OF THE 12 men who walked on the moon, only four are alive today, following the death of Apollo 12 astronaut last month. At the time of the Apollo programme, it was widely expected that NASA would have sent people to Mars and even the rest of the solar system by now.
Instead, those few moon landings are fading into the distant past. What went wrong?
For starters, NASA can’t agree on a destination. There are two vociferous factions in the agency: one favours returning to the moon to begin with and another wants to go directly to Mars.
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The moon-first camp believes that the technology needed for a Mars landing can be tested on the moon, which is near enough to allow a return to Earth if something goes wrong.
In contrast, those who want to go straight to the Red Planet believe another moon landing is a backward step. They think that all the technological kinks can be worked out with robotic missions to Mars. No one has yet managed to get these groups working in a single, unified direction.
Another hitch is that, as far as the US public is concerned, neither destination should be a top priority for NASA. According to a , only 18 per cent of people want the agency to prioritise sending astronauts to Mars, and just 13 per cent favour a focus on the moon.
“The biggest problem confronting NASA is a constant shift in what it is told to do”
“The numbers are sobering for those of us that advocate a strong space exploration programme,” says John Logsdon of the Space Policy Institute, Washington DC.
According to the survey, people are much more concerned about NASA’s activities to protect Earth: 63 per cent say monitoring the planet’s climate should be a top priority, while 62 per cent want the agency watching the skies for deadly asteroids. Perhaps NASA should just forget space exploration altogether?
That would be a mistake, says Logsdon. The president, not the public, decides NASA’s priorities, and the fact that successive US leaders have set their sights on the moon and Mars shows that space exploration is seen as being in the US national interest, he says.
The trouble is, presidents almost never agree with their predecessors when it comes to choosing a destination (see “Power trips”). “The biggest problem confronting NASA is a constant shift in what it is told to do,” says Keith Cowing, a former NASA scientist turned space commentator.
The road to the Red Planet began in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first moon landings, when George Bush senior committed NASA to a crewed landing. The agency’s plan was to build a space station, go back to the moon and then head to Mars. It was solid, sensible – and way too expensive.
In the years that have followed, NASA’s two factions have fought an endless turf war for each president’s attention and the limited funds available. In the process, they have gone nowhere.
The promised space station only became a reality because Bill Clinton turned it into an international endeavour to keep costs down. NASA now pays ever-increasing amounts to Russia for crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS). No astronauts have left Earth from US soil since the last space shuttle mission in 2011.
NASA’s most recent road map, introduced by Barack Obama in 2010, was called Journey to Mars. It bypassed the moon in favour of practising in space stations and by visiting asteroids, before going to the Red Planet. In March 2017, Donald Trump seemed to endorse this by signing the NASA Transition Authorization Act, which mandates the agency to reach Mars by 2033.
However, in October 2017, vice president Mike Pence announced that NASA will return astronauts to the moon in the 2020s ahead of crewed missions to Mars. These goals are now enshrined as a directive signed by the president in December 2017.
Failure to launch
NASA calls these U-turns “pivots”. They normally occur when the presidency changes and are often politically motivated, offering a way for the new administration to distance itself from the old. Clearly, they are not good for actually getting anywhere.
What is needed is a way to unite the factions and keep the agency on a single trajectory. Ironically, the man now tasked with the job is himself a divisive figure. NASA’s newly appointed administrator, Jim Bridenstine, was only confirmed by a Senate vote that split 50-49.
Some senators, including Republican Marco Rubio of Florida, expressed concerns that Bridenstine was a politician with no experience of the space industry. That is perhaps unfair: he masterminded the American Space Renaissance Act in 2016, a sweeping bill that sought to align NASA, the Department of Defense and other government agencies to prevent wasting time and money on duplicate space programmes.
Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, says Bridenstine will now need to do the same for the wider space community. Although NASA has around 20,000 staff, it also relies on 60,000 industrial contractors to bring its visions to life.
“His first big priority is to clarify the strategy and direction for the human space-flight programme,” says Hubbard. “It has been subject to political whims and changes for decades.”
At his initial meeting with NASA employees last month, Bridenstine walked the fine line between humility and leadership. He hinted at the divisions in the agency without ever calling them that. Instead, he referred to passionate opinions. And he said that NASA would go to the moon and to Mars at the same time. By implication then, he intends to bring the programmes together.
In reality, that means moon first and Mars later, says David Baker, a former NASA engineer who worked on the Apollo moon landings. “I think he can bring them together in series, but not in parallel,” he says. “We just do not have the hardware to go to Mars.” Speaking to former colleagues at NASA, Baker senses that around 75 per cent of them support a return to the moon before going to Mars.
Yet the plan could change again soon. Since the NASA administrator is a presidential appointment, Bridenstine is likely to be replaced as the president changes, which could be in less than three years. So the question is, can he root any changes deeply enough that they survive beyond him?
“Ironically, the man now tasked with bringing NASA together is himself a divisive figure”
Hubbard thinks that a big step towards achieving this would be for NASA to follow the example of the ISS and build an international coalition with other space agencies and commercial companies. If they all signed an agreement over the direction of space exploration, then not just NASA, but also space agencies around the world could move in lockstep towards achieving that goal.
Logsdon agrees. “A treaty-like agreement signed with the full authority of the president is a pretty high-level agreement,” he says, and would make it harder for the US to change its mind. He thinks that having international partners in the ISS helped keep it alive in the US through numerous administrations.
First though, all parties have to agree on a destination. A move in this direction is the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, which was set up by 14 space agencies including NASA, Roscosmos in Russia and the European Space Agency. The group has developed a that affirms Mars as the goal, but plans a stop-off at the moon on the way. It also cites commercial companies, the likes of Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX, as potential partners in the effort.
The second part of the solution is sustained funding, because even the best road map will fail without a budget. Here is where Bridenstine must make his mark. “In the end, it comes down to whether NASA has a clear plan that everyone agrees to – one that will function across multiple congresses and presidential administrations,” says Cowing.
Find out about a simulated Mars mission on Hawaii in “The Habitat: Podcast power turns us into terraformers“
This article appeared in print under the headline “To boldly go… nowhere?”
