The Moon: Why It Took 58 Years to Go Back

Exploring space is an amazing, beautiful, inspiring, noble human endeavor. Since the earliest days of humans looking up at the night sky, we've wanted to know these distant points of light, visit other planets, see what's happening on other bodies, and ultimately figure out where we fit in the cosmic scale, leaving bootprints along the way. Right? Or is space a political bargaining tool with a side of science? Hi, I'm Amy. I always forget to introduce myself. I'm an author and historian who has spent more than a decade unpacking the Apollo program. So, trust me when I say space exploration and politics are inextricably linked. Most large technological programs of the Cold War, which is the era I work in and write about, are tied to politics, which is why I've been digging into mid-century politics lately. And I understand that even that can be polarizing in today's landscape. So upfront, my agenda with this video is to give you a completely neutral deep dive into the policy decisions that have shaped human space flight since NASA's inception in 1958. As always, the blogified script is over on Medium with all the policy and budget documents linked if you want to check anything out for yourself. Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to look at the origins of NASA and how Apollo worked from a policy structure and funding standpoint because that's really the most important part. And that's also my expertise. Apollo has set the standard not only for how we approach space, but crucially how the public imagines and expects space exploration should work. I've said this before, and I'll say it a million more times. It's a bad model. I've been saying this for over a decade. From there, we'll look at how space has been linked to politics, a driver for some administrations and a footnote for others. Since Apollo, we've seen an eb and flow of interest and promises of grand goals, most notably a return to the moon and Mars landing missions, which I guess makes this video a double whammy. We're also going to get a deep explanation of why we haven't gone back to the moon since 1972. There have been a lot of promises, none of which have come to fruition as first conceived. It's all a rich tapestry, and we're going to see how it's woven. And a heads up, this is a big video because we're covering 70 years of history. But you knew it was long when you clicked on it. So, let's get [Music] started. The space age, I argue, started on July 29th, 1955. That was the day White House press secretary James Hagerty told America the president has approved plans by this country for going ahead with the launching of a small unmanned earth circling satellite as part of the United States participation in the international geohysical year. The International Geoysical Year or IGY was an 18-month scientific investigation into solar and geohysical activity running from July of 1957 to December of 1958. At the time, 55 nations were participating, and the US satellite announcement quickly caused a stir. It stirred the Soviet Union into announcing it would also launch a satellite as part of its IGY contributions. The starting gun had been fired, and the Soviets crossed the finish line first with Sputnik on October 4th, 1957. That night, Senate Majority Leader Lynden Johnson walked around his property to mull over the news. He felt a palpable change. The satellite simultaneously heralded a new era of exploration and a grim development in the Cold War. It was also an opportunity. A Democrat, he'd become Senate Majority Leader in 1954, but the party was struggling to find something it could use to regain the White House. He realized that night that space could be the answer. He thought that if he could take charge of space policy and mold the nation's reaction to Sputnik, he might be able to launch himself to the presidency. He started laying the groundwork right away, calling Sanders Richard Russell of Georgia and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire that night to secure their support. He was already planning to launch an investigation into how the Republican president had let the nation fall behind the Soviet Union first thing Monday. That Republican president was Dwight Eisenhower, who addressed the nation about Sputnik on October 9th and maintains that it didn't raise his concerns about national security, not one iota. As to the Soviet satellite, we congratulate Soviet scientists upon putting a satellite into orbit. Our satellite program has never been conducted as a race with other nations. Rather, it has been carefully scheduled as part of the scientific work of the International Geoysical Year. I consider our country's satellite program to be welldesigned and properly scheduled to achieve the scientific purposes for which it was initiated. That satellite was the Navy's vanguard. The next test of which TV3 assumed would be the country's official response. Neither LBJ nor his aid, George Reedi, felt confident after Eisenhower's speech. Rei advised LBJ to advise Congress to conduct an inquiry into Sputnik's importance and the leadership decisions that had kept American satellites grounded because the Army had a satellite capable Jupiter Sea rocket. It just hadn't been allowed to launch it because the technology was wrapped up in Nazi heritage. If you want my deep dive into Warner Brown, that video is linked in the description. That America could have beaten the Soviets into orbit but didn't was the key issue for Rei. Before Johnson could bring the issue to Congress, the Soviets struck again with Sputnik 2. Launched on November 3rd to commemorate the anniversary of the Bolevik Revolution, so it was political on both sides. Just saying. This satellite was five times heavier and had a dog named Leica on board, which meant it also had a life support system. The Soviets got the first satellite up, then showed they were working on a human rated system. But at the end of the day, it was the rocket that was scariest. A rocket to launch a satellite that large could easily launch a nuclear warhead over an ocean. Dominance in space immediately became akin to dominance in war. A month into the space age, and space was already a cold war battlefield. On November 25th, LBJ addressed the new Senate Preparedness Subcommittee on Satellite and Missile Programs. The Sputniks were akin to another Pearl Harbor. He said there were no Republicans or Democrats in this country that day. There were no isolationists or internationalists. There were no defeists of any stripe. There were just Americans anxious to roll up their sleeves and wade into the enemy. LBJ led the subcommittee in cross-examining witnesses from the military, the aviation industry, and science experts. Among them were Nerf & Brown, the architect of the Nazi V2 missile, and the unlaunched Jupiter rockets that could have beaten Sputnik. Finn Brown testified that a dedicated and well-unded space agency could fix America's flagging attempts in space. At some point, the proposed budget was thrown around of about 1.5 billion a year, which adjusted for inflation would be on the order of about 16 billion a year. The preparedness subcommittee's inquiry ended with the unanimous agreement that decisive action was vital to avoid a destructive war. America needed an accelerated space program, powerful rockets, fast-tracked missile programs, and above all, to bring structure over the waring service branches trying to gain dominance in space. Because the Air Force, Navy, and Army were all developing manned satellite proposals to win the glory of launching Americans into orbit. America's answer to Sputnik, Vanguard TV3 failed spectacularly on December 6th. This opens the door for Ven Brown and his Army team to succeed with Explorer 1 on January 31st, 1958. Less than a week later, Lynden Johnson pushed through a Senate resolution to establish the Special Committee on Space and Astronautics to oversee space policy and direct its use of resources. He was elected chairman against one lone desenter. Once space funding came in, LBJ would be in control. Meanwhile, in the White House, Eisenhower was at loggerheads with his advisers about directing that space funding. He wanted the space program to fall under the Department of Defense. While his advisers were pushing for a civilian space agency that could foster creativity and international cooperation, Eisenhower gave in and sent the recommendation to Congress to form a new space agency with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the country's foremost aeronautical research agency at its core. LBJ presented Senate Resolution S3606 to the House on April 14th, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Organizationally, NASA would be headed by a director appointed by the president, who would in turn be advised by the 16person National Aeronautics and Space Board. The hearing to turn the resolution into a proper agency began a month later. And on July 29th, Eisenhower signed the NAS Act into law. On Wednesday, October 1st, the NACA's 8,000 employees went to work, suddenly on the forefront of the space age. NACA President Hugh Dryden stayed on as deputy administrator to Eisenhower's pick of T. Keith Glennon as administrator. The new NASA's official goal was to expand knowledge of atmospheric phenomena and the space environment and to improve the usefulness, performance, safety, and efficiency of aircraft. Off the record, its real goal was to get a man in space before the Russians. This task fell to the Space Task Group, working out of the Langley Laboratory in Virginia. The program that would do it was called Mercury, officially approved on October 7th and referenced in a public policy speech for the first time on December 17th. Mercury would be incredibly simple. develop a small capsule for one man, stick him inside, and launch him up into space. He would be a passenger. He would also be a he. If you want more on that story, check out my book, Fighting for Space. The first step was deliberately simple. There were so many unknowns about spaceflight that just keeping a human alive was a huge step. But even at this early stage, the AY's long range plan, published in 1959, called for a manned flight to the moon sometime beyond 1970. So Eisenhower created NASA, but it was Lynden Johnson who pushed the nation to get its foot in the space door because he wanted to get his own foot into the Oval Office. NASA has just been created and we're already seeing space as a political bargaining chip. We're also seeing how it was created as a reaction to Sputnik, clearly showing how the space race was an iteration of the Cold War. People really like to ignore that part of the story, so I want to make that super clear. In 1960, Jack Kennedy won the presidential election against Vice President Richard Nixon. And LBJ did get his foot in the Oval Office, but as vice president, which he wasn't thrilled with. Once Kennedy was in office in 1961, he backed LBJ's pick of lawyer turned lobbyist Jim Webb to lead NASA. Webb wasn't keen on the appointment. In its two years of existence, NASA had grown to absorb Warner Brown and his team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, and Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It had recruited astronauts and let contracts to build the Mercury spacecraft. It was starting to plan the next program, Mercury Mark II, with a long-term eye on lunar missions and a space station and maybe even going to Mars. But none of that was certain. A lot of people felt the agency was something of a boondoggle, managing the pieces of Mercury while standing up to the armies and the Air Force's attempts to control all space activities and shouldering the responsibility of maybe very publicly killing an astronaut fell to the administrator. And while space was glamorous now, what would happen when that appeal faded? If NASA shut down after succeeding with Mercury, whoever was its administrator at the time could end up with a permanent blotch on their record. That overwhelming negativity was so strong in Washington that Jim Webb didn't want the job. He finally met with Kennedy and rebuffed the offer, telling the president, "You need a scientist or an engineer." Kennedy disagreed. I need somebody who understands policy. You've been under secretary of state and director of the budget. This program involves great issues of national and international policy. That's why I want you to do it. And this is a key part of the story. I need somebody who understands policy. From the start, running NASA was about policy and lobbying, not about science or inspiration. Jim Webb was sworn in on February 14th, 1961. On April 12th, the Soviets scored another huge first in space, the first human in orbit with Yuri Gagarin. Kennedy had never seriously considered that the Soviets would get there first, and now he had to figure out how to respond. He'd just approved a new larger rocket Warner Brown's team was developing called Saturn. But he denied funding for a three-man spacecraft. That next step had seemed too big. Now things were different. He had to admit America was falling behind. And he did it at a press conference that day. President, a member of Congress said today that he was tired of being seeing the United States second to Russia in the space field. However tired anybody may be and no one is more tired than uh than I am, it is a fact that it uh it's going to take some time and I think we have to recognize it. They secured these large boosters which have led to their being first in Sputnik and led to their first uh putting their man in space. As I said in my state of the union, the news will be worse before it's better and it will be some time before we catch up. We are, I hope, going to go in other areas where we can be first and which will bring perhaps more long range benefits to uh mankind, but here we're behind. That same day, a House resolution amended the NAS Act and nominated LBJ to serve as chairman of the Space Council, an appointment the committee quickly approved. Three days later, the Kennedy administration was dealt another blow with the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy needed a win, so he looked to space. On April 20th, he sent LBJ a memo. Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space or by a trip to the moon or by a rocket to land on the moon or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win? How much additional money would it cost? Are we making maximum efforts? Are we achieving necessary results? LBJ met with his congressional space team. He talked to Jim Webb, presidential science adviser Jerry Weisner, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera, and Warner Brown, and every conversation confirmed that the Soviets had bigger rockets, but lacked resources and leadership. Instead of trying to catch up to them, America's best move was to embark on a long range goal that would depend on successful management and problem solving over immediate rocket power. The best option, one NASA was already researching, was a moon landing, a program internally called Apollo. Jim Webb explained that this mission was massive. It would take ongoing support over at least a decade. And it had a price tag of about 30 or 40 billion adjusted for inflation that's about $340 billion. And he warned LBJ if Kennedy picked the moon he might not be in office to see it succeed. And he'd have to be okay with that. The moon wasn't a far-off goal anymore. Now it was a so-called crash program to beat the Soviets at their own game. The political and propaganda implications were as important, if not more important, than the technological coup. Control of space was the modern-day equivalent of controlling the oceans. And first in space would mean first in the world. LBJ passed the recommendation to Kennedy, saying that with the strong effort, the United States could manage it by 1966 or 1967. On May 5th, Al Shepard made America's first space flight. This 15-minute suborbital shot didn't exactly soothe the wounds of having been beaten by the Soviets, but it gave Kennedy confidence. He addressed a joint session of Congress on May 25th. I therefore ask the Congress above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals. First, 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. What Kennedy did was mandate fasttracking the lunar goal. But he still had to ask Congress to approve a $549 million supplemental appropriation for NASA just to get started. Congress voted in favor knowing the program would cost somewhere around $40 billion. Money was one thing, but how to get to the moon was another matter. And even though this is a policy story, we can't not talk about this technology side. Kennedy's pledge didn't come with a map. NASA had been given a directive and it had to figure out how to get that done. There was some concern that the Soviets would try for a lunar mission in 1967 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Since speed was paramount, NASA started by building on what it had. It had the Mercury capsule, so it made sense to use that research and retain the same shape with the Apollo spacecraft. It would need a bigger crew, so make it three to avoid deadlock decisions on board. The mission would take up to two weeks, so it would need a better power system than batteries, and a flight that long would mean the crew couldn't stay in their big space suits. They would need a safe shirt sleeves environment. They would also need specialized suits to keep them alive walking around on the moon. But the biggest problem was mass. Whatever was going to land on the moon was going to be heavy because it had to take fuel to launch back off the moon and travel back to Earth. To get all that off the Earth in the first place, NASA would need either a single massive rocket called Nova or it could launch the spacecraft in pieces on smaller Saturn rockets, assemble it in Earth orbit, then send it to the moon. This was the mission mode decision between Direct Descent and Earth orbit rendevous. In effect, did NASA want a simpler mission with a complicated rocket or a complicated mission with simpler rockets plural? Picking the rocket would shape the mission and the choice had to be the path of least resistance to get the job done. After months of studies, NASA chose a third mode, lunar orbit rendevous, that launched the whole mission on a big but not massive rocket, the Saturn 5, and left the heaviest part of the spacecraft, the gas tank, in orbit while descending to the moon in a purpose-built lander. On September 12th, 1962, Kennedy made his now famous speech at Rice University. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. In reality, he didn't care about the science return or about what lay beyond our planet or even the challenge. The moon landing was important, he told Jim Webb on November 21st, for political reasons, international political reasons. Dave Bell, but I do think we ought to get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to be that this is the top priority program of the a otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money because I'm not that interested in space. I think it's good. I think we ought to know about it. We're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money, but we're talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs. And the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this come out fashion is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind it. We did by a couple of years by God we passed. I think it' be a hell of a run for us. He cared about beating the Russians. He also cared about the ballooning cost as the agency was allotted more funding yearbyear. Apollo consumed an increasingly large percentage of that budget and it still needed more. Kennedy worried that he'd started the country on an expensive mess, the legacy of which would be his destroyed public image. Things were no better a year later. On September 18th, 1963, Kennedy asked Jim Webb, "Do you think the lunar, the man landing on the moon, is a good idea?" Webb said yes, but Kennedy still felt it wasn't worth pursuing. He wanted to end Apollo before it ended his reputation. So on September 20th, before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations, Kennedy called to cancel Apollo in favor of a joint US Soviet mission to the moon that would foster peace and cooperation instead of competition. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union in preparing for such expeditions become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries indeed of all the world cannot work together in the conquest of space. sending someday in this decade to the moon. Not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries. Kennedy wanted out of Apollo and LBJ wanted out of the Kennedy White House. In November, the night he and Kennedy arrived in Dallas, LBJ went to the president's suite and told him he wouldn't be his running mate in another election. The next day, LBJ sat in the car behind Kennedy's in the motorcade to see his assassination. Kennedy's assassination, I would say, is the most important thing that happened to Apollo. Not only did it save the program from cancellation, it imbued Apollo with the need to write a wrong. The space agency wasn't just following a presidential order anymore, it was now honoring the dream of a fallen president. It also put LBJ in an impossible position. Remember that he had been one of space's biggest backers in the wake of Sputnik. Not only was he synonymous with space, if he canled Kennedy's program, he would look horribly disloyal. LBJ had no choice but to lead America to the moon within the decade. Apollo pressed on, not without setbacks. When a fire killed the Apollo 1 astronauts during a routine pre-launch test, it might have derailed the program entirely. But NASA instead found the flaws, found its errors, including poor management decisions that led to unsafe tests, and rebuilt the spacecraft. It did an all-up test of the Saturn 5 launching the full rocket on Apollo 4 in November of 1967. When the lunar module fell badly behind schedule, NASA threw its step-by-step plan out the window and went to the moon with just the command module on Apollo 8, a daring, risky flight that paid off. Every mission checked a box on the lunar to-do list. So, after Apollo 10 flew a dress rehearsal landing, there was nothing left to do but land on the moon. NASA management had been right in warning that Trude Kennedy picked the moon, he might not be in office to see it succeed. I'm talking to you by telephone from the room at the White House. Apollo 11 launched on July 16th, 1969, and Richard Nixie was facing his own impossible task. Apollo 11 accomplished the goal that NASA was created to achieve, technologically dominate the Russians in space. Apollo was also his old rivals legacy. So, what was he going to do with the space agency? [Music] Now, let's spend a minute here to look at NASA around the time of Apollo 11. The NACA that had formed NASA's core sort of felt like the wild west of aviation research and that carried into NASA's early years. Engineers built model test beds based on instinct before moving on to proper models and wind tunnels. There's a story about Max Fay at the NACA's Langley Lab using paper plates to explore early shapes of blunt body vehicles research that ended up with the Mercury spacecraft. At the high-speed flight station at Edwards Air Force Base, Milt Thompson wanted to know how the Gemini Regalo wing would feel to fly. So he built a training vehicle himself with scrap metal. By 1969, NASA had grown. In addition to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville and JPL in California, NASA had taken over the Masheed Airfield in 1961 to assemble parts of the Saturn 5 rocket. The man space flight center in Houston and the launch operations center in Florida were added to the sprawling network of NASA field sites. There were also contracts with companies all over the country building various pieces of Apollo from the rockets to the spacecraft to electrical components to the suits. One 1969 NASA report said that the agency directly employed some 90,000 scientists and engineers, a figure that doesn't include support staff, and it had more than 20,000 industries partners and 100 university partners. All that came with an annual price tag of nearly $6 billion and a labor force of about 420,000 people all under a firm bureaucracy. It had truly become a space industrial complex. But NASA wasn't in the best shape when Apollo 11 launched. While focusing his energies on selling America to the moon, Jim Webb had tried and failed to secure a presidential mandate to support post Apollo programs. The problem was money. In 1966, when research and development was at its peak, NASA had 4.41% 41% of the federal budget. In 1969, when the missions were running based on that R&D, that figure had fallen to 2.31%. The bloated Apollo budget was unsustainable, and Jim Webb realized that substantial post-apollo goals like a space station needed those impossible budgets. NASA had turned out to be a different kind of boondoggle than he'd feared. Rather than the agency disappearing because people lost interest in space, it was flagging because leadership wasn't willing to commit to another major program or even a program office to start studying and planning a follow-up. The closest thing was the Apollo applications program set up in 1966 to start studying possible missions with Apollo Saturn hardware missions like a man Venus flyby. There was casual talk of an Apollo mission landing on the moon's far side to prove the technology was up for the challenge, but it never went anywhere. The big program NASA wanted was a space station and new shuttle to ferry crews and supplies to that station. But again, nothing was ever firmed up. By mid 1968, Apollo applications was kind of in tatters. NASA management wasn't ready to adapt to a disintegrating budget. Personnel and funding numbers were dwindling, but each center, each contractor, each university, they all had a vested interest in NASA's next steps because they had employees who wanted jobs. The budget was scheduled for reduction to about 4 billion. and the labor force was set to shrink to about 190,000 by the end of 1970. Disenchanted, Jim Webb retired from NASA on October 6th, 1968, his 62nd birthday, 3 days before the agency made its triumphant first flight after the fire with Apollo 7. Dwindling budgets were a problem, he said, and it would only get worse. He warned in his retirement address that NASA needed a new direction or it risked falling behind the Soviets once again, losing national prestige in the process. Hi, editor Amy here. I just wanted to jump in really quickly because I was actually able to track down um a copy of a letter that Jim Webb wrote to LBJ and one he wrote to Hubert Humphre um when he retired. And I think there's something in the letter to LBJ that's actually really interesting. At a time when we are beginning to fly the Saturn 5/Appolla system and will soon have a pressing in on the senior executive group, decisions of the greatest consequence to the lives of astronauts and to the position of the United States all around the world. I really wanted to highlight this because I thought it was interesting to see it in a personal letter to the president and vice president, not just in a public speech. This was something he really truly believed in and really wanted to kind of make sure the leadership knew and appreciated. So, just wanted to really kind of drive that one home. Okay, back to other me. Thomas Payne, Web's deputy, became acting administrator, confirmed by the Senate on March 20th, 1969. Thus was at the helm with Nixon when Apollo 11 went to the moon. The NASA that Nixon inherited had lunar missions through Apollo 20 on the books, a proof of concept space station called Skyab in development, and robotic missions, including the Mars Viking landers, and some smaller Mariner class spacecraft for interplanetary flybys. There was a general consensus that human space flight should continue, but there wasn't a firm long-range plan. There also wasn't arrival to best anymore, so there was no obvious goal. So again, what was Nixon going to do with the agency? Now, mull that over a little bit while we take a quick ad break. [Music] Shortly after taking office, Nixon appointed a new space tax group, not to be confused with the group at Langley that got Mercury off the ground. This new STG, led by Vice President Spiro Agnu, as chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, was charged with planning NASA's next decades, and NASA didn't hesitate to lay out its dream plan for the new administration. At the moment of its greatest triumph, the report began, the space program of the United States faces a crucial situation. At stake is America's position of world leadership in technological and scientific progress and the image that 200 million Americans have of their country and its record of achievements. For the country to maintain its good global standing, NASA's report recommended keeping the missions on the books, the planned Apollo landings and Skylab. These would help gain experience before developing a permanent station, part of which should be the development of a lowcost transportation system to carry astronauts and supplies to and from orbit. NASA also advised a rigorous planetary program with missions to Mars and the outer planets, all designed to look for life. Crude missions with men and women could begin as early as 1981, when the station would be permanently staffed by 100 astronauts. But these planetary landings had to be more than just boots on the ground. They had to include practical applications, astronomy, science, and technology. These missions would have to push the limit of technical capability. This proposal was audacious to say the least, and also not a plan. In the context of a dwindling budget, it's a wish list. This is a big future that would require Apollo level funding, which wasn't in the cards. The STG considered NASA's report and sent its own recommendations to Nixon. The STG's report said that one of Apollo's most important elements was the strong and widespread personal identification with the manned flight program. A forward-looking space program for the future for this nation should include continuation of manned spaceflight activity. It then broke NASA's wish list into three possible paths. The first option called to more than double NASA's budget by 1980 to support a human mission to Mars, establish a space station in orbit around the moon, that 50 to 100 person Earth orbiting space station and a lunar base. Nixon would need to approve this by 1971 to preserve the schedule. The second option maintained NASA's budget at its current levels with anticipated increases to support an Earth orbiting station and its fing shuttle. The Mars mission would be shelved until the mid1 1980s, but retained as the next big goal. The third option was the same as the second, only this time the Mars mission was shelved indefinitely. Developing this new space transportation system and the station concurrently would demand a budget increase to about $6 billion in 1976 if the station and shuttle were developed sequentially. The funding would only need to go up to about four or 5 billion. But in either scenario, NASA had big hopes for the shuttle. The agency expected to be able to turn these reusable orbiters around for another launch in a matter of weeks. And it would have a fleet of four or five orbiters launching from as many as three launch sites. With so much infrastructure and hardware, NASA imagined launching between 40 and 50 flights a year. There was even some talk of flying simultaneous missions. With this frequency, the cost per launch was initially set at about $20 million a flight. And sweetening the deal, NASA wouldn't be fitting the bill alone. The DoD was part of the program. The orbiter's payload bay would be big enough to carry defense satellites. The shuttle, even without the station, was a big ask, but it was vital to long-term space and interplanetary goals. Both Spiro Agnu and Tom Payne urged Nixon to pick the second path. NASA, of course, preferred the first path. Nixon picked none of the paths. Payne met with Nixon in January of 1970, and the president told the administrator that both public opinion and political adviserss were pushing to cut the space and defense budgets. A 1969 Harris poll said that 56% of Americans thought that Apollo cost too much and 64% believed that a $4 billion annual budget was too much for NASA. That year, the AY's budget fell below 2% of the federal budget for the first time since 1962. NASA was forced to cut 50,000 people from its 190,000 strong workforce, already down from the peak of over 400,000. Tom Payne called it a peril point. And it wasn't just jobs NASA was cutting. In January, Apollo 20 was canceled and its Saturn 5 designated as the launch vehicle for Skylab. It wasn't until March 7th, 1970 that Nixon made a statement on NASA's future. We must now define new goals which make sense for the 70s. We must build on the success of the past, always reaching out for new achievements. But we also must recognize that many critical problems here on this planet make high priority demands on our attention and our resources. By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate, but with the entire future and entire universe before us, we should try not to do everything at once. Our approach to space must continue to be bold, but it also must be balanced, which is a very poetic way to say not much. But it wasn't wrong. NASA had made space exploration glamorous and exciting. And while that glory couldn't last, a measured approach to space could. But Nixon wasn't committing to anything, measured or not. The next month, Apollo 13 suffered a ruptured oxygen tank that prevented the lunar landing and demanded some of the best problem solving to get the crew home. The mission highlighted the real dangers of space flight, and nearly losing a crew deeply affected Nixon. He considered cancelling Apollo 16 and 17 before the 1972 election in case another incident damaged his campaign. He didn't cancel the missions, and the shuttle station proposal took its first uneasy steps before Congress. It was not universally popular. Senator Walter Montdale was the most vocal advocate against the shuttle, arguing that there were still so many unknowns about spaceflight. There was just little justification for proceeding with the development of a space shuttle or station in this fiscal year. A funding vote passed 53 to 53 in the House and 32 to 28 in the Senate, giving NASA 110 million to start working on the proposal. Payne was still hopeful that the shuttle would be the first step to Mars and accepted sacrificing Apollo missions to lay the groundwork for the future. In September, he canceled Apollo's 15 and 19, leaving four more lunar landings. Then he resigned, replaced by James Fletcher. On January 5th, 1972, an election year, Nixon formally approved a new NASA program. He backed the shuttle, though without the space station or a Mars component. It wasn't just the cheapest part of that 1969 STG proposal. It was a shadow of that plan. The initial price tag of 10 billion, half of Apollo, was denied. NASA could only proceed if it agreed to a budget of 5.5 billion, a figure that was quickly cut down to 5.15 billion. Right off the bat, it was underfunded. NASA started developing the shuttle and Nixon went to Moscow to meet with Soviet chairman Alexi Kosagin and signed the agreement concerning cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes. This led to the 1975 Apollo Soyos mission, the first joint US Soviet mission that saw the famous handshake, marking a symbolic end to the space race. Apollo Soyos might be Nixon's greatest legacy in space. Some argue that his legacy is his leadership that transformed NASA from an era of indulgence into one aligned with national priorities. Others argue that his real legacy was setting NASA up for more problems down the [Music] road. In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agne resigned over tax evasion. Nixon brought in Gerald Ford as his second in command before announcing his resignation on August 8th, 1974 over the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford wasn't in office very long. He continued funding the shuttle. Space fans are fast to celebrate that he had NASA changed the first orbiter from Constitution, a nod to it rolling out on the year of the bicesentennial to Enterprise, a nod to Star Trek. He mostly oversaw some pretty great moments. Apollo Soyos, the Viking landers reaching Mars, and the shuttle's roll out. Jimmy Carter took office in 1977. And though he was a longtime space advocate, he didn't push for any big leaps. He was far more concerned with the problems on Earth and felt robotic missions were a better and cheaper way to explore the cosmos. His vice president, Walter Manddale, we have just seen, was a very vocal critic of the space program. The Carter administration shared a space policy on May 11th, 1978. It didn't include any specific proposals. Instead, it called more generally for a commitment to the principles of exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all mankind and a commitment to conducting those activities in space which are necessary to national defense. Meanwhile, the underfunded shuttle, though the first orbiter had rolled out, was fraught with cost overruns, schedule slippages, management changes, and a host of technical challenges. Robert Frost, who'd taken the position of administrator in 1977, met with Carter in 1979 to give the president two options for the shuttle's future, turn it into a research-only vehicle, giving up the goal of flying crews and payloads or increase the program's funding. Frost was stunned when Carter asked how much money he needed. A big part of Carter's decision was the need for the shuttle to launch DoD satellites. The national security element was reason enough for Carter to make sure it got off the ground. He gave the shuttle supplementary funding and saved it from cancellation. So let's pause for a minute in 1979 to look at NASA's first two decades. NASA's first decade was defined by three words, man, moon, decade. These are terms we can easily grasp. We know what a human is. We can see the moon. And a decade is a nice round length of time that's easy to grasp, especially when you're at the start of one. There's also the vital element of the Cold War. Apollo being effectively a proxy battleground of the Cold War, coupled with the need to fulfill Kennedy's pledge, brought the funding to see it through. The 1960s also saw stability in Washington. Kennedy and Johnson covered most of the decade, while the 70s had shorter term presidents who had less time to lay groundwork, and in light of budget realities, a harder time committing to big programs. Even though Nixon started the shuttle, it didn't really have Apollo's cart blanch, nor did it have a firm goal. The shuttle was sold to Nixon as the shuttle station, but it began life as a shuttle to nowhere. Kind of like the spacecraft version of the escalator to nowhere in the Simpsons. On the cusp of a new decade, Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter, and the space shuttle was getting close to flight ready. Could this next president finally be the one to give NASA its next big goal? [Music] The NASA transition team didn't pull any punches when it delivered its report to Reagan in 1980. United States leadership and preeminence are seriously threatened and measurably eroded. It began. After the final Apollo landings in 1972, Skylab launched in 1973 and hosted three crews before the program ended. The Apollo Soyuse mission in 1975 was NASA's last human mission. The Soviets, meanwhile, had launched a series of salute space stations, some of which were later revealed to be the military Almaz iteration that were staffed by an ongoing roster of Soyuse missions. The Soviets had gained the orbiting footholds that NASA had been trying to secure since its inception. And it wasn't just the Soviets anymore. Japan and France were moving ahead with their own launch systems. The latter becoming a path for American commercial satellites, costing the country revenue and prestige. The United States has lost its competitive edge in the world militarily, commercially, and economically. And our competition with the Soviet Union has taken on a new dimension. The Soviet Union recognizes that science and technology are major factors in that competition. The nation that is strong in science and technology has the foundation to be strong in all other areas and will be perceived as a world leader. The transition team recommended Reagan throw his support behind the shuttle right away. Select a strong, politically savvy administrator. I want to highlight that a politically savvy administrator retain existing expendable launch vehicles and wait until NASA had some shuttle experience under its belt before giving that program a firm goal. Luckily for NASA, Reagan liked space. In a 1985 diary entry, he wrote, "Space truly is the last frontier, and some of the developments there in astronomy, etc., are like science fiction, except they're real." Reagan saw the space program as an example of American exceptionalism and global leadership. He had big values and ideas and surrounded himself with the people who could turn those ideas into policy. On the NASA side, that included the new administrator Jim Begs and former AIM center director Hans Mark as his deputy. Begs and Mark were united in their goal of getting the shuttle up and running and getting approval for the space station it was meant to service. NASA was so confident that the shuttle would make spacelight routine and reliable that goals soon emerged to take advantage of its expected capability. As we saw earlier, the estimated launch cost was about $20 million, far less than the $185 million of a Saturn 5 launch, which adjusted for 1980 to keep the shuttle in context with the early Reagan years, was about 393 million. At that price point, NASA could sell space on missions, and there was plenty to go around. Remember, it was meant to launch between 40 and 50 flights a year. There were plans to launch payload specialists, non- US astronauts to foster international goodwill, specialists accompanying foreign satellites or experiments, congress people, and even regular people like teachers. And don't forget the DoD satellites, Reagan backed this shuttle. John Logden, an absolutely brilliant historian who's been doing space policy forever, has called the Reagan administration building policy around the shuttle's potential as the worst space policy decision ever made. And I 1,000% agree. On April 12th, 1981, the shuttle made its first flight and the realities of its capabilities and limitations became clear and the picture changed fast. The estimated 20 million per launch was off. Projected costs going into the 1980s were looking closer to 250 million, though NASA preferred to use an out-ofpocket figure of 71 million. Regardless, the cost was more than expected. And since NASA had sold spots on launches to military and industry partners at that initial price point through 1985, the agency was set up to hemorrhage money with every launch. The shuttle quickly evolved into a program unable to do what it was designed for, even in its truncated state. It risked becoming an orbital trucking company, delivering cargo to space for paying clients. Begs had to revise the 40 plus launches a year to about 24, though internally management agreed the number would be closer to 12 to 18. This was a problem for the National Security Council and the Department of Defense. It had been banking on the shuttle to launch vital satellites. Now it would have no choice but to go back to expendable rockets. Reagan's National Security Decision Directive number 42 added a new complication for NASA. This directive initiated the private sector's use of space for commercial ends. The departments of commerce and transportation were very keen to have a private launch industry as a way of making money. But its biggest competition wasn't Japan or France. It was NASA. NASA pushed Reagan to decide on the space station in 1983. And in April, the senior inter agency group on space called SIG Space requested a study into the proposal and some alternatives. This study sparked internal debates on the station's role. NASA wanted it to be a nation facility for the civilian, commercial, and national security communities. The DoD and intelligence community saw no use in the station and were outspoken opponents. They just wanted NASA to fix the shuttle's flight schedule. Sig and NASA met with Reagan on December 1st in the cabinet room, which is actually a significant detail. The venue not being a secure room meant it was now a civilian-on-only endeavor. NASA asked for 8 billion to build the station during Reagan's tenure in the White House. 4 days later, still with national security push back, it was funded, at least in part. Not enough to start a robust program, but research could finally begin. The public announcement came on January 25th, 1984 in the State of the Union address. America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful economic and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in life-saving medicines which can be manufactured only in space. Just as the oceans opened up a new world for Clipper ships and Yankee traders, space holds enormous potential for commerce today. And as we develop the frontier of space, let us remember our responsibility to preserve our older resources here on Earth. Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge. It's common sense. The president's announcement turned years of NASA studies and hopes into a real program. He had also said the magic word decade, that nice clean number people can get their heads around. It's just a little less clean when it's starting midway through a decade and near the end of a presidential term. But four days later, Reagan announced he was running for reelection. On November 6th, he won by a landslide. Reagan's second term didn't translate to stability at NASA. Begs and Mark both left, as did a number of first-term appointees, which meant that there wasn't anyone left at the White House with space experience. Policy-wise, the status quo remained. The shuttle pressed on with talk of bringing in international astronauts and flying commercial payloads. The DoD pursued its own launch capability while helping NASA get the shuttle back on track. On January 28th, 1986, STS-51L launched with NASA's big marketing goal of a teacher in space on board, Christa McAuliffe. She was a huge draw. And being a teacher, it wasn't just space lovers who watched the live broadcast. It was everyone, including students. The launch was live in classrooms nationwide. 73 seconds after launch, an O-ring on the solid rocket booster failed. The leaking, burning propellants destroyed the external tank, and extreme aerodynamic loads ripped the orbiter apart. A complete structural breakup claimed the lives of all seven astronauts on board while the world watched. Former administrator James Fletcher returned to help the agency recover. And there were two big questions facing the agency. Should NASA build another orbiter? And should NASA keep launching commercial and foreign payloads, but do away with the business of launching commercial satellites? The answer to both was yes. Funds for the new orbiter were taken from the Department of Defense, which somehow had two billion just sitting around unused. That was the good news. The bad news for NASA was that cancelling commercial satellites barred it from any fair paying partners, which forced it to cancel 40 odd contracts and opened the door for a new commercial space industry to step in. The shuttle was back to being a launcher for NASA missions to the space station, which still only existed on paper. Design changes coupled with the changes to the shuttle program compounded such that in 1987, the space station's budget increased by 80%. But Reagan kept it funded. He approved a smaller variant with a 12.2 billion price tag and protected it from congressional attempts at cancellation. To the strugg of the national security community, Reagan brought in international partners Canada, the European Space Agency, and Japan. These negotiations were signed on September 28th, 1988, the same day the shuttle returned to flight. Also in 1998, the station was named Space Station Freedom. As part of the AY's recovery from Challenger, Fletcher wanted NASA to have a stronger direction. You guys seeing a theme here yet? So, we asked astronaut Dr. Sally Ride to prepare a report. Quest for Leadership presented four possible futures. Exploring the solar system, focusing on Earth science, getting humans to Mars, and establishing an outpost on the moon. Leadership results from both the capabilities a country has acquired and the active demonstration of those capabilities. Thus, the strategy we choose must lay a strong foundation of scientific research and technology development and must include visible significant accomplishments that demonstrate the successful pursuit of our stated goals. It would not be good strategy, good science, or good policy for the US to select a single initiative then pursue it single-mindedly. The pursuit of a single initiative to the exclusion of all others results in leadership in only a limited range of space endeavors. Rise report highlighted a shift in thinking about space. In NASA's early years, personified by Kennedy, space was a competition, an arena for the United States to demonstrate its power against an adversary. For Reagan, space was still an arena in which to demonstrate American exceptionalism. But it was now more abstract. In this era, NASA downplayed Soviet successes and played into the economic and leadership potential of the station. That's how it sold the program to Reagan. Leadership in space was now part of America's national identity for its own sake. Reagan backed the rhetoric of RID's report and called for increased leadership in space, culminating with human activity beyond Earth orbit. He just didn't really do anything to implement this policy and certainly didn't add any funding. He effectively paired rides and Kennedy-esque rhetoric with Nixon's pragmatism. The station was struggling. Congress reduced program funding and demanded NASA research a less costly rescoped program. This also pushed target launch dates back. at this point into the late 1990s, but NASA nevertheless signed a 10-year development contract in September of 1988. It could finally begin hardware fabrication. As Reagan left office, his vice president, George Bush, taking his place, NASA had a spacecraft in service and a station under development. It had also failed to find its footing, becoming more riskaverse and steeped in bureaucracy. Overall, NASA wasn't in great shape. [Music] George Bush had been increasingly involved in space as vice president, including meetings with James Fletcher about the American Soviet space programs. So Bush knew when he took office that the Soviets had pulled ahead and that freedom and the shuttle together wouldn't match the Soviet achievements for decades. The reality was that NASA needed a budget increase to develop a robust shuttle program and to test some fundamental technologies that would support future long-term goals like artificial gravity, closed loop life support, aerobreing, orbital transfer, crowd jank storage, and largecale space operations. But more than anything, America needed a push. It needed a goal to rally behind and see the nation regain preeminence in space. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering were in Bush's ear, urging him to support the station and promote a long-term goal. And that goal had to be something Congress would support. Bush said on the campaign trail that our exploration of space defines us as a people. Our commitment to leadership in space is symbolic of the role we seek in the world. In those meetings with Fletcher, the administrator planted the idea in Bush's mind of a return trip to the moon and a trip to Mars. The other reality Bush faced was that America wasn't in great shape. National issues, namely a struggling economy and a deficit straining the federal budget, made an aggressive large-scale space program a tough cell. Politically, it wasn't the best time to take on a massive program. But Fletcher had a bit of an ace up his sleeve. On March 9th, 1989, he wrote a letter to Bush alerting him to the upcoming Apollo 11 anniversary. An anniversary of this sort tends to focus on past glories with a nostalgia for days long gone. Coupled with a message of leadership and strong direction for the future, it becomes an integral part of the American space experience, it can re-energize the country. This really played into those pre-presidential meetings the two had had. A month later, Fletcher retired. Bush appointed Dick Truly in his place, a two-time shuttle astronaut who'd served as associate administrator for spaceflight and helped NASA recover after the Challenger disaster. He was a stareyed ex-stronaut, not a policy guy. Remember what Kennedy told Jim Webb? On April 20th, Bush created a new National Space Council like the one LBJ had chaired under Kennedy. Vice President Dan Quayle was chairman and Mark Alrech, a national security and policy guy from the Rand Corporation, but new to NASA, was the executive secretary. Like its previous iteration, the council was designed to advise and assist the president on national space policy and strategy. It was Alrech who pitched Quail the idea of a new human goal to give the agency direction and streamline the station. Quail took the idea to Bush, who gave the council the go-ahead to develop something for the Apollo 11 anniversary. Just like Fletcher had said, Bush told Quail he wanted to use the speech to look forward, not to celebrate the past, and also to challenge the history that said only Democrats make big space proclamations, though that's arguably breaking down already since Reagan had kicked off the station. The Space Council presented Bush with three plans. One for the moon, one for Mars, and one for both. The council wasn't aware that NASA under Truly didn't want a new human program or that the agency was plagued by management issues. In fact, when Alrech called Truly on May 25th and asked if NASA could go back to the moon by the end of the century as groundwork for a mission to Mars in the early 21st, Trul's knee-jerk reaction was, "Don't do it. NASA can't handle that kind of plan." Bush's team didn't take Trulie's unfiltered reaction into consideration. And Truly formed an ad hoc working group at the Johnson Space Center to figure out the mission. He told this JSC team, "Do it right. Make sure we can do this. Make sure we understand the scope and magnitude of this program." A three-phase plan emerged. From 2000 to 2004, the imp placement phase would see a larger shuttle C variant support building, then occupying a lunar base camp and a science outpost. From 2006 to 2017, the consolidation phase would develop the use of insitue resources, grow the lab, and extend missions up to three years. Coincident with this lunar phase would be the robotic missions to Mars for imaging and sample return. Human missions to the red planet would start in 2015 with the utilization phase. The first crew would spend 100 days at Mars with 50 days on the surface. Later missions would extend that Mars day to 5 years. The whole approach hinged on freedom serving as the hub for orbital research and deep space mission staging and also the shuttle C version that could lift 68 metric tons into low Earth orbit about doubling the shuttle's existing capacity and also a reusable lunar transfer vehicle and lunar module. The budget started at about 85 billion on the low end and 365 billion on the high end which seemed reasonable for a 30-year time frame. But by the time the working group presented the plan to Mark Alrech, the administration had added a requirement for a 99.9999% safety rate, which shot the base cost up to $400 billion. The Space Council took NASA's measured plan and presented three options to Bush. A lunar outpost then onto Mars, a direct program to Mars, or a roboticon program. Internally, Bush committed to the first option in early July, but wanted to hold the announcement until the Apollo anniversary. The story leaked. On July 17th, Aviation Week and Space Technology Magazine published an article about a secret White House plan for a human mission to the moon and Mars. The article said that Quail had been meeting secretly with top NASA officials and that Bush wouldn't likely make a Kennedy-esque proclamation, but rather start on a long-term goal, deferring specific budget decisions until NASA could do more intensive investigations. The leak was largely accurate. On July 20th, the big anniversary, Bush gave us what I would say is a Kennedy-esque moment. Standing on the steps of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in front of a massive American flag, joined by the Apollo 11 crew, he proclaimed the date to be Space Exploration Day, then pledged America a return to the moon and to land humans on Mars within 30 years. In 1961, it took a crisis, the space race to speed things up. Today, we don't have a crisis. We have an opportunity to seize this opportunity. I'm not proposing a 10-year plan like Apollo. I'm proposing a long range continuing commitment. First, for the coming decade, for the 1990s, space station freedom, our critical next step in all our space endeavors, and and next for the new century, back to the moon, back to the future, and this time back to stay. and then and then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars. The program was called the Space Exploration Initiative, and it was immediately a strange mess. At a press conference after the event, a reporter asked Dick Truly if there was a target date for the first Mars landing. And Truly, who'd gone over the working group's plan, said, "No, I just frankly learned this morning what President Bush's direction was." The public reaction skewed negative. Journalists dug out the proposed $400 billion price tag and boked, as did the Democratc controlled Congress. Al Gore, chairman of the subcommittee on space science and technology, said, "President Bush offers the country not a challenge to inspire us, but a daydream." Public sentiment was the same. A Galllet poll released shortly after Bush announced SEI said that only 27% of Americans believed space spending should be increased, and only 51% thought being the first nation on Mars was a meaningful goal. SEI pressed on. Mark Alrech directed NASA to provide different versions of the plan with different costs and time frames that exploited different technologies so Bush could choose from options rather than being told this is the way. The council specifically wanted NASA to develop new technologies as part of the plan to reduce long-term costs. Dick Truly disregarded this directive. The council had let NASA start the plan in its own way which had effectively transferred the council's authority to the space agency and Truly wasn't relinquishing that now. He was directing NASA to pursue the path it thought was best. And even within NASA, there was friction. The whole plan had come out of the Johnson Space Center. The working group hadn't consulted other NASA sites. As such, the plan was hugely dependent on past technologies and methods. Then came the 90-day study from a NASA technical study group at Trulie's direction released in November of 1989. This more detailed breakdown followed the same basic structure of the previous internal report, the bases, the new rockets, the spacecraft, and made clear how the moon would be a proving ground for Mars. And at this point, NASA finally came up with different approaches. a human presence on the moon by 2001 with the initial 600day Mars visit in 2018. A fast-tracked Mars landing by 2011, pushing back the Mars portion of the mission, pushing all mission milestones back by 2 to 3 years, or reduce the lunar phase and slip the Mars landing to 2027. The difference in these approaches was just the dates, but all told, the program would run from 1991 to 2025. The first option carried a price tag of 541 billion, the last 471 billion, which was also at odds with reality. At the time, NASA's budget was less than 1% of the federal budget, well below the peak of 4.6% in 1966. The cost of this report read like NASA expected another blank check. But SEI wasn't Apollo. And this is so much bigger than Apollo, it's almost hard to imagine. It was also too many things at once. A mix of science goals and engineering with a manned lunar base, a manned Mars base, full development of space station freedom, and upgraded shuttles. Space people will look at this and drool. This is unreasonably large and expensive. The lunar base alone was projected to cost 100 billion between 1991 and 2001. Mars was 158 billion between 1991 and 2016. And there was an anticipated additional 28 billion to keep things running to 2025. The whole plan now cost 550 billion. NASA told Bush he had to fund SEI like Apollo or scrap it. The Space Council wanted alternatives and wanted NASA to build on its track record of quote calling forth factors which are critical to American greatness, pushing the frontier, creating economic opportunity from adversity, and looking over the horizon to generate a better world for tomorrow's generation, which is word salad. The National Research Council pointed out that the 90-day study's failure to discuss an eventual phase out of the shuttle was a significant flaw in wider thinking, as was the failure to provide multiple options. Nevertheless, Bush's team remained committed to Mars. In January of 1990, a $2.8 billion budget increase to NASA seemed like the administration was backing up the program despite its issues and despite some significant world events like the implosion of communism in Europe. On February 21st, 1990, Bush signed a presidential declaration on the Space Exploration Initiative that confirmed his commitment to SEI. But this didn't mean Congress would fund it. And it didn't. In April, Congress was preparing to eliminate SEI related funding from NASA's budget, which prompted the Space Council to start a big lobbying effort to garner support. The goal was approval of 188 million in 1991 to examine faster, better, cheaper paths to the moon and Mars. Then NASA announced a crippling flaw in the primary light gathering mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope. It had only been in space a month, and this flaw risked negating the entire program. Two days later, NASA announced it was grounding its entire shuttle fleet because Colombia and Atlantis had both developed hydrogen leaks. Questions arose about NASA's ability to take on a Mars program with its ongoing load and the space station that had yet to launch. Around the same time, the House Appropriations Committee released its markup of NASA's budget, and all SEI funding was gone. The station and the shuttle should be the focus, and if there was more money later, it should go to these programs rather than SEI. The House Senate budget deliberation a few months later was the final nail in the coffin. It figured the now $500 billion estimate was low and entirely untenable. SEI effectively went through a whole life cycle in about 15 months, getting just 21 million for studies. Dick truly left NASA in February of 1992, succeeded by Dan Golden. 7 months later, Bush lost re-election to Bill Clinton. SEI ended as a flash in the pan. The NASA study group and Dick Truly thought Bush was prepared to support the necessary increase in funding to get to Mars. They didn't consider that the nation was in a large budget deficit and almost every sector of the government was expecting significant funding cuts, which was a huge thing to overlook. NASA argued that it was poorly advised and that it should have been directed to explore different mission concepts. On his end, Bush later said he'd been poorly advised, that he got set up by the plan. He blamed the Space Council's poor working relationship with NASA and friction on Capitol Hill. So, with another president coming into the office, NASA once again isn't in a great spot. [Music] Bill Clinton entered the White House in 1993 with a big focus on getting America out of a recession and balancing the budget. It wasn't long before Dan Golden was called into the White House and told NASA's budget was being cut by 20%. Golden recalled later that the blood drained out of his face when he realized what that meant for human space flight. Space station freedom was not happening and without the station there was pretty much no future that ended with boots on Mars. So he set out to save freedom or at least some version of it. Golden worked with key NASA personnel over a sleepless three days putting together a plan. There were three options. Option A was a scaledown version of freedom that would be built in orbit in pieces. Option B was a direct evolution of freedom with modified systems. Both of these Golden represented with Lego models. A third option, option C, was a hybrid station using shuttle and freedom elements. He represented this design with a single toilet paper roll. Golden brought all this to a Clinton senior staff meeting the following Tuesday and was thrilled to get permission to undertake a 90-day emergency redesign study to flesh out the options. On the strength of this study, Clinton approved a modular station with elements from options A and B, calling it a new station for simplicity sake. The station avoided cancellation, but it wasn't freedom anymore. Part of the costsaving came from international cooperation with Russia being the leading partner. Freedom transformed into the International Space Station. At a press conference on June 17th, 1993, Clinton announced, "The redesigned program will capitalize on the investments we have already made. However, with its deep cuts in future development and operation costs, this redesigned program will save more than 4 billion over the next 5 years, compared with our assessment of what the real cost of funding the planned space station freedom would have been. Over the two decade life of the program, these savings will grow to more than 18 billion. Part of the new international effort was the shuttle MIR program. On February 3rd, 1995, STS-63 launched on a mission to rendevous with the Russian space station Mir. This paved the way for STS71, which launched on June 29th, to make the first docking with the Russian station. It was also the first crew transfer mission. Space shuttle Atlantis delivered the new Mir 19 crew and picked up the departing Mir 18 crew. In September of 1996, while campaigning for reelection, the White House National Science and Technology Council released the first comprehensive revision of National Space Policy since the end of the Cold War. The United States would retain leadership by supporting a strong, stable, and balanced program. It said, with NASA's efforts focusing on the station, there was no mention of human flights beyond low Earth orbit. Clinton didn't have big space goals, but he also worked within a reasonable budget for NASA to finally see that space station launch, or at least the start of it. He was in office when the first Russian module Zarya launched on November 20th, 1998 and when the first American module Unity launched on December 4th of that same year. He also presided over the first crew visiting the station on November 2nd, 2000. 5 days later, George W. Bush won the presidential election over Vice President Al Gore. On the cusp of a new century in space, let's take another quick ad break. [Music] Bush took office in January of 2001 and whatever plans he had for anything were thrown for a loop after the September 11 terrorist attacks. New wars started in Iraq and Afghanistan and home issues like immigration, healthcare, social security, and economic policy took center stage. Meanwhile, the shuttle was flying and the ISS was taking shape under administrator Shawn O'Keeffe, who was sworn in in December of 2001. a previous top financial guy with the Navy and Department of Defense. He was using that experience to negate a five billion dollar cost overrun dogging the ISS. But by and large, space was running well, though a shift was on the horizon. The shuttle was vital for building the station. 30 odd years after it was first approved, the vehicle finally had the goal it was designed to meet, but it wouldn't be around forever. The shuttle couldn't land on the moon or Mars. It was always an Earth-cententric spacecraft. There was a limitation to the missions it could support and NASA was already internally thinking about the next generation spacecraft. O'Keefe had a vision of extending the shuttle's life to 2020, upgrading it in the process and adding an orbital space plane to the fleet that could ease the shuttle's ISS construction load and serve as a rescue vehicle. In 2002, O'Keefe said that he wasn't looking for a destinationdriven mission like the moon or Mars. Instead, he wanted to push NASA where science said it should go. NASA was entering a new era of research and development with the station and part of that for O'Keeffe was attracting young human capital to the space agency. With that in mind, he created a new division focusing on education. Then everything changed again. On January 16th, 2003, STS 107 launched on a microgravity and earth science research mission. During ascent, a piece of foam dislodged from the shuttle's external fuel tank and struck the orbiter Colombia, punching a hole in its thermal protection system. In orbit photographs to assess the damage determined there was no immediate danger to the crew. But when Colombia re-entered the atmosphere on February 1st, hot plasma seeped into the orbiter and tore it apart. O'Keeffe called it a catalytic event. It did focus everyone's attention across the board. Whether they were in the White House, in NASA, or on Capitol Hill, it brought this into a stark reality of asking very important and significant questions. What is the point of this? What are we really trying to do here? We've seen to this point that NASA has been kind of rudderless since Apollo. It developed the shuttle to build a space station, but the station came after decades of refocusing and reassessing the goal, leaving it ideologically different and significantly smaller than its initial conception. Administration after administration have shown that a big Apollo level goal is hard without a force behind it pushing it forward. Now NASA is again facing a reassessment of goals while recovering from another painful tragedy. Colombia, on top of September 11th and the ongoing wars, brought space into focus for Bush for the first time. He'd never really been interested in space, but now saw it as a potential key part of the nation's recovery. O'Keefe realized that he had a chance to bring together key NASA, White House, and other agency players to plan a bold next step in space. This could give the nation a focus for its recovery and give NASA a spacecraft to follow the shuttle. And now Bush was on board, and he wanted something big and bold, more than just the moon. He wanted the moon, Mars, and beyond. Professor of public administration and political science W. Henry Lambrite has suggested that this was Bush's business school training kicking in. That he believed as the nation's CEO, he had to provide a long range vision similar to his father's SEI program. He wanted to emphasize exploration. Of course, budgets would have to be cut elsewhere to compensate, but that was a problem for later. Meanwhile, O'Keefe, the man brought in to address the ISS cost overruns, convinced the Office of Management and Budget to back a big program. On December 19th, 2003, in a private meeting, O'Keefe, Vice President Dick Cheney, and a handful of top officials met with Bush. O'Keefe's strategy was to offset the program's cost by asking for a modest budget increase up front, then drawing in more money as the shuttle was scaled back and phased out. The orbital space plane, the OSP, would become a different vehicle altogether, one that would keep NASA flying and also support missions beyond LEO, helping return NASA to the moon by 2020. The president looked at all the proposals at the numbers and asked, "This is about more than just the moon, isn't it?" "Then this is really about going to other destinations, isn't it?" "Yes," O'Keefe said. And the circumstances were different now than before the Colombia disaster. "Well, let's do it," Bush said. He also might have thought that a big space program could boost his approval rating, which had been in steady decline since hitting an all-time high in the wake of September 11th. On January 14th, 2004, another election year, Bush took the stage at NASA's DC headquarters and announced his new vision for space exploration. America has not developed a new vehicle to advance human exploration in space in nearly a quarter century. It is time for America to take the next steps. Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system. Our first goal is to complete the International Space Station by 2010. In 2010, the space shuttle after nearly 30 years of duty will be retired from service. Our second goal is to develop and test a new spacecraft, the crew exploration vehicle by 2008 and to conduct the first man mission no later than 2014. Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions beyond. The echoes of SEI were immediately apparent and memories of it falling apart over the half trillion dollar price tag were also fresh. And in another echo of SEI, the press immediately raised issues. The next day, the Washington Post published a front page article pointing out that phasing out the shuttle would mean no more servicing missions for Hubble, a point that had been accidentally leaked. This was a matter of physics. The telescope is in a different orbit than the ISS, so without the shuttle, astronauts would have no way to reach it. O'Keefe realized that his measured approach would still leave bodies in its wake. And it looked like Hubble might be the first, America's most successful space program in years. From that moment on, Hubble was entangled in the Bush administration's new goal. Space enthusiasts were especially incredulous that NASA would embark on a plan that would leave Hubble to rot. When Bush won re-election in 2004, it solidified the moon Mars plan. NASA now had four years to lay the foundation of a program that would hopefully survive to see its goals come to pass. The Republican majority in Congress was also potentially beneficial. A blow to this was O'Keefe's sudden resignation in December, leaving his successor Mike Griffin to deal with the shuttle still not in service after Colombia. The station 6 years from completion and 12 years from its planned termination and the Hubble controversy. Whatever was next wasn't clear, but the visible options were relying on foreign partners for launches or the private sector or building something entirely new. Griffin wasn't thrilled with this landscape and wanted to see an in-house successor to the shuttle. So he commissioned a report titled the exploration system architecture study. The result was the constellation program. Per the report NASA would build two new rockets with shuttle heritage. The Aries 1 and the Aries 5. Aries was a nod to the Greek god of Mars and the numeric designations were a throwback to Saturn's 1b and 5 that launched Apollo. The Aries 5 would be powerful enough to carry a single lunarbound spacecraft into orbit. Something existing Delta and Atlas rockets couldn't manage. This was basically the modern version of one Saturn 5 launching Apollo instead of multiple Saturn 1bs. History repeats. The crew capsule, a gumdrop shape reminiscent of Apollo, was christened Orion to forge a link with the bright, recognizable constellation. Griffin called the program Apollo on steroids. He hoped to get Aries 1 flying as early as 2012 to help offset the loss of the shuttle, whose retirement was imminent. Griffin knew that losing the shuttle was more than just losing America's access to the ISS. It was losing American jobs and losing an icon. The shuttle marked multiple generations childhoods and brought space to countless people, which made it all the more problematic when Griffin called the shuttle a mistake in an interview with USA Today on September 28th, 2005. He argued that it had been the wrong path for NASA in the 1970s in the wake of Apollo. And that decision had by necessity shaped the space program for three decades. We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can. My opinion is that it was it was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible. Griffin did apologize. And when we're not discussing the merits of the shuttle today, longtime viewers know that I agree with Griffin on this point. But I digress. At the time, this statement coming from the NASA administrator did two things. First, it hurt a lot of feelings both within NASA's giant expanse of contractors and field sites and the public. Second, it solidified the commitment to Bush's vision. He wanted a new direction. Constellation was poised to write NASA's path. Constellation pressed onwards as the shuttle returned to flight in 2005 with STS 114. Bush's space policy, released in 2006, focused on strengthening the nation space leadership and ensuring that space capabilities are available in time to further US national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives. America and NASA finally had a solid plan. NAO just had to stick to it. [Music] Constellation was still getting its footing when Barack Obama succeeded Bush in the Oval Office. Obama was excited about space, but felt NASA was spread too thin. He wanted the agency to invest in technology programs and see the public's investment going toward economic growth and scientific knowledge. And as we've seen with transitions in the White House, it came with a change of leadership at NASA. Mike Griffin retired the day Obama took office. The new administrator was Charlie Balden with Lorie Garver as his deputy. Garver led the transition team that had a strangely hard time getting information out of the constellation office. The Aries team, in particular, was ky in answering questions about budget and timelines, apparently because they'd been told not to share results. The Orion team was only a little more willing to talk. When NASA released its 2009 budget estimate report, she and the new administration found out why the program office had been so ky. The agency admitted that Aries 1 and Orion were behind schedule. Neither would be ready to fly before 2015. Aries 5, the agency said, was still on track to get a crew to the moon by 2020, though was a little less committal in language about an actual landing. In August of 2009, a Government Accountability Office report found that NASA is still struggling to develop a solid business case, including firm requirements, mature technologies, a knowledgebased acquisition strategy, a realistic cost estimate, and sufficient funding and time needed to justify moving the constellation program forward into the implementation phase. It added that the whole program had a poorly phased funding plan that runs the risk of funding shortfalls in fiscal years 2009 through 2012. in addition to a host of technical challenges. All of this, it said, risk stopping the program before it really got started. The budget was another issue. The budget for fiscal year 2005 saw NASA asking Congress for $ 8.9 billion through 2009. The real cost, according to the Planetary Society's analysis, ended up closer to 11.9 billion, an overrun of 3.1 billion. And almost all of that was on Orion. Only 4% of that budget was earmarked for the Aries rockets. In the 2009 budget request, NASA asked for nearly 29 billion through 2015, and a lot of that was just to get Aries 1 and Orion off the ground. The lunar landing goal was slipping fast, likely into the late 2020s or even 2030s. A White House commissioned review of United States Human Spaceflight Plans Committee report titled Seeking a Human Spacelight Program Worthy of a Great Nation was published in October and said the same thing. The US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most demanding and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations such as the case today. And it noted as have become tradition, the driving question behind big programs was where when it should be why. Which highlights one of the hardest parts of any space program that has been an issue since Nixon took office. explaining what tangible elements it brings to the regular Americans whose taxes are footing the bill. People respond better to where than why, even if the why has more long-term benefits than we can possibly imagine. When I was editing this, I realized I actually want to hit this point a lot harder because, like I said earlier, people kind of forget or choose to ignore that Apollo was just an extension of the Cold War and focus so much on the where when the full driving factor was the why. There's even a line in Apollo 13 where someone says why we've decided to go to the moon. And Jim Levelvel, played by Tom Hanks, says we just decided to go. Well, it's not quite that simple. We decided to go for a reason. Because of the space race and the Cold War, the why was always the driver. And I feel like we've lost that when we talk about what really drives space exploration. The reality was Constellation was 3.1 billion over budget and had only seen one launch, an Aries 1 prototype. Without a budget increase of 3 billion a year, the agency wouldn't have any choice. Neither constellation nor any alternative lunar program that might take its place would see astronauts on the moon before the 2030s or even later. The Obama administration took this information on board and when NASA released its 2011 budget estimates, there was no funding listed for constellation. The program had been cancelled. Lorie Garver defended the move in a teleconference saying, "We have lost the moon, and what this program does is give us back the solar system." But that wasn't the real issue. The cancellation itself wasn't the issue, nor was the potential for new missions. The issue was that Obama hadn't consulted with Congress. NASA is funded by taxpayer money, and Congress is the body that approves or modifies the spending for space. Some called the move a bureaucratic dodge that was so clearly against the processes that have been in place for decades. Others read the cancellation as Obama's antipathy towards American exceptionalism. Canceling constellation was cancelling the inspiration for a new generation. The move was so controversial that a group of astronauts and NASA personnel going back to the 1950s wrote an open letter to Obama expressing their dismay. Too many men and women have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to achieve America's preeminence in space only to see that effort needlessly thrown away. We urge you to demonstrate the vision and determination necessary to keep our nation in the forefront of human space exploration with ambitious goals and the proper resources to see them through. This is not the time to abandon the promise of the space frontier for lack of will or an unwillingness to pay the price. Signitories included Chris Craft, Glenn Lenny, George Miller, Scott Carpenter, Charlie Duke, Jack Schmidt, Jean Cernin, Al Bean, Dick Gordon, Fred Hayes, Frank Borman, Al Warden, Jim Levelvel, Ed Gibson, Paul Whites, Vance Brand, Bruce McCandless, Jake Gar, and Bob Krippen. And it wasn't just the way Obama had canceled constellation. The cancellation came with a big shift in NASA's activities that wasn't immediately obvious. Obama's proposal had NASA relying on private companies for access to space with the agency paying for the flights of its government astronauts. That meant everyone employed by the contractors and subcontractors building the Aries rockets was out of a job. For congressional representatives, the decision hit their constituents hard, and that was unacceptable. Congress fought back, demanding that Obama create a new rocket to give their constituents in industry reliant areas work. It didn't care what the rocket was or what it did. It just needed to exist and it needed to be big and it needed to launch heavy things into space. What things and to where didn't matter. Congress demanded that NASA pour through shuttle parts and designs and find something that it could turn into a rocket. And that rocket had to launch by 2016. So Obama backtracked. Speaking at the Kennedy Space Center in April, he outlined his new strategy. Next, we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced heavy lift rocket, a vehicle to efficiently send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems, and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it. The bottom line is nobody is more committed to man space flight to human exploration of space than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way early in the next decade. A set of crude flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crude missions beyond the moon into deep space. So, we'll start we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid 2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow, and I expect to be around to see it. Obama made this plan official on October 11th, 2010 when he signed into law the NASA Authorization Act 2010. This directed the agency to create the space launch system, an Aries 5 like rocket with an initial capability of 70 tons, increasing to 130 tons with upgrades, the core stage of which had to be operational by December 31st, 2016. Orion was also pulled from the scrap heap to join SLS as the crew module for the human rated versions. I've said before that SLS isn't a bad idea. I like a modular rocket that can carry humans and cargo to LEO or more distant destinations with swappable parts. The theory is great. The problem was it was always a job machine, not a space machine. Hence the nickname the Senate launch system. At the time, private companies, foremost among them SpaceX, were making strides with rockets capable of delivering cargo and eventually crews to LEO. It would have made more sense to divide and conquer, leave low Earth orbit to private partners, and get NASA building the deep space rockets. But again, I digress. Obama canled constellation and replaced it with a less defined mission that was kind of the same. His space policy, released in 2010, gave NASA an additional goal under the mantle of setting far-reaching exploration milestones. By 2025, began crude missions beyond the moon, including sending humans to an asteroid. By the mid 2030s, send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. It also tasked NASA with forging partnerships with private companies, implementing new space technologies, and retaining the ISS until at least 2020. NASA refocused on Mars. This was around the time the Martian came out, and I was working with NASA doing short educational videos about Mars technologies and innovations, and everything was about the hashtag journey to Mars. The problem was the same as it had always been. There was no firm plan. Mars was non-committally on the docket, but unlike the moon man decade, it was human reddish spot in the sky sometime in the next 30 years. It was a harder cell and a harder goal to get people rallied behind. When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, I met people who didn't know it wasn't the first time we'd put a rover on Mars. And also some people who thought it was a man mission. Some people thought The Martian was a true story, which is just to say that Mars feels so foreign, it is hard for people to grasp. With Orion SLS, NASA had again been told to figure it out and also do things like capture and land on an asteroid in the meantime. The most baffling thing is cancelling a program and not just uncancelling it, bringing the same goal back with a new rocket and a less clear plan. But I don't know the ins and outs of how that could feasibly happen, if at all. The point is SLS's launch deadline of December 31st, 2016 came and went with no rocket. Just another pending change in the White House. [Music] Diehard space fans are fast to point to Obama as ruining space. Years that could have gotten us beyond Earth orbit were wasted planning an asteroid mission and building a rocket that, are we seeing a pattern here? Was behind schedule and over budget. By April of 2017, when Donald Trump had settled into the White House, SLS's first launch was slated for 2019, a three-year delay from the original plan. Those same space fans pinned their hopes on Trump to change course. And Trump, with Jim Benstein taking over as administrator in 2018, didn't wait to follow in both Bush's footsteps. Trump resurrected Bush the First Space Council, dormant since 1993. Then he amended Obama's 2010 space policy. The original document reads, "Set far-reaching exploration milestones. By 2025, began crude missions beyond the moon, including sending humans to an asteroid. by the mid 2030s, send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. Trump changed that paragraph to read, "Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations." This firmer language led NASA to firm up its new lunar program, now called Artemis, named for the Greek moon goddess, who is the twin sister of Apollo. Other space policy directives called for streamlining the commercial use of space, space traffic management, and creating the space force. Artemis took shape and SLS and Orion moved forward. The lunar gateway joined the program, a small space station in orbit around the moon that crews would use as a storage and resupply depot, a science outpost, and a waypoint on the way to Mars. Like the ISS, it would be supplied with help from commercial partners. Meanwhile, the commercial crew program took its own steps with the first successful Dragon mission, marking, to the delight of many, the first time American astronauts launched on an American rocket from American soil since the shuttle program ended. Then the ante was upped. At the fifth meeting of the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama on March 26th, 2019, Vice President Mike Pence addressed attendees since the disastrous decision to cancel the constellation program in 2010. The truth is NASA's exploration efforts were left a drift with no clear direction, focus, or mission. Just as the United States was the first nation to reach the moon in the 20th century, so too will be we be the first nation to return astronauts to the moon in the 21st century. And I'm here on the president's behalf to tell the men and women of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the American people that at the direction of the president of the United States, it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years. And let me be clear, the first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts launched by American rockets from American soil. The conventional wisdom says that we'll need more time to do what President Trump has challenged us to do, landing American astronauts on the moon within the next 5 years. Some will say it's too hard, it's too risky, it's too expensive. But the same was said back in 1962 when President Kennedy boldly declared that we, in his words, choose to go to the moon in this decade. And today, the National Space Council will recommend that when the first American astronauts return to the lunar surface, that they will take their first steps on the moon's south pole. If NASA's not currently capable of landing American astronauts on the moon in 5 years, we need to change the organization, not the mission. When I was putting in bits of this speech, I realized I actually want to put in a little bit more than I'd intended. Mike Pence saying that the moon seemed crazy in the 60s, but they did it, so why can't we do it in 5 years is just like a crazy thing to say because as we've seen, NASA had over 4% of the federal budget in 1966 when Apollo funding was at its peak and all that R&D was really coming together. At this point, NASA has less than 1% of the federal budget. And he knows that it's not getting anymore. So, it's a really weird thing to say to kind of lean on the legacy of Apollo knowing full well that the modern standpoint doesn't line up with that. And this is what I mean by saying that Apollo is a bad model, but we keep leaning on it because it just it doesn't fit. It doesn't match at this point. And him kind of really leaning on it, really hitting it. I mean, he's standing in front of the Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 mission insignia, too. It just it doesn't line up. But we are still so focused on Apollo as the gold standard and the way that things should be and it's just not feasible. This refocused the Trump administration. When the 2019 budget proposal was released, five NASA Earth science missions were facing cancellation to free up money for Aremis. W First, a space-based observatory the size of Hubble, but with more than 50 times the field of view, was also in the administration's crosshairs, as was NASA's office of education. The cancellation of which would end grants, scholarships, internships, and programs in schools, museums, and science centers. The young human capital O'Keefe had sought to reach with the education office in the early 2000s would be gone. The money from these cuts wouldn't be able to fund the lunar mission. According to Forbes, these cuts combined would amount to about 338 million a year, which is a drop in the bucket for the super fasttracked lunar mission. The 2020 budget looked worse for science. In a $4.7 trillion national budget, NASA's allocation was just 0.45% of federal spending, a level not seen since 1960 when the agency was still brand new. Science, astrophysics, and STEM were again in the Trump administration's sites for cancellation. The final budget wasn't as bad as it could have been. Earth science remained, and WFIRST, renamed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in honor of the AY's first chief of astronomy, was retained. Nevertheless, it was clear that Trump's real interest was the lunar landing, which thrilled space fans, and Jim Benstein was allin. It is the right time for this challenge, and I assured the vice president that we, the people of NASA, are up to the challenge. But things were messy. One day, Trump was so excited to see an American flag on the moon again that he'd moved the goal up to 2024, telling NASA to get it done by any means necessary. The next, he was criticizing NASA for wasting money retreading old ground when it should be focusing on Mars. All the while, the budget didn't support any kind of program that was this big or on this time frame. In 2020, Trump's administration laid out a new space policy. A robust, innovative, and competitive commercial space sector is the source of continued progress and sustained United States leadership in space. It read, "One of the stated goals was to extend human economic activity into deep space by establishing a permanent human presence on the moon and in cooperation with private industry and international partners, develop infrastructure and services that will enable science-driven exploration, space resource utilization and human missions to Mars. Other stated goals were continued international participation, preserving America's leadership role, and using space to benefit all humanity. without a budget to back it up. It was a lot of [Music] talk. Joe Biden succeeded Trump, taking office in 2021, and he retained many of the previous administration's policies when it came to space, notably Artemis. This huge program survived the change in leadership. On December 1st, 2021, Vice President Kla Harris, in her role as head of the Space Council, announced a new framework for space. The United States will maintain its leadership in space exploration and space science. The United States will remain a global leader in science and engineering by pioneering space research and technology that propels exploration of the moon, Mars, and beyond. US human and robotic space exploration missions will land the first woman and person of color on the moon, advance a robust cis lunar ecosystem, continue to leverage human presence in low Earth orbit to enable people to live and work safely in space, and prepare for future missions to Mars and beyond. And all the while, the SLS program slipped further and further behind schedule. In a 2021 report, the NASA Inspector General estimated that the true cost per launch of the SLS would be 2.2 billion, which meant that each Artemis launch would cost more than 4 billion when the cost of Orion was included, and it kept slipping. In 2022, the Artemis Orion stack was on the launchpad when the launch was scrubbed because of an engine issue. It finally launched on November 16th, 2022. nearly six full years late and the re-entry on December 11th raised a new issue when the heat shield eroded in unexpected ways. At the end of 2024, NASA reported that a planned mission to land on the moon in 2026 will now take place no earlier than mid 2027. The next Artemis flight is currently slated to be a crude lunar flyby. Originally planned for April 2026, now delayed until mid 2027, but it's still a step. It's basically what Apollo 8 did in 1968. We're in unchartered waters now, and I know there's no way to talk about any modern politics without polarizing audiences, but please bear with me. I am keeping this to facts, and we are only talking about space. I'm recording this in February of 2025, so I might pop in while editing if there's anything new. Yeah. Hi. You've seen me a bunch. But at the very least, we can talk a little about projections because even before Trump's second inauguration, there was a lot of speculation that a second Trump term would be good for space, but bad for NASA. Trump's right-hand man has somehow become Elon Musk, who spent $259 million supporting the former president's bid for reelection. During his campaign, Trump did talk about space, telling a crowd in Latro, Pennsylvania, "And we will land an American astronaut on Mars." "Get ready, Elon. Get ready. We got to land. We got to do it quickly. Must backed the sentiment at the time, saying that a bloated bureaucracy and a quote comma regime would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity. This has fueled speculation that the administration now in office might gut NASA entirely, turning it into a contracting agency that would give most of its funding to SpaceX to effectively become America's space agency. Except that it's not. It's a private company that isn't beholden to the same transparency and access to archive that NASA is. And it certainly doesn't do the vital science and research that NASA does. But our tax dollars would still be used to fund it because that funding would come through the government civilian agency of NASA. I wouldn't be surprised, and I'm not the only one thinking this, if Trump acts as the perpetually overbudget and behind schedule SLS to give SpaceX an unchallenged path to the moon and Mars. Musk criticized SLS in 2020 for not being reusable, which is a fair point. Trump's pick for NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, more on him in a minute, has also called SLS outrageously expensive. The problem with cutting SLS is the same reason it was built in the first place, jobs. In Alabama alone, 14,000 people have jobs because of SLS. SpaceX benefits from NASA's partnerships with private companies more than any other company, receiving billions. The 1.1 billion it got in 2020 was raised to 3.7 billion in 2024. It currently has 15 billion in contracts with NASA. And while the wider public has had a favorable opinion of SpaceX for quite a while and space fans are ardent supporters, public opinion on Musk is turning sour. One month into the administration and approval numbers are at historic lows. Among those results, Politico has reported 54% of Americans feel it was bad for Trump to have given the SpaceX CEO a prominent role in his administration. A Yuggov poll found that only 25% of respondents feel Musk should have a prominent role in this administration. A Pew Research poll found that only 11% of respondents had a favorable view of Musk at all. So, the latest on this one is it looks like Musk and Trump might actually be separating a little bit. There is some discussion that it could be a conflict of interest. Musk has a lot of business with China and the trade relations with China that's going on that could be problematic with him being in the inner circle. There's also discussion that the inner circle is not happy with Musk having a prominent role. None of this can necessarily affect SpaceX, but again because we're talking about SpaceX potentially taking over basically everything. Um it could potentially be that like him falling out of favor could affect some of the money that he does get funded because it would still be coming from Congress through NASA to SpaceX. So, I mean, this is like not necessarily a big thing, but it it just could be something worth mentioning in this conversation. Of course, none of this can affect SpaceX maybe taking a much more prominent or even leading role in space. This public sentiment might just make it a little harder for the administration to cancel a major NASA program like SLS. NASA's landscape is already changing. When the Trump administration offered federal employees a buyout package, hundreds of NASA employees took the offer. We know from Trump's first administration that Earth science and astronomy missions are likely candidates for budget cuts as the administration seeks to purge inefficiency. Within days of taking office, the administration had scrubbed environmental resources and climate data from federal websites, suggesting that move away from science missions from his first administration could continue. Trump's cancellation of all things DEI also makes Artemis' stated goal of landing the next man, first woman, and first person of color on the moon against his orders. an easy way for the administration to cancel the program if it wanted to. Even though Trump started the program, NASA was already ordered to remove all inclusive language from its website. Though, as of the day I'm writing this, that verbiage is still on the Aremis landing page. Yep, the Artemis verbiage was already changed. Isaacman, Trump's pick for NASA administrator, is firmly in Musk's camp. Remember what Kennedy told Jim Webb? I need somebody who understands policy. Isaacman is a billionaire who has paid to fly with SpaceX twice. Some are keen on his appointment, saying he has the energy to reinvigorate the agency, while others worry his ties to Musk and past criticism of SLS could see that whole NASA being gutted thing come to fruition. Okay, this is the big one to update when it comes to this video because it is still an evolving situation. But on May 2nd, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget released a document outlining President Trump's recommendation on discretionary funding levels for fiscal year 2026. Everything under the NASA banner except for human space exploration is down as is the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. But we are not talking about all that just to say that science as we have speculated is very much under fire. So there's an increase coming of 647 million for human space exploration including 1 billion in new investments for Mars focused programs. The budget ensures that America's human space exploration efforts remain unparalleled, innovative, and efficient. Otherwise, everything else is down. And the big one for this video is legacy human exploration systems. The budget phases out the grossly expensive and delayed space launch system rocket and Orion capsule after three flights. SLS alone costs 4 billion per launch and is 140% over budget. The budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions. So, what that sounds like to me is that the Aremis missions that have hardware that's done will go. And I think that includes the one that has already flown, the one in 2022. Because if you have a rocket and a spacecraft, it's silly not to launch them. You might as well launch them. So, that means Artemis 2 will go around the moon, Artemis 3 will land on the moon and then we're done. So, 20 years of development will be for a single landing and then it will be replaced with a commercial option, which can only mean SpaceX. So, on this point, I will absolutely be talking about this in more detail in another video at some point, but this is why I have had such a hard time getting super excited about Artemis because it's been 20 years for development for a single landing and we just haven't like had enough to be excited about over the years. NASA knew basically nothing when Kennedy put Apollo on a path to the moon. Then we had six Mercury missions, 10 mandemy missions, and six Apollo missions that led up to the landing, each representing huge steps forward. And we're just not seeing the same thing now. And the big one for me personally, and the reason why I love history and I'm so drawn to history, is I just love the first time we figure something out. that innovation, that kind of like throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks, like that just, you know, there's no bad ideas in brainstorming because we're going to the moon and we got to figure it out. That's what I love about the Apollo program. And we just haven't seen the equivalent of that now. Like that's a super personal thing for me, but it's kind of that like frenetic pace of Apollo has always captured me way more than the kind of like is it going, is it not? Is it going whole development of Artemis and like I'm still excited. It's still really exciting and I love the crew. I've actually spoken to Reed Wisman a few times and had a couple of amazing exchanges with him and I actually informally interviewed Jeremy Hansen a few years ago for my second book. We just talked about flying stuff and pilot experience and he's Canadian. Like it's so cool and I'm very excited. They're both so lovely. I'm sure the whole crew is great. It still just doesn't quite feel the same. 20 years of development, having seen one launch and then one Apollo 8 and one Apollo 11 just it doesn't have the same feeling. It feels a little bit hollow. And again, this is just my own perspective being so steeped in Apollo history, but it just kind of doesn't hit the same way. So, while we're on the skinny budget, there's also a total shift away from the International Space Station in this new era of cost-effective commercial flight and a total move away from STEM, which seems really problematic. You know, the one of the things that this budget is really talking about is like maintaining America's preeminence in space and keeping America on the world stage. But if you don't have programs at libraries and at schools to get young people excited to get them in the STEM programs to then continue doing that in the next generation, you will lose that. So, this does seem like a little bit problematic for me. Um, and space science is getting the largest cut of everything. Uh, Mars sample return is gone, which I would say is probably a pretty important mission to do ahead of a human landing. But with all of these cuts, we're kind of back to my original speculation in this section of the video, which is NASA becoming basically a contracting agency for other partners. Because at this point, what is going to be left for NASA to do? It's all politics. But now, instead of a cold war battleground or politicians getting congressional support for centers and their districts or leveraging space to boost approval ratings, it's billionaires playing with rockets. [Music] The hardest thing about all this is that behind all the politics are scientists and engineers who love what they do. When I worked at the New Horizon's mission to Pluto, I saw science team leads in tears because the data the spacecraft was sending back was better than they'd hoped. It was confirming literal decades of work they'd put into this planet, or dwarf planet if you want to be technical. It was amazing and I felt so lucky to have been a part of it even if I couldn't have that same emotional reaction. I can tell you space means so much to so many people. All the people who love unpacking space and the people who are passionate about the research that benefits everyone like climate data are beholden to the cycle of politicians starting big programs because they want to cement their legacy or call back spending to try to manage a bloated budget. And that's always been the case. In my first book, I talk about the programs that fed into Mercury. And so many of them are just engineers curious about spaceflight's effects on humans. So they built a rocket sled to see how humans fare when exposed to high g forces. They toss paper plates to see what shapes might work for capsules. They love what they do. And they're just trying to get a bit of funding out of the machine run by politicians in Washington. And this isn't talked about enough, but NASA is so much more than just sending probes into space. Whether you care about space or not, you personally benefit from the spin-off technologies. Use GPS. JPL developed software in the 90s to correct data errors from its global network and now GPS is accurate down to 5 centimeters or 2 in. Ever use the camera on your phone? The technology is rooted in the CMOS active pixel sensor NASA developed for small interplanetary missions. Technology so small it's perfect to fit in your pocket. Did you get LASIK? The laser radar eye tracking device that makes it so precise is rooted in autonomous rendevous technology. Have you ever used a cordless drill? NASA collaborated with Black & Decker so astronauts could use tools on the moon. Space exploration is amazing and inspiring and the spin-off technologies benefit everyone. NASA is so worth the poulry amount of tax dollars it gets. But the big programs are the only things anyone ever pays attention to and are largely what brings in the money, but they're so horrifyingly expensive that at the end of the day, you need to be a country to be able to afford it. It will always be beholden to politics. All right, that's going to do it for me today. I know this was a big one, so if you're still here, thanks for sticking with me. And I hope this helped give you some kind of context into the total mess that is the endeavor of space exploration. If you've enjoyed this deep dive, be sure to give the video a like and the channel a sub. It really helps me grow and escape the landscape that is increasingly saturated with AI content. You can also support my work through memberships or Patreon. Huge shout out to my members and patrons who make it possible for me to keep working on these giant videos and also the shorts that keep things active between these videos. Keep looking up you guys and I'll see you in the next one. [Music]