Space Station in Earth orbit.
I strongly recommend everyone to take a few minutes and read Zubrin’s testimony. Not only is it a good overview of what a clear minded NASA can accomplish, it also gives a concise description of a realistic Mars mission plan and more interestingly, is a salient commentary on the consequences of institutions choosing to orient themselves around questionable goals. This last part can actually be extended to any institution, particularly as it matures.
Zubrin describes two operational modes that NASA has operated in — Apollo mode between 1961 – 1973, and Shuttle mode since 1974. The former is destination-driven, whereas the latter is constituency-driven. To set the context for this distinction, Zubrin offers a comparison of NASA’s accomplishments between 1961-1973 and 1997-2009 era, two eras in which the total expenditures were roughly equal (about $18 billion in real dollars).
“Between 1961 and 1973, NASA flew the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Ranger, Surveyor, and Mariner missions, and did all the development for the Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager missions as well. In addition, the space agency developed hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines, multi-staged heavy-lift launch vehicles, nuclear rocket engines, space nuclear reactors, radioisotope power generators, spacesuits, in-space life support systems, orbital rendezvous techniques, soft landing rocket technologies, interplanetary navigation technology, deep space data transmission techniques, reentry technology, and more. In addition, such valuable institutional infrastructure as the Cape Canaveral launch complex, the Deep Space tracking network, Johnson Space Center, and JPL were all created in more or less their current form.
In contrast, during the period from 1997-2009, NASA flew forty-seven Shuttle missions allowing it to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope and partially build the International Space Station. About a dozen interplanetary probes were launched (compared to over thirty lunar and planetary probes between 1961-73). Despite innumerable “technology development” programs, no new technologies of any significance were actually developed, and no major space program operational nfrastructure was created.”
One might take exception to the idea that the ISS is not a ‘major space program operational infrastructure’, but the differences are rather significant nonetheless. The key takeaway for me is how the operational mode chosen results in different strategies. In ‘Apollo mode’, a destination was chosen and technologies were developed according to a plan that would enable us to reach that destination. Technologies were evaluated based on how effective they were at fulfilling this objective. In contrast, in ‘Shuttle mode’ technologies are developed at the desires of the technical communities involved then justified based on the possibility of it being useful in some indeterminate future. While I’m hesitant to claim this as a good example, but I vividly remember all the buzz surrounding Lockheed Martin’s X-33 in the late 1990s, with claims as this was the shuttle of the future and would help fill NASA’s need for a reliable way to get into orbit cheaply — it was canceled in 2001 after NASA had invested nearly $1 billion into it.
The Apollo era had a concrete goal — land a person on the Moon and bring him back safely to earth. The Shuttle era’s goal is…to do things in orbit? Without a meaningful, definite goal, NASA as an institution lost its strategic focus and allowed its constituents to control the flow of dollars. As Mike observes, while unmanned space probes have resulted in enormous contributions to science, it fails to attract public interest which helped buoy NASA’s standing in the 1960s. Dwindling public interest results in less political attention which results in ever more tightening budgets, which in turn restricts the types of projects NASA can undertake and the vicious spiral continues. Zubrin wants to bring Mars back as a goal, and to get there within a decade. Of the reasons he gives for Mars, the one concerning educational stimulus is the one I find most compelling. His words are too good, so an extended excerpt follows:
“Nations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. The challenge of a humans-to Mars program would also be an invitation to adventure to every youth in the country, sending out the powerful clarion call: “Learn your science and you can become part of pioneering a new world.” There will be over 100 million kids in our nation’s schools over the next ten years. If a Mars program were to inspire just an extra one percent of them to scientific educations, the net result would be 1 million more scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers, and doctors, making technological innovations that create new industries, finding new medical cures, strengthening national defense, and generally increasing national income to an extent that utterly dwarfs the expenditures of the Mars program.
This point is so critical that it is worthy of further emphasis. The wealth and the strength of a nation are based first and foremost on its intellectual capital. In this respect, the Apollo program produced a terrific return, as it doubled the number of our science graduates, at every level—high school, college, Ph.D. This paid off massively when those twelve-year-old little boy scientists of the 1960s became the forty-year-old technological entrepreneurs of the 1990s and launched the computer revolution. A humans-to-Mars program today would repay even greater dividends, because in this day and age the science and engineering professions are also open to women in a way that was simply not the case during the 1960s. Thus an Apollo-like challenge today would not only inspire into being legions of little boy scientists, but little girl scientists as well, whose ensuing research and nventions would benefit the nation, and humanity at large, for decades to come.” (emphasis mine)
When it comes to public policy decisions, I am most interested in choices that bring about institutional change — the kind that becomes baked into the fabric of society whose benefits will be enjoyed for decades and generations to come. Zubrin describes above the kind of ‘baked in’ change the Apollo era introduced into the American society, and its return on investment is almost too large to comprehend. In today’s age where change is accelerating ever more rapidly, just imagine the effect these kinds of investments made today could have on our grandchildren’s generation.
Addressing the commission, Zubrin says,
“Many options have been placed before you, but really only one fundamental choice: and that is to shun challenge or to embrace it, to choose to do things because they are easy, or because they are hard. Humans to Mars is the challenge that has been staring NASA in the face for the past forty years. It is the challenge that says to us: “Are you still a nation of pioneers? Do you still have the guts, and fortitude, and vision that your predecessors had—those brave men and women who took the risks to get you to where you are today? Are you still a nation whose great deeds will be celebrated in newspapers, or just in museums?” (emphasis mine)
It may sound cliched, but is this not the greater question at hand? A “decade goal” is a strange beast in our political consciousness — it is short-term enough to have fairly deterministic, observable results for society but long-term enough to fall outside the election cycle of any of our elected officials — and thus subject to suffer at the hands of political maneuvering. It requires a national vision, a societal appetite for risk, and a political will that transcends the current state of our politics.
Now, this is the first I’ve read about Dr. Zubrin, but his testimony nonetheless touches upon numerous critical points with regard to the general direction of science and technology in America. I’ll be the first to admit — we have national priorities right now in the realm of economic recovery and healthcare reform at a scale not seen in 80 and 60 years, respectively. But we must keep our sights to the stars and have the courage to dare to dream big. As Zubrin notes, we have the technology to do a Mars mission right now. We can do this, and it would serve us well to rekindle the kind of can do spirit that has made America great.
A big thanks to Mike for being a valuable sounding board for this post.
^ Here is pretty common looking page (pg. 629)
^ Section titles can take up a lot of space (pg. 194)
^ and sometimes whole pages are indented. (pg. 604)