The Next Giant Leap for Mankind

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Three-quarters of a billion people peered at the murky images on their television screens on July 20, 1969, as Neil Armstrong became the first human to stand on another world. To Americans, the spirit-lifting achievement was well worth the cost and effort. The quest to reach the moon had revitalized U.S. science and technology and yielded countless benefits to industry and the military. Most amazing of all, the Eagle landed only eight years after John F. Kennedy proclaimed the moonshot a national priority.

But after Apollo, something went wrong with the nation's space program. Despite successes -- such as the Skylab space station and the series of unmanned missions that will reach its climax next month when Voyager 2 arrives at Neptune -- the program seemed to founder. The space shuttle, for example, was oversold as the one answer to U.S. space-transportation needs. But it is too big to put astronauts in space efficiently, too small to launch the largest payloads and too unreliable to live up to the 60-flight-per-year schedule once promised. The result, even before the Challenger accident: a backlog of unlaunched missions.

Now NASA is poised to make a similar mistake with its next major project, the $32 billion Freedom space station, scheduled to go into full operation in the late 1990s. Like the shuttle, it is being presented as a widely versatile project that will provide for the needs of scientists, engineers and space explorers. But without a focused, long-range program, those needs are not clear.

The crux of the problem is that the leadership Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson gave the Apollo program was not continued by their successors. That leadership gap may soon end, though. As early as this week, President George Bush is expected to announce his vision for the U.S. space program. No one knows what Bush will say, but some members of his National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, reportedly favor a return to the moon, followed by a manned trip to Mars.

That would be ambitious and expensive -- up to $150 billion. But the payback would be great. Such a specific, long-term goal would invigorate NASA. It would revive public interest in science, providing new pep for a sector of the educational system that has become disturbingly weak. It would stimulate innovation in everything from materials science to computers to communications. It would create jobs. And, least tangible but perhaps most important, it would add enormously to the nation's prestige.

Moreover, points out Eugene Cernan, who walked on the moon in 1972, with such a long-range goal "we can then work backward and take the steps to get us there." That would eliminate the let's-build-it-and-see-what-it's-good-for approach. Far from withering, other space initiatives would be lifted by the rising tide of national interest and funding. Unmanned probes to the planets would continue, and NASA would still be able to launch the Mission to Planet Earth, a series of satellites designed to study the planet's environment and give scientists the information they need to head off ecological disaster.

The most reasonable date for a Mars mission is 2020. That allows plenty of time for a measured approach and spreads the expenditure over a sensible period. It also gives NASA ample opportunity to choose the next goal after Mars -- exploration of the asteroid belt, for example, or a manned trip to the outer planets. Robot probes would have to study the Red Planet in depth first. One, the Mars Observer, is scheduled for a 1992 launch, and others would have to follow.

Another logical stepping-stone is a lunar base, which could be built by 2000, as a testing ground for technologies necessary for a Martian sojourn. In particular, astronauts would experiment with living quarters in which air and water are recycled. Inhabitants of a lunar base would also begin learning how to mine the moon for raw materials, including trapped gases and minerals, that would permit the base to become almost entirely self-sufficient and thus permanent.

Before such a moon base can be built, NASA will have to get some kind of space station: the massive components needed for a lunar habitat are too heavy to lift from earth and will have to be assembled in space. The station will also be needed for assembling a bulky Mars vehicle and studying the effects of long-term space flight. But a single station may not be the best option. Several experts have suggested breaking it down into smaller units. One such station, the Industrial Space Facility, has already been designed by a Houston firm, Space Industries Inc. At $900 million, it could be launched by 1994 and take over most of the Freedom station's proposed experiments in space manufacturing. Another mini-station could handle biomedical studies, and others could be used as assembly and takeoff points for the Mars and subsequent missions. Just as with the moon base, these stations would operate indefinitely. Being smaller and less complicated than Freedom, the mini- stations could presumably be launched and built at a lower overall cost.

NASA and the Defense Department have already begun work on two new launchers to make space-station construction feasible. One is a heavy-lift unmanned rocket for massive payloads. The other is the National Aerospace Plane, or "Orient Express." Smaller than the shuttle, it would take off like an airplane from a runway, soar into space to deliver its human cargo, then return and land. And NASA has plans to convert the present shuttle into a cargo-only model, with a larger payload than the manned version. Together, these launchers would give NASA much needed flexibility.

The cost of such a multi-step project would be large -- at least $5 billion a year and maybe considerably more. But unlike the $35 billion spent on the shuttle program, the expenditure would produce a return not just in prestige and technological leadership but also in the establishment of bases and % stations that can be used for future space projects. In order to ease the costs, the U.S. should encourage as much participation as possible by foreign governments. The Soviets, Europeans and Japanese all have active space programs, and duplication of efforts will increasingly be seen as an unnecessary waste. Many countries are interested in participating in the Freedom project or Mission to Planet Earth or both, and the Soviets have accepted international help on their Mars probes.

NASA's budget will have to be raised to pay for such an ambitious program, perhaps even doubled from its current $11 billion a year. That will be hard in an era of budget deficits. But there is support for a Mars mission in both the House and the Senate. If the President comes out strongly for the mission, Congress should be able to find a way to fund it. One option: to siphon the money from Star Wars and other questionable defense programs.

The U.S. cannot remain a leading force in technology, industry and science unless it is in the forefront of space exploration. Throughout its history, America has been a nation of discoverers and achievers. If it fails to take the next major step in space, it will have given up an essential part of its national character.

With reporting by Glenn Garelik/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston