NASA, also known as the National Aeronautics and Space Agency has been widely known as one of the most successful space agencies in the world. They conducted many space expeditions, projects, and breakthroughs in space travel and its history. When President Kennedy spoke to an audience at Rice University in 1962, his speech popularly entitled “We choose to go to the moon” stated that the United States of America shall reach the moon by the end of the decade, he added that they chose to go to the moon not because they want to, but because they can. Seven years later on July 16, 1969, NASA launched the Saturn V rocket carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins that was entirely known as the Apollo 11 mission and the mission that marked Neil Armstrong in history as the first man on the Moon. But as the years have gone by and with Earth's resources slowly decreasing due to the increasing human population, people are now taking interest on Mars. In the 70’s wherein the Apollo era was the agency’s pride, NASA envision on getting humans into the great beyond, its plans included building several space stations, continuous missions, and expeditions to the Moon, and hopes to have its first manned mission to Mars by the 1980s. But of course, NASA never had a mission for humans to go to Mars and here we are 30 years later still dreaming of the possibility, but the reason is not a matter of science, technology, and innovation, but comes down to the world of politics behind it. NASA is capable of an expedition on Mars but considering the different priorities each President has and the shifting increase and decrease of funds and interests, these factors give us a clear sign that we are still not ready for the colonization of the Red Planet.
The first factor why the agency has not sent anyone to Mars was the shifted interest from missions to the Moon to focusing on low earth orbit missions and the decrease of the agency budget. As a government agency, NASA's objective is determined by the executive branch of the U.S. Government, since its creation, NASA has served under different presidents and at the start, it is obvious that not every president will support NASA favorably since each president has different platforms and priorities in governing the United States. During the time of President Nixon in 1969, NASA became just another domestic program, and the agency’s budget decreased even as it kept goals. Fully funded moon missions such as the remaining three Apollo missions were canceled, at the same time Nixon diverted NASA’s focus from the Moon and Mars and shifted towards lower cost, and lower risk low earth orbit plans such as unmanned robotic explorers and space telescopes. At the end of the Nixon administration in 1974, NASA’s budget had plummeted from four percent to less than one percent. His final gift to the agency was to sign into effect what would eventually become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Shuttle program which has sent astronauts to low earth orbit for over three decades.
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Another factor is the start-stop-start-stop-cancel phenomenon. When the Space Shuttle program was nearing its end. A mission to Mars was finally considered and funded by a president. In 2004, President George Bush spoke to an audience that he will give NASA a new objective and insight for future space exploration. He also added that they will build new ships suitable for traveling into space to carry humanity forward into the regions of the universe and to gain a foothold on the moon and beyond. As a result, NASA’s Constellation Program started, it aimed to send a manned mission to the moon in 2020 and was set to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s, by the time Barrack Obama was sworn as President in 2009 the Constellation Program was behind its expected schedule and over-budget. After a year in office, Obama canceled one hundred percent of the program’s funding. Obama shifted NASA’s focus from sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars which is the goal of the Constellation Project to ultimately just focusing Mars. In the process, Obama asked the U.S. Congress to increase the space agency’s budget by 6 billion dollars over the next 5 years. And as a result, NASA began its mission to Mars initiative in 2010 intending to send humans into Mars orbit by the early 2030s.
Moreover, another factor is the shifting point of interests of the presidents and the reliability of private space companies. after Barrack Obama’s presidency ended, Donald Trump was sworn in as President in 2017, at the same time he relaunched the National Space Council and during the council's inaugural meeting last October 2017, they agreed a recommendation to shift NASA’s focus again, and planned to bring back astronauts to the Moon, from there they will build a base for a mission to Mars. The policy that concerns space under the Trump and Obama administration look similar, except for the fact that Trump's administration has shifted the focus once again to a Moon first then Mars later initiative. NASA is not new to this recommendation, and it has learned to recycle old projects to fit new missions, one example was the Orion spacecraft that was first developed for the Constellation project and has been redesigned for a journey to Mars but even that cannot prevent the unavoidable changes NASA projects and programs now face under the new administration. As NASA ponders on, a new possibility has appeared in its vicinity. Privately-owned space companies like SpaceX have also set focus on Mars. The people at NASA are amazing and they have done remarkable things, but there is still the risk factor that does not allow them to do things that are new and on the edge. It is these entrepreneurs like SpaceX who are willing to take risks and put everything on the line to get there. The race for the Red Planet has started, and while NASA has been partnering with private space companies in recent years. The agency might not be the first in sending humans to Mars.
Technically, NASA is qualified in sending humans to Mars, but considering the different interests of presidents through the years since the agency’s existence and the inconsistency of its agendas and objectives, it is a “no-go” situation. NASA is a government agency that is controlled by the executive branch of the government, so their objective is dependent on them. Since its creation, presidents showed little concern to NASA’s primary goals such as getting humans into the Moon, Mars and beyond, different presidents have different insights in seeing that goal, some say it is a step towards future human exploration while others say that sending humans to the Red Planet is a secondary objective in the space agency and deemed too risky and expensive, by not focusing on an expedition to Mars, the interests of different presidents tend to shift. Furthermore, what is happening throughout space history after the Apollo program was canceled was that they had to start-stop-start-stop and then cancel. Additionally, the increasing and decreasing situation of the budget for the agency is also one factor that delayed NASA’s ultimate goal. On the other hand, private space companies are also setting their own goal of stepping foot the red planet leaving NASA to be entangled with the country’s political problem whether the agency should send humans to the red planet. Ultimately it might not be NASA who will write the next chapter in human space exploration.
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