WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Now that the Bush administration has chosen a space policy path, the most difficult tasks lie ahead.
A review of the five previous attempts to set national space goals shows a record mixed with stunning achievement -- and rejection. Twice efforts yielded the intended programs, twice the proposals were met with substantial revisions in Congress, and one effort, the most recent, failed completely.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated the first U.S. manned space project, called Mercury, in 1959 following the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the previous October. Congress approved the Mercury program's objectives of sending a man into space during the period from 1961 to 1963.
President John F. Kennedy used an address to Congress on May 25, 1961, to set a national goal of landing humans on the moon. Funding for the program was forthcoming from Congress, and six successful landings were accomplished from 1969 to 1972.
That support eventually cooled, however, and three remaining Apollo lunar landings, as well as a follow-on program to expand the Apollo system into semi-permanent lunar bases, were canceled.
A decade later, on Jan. 5, 1971, President Richard Nixon initiated the reusable space shuttle program in a bid to lower the cost of access to space. Repeated budget cuts, however, imposed on the program from both within the Nixon administration as well as Congress, sharply reduced the configuration of the shuttles from a fully reusable design to a partially reusable one.
That shift reduced short-term costs but led to a more expensive system to operate. Its higher operating costs plus fragile technology bedeviled the program throughout its history, reducing the shuttles' use and flexibility. Instead of lowering launch costs, the shuttles became the most expensive launch vehicle ever developed.
More than a decade later, another president was ready to try again with a new space plan. During his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, 1984, President Ronald Reagan made building and launching a permanent space station the nation's civil space goal.
Reagan failed to defend the program from critics within his administration, though, as well as from budget cuts imposed repeatedly by Congress. The design of the station was altered more than a dozen times while its cost soared from a projected $8 billion to more than $100 billion. The constant redesigns delayed completion of the station from "within a decade," as Reagan first sought, to a station that still is under construction today.
President George H.W. Bush attempted to launch his administration's expansive space goal during a speech on July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. Bush sought to start a program of manned lunar and Mars exploration but the lack of internal consensus within that administration, as well as from NASA itself, doomed the plan. Congress failed to fund any element of the proposal, which ultimately was abandoned.
Now George W. Bush has made his own effort at space planning. The assembly of a legislative coalition to start the project lies ahead, with a budget boost in 2005. Each year thereafter, as the space plan gets underway, new funding battles will be required to keep the project operating.
Between now and the first landings on the moon, two presidential elections will occur, as well multiple congressional elections. The public, whose support for the initiative will be crucial, will have ample opportunity to have its attention distracted by other developments at home and abroad.
The political environment that greets George W. Bush's space plan is far different than what faced Kennedy's lunar effort 40 years ago. To succeed this time, Bush will need to forge a consensus not in space, but on Earth, among groups that rarely agree on his other policies.
In a very real sense, the pathway to the planets begins at the doorway to the U.S. Treasury.
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Frank Sietzen Jr. covers aerospace for UPI Science News. Keith L. Cowing is editor of nasawatch.com. E-mail [email protected]
