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DOCUMENT outlining alternative strategies for mounting a manned mission
to Mars has triggered a conflict between NASA and the White House’s recently
created National Space Council over who should control the US’s space programme.

The National Space Council was formally created last April, with the
task of coordinating US space policy. It is currently scrutinising how NASA
carries out its functions. President George Bush appointed Vice President
Dan Quayle to head the cabinet-level organisation.

Since April 1989, the most significant statement on space policy by
the administration has been President Bush’s assertion that the US would
send people back to the Moon and then on to Mars. He told the council to
draw up a timetable and estimate costs for the venture, and to investigate
the scope for international collaboration.

Bush’s proposal led to the National Space Council’s scrutiny of NASA’s
way of doing business. The current tug of war between NASA and the space
council began last November when the agency published a study of technology
for returning to the Moon and going on to Mars (Technology, 16 December).

The report outlined five possible ways to achieve the President’s aim.
The earliest the agency envisaged putting people on Mars was 2011. Frank
Martin, the head of NASA’s Office of Exploration, says that the report,
undertaken on the agency’s own initiative, was not intended to be definitive,
but rather a summation of the agency’s ideas over the past three years.

Nevertheless, the report has encountered criticism from some industrialists
and analysts. John Pike, from the Federation of American Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs, says
that if everything in the NASA report were to go ahead, the agency would
need $8 billion each year to add to its existing annual budget of $12 billion.
‘I’m not sure how conscious it was, but the end result is a document that
allows everyone at all the NASA field stations to do all they’ve ever wanted
to do for the next generation or so,’ he says.

One industrialist, who did not want to be named, said that the report
contained all of the old ideas that NASA has had for years. He added that
NASA does not hear of many new ideas because industrialists filter out what
they think the agency does not want to hear. In an attempt to move forward
the debate about the US’s exploration of the solar system with crewed craft,
the council has called in the National Academy of Sciences, the Aerospace
Industries Assocation and has issued orders to NASA.

Vice President Quayle sent a letter last month to Admiral Richard Truly,
NASA’s administrator, telling the agency to consult the ‘best and most innovative
brain power in the country, at universities, federal research centers, within
our aerospace industry and elsewhere’. The agency must give the council
a plan and timetable for achieving this aim next week. The Aerospace Industries
Assocation will then examine the plan to ensure that NASA will consult as
broadly as the space council wants.

The National Space Council has also told the National Academy of Sciences
to complete a review of the NASA study by 15 February and to consider alternative
approaches to exploring the Moon and Mars. This review is meant to give
the council a brief assessment of alternatives. The academy held its first
meetings to assess NASA’s plan last week.

One of the alternative approaches to exploring the Moon and Mars includes
what are called inflatable space stations (Technology, 13 January). Lowell
Wood, a protege of Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in California, first put forward the idea a couple of years ago. Pike calls
the inflatable space stations ‘the silliest damned idea I have ever heard’.

While the national academy, the Aerospace Industries Association and
NASA now move to the National Space Council’s tune, the council itself is
preparing a series of options for international collaboration. These will
be discussed during the coming weeks.