Thanks for the reminder of Zubrin's reaction to 911. I've commented on Space Utopianism before, many times.

As for how things ended up, Mars Society membership now stands at 2,000 or so.

What has escaped "Mars Enthusiats" is the paradigm shift which is going on - the Cassini data will be coming in soon, and the cometary impact threat firmly determined. If its as severe as I estimate, NASA and others will then implement Langley's plan.

That should be within the next 10 years. If the US does not lead the effort then, then some other group of nations will after the next "small" one hits.

Now for the historical review... think Tom Hanks woudl be interested?

September 26, 1998.

That's the date Representative Newt Gingrich began the co-ordinated attack on the Inernational Space Station, in a speech given in San Francisco.

The International Space Station was the result of a decision by President George H. Bush to take Russia up on its request to be allowed to participate in the already international space station. The President's decision saved the space station project from its cancellation by the Congress, where it survived its end by exactly 1 vote.

Money for the attack on ISS was provided by Walt Anderson. While Anderson's earlier political connections are currently undocumentd, he made his money in telecommunications, a field always requiring close political lobbying for both bandwidth and connections.

The ISS had been under attack for some time prior to this by two space lobbying groups: the Mars Society, and more particularly by Rick Tumlinson and his Space Frontier Foundation. These groups general view was that any money which NASA spent on a space station was money which NASA was not spending on manned flight to Mars, in other words money which they were wasting.

Neither group realized that the US public as a whole did not place that high of a priority on manned Mars flight. The general public had long since realized that Mars was not an Earth-like planet that could be easily settled, a position they arrived at due in large part to their viewing the data returned from Mars by Mariner IV in the 1960's and Viking in the 1970's. Thus the attacks not only had been completely ineffectual, they had been completely pointless. (Adds an element of humor to the situation, ne c'est pas?)

The Mars Society was formed by space enthusiasts who believed that Robert Zubrin's proposed fuel production cycle using Mars on resources could significantly lower the cost of manned Mars flight. They ignored the facts that such a fuel production cycle had never been tested in real life, and that much more than a propulsion system is required for manned Mars flight. Finally, no matter how cheap the resulting project was, no one much cared to pay for it.

Tumlinson's Space Frontier Foundation proposed an very interesting variant of this, in which NASA would buy servcies from the private sector. Theoretically, this would allow himself and his friends to avoid any astronaut selection procedures and to fly to Mars themselves, and Tumlinson would promise this to his supporters. (Easy humor here.)

Their initial focus was on NASA's purchase of launch vehicles from the private sector, and they supported the purchase of small launchers, and small NASA payloads. The Space Frontier Foundation had previously enjoyed the support of the government of Israel, which due to their loss of access to the South African launch range when the apartheid government ruling there fell, desperately needed a new launch facility for the testing of ballistic missile technolog.
(Ahah! International intrigue, and when combined with the delusional state of these Mars Nuts, it makes for an even funnier story!)

Media connections for the attack were provided by Keith Cowing, a manned Mars flight enthusiast and disgruntled former NASA employee. It could be fairly said that Cowing was a man who hated the current NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin with every fiber of his being. (More humor)

Co-incident to the attack, Cowing would have his friend's clipping service purchased by Discovery Communications, a firm jointly owned by John Malone's Liberty Media (Malone would later come to help Rupert Murdoch's News Corps), Cox Communicatios, and Advance/Newhouse Communications.

Now Daniel Goldin, the NASA Adminstrator, proposed ending US reliance on the Space Shuttle by developing a new launch vehicle. Goldin had had his start in the early 1960's as an engineer developing manned Mars flight, and when the new launch vehicle came into operation, he intended to convert the shuttle fleet into Shuttle C variants, heavy lift vehicles for manned Mars flight. Zubrin's fuel cycle was to be tested by a sample return mission scheduled for 2008, with manned Mars flight to follow in 2018.

It is fair to say that the incompetence at NASA, the indifference of the public, and the political manuevering were driving Goldin nuts. (More humor)

NASA money was under the control of Representative Sensenbrenner, who was an active and key participant in a co-ordinated attack on the President, William Jefferson Clinton. These attacks were based at first on Clinton's real estate dealings, then on his personal gifts, and then later on his marital indiscretions. (Throw in some Monica Lewinsky scenes here - the whole thing needs more sex.)

Clinton was actively pursuing a settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and at the time Isaeli intelligence was tapping his telephone conversations with his mistress. (The story has a sex element - this makes it more interesting to the general audience, and a far better commercial property. While Clinton's sex appeal is questionable, surely some young cupcake could be found to play Monica. But one had better get their facts absolutely straight, or they'll get sued.)

Russian manned space enterprises were under the control of Yuri Pavlovich Semenov, a veteran political survivor (Kirilenkovich), who had cemented his hold on this position by helping to thwart the 1991 coup against Soviet president Gorbachev. (Grim Russian humor.)

At the height of the battle to end the International Space Station, Anderson would help form a private firm to keep the over aged Mir station in orbit, which he planned to offer as an alternative to it. Remarkably, through simultaneous appeals to right wing nationalistic factions in both Russia and the United States, Anderson and his colleagues would succeed in wasting nearly $65,000,000 in funds from both governments.

Semenov would survive this fiasco, but by his personal style of management would manage to alienate both international as well as domestic customers. His firm, Eneriga, would continually loose market share to its rival Krunichev, and he himself would never gain popular support in the Duma. Yeltsin would carry it out by himself. (Nice drinking humor here)

NASA would have its budget severely restricted by Sensenbrenner. When difficulties were encountered in development of the fuel tank for the new heavy launcher, no further money was available, and the new launcher's development was immediately abandoned.

There would not be any manned flight to Mars in 2018 using Shuttle C vehicles.

In the budget squeeze, it was also impossible to raise more money for 2 pre-cursor Mars landers when they hit technical difficulties. Both would fail, and the 2008 test on Mars of Zubrin's fuel production cycle was cancelled. (Hinners versus the dot com bubble - more humor)

Israel would enter into an agreement to sell its solid rocket motors to Coleman Launch Services, who would use them in launches from Kennedy Space Flight Center. Following a change of government in India, Israel would also gain access to Indian launch ranges.

Anderson would have telecommunications business deals challenged in court proceedings in both Australia and the UK. His attempt to keep the Mir in orbit would later result in his company enjoying a monopoly position on private manned space flight to the ISS, the very same facility whose construction he had desperately tried to stop. No attempt would be made to recover the $65,000,000 in funds lost to the diversion in the scheme to keep Mir in orbit.

Gingrich would evoke the ire of his colleagues by an attempt to have a new central defense emergency command post built in suburban Atlanta. Gingrich would be forced to resign office following the discovery of an extra-marital affair. (Oh boy! More sex, but the audience appeal of seeing re-enactments of either Clinton or Gingrich in the nude is questionable. Anybody have any idea how good looking Newt's girlfriend was?)

In 2000, George H. Bush's son George W. Bush would gain the presidency in a closely contested election, and the attacks on the ISS would stop.

Goldin would honorably resign, and Cowing would loose his focus. Membershipi in the Mars Society would plummet to 2,000 people out of a nation of 285,000,000. Tumlinson woud resign from the Space Frontier Foundation.

Besides enjoying a limited monopoly on private manned flights to the ISS, Anderson would later become active in two companies which hoped to provide space services, one proposing bolting station keeping engines onto aging communication satellites, the other advancing the use of tethers for boosting small payloads to orbit.

In 2003, following on the grouding of the US shuttle fleet after the loss of the shuttle Columbia during re-entry, Russian spacecraft would be the sole means of keeping any space station in orbit.

Russian President Putin would also admit to having provided US President information on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's attempts to procure weapons technology from Russia, essentially continuing the policy of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

Gingrich would go on to being a paid consultant to an "Office of Special Plans" within the Pentagon which was set up to justify an attack on Iraq.

In August, 2004, FORMER Representative Newt Gingrich spoke to his FORMER colleagues about the VITAL US need to help stabilize and convert the military industries of the successor nations of the former Soviet Union, essentially throwing his support behind George H. Bush's decision of 1991.

White elephant? Hardly. Due to failure, manned systems for space flight need to be developed and tested in low Earth orbit before their deployment in deep space. Due to costs, all manned space projects in the future will be international...

It strikes me that the 2 Bush's space plan announcements would provide nice endcaps for it.

ep