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

[4], iii, [1], 188 pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Index. This is one of the NASA History Series. After completing his undergraduate degree at Clark University, Thor Hogan worked for two years as a speechwriter and deputy communications director for the Democratic Party in Massachusetts — while going to law school at night. In 1998, Thor moved to Washington, DC to start graduate work at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University. At the same time, he began an eight-year career as a policy researcher at a series of think tanks — this included half a decade as a project director within the RAND Corporation's Science and Technology Policy Institute. In this capacity, he was the principal investigator on numerous studies conducted for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). This work was the 2007 winner of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics History Manuscript Award. On the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon, President Bush had stood atop these very steps and proposed a long-range exploration plan that included the successful construction of an orbital space station, a permanent return to the Moon, and a human 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. This work recounts the story of the rise of Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and its eventual demise. Tells of organizational, cultural, and personal confrontation. Organizational skirmishes involved the Space Council versus NASA, the White House versus congressional appropriators, and the Johnson Space Center versus the rest of the space agency--all seeking control of the national space policy process.…