Collins Task Force Says Aim for Mars (1987)

Astronaut Michael Collins traveled to the moon on Apollo 11, but stayed in orbit on board the Command Module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface. In 1986, he led a 12-member task force that advised astronaut Sally Ride, NASA Special Assistant for Strategic Planning, on NASA's long-range future. His advice: don't go back to the moon, go for Mars.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong (left), Michael Collins, and Edwin AIdrin. Image: NASA.
The January 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle accident laid bare many shortcomings of the U.S. space program. NASA, which only 14 years earlier had soared to the moon, had suffered chronic underfunding since the Nixon Administration (1969-1974). At the same time, expectations for the Shuttle had grown until, in January 1984, President Ronald Reagan had called upon NASA to use its Shuttle fleet to build an Earth-orbiting Space Station within a decade.
NASA had eagerly encouraged such expectations. The Shuttle, it had promised, would fly cheaply and often. This would enable it to replace all NASA expendable rockets. It would fly so inexpensively that Shuttle astronauts would be able to economically service Earth-orbiting satellites. The Shuttle would reliably launch all U.S. robotic planetary ...