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Even as the celebration went on, the thoughts of space experts turned to future Mars odysseys. Scientists and engineers in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are involved in the design of complex unmanned craft that will travel to the planet. Some American scientists are even conducting tests on a model of the robotic vehicle that may one day rove the Martian surface. Others are considering the ships that will carry human crews to Mars, the orbiting space station needed to launch them, the size and safety of the crews and the most practical routes through space. Though some formidable problems remain, many Soviet and U.S. experts see no insurmountable obstacles to landing humans on Mars early in the 21st century.
While the American space program has been crippled since the Challenger disaster in January 1986, Soviet cosmonauts have been gaining invaluable experience aboard the orbiting Salyut and Mir space stations. And though U.S. astronauts are scheduled to return to space this September in the shuttle Discovery, which was wheeled to its Kennedy Space Center launching pad last week, NASA Administrator James Fletcher concedes that the Soviets are now "way ahead of us in manned flight." If each nation goes its own way, he predicts, the Soviets could land humans on Mars at least five years before the U.S. could.
Stifled by budget cuts and foundering without clear-cut goals, NASA has scheduled only one Mars probe, the Mars Observer, which will go into orbit around the planet in 1993 to collect data on climate and geology. And while President Reagan agreed at the recent Moscow summit to a cautious joint communique describing "scientific missions to the moon and Mars" as "areas of possible bilateral and international cooperation," the Administration has been at best lukewarm to the concept of exploring Mars, jointly or otherwise.
Among other Americans, however, the idea of a manned Mars mission is gaining momentum, despite the estimated $100 billion price tag for the undertaking. The venture has been endorsed by a dozen major publications, ranging from the New York Times to the New Republic. In a recent full-page advertisement in the Washington Post, the 125,000-member Planetary Society urged support for a manned mission. The ad listed the names of a glittering array of such prominent Americans as Walter Cronkite, Jimmy Carter, Utah Senator Jake Garn, Nobel Laureate Physicist Hans Bethe and Notre Dame's former president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh. All of them have signed the Society's "Mars Declaration," which advocates a U.S. space program that would lead to the human exploration of Mars.
In Congress, too, support is growing, despite strong opposition from those who fear that a manned Mars trip would soak up funds needed for social programs, unmanned scientific space probes and military projects, among other things. Democratic Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii has even written a book, The Mars Project, that strongly advocates the space journey.