It was actually unfortunate for Nixon, Josephson thought. Nixon’s thinking had been sensible, really; he’d wanted an affordable program with more than just one goal, a program which would lay a more solid foundation for the future. But it looked as if he was going to end up with another footprints-and-flags extravaganza. And Jack Kennedy — or maybe Ted, drawing on the credit of one assassinated and one crippled brother, making his own way to the White House — was going to get the credit.
Anyhow, thus, in a crucible of social, political, economic, and technical forces, wielded by men like Michaels and Nixon and Kennedy, the decision had emerged. And, incremental and contingent though it might be, it was — against all the odds — a decision to send Americans to Mars.
A cleaning woman knocked and entered, towing a heavy vacuum cleaner. Josephson turned off his tape recorder. Millie Jacks grinned at Josephson; she was used to seeing him work as late as this.
“I hear we’re going to Mars, Dr. Josephson?”
“Looks like it, Millie.”
“Hoo!” Millie chortled her disbelief. But then, she’d been shaking her head over everything NASA had done since 1966; Josephson sometimes wondered if she actually believed that men had been to the Moon, that it wasn’t all some kind of stunt.
Of course, what would be unbelievable — what would really make Millie shake her head — would be if we got a few blackfaces, even female ones, among the Mars crews.
Maybe it will change. Maybe it will be a different world, when we fly to Mars in 1982. Wednesday, January 5, 1972
…I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of systems and technologies designed to take American astronauts on landing missions to Mars. This system will center on a new generation of rockets, exploiting nuclear power, which will revolutionize and routinize long-haul interplanetary flights.
The year 1971 was a year of conclusion for America’s current series of manned flights to the Moon. Much was achieved in the three successful landing missions — in fact, the scientific results of the third mission have been shown to greatly outweigh the return from all earlier manned spaceflights, to Earth orbit or the Moon. But it also brought us to an important decision point — a point of assessing what our space horizons are as Apollo ends, and of determining where we go from here.
In the scientific arena, the past decade of experience has taught us that spacecraft are an irreplaceable tool for learning about our near-space environment, the Moon, and the planets, besides being an important aid to our studies of the sun and stars. In utilizing space to successfully meet needs on Earth, we have seen the tremendous potential of satellites for international communications and worldwide forecasting, and global resource monitoring.
However, all these possibilities, and countless others with direct and dramatic bearing on human betterment, will not be achieved without a continuation of the dream which has carried us so far and so fast: I mean the dream of exploration, of American and human expansion into space, the greatest frontier of all. In my decision today, I have taken account of the need to fully encourage and sustain that dream.
NASA and many aerospace companies have carried out extensive design studies for the Mars mission. Congress has reviewed and approved this effort. Preparation is now sufficient for us to confidently commence a new development program. In order to completely minimize technical and economic risks, the space agency will continue to cautiously take an evolutionary approach in the development of this new system. Even so, by moving ahead at this time, we can have the first components of the Mars spacecraft in manned flight test by the end of the decade, and operational a short time later. But we will not set arbitrary deadlines, as some have called for; we will make decisions as to the pace of our program in the fullness of time and with the wisdom of experience.
It is for the reason of technological robustness that I have decided against the development of the reusable Space Shuttle at this time; despite the manifest economic benefits of such a launch system if available, I am not convinced that our technology is so mature that we are ready yet to confidently tackle the huge problems posed by the project without cost overruns and delays, and many of its economic benefits should in any case be realizable from enhancements to our existing “throwaway” platforms.
It is also significant that this major new national enterprise will engage the best efforts of thousands of highly skilled workers and hundreds of contractor firms over the next several years. The continued preeminence of America and American industry in the aerospace field will be an important part of the Mars mission’s payload.
We will go to Mars because it is the one place other than our Earth where we expect human life to be sustainable, and where our colonies could flourish. We will go to Mars because an examination of its geology and history will reflect back a greatly deepened understanding of our own precious Earth.
Above all, we will go to Mars because it will inspire us to clearly look beyond the difficulties and divisions of today, to a better future tomorrow.
“We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes, “but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” So with man’s epic voyage into space — a voyage the United States of America has led and still shall lead. Apollo has returned to harbor. Now it is time to swiftly build new ships, and to purposefully sail farther than our ancestors could ever have dreamed possible…
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1972 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1972) Wednesday, January 5, 1972
…As indicated in the President’s statement, the studies by NASA and the aerospace industry of the Mars mission have now reached the point where the decision can be made to proceed into actual development of mission components. The decision to proceed, which the President has now approved, is consistent with the plans presented to and approved by Congress in NASA’s FY1972 budget.
The Mars mission will consist of a pair of ships assembled in Earth orbit. The ships will be clusters of several nuclear-rocket propulsion modules, launched by chemical vehicles based on our proven Saturn V technology. The spacecraft will be designed in this modular form to enable different configurations to be assembled speedily: for example, to complete missions to other planets or to the asteroids. The crew will inhabit modules developed from the first “dry fuel tank” Skylab space stations we intend to fly from next year. The crew will ride a new landing craft to the Martian surface.
As the President indicated, we are not going to work to a set timetable.
However, we hope to fly our first mission to take advantage of Mars’s opposition with Earth in 1982. This first mission will be preceded by an intensive development program including flight phases in Earth orbit. The program will include the full development of the new nuclear technology, of life support for long-duration missions, of interplanetary communications and navigation techniques, of the increased reusability and reliability of systems, and of Mars entry and landing systems. Calls for recruitment of astronauts for the new program will shortly be issued.
To survey landing sites for the eventual manned mission, a new series of Mariner unmanned photographic orbiters will be sent to Mars. These flights will replace the previously proposed Viking science platforms, which are now canceled, and so will take place within the envelope of current funding levels.
The decision by the President is a historic step in the nation’s space program. It will transform man’s reach in space. In another decade the nation will have the means to transfer men and equipment across interplanetary space; shortly thereafter we expect such missions to be mounted as routinely as we now have sent men to the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. Not just Mars, but our sister planet Venus, the resources of the asteroid belt, and the moons of Jupiter and the outer planets will come within our compass. This will be done within the framework of a useful total space program of science, exploration, and applications
at approximately the present overall level of the space budget.
Thank you…
Source: Frederick W. Michaels Chronological File, 1972, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Wednesday, January 5, 1972
NASA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, DC
Gregory Dana had spent the day at a meeting on rendezvous techniques for the upcoming Skylab missions. He came across a number of Houston people gathered in the hallway, before a notice board. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t you know? We’re going to Mars. Nixon has confirmed it at last. Look at this.” They made way for him at the board.
At first Dana could see nothing of interest to him on the board: an offer of tickets for the Cowboys vs Dolphins Super Bowl, classes in TM and acupuncture (posted in NASA HQ!), and a bright orange sticker saying simply JESUS HEALS. But there, crowded out by the trivia, was a closely printed piece of headed paper. It was a statement from Nixon, and a subsidiary statement from Michaels, the new NASA Administrator. Some supporting press briefing material was pinned up, too: a “Mars mission digest,” with simple question-and-answer chunks of information about the mission, and a few spectacular artist’s impressions of the mission’s various phases. There were even a few outlines of the mission modes which had been evaluated and discarded.
There was no mention of Dana’s Venus swing-by mode.
Since that apocalyptic Phase A meeting in Huntsville back in July, Dana had heard almost nothing of the development of the Mars options. And this was the first he’d learned of the final decision — along with the Headquarters cleaning staff, and the rest of the nation. It was clear that he’d been excluded from the decision-making process since July.
What could he do about it? Write another letter to Fred Michaels?
He felt the injustice, the stupidity of it, burn a hole in his stomach.
Well, it was nothing to do with him anymore. Maybe, at least, Jim would be able to realize some of his own dreams, in the slow unwinding of this decision.
Dana tucked his briefcase under his arm and walked away.
Book Two
TRAJECTORIES
Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Plus 003/09:23:02
York floated in her sleeping bag. She was dog tired, but sleep just wouldn’t come. Her lower back was sore, and she had a stuffy headache, as if she was developing a cold. Her heart was suddenly too strong; blood seemed to boom through her ears. She missed the pressure of a pillow under her head, the security of a blanket tucked in close around her. The bag was too big, for one thing; she found herself bouncing around inside it. And every time she moved, the layer of warm air which she’d built up around her body, and which stuck there in microgravity, tended to squirt away, out of the bag, leaving her chilled.
When she managed to relax, she had a feeling of falling. Once she almost drifted off, but then her arms came floating up, and a hand touched her face…
She let her eyes slide open.
She was inside her sleep locker, at the base of the Mission Module. The locker was little bigger than a cupboard, with a foldaround screen drawn across it. On the surface above her head was her overhead light, and a little comms station, and a fan. There were little drawers for personal things, like underwear; when she opened them the drawers had blue plastic nets stretched over them, to stop everything from floating away.
A lot of light and noise leaked around the foldaround screen. She could hear the hum and whir of the Mission Module’s equipment, and the occasional automatic burn of the attitude clusters as they kept Ares pointing sunward. With the bright, antiseptic light of the wardroom beyond her screen, and the new smell of metal and plastic, it was like trying to sleep inside an immense refrigerator.
Apparently there had been plans to provide solid doors on the sleep lockers. She even remembered seeing a memo which talked about the need to provide privacy for astronauts “significantly relating,” in the typically obscure, euphemistic double-talk NASA employed when talking about the functions of the warm bodies they were shipping into space at such expense. But the doors had been skipped, for reasons of saving weight. So much for significantly relating.
And — on top of everything else — she needed a pee.
She tried to ignore it, but the pressure on her bladder built up steadily. Christ. Well, it was her own fault; the relief tube — the Mission Module’s toilet, the Waste Management Station — was so uncomfortable she’d put off using it. Besides, she seemed to be peeing more than usual since coming up into microgravity.
She succumbed to the inevitable. She squirmed her way out of the bag, turned on her overhead light, and folded back the screen. When she moved, her back hurt like hell.
After the TOI burn, the Ares modules had undergone the first of the cumbersome waltzes the crew would have to endure before the mission was done. Under the command of Stone, Apollo, containing the crew, had separated from the nose of the stack, turned around, and docked nose to nose with the Mission Module.
When she’d first been talked through the mission profile, waiting until after the TOI burn to accomplish separation and docking had seemed bizarre to York. Why wait until you were already on your way to Mars to cut loose of your main ship? But it made a kind of sense, in the convoluted, abort-options-conscious way the mission planners figured those things. If the MS-II had blown up during the TOI burn, the crew, in Apollo, could have gotten out and done an abort burn to get home. And if the injection burn was successful but the docking hadn’t been, the crew could use the Service Module’s big engine to blast back toward Earth.
Anyway, after the successful docking, the crew had been able to crawl through a docking tunnel and started moving into the Mission Module, their interplanetary home away from home.
As long as she didn’t think about the wisdom of taking apart the spacecraft in deep interplanetary space, it didn’t trouble York.
York let herself drift across the wardroom. She was light as a feather and invulnerable; it was like moving through a dream. The Mission Module was a lot roomier than the Apollo Command Module had been, of course. But she was learning to move around, to operate in that environment. She’d found she couldn’t move too quickly. If she did, she’d collide with the equipment, dislodging switches and maybe damaging gear. It just wasn’t a professional way to behave. She was learning to move slowly, with a kind of underwater grace.
It wasn’t a big deal. Microgravity was just a different environment; she’d learn to work within its constraints.
The wardroom, with its little plastic table and three belted chairs, was clean and empty, bright in the light of strip floods. The walls and floors weren’t solid; they were a gray mosaic of labeled storage drawers and feet restraints — loops of blue plastic — and there were handy little blue rectangles of Velcro everywhere. There were up-down visual cues, signs and lighting and color codes. Everything was obviously designed for zero G.
The whole thing had the feel of an airliner’s crew station, she thought; it was all kind of pleasing, compact, well designed, everything tucked away. Like a mobile home in space. Of course everything was still bright and new, every surface unmarked; it would be different after a few months’ occupancy. Much of the Mission Module’s equipment was still in stowage; the crew would spend the next few days hauling ass around the module, configuring it for its long flight.
The Waste Management Station was a little cubicle containing a commode, a military thing of steel and bolts and terse metal labels. She pulled across the screen, swiveled in the air, dropped her pants and shorts, and pulled herself down. Thigh bars, cushioned and heavy, swung across her legs to clamp her ass to the seat.
She pulled a hose out of the front of the commode; the hose would take her pee to a tank, for dumping in space later. The hose justified the Apollo-era nickname, “relief tube,” that the crews still used for the waste station. In a cupboard beside her there was a set of funnels, all color-coded to ensure they weren’t mixed
up by the crew; hers, anyway, were of the distinctive female variety. The cupboard was already starting to stink a little, and the clear plastic of the funnels was turning yellow. Eighteen months of this.
She fitted the funnel to the hose, clamped it over her private parts, and opened the valve to the urine store.
There was a certain strategy to it, which involved aiming for the minimum of pain when using the device. If she opened the valve too soon, the suction would grab at her. And when it resealed itself it was liable to trap a little piece of her inside it. The way round that was to start pissing a split second before opening the valve. But there was a danger that the funnel would just slip off, and off would float her piss in little golden globules.
It took her a few seconds to be able to let go.
Now that she’d gotten set up there, she considered whether to try taking a dump. That was actually easier, mechanically, than peeing. She’d have to start up the slinger, a spinning drum under the commode. The shit would stick to the walls of the drum, and later she would turn a switch to expose the drum to vacuum, and the shit would be frozen and dried out.
But, though she felt a pressure in her lower gut, there was nothing doing; she suspected it was going to take her a few days to relax enough to unclench. And besides, there was no gravity to help her, as the guys had informed her with glee; she wasn’t looking forward to the experience.
She took a couple of wet wipes and cleaned out the inside of the funnel. The wipes might have come out of any drugstore back home, except for the strong stink of disinfectant about them.
She unlocked herself from the john seat. She pushed her hands into the washbasin, a plastic globe which sprayed water across her skin and out into a waste tank. One or two droplets escaped the basin and went oscillating around the john, but she swatted them out of the air easily. There was a row of towel holders on the wall, little color-coded rubber diaphragms: towels, their corners shoved into the holders, hung out in the air like flags. She dried her hands.
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