Real reason NASA has not send humans to mars.

 Real reason NASA has not send humans to mars.

Introduction.

- [Man] We could've been on Mars 30 years ago. At the peak of the Apolloera in the early-'70s, NASA was already planning its next step into the unknown. Its plans included building multiple space stations, continued trips to the Moon, and its first crude mission to Mars by the 1980s. Can you imagine watching astronauts walk on Mars the same time the Walkman came out? But of course, NASA never sent humans to Mars in the '80s.

 

And here we are, 30 years later, still dreaming of the possibility. But the reason isn't necessarily a matter of technology or innovation. It actually comes down to politics. As a government agency, NASA's goals are determined by the executive branch. Since its inception, NASA has served under 12 presidents.

 

And it was clear near the start that not every president  would support NASA equally. By the end of the Nixon Administration in 1974, NASA's budget had plummeted from 4% of the federal budget to less than 1%. Fully funded Apollo missions18 and 19 were abandoned, along with Apollo 20. At the same time, Nixon pulled NASA's focus away from the Moon and Mars and instead towards low-Earth orbit. His parting gift was to sign into effect what would eventually become NASA's Space Shuttle Program, but this was just the beginning. –

 

So, what's happened throughout all of space history after the Apollo program was over was we had this start-stop-start-stop-cancel. So, a president comes in, like President Bush comes in and says we're gonna go to the Moon, back to Mars, and then the next president comes in and cancels that. And the next president sets their objective, and the next president comes in and cancels that.

 

The agency's unable tosustain consistent funding long enough to do anything. - [Man] It wasn't until the Space Shuttle Program was nearing its end that a crude mission to Mars was finally considered and funded by a US president. George W. Bush, in 2004, announced-- - We will give NASA a new focus and vision for future exploration. We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gaina new foothold on the Moon. - [Man] As a result, NASA's Constellation program was born. Never heard of it? That's because it was canceled a few years later. It aimed to send a crude mission to the Moon in 2020 and land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s.

 

By the time Obama was sworn in, the Constellation program was behind schedule and over-budget. One year later, Obama canceled 100% of the program's funding. - All that has to change. And with the strategy I'moutlining today, it will. - [Man] Obama shifted NASA's focus from sending people to the Moon and Mars to ultimately just Mars. In the process, Obama asked Congress to increase NASA's budget by $6 billion over the next five years. As a result, NASA launched its Journey to Mars initiative in 2010, with a goal to send humans into orbit around Mars by the early-2030s.

 

And until recently, NASA, for the most part, was on track. But then, this happened. - President Trump has relaunched the National Space Council and at the council's inaugural meeting in October, we unanimously approved a recommendation to instruct NASA to return American astronauts to the Moon, and from there to lay a foundation for a mission to Mars. - [Man] Oddly enough, the space policy under Trump and Obama look nearly identical, except for 63 words. In those 63 words, Trump's administration has shifted the focus once again to a Moon-first, Mars-later initiative.

 

NASA isn't new to this. It's learned to recycle old projects to fit new missions. For instance, the Orion capsule was first developed for Constellation and has since been redesigned for a journey to Mars. But even that can't prevent the unavoidable changes NASA programs now face  under the new president. - As such, we're also gonna realign the organizational structure to best meet this new exploration focus. I've asked Steve Jurczyk, the current head of Space Technology Mission Directorate, to lead an effort to design anew organizational approach. - [Man] As NASA pushes on, a new possibility has grown on the horizon.

 

Privately-owned space companies like SpaceX have also set their sights on the Red Planet. - The scientists and engineers at NASA are amazing and they've done extraordinary things, but there's still a riskaversion that doesn't allow us to do things that are new and novel and on the edge. It's these entrepreneurs willing to take risks and put everything on the line. - [Man] The race for Mars is on. While NASA has closely partnered with SpaceX and other privately-owned space companies in recent years, ultimately it might not be NASA who writes the next chapter in human space exploration.