- [Man] We could've been on Mars 30 years ago.
At the peak of the Apollo era in the early-'70s,
NASA was already planning its next step into the unknown.
Its plans included building multiple space stations,
continued trips to the Moon,
and its first crude mission to Mars by the 1980s.
Can you imagine watching astronauts walk on Mars
the same time the Walkman came out?
But of course, NASA never sent humans to Mars in the '80s.
And here we are, 30 years later,
still dreaming of the possibility.
But the reason isn't necessarily
a matter of technology or innovation.
It actually comes down to politics.
As a government agency,
NASA's goals are determined by the executive branch.
Since its inception, NASA has served under 12 presidents.
And it was clear near the start
that not every president would support NASA equally.
By the end of the Nixon Administration in 1974,
NASA's budget had plummeted from 4% of the federal budget
to less than 1%.
Fully funded Apollo missions 18 and 19 were abandoned,
along with Apollo 20.
At the same time, Nixon pulled NASA's focus
away from the Moon and Mars
and instead towards low-Earth orbit.
His parting gift was to sign into effect
what would eventually become NASA's Space Shuttle Program,
but this was just the beginning.
- So, what's happened throughout all of space history
after the Apollo program was over
was we had this start-stop-start-stop-cancel.
So, a president comes in, like President Bush comes in
and says we're gonna go to the Moon, back to Mars,
and then the next president comes in and cancels that.
And the next president sets their objective,
and the next president comes in and cancels that.
The agency's unable to sustain consistent funding
long enough to do anything.
- [Man] It wasn't until the Space Shuttle Program
was nearing its end that a crude mission to Mars
was finally considered and funded by a US president.
George W. Bush, in 2004, announced--
- We will give NASA a new focus
and vision for future exploration.
We will build new ships to carry man forward
into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the Moon.
- [Man] As a result, NASA's Constellation program was born.
Never heard of it?
That's because it was canceled a few years later.
It aimed to send a crude mission to the Moon in 2020
and land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s.
By the time Obama was sworn in,
the Constellation program
was behind schedule and over-budget.
One year later, Obama canceled 100%
of the program's funding.
- All that has to change.
And with the strategy I'm outlining today, it will.
- [Man] Obama shifted NASA's focus
from sending people to the Moon and Mars
to ultimately just Mars.
In the process, Obama asked Congress
to increase NASA's budget by $6 billion
over the next five years.
As a result, NASA launched its Journey to Mars initiative
in 2010, with a goal to send humans into orbit
around Mars by the early-2030s.
And until recently, NASA, for the most part, was on track.
But then, this happened.
- President Trump has relaunched the National Space Council
and at the council's inaugural meeting in October,
we unanimously approved a recommendation
to instruct NASA to return American astronauts to the Moon,
and from there to lay a foundation for a mission to Mars.
- [Man] Oddly enough, the space policy
under Trump and Obama look nearly identical,
except for 63 words.
In those 63 words,
Trump's administration has shifted the focus once again
to a Moon-first, Mars-later initiative.
NASA isn't new to this.
It's learned to recycle old projects to fit new missions.
For instance, the Orion capsule
was first developed for Constellation
and has since been redesigned for a journey to Mars.
But even that can't prevent the unavoidable changes
NASA programs now face under the new president.
- As such, we're also gonna realign
the organizational structure
to best meet this new exploration focus.
I've asked Steve Jurczyk, the current head
of Space Technology Mission Directorate,
to lead an effort to design a new organizational approach.
- [Man] As NASA pushes on,
a new possibility has grown on the horizon.
Privately-owned space companies like SpaceX
have also set their sights on the Red Planet.
- The scientists and engineers at NASA are amazing
and they've done extraordinary things,
but there's still a risk aversion that doesn't allow us
to do things that are new and novel and on the edge.
It's these entrepreneurs willing to take risks
and put everything on the line.
- [Man] The race for Mars is on.
While NASA has closely partnered with SpaceX
and other privately-owned space companies in recent years,
ultimately it might not be NASA
who writes the next chapter in human space exploration.