In January 1970, Nixon somberly told Paine of a Harris poll reporting that 56% of Americans believed the costs of Apollo were too great. Nixon said he regretted cuts but could not make an expansive space program a priority. Paine, however, kept up pressure on the President for a greater commitment to NASA’s activities, and this led to hard feelings between them. White House officials concluded that: ‘We need a new Administrator who will turn down NASA’s empire-building fervor … someone who will work with us rather than against us, and … will shape the program to reflect credit on the President rather than embarrassment.’
In March 1970 Nixon formally endorsed the STG’s third and least expensive option. His language was cautious. ‘With the entire future and the entire universe before us … we should not try to do everything at once. Our approach to space must continue to be bold – but it must also be balanced.’
Nixon set out six specific objectives: the remaining Apollo missions, Skylab, greater international cooperation in space (essentially ASTP), reducing the cost of space operations (Space Shuttle studies), hastening space technology’s practical application, and unmanned planetary exploration. Nixon made mention of one ‘major but long-range goal we should keep in mind … to eventually send men to explore the planet Mars’ (my emphasis). Nixon distanced NASA organizationally from its Apollo past: ‘We must think of space activities as part of a continuing process … and not as a series of separate leaps, each one requiring a massive concentration of energy and will and accomplished on a crash timetable.’
Essentially, NASA had lost the argument for Mars, and Nixon had (provisionally) chosen the Space Shuttle. In this short but crucial statement, Nixon summarized virtually all of US space policy through the 1970s.
In the Voyage timeline, Nixon withdraws this statement before publication; after this crux point, history diverges decisively.
Even after Nixon’s response to the STG, the future of US manned spaceflight was far from assured. To save funds for future programs, on September 2, 1970 Paine cut two more Apollo missions. Paine was out of place in the Nixon Administration, and he resigned on September 15.
Congressional critics still wanted more of NASA’s budget trimmed. The familiar partially-reusable Shuttle concept emerged in response to the need to halve development costs. But even this did not win automatic approval. In November 1971 the new NASA Administrator James Fletcher sent a testy memo to the President arguing that the US could not afford to forgo manned spaceflight altogether, that the Shuttle was the only meaningful new program that could be accomplished on a modest budget, and not starting the Shuttle would be highly damaging to the aerospace industry.
But Fletcher did not know that NASA had gained a powerful ally inside the Administration in Caspar Weinberger, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who wrote to Nixon on August 12, 1971 in support of the Space Shuttle (not of a Mars program!). NASA’s budget was still under threat simply because it was cuttable, Weinberger said. Further NASA cuts would confirm ‘that our best years are behind us, that we are turning inwards, reducing our defense commitments, and voluntarily starting to give up our superpower status and our desire to maintain world superiority.’ In a handwritten scrawl on the memo, Nixon added, ‘I agree with Cap.’
In December 1971 Fletcher learned that Nixon had decided in principle to go ahead with the Shuttle. The decisive factors were the arguments put forward in Weinberger’s and Fletcher’s memos, the fact that so many high-technology programs had already been cut, and – given the decision already to cancel the proposed Supersonic Transport (SST) project – the desire to start some new aerospace program that would avoid unemployment in critical states in the 1972 election year.
On January, 5 1972 Nixon issued a statement announcing the decision to proceed with the development of ‘an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor in the 1980s and ’90s …’
So ended the tortuous post-Apollo decision-making process. In January 1972 Nixon initiated the Shuttle project, not a Mars program.
Mars was lost. But so, nearly, had been the Shuttle – the last, compromised, element of the STG’s grand vision – and with it, the US manned space program.
In the pages of Voyage, the survival of President Kennedy in 1963 pushed history onto a track which diverged from our own trajectory: slowly, but sufficiently far, in the end, for the US space program to reach out to Mars. The decision-making points depicted in Voyage closely parallel those in our own world. It could – with a small perturbation – have happened like this.
But even if the argument for Mars had been ‘won’ in 1969, it would have been essential to maintain a supportive coalition of political forces behind a Mars program over the years, or decades, it would have taken to implement it – a period during which downward pressure on NASA’s budget was consistent. To reach Mars, NASA would have needed a Fred Michaels: another Webb – not another Paine.
And in many ways, an Apollo-style Mars program could have been a mixed blessing.
As Nixon foresaw, if the Mars program had come about NASA would have been able to remain a one-shot, ‘heroic’ agency, rather than move to the organizational maturity for which current Administrator Dan Goldin is still reaching. On the science side, Apollo dominated other space programs in the 1960s – often to their detriment. The Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor lander programs were effectively downgraded to serve as mappers for Apollo. Perhaps, if the Mars option had been followed, Viking might have been compromised in a similar fashion, and unrelated programs – such as the unmanned exploration of the outer planets – might have been put under even greater funding pressure.
On the other hand, the abandonment of Mars and NASA’s other great plans did not free up funds for other projects; the funds simply did not make themselves available at all. If a Mars program had gone ahead, it would surely have brought many benefits in its wake, such as the need for the US to build up expertise in orbital assembly and long-duration missions.
And in the end, we cannot help but regret the loss of the great spectacle we should have enjoyed had Natalie York walked on Mars at Mangala Vallis in 1986.
Stephen Baxter
About the Author
VOYAGE
Stephen Baxter was born in 1957. Raised in Liverpool, he has a mathematics degree from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D from Southampton. He sold his first short stories to Interzone in 1986 and his first novel, Raft, was published in 1991, to great acclaim. Voyage is his seventh novel. He is married and lives in Buckinghamshire.
Praise for Voyage:
‘Tom Clancy meets Tom Wolfe.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘If you liked The Right Stuff you’ll like this too.’
Interzone
‘Voyage is a splendid nostalgia trip to times when astronauts were still the Right Stuff.’
New Scientist
‘For SF fans it encapsulates not only the traditional “sense of wonder”, but also – because the story it tells was this close to being true – a warm and thrilling sense of “I wonder …” A brilliant book.’
SFX
‘Based on NASA’s actual shelved Mars plans, but throughout, Baxter concentrates on the people involved, not just their hi-tech ventures, and the result is a compulsive and intelligent page-turner.’
Focus
‘Baxter is emerging as the most credible heir to the hard sf tradition previously monopolized by Clarke and Asimov.’
Time Out
By the Same Author
Novels and stories in the Xeelee Sequence
RAFT
TIMELIKE INFINITY
FLUX
RING
VACUUM DIAGRAMS
ANTI-ICE
THE TIME SHIPS
TITAN
TRACES
MOONSEED
TIME
SPACE
ORIGIN
&n
bsp; PHASE SPACE
Author’s Note
In 1996, evidence of life on Mars has ignited interest in manned missions to the red planet, but such missions are many years, perhaps decades away. But NASA could have sent astronauts to Mars as long ago as 1986.
Voyage depicts an alternate history: a timeline identical to our own up to a crucial moment in the autumn of 1963, and diverging thereafter.
This novel is a work of fiction. Because of the nature of the plot certain real people associated with the US manned space program are referred to in the story by their real names. For the purposes of weaving my story into the fabric of our own history I have replaced some historical personages with fictional characters. In particular, the second American to orbit Earth was Scott Carpenter, not Chuck Jones as portrayed in the novel; and the second man to walk on the Moon was Buzz Aldrin, not Joe Muldoon as portrayed here. All other characters are fictional constructs, in which case any resemblance to any real individual is wholly unintentional and coincidental.
I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of Simon Bradshaw, Eric Brown and Calvin Johnson, all of whom read and commented on versions of the manuscript; and the staff at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, who were extremely generous of their time and energy in support of my research for this book, particularly Eileen Hawley, Paul Dye, Frank Hughes, astronaut Michael Foale, and especially Kent Joosten of JSC’s Solar System Exploration Division who scrutinized my Mars mission with great attention and care. The assistance of these friends has greatly improved the accuracy of my depiction, and any remaining errors and omissions are my responsibility.
In our history, Americans have not traveled to Mars. But in 1969 the US came as close as it ever has to assembling the will and resources for such a mission. Diagrams at the end of the book show how the mission might have been assembled. In an afterword, for interested readers, I have set out my understanding of the crucial historical points at which America turned away from Mars.
In 1996 we need scientists on Mars. They could have been there a decade ago. My novel may be the closest thing to a history of that lost, alternate universe ever to be written, and I have striven to make it as ‘true’ as possible.
It really would have been like this.
Stephen Baxter
Great Missenden
August 1996
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Voyager
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This paperback edition 1997
First published in Great Britain by Voyager 1996
Copyright © Stephen Baxter 1996
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