Mars Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative

by National Aeronautics and Space Administration

On the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon, President George H.W. Bush stood atop the steps of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. and proposed a long-range human exploration plan that included the successful construction of an orbital space station, a permanent return to the Moon, and a mission to Mars. This enterprise became known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). The president charged the newly reestablished National Space Council with providing concrete alternatives for meeting these objectives. To provide overall focus for the new initiative, Bush later set a thirty-year goal for a crewed landing on Mars. Within a few short years after this Kennedyesque announcement, however, the initiative had faded into history the victim of a flawed policy process and a political war fought on several different fronts. The story of this failed initiative was a tale of organizational, cultural, and personal confrontation by key protagonists and critical battles. Some commentators have argued that SEI was doomed to fail, due primarily to the immense budgetary pressures facing the nation during the early 1990s. The central thesis of Mars The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative suggests, however, that failure was not predetermined. Instead, it was the result of a deeply flawed decision-making process that failed to develop (or even consider) policy options that may have been politically acceptable given the existing political environment.

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.

Reviews

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid research on the politics and formulation of Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative. Recommend for anyone that does space policy and I think it’s a useful case study for Technology Policy studies more broadly. My only criticism is that it goes a little repetitive … the book may be too long. Unless you’re specifically interested in policy related to SEI, I suggest that you check out Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership by Roger Launius first. It’s a more comprehensive look at Space policy since Eisenhower and covers all these same themes.