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capabilities, and could be carried out with our traditional commitment to excellence.

Should NASA do it? Virtually everyone exposed to this initiative recognized its fundamental importance, and agreed that "whatever we do, we have to do this"; but some felt it may not be bold and visionary enough to stimulate the increased funding necessary. The National Commission on Space conducted numerous public sessions on the space program, and solicited and received comments from a wide cross-section of Americans. The Commission's report lists a series of points "brought forward repeatedly" in those public sessions. One of these was the concern that "any new push into space must supplement living on Earth.... Don't abandon our home planet!"

Plans are already under way within NASA to undertake a subset of this program. The Earth Observing System, which consists of two NASA polar platforms, is being coordinated with the corresponding activities of the European Space Agency and Japan. The first NASA platform is part of the Phase 1 Space Station. The second platform, the instruments, and the payloads remain unapproved. And although the Earth Observing System would represent a major start, it is not sufficient to fulfill all the objectives of this initiative. Critical activities for the immediate future include the coordination of Federal agencies, and the strengthening of international agreements to facilitate the coordination of this international effort.

NASA should embrace Mission to Planet Earth. This initiative is responsive, time-critical, and shows a recognition of our responsibility to our home planet. Do we dare apply our capabilities to explore the mysteries of other worlds, and not also apply those capabilities to explore and understand the mysteries of our own world-mysteries which may have important implications for our future on this planet?

Humans to Mars

Exploring, prospecting, and settling Mars are clearly the ultimate goals of the next several decades of human exploration. But what strategy should be followed to attain those goals?

Any expedition to Mars is a huge undertaking, which requires a commitment of resources which must be sustained over decades. This task group has examined only one possible scenario for a Mars initiative - a scenario designed to land humans on Mars by 2005. This timescale requires an early and significant investment in technology; it also demands a heavy-lift launch vehicle, a larger Shuttle fleet, and a transportation depot at the Space Station near the turn of the century. This would require an immediate commitment of resources and an approximate tripling of NASA's budget during the mid-1990s.

More important, NASA would be hard pressed to carry the weight of this ambitious initiative in the 1990s without severely taxing existing programs. NASA's available resources were strained to the limit flying nine Shuttle flights in one year. It will be difficult to achieve the operations capacity to launch and control 12 to 14 Shuttle flights per year, and assemble, test, and continuously operate a Space Station in the mid-1990s. It would not be wise to embark on an ambitious program whose requirements could overwhelm those of the Shuttle and Space Station during the critical next decade.

This suggests that we should revise the ground rules and consider other approaches to human exploration of Mars. One alternative is to retain the scenario developed here, but to proceed at a more deliberate (but still aggressive) pace, and allow the first human landing to occur in 2010. This spreads the investment over a longer period, and though it also delays the significant milestones and extends the length of commitment, it greatly reduces the urgency for Space

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