It was actually unfortunate for Nixon, Josephson thought. Nixon’s thinking had been sensible, really; he’d wanted an affordable program with more than just one goal, a program which would lay a more solid foundation for the future. But it looked as if he was going to end up with another footprints-and-flags extravaganza. And Jack Kennedy — or maybe Ted, drawing on the credit of one assassinated and one crippled brother, making his own way to the White House — was going to get the credit.

Anyhow, thus, in a crucible of social, political, economic, and technical forces, wielded by men like Michaels and Nixon and Kennedy, the decision had emerged. And, incremental and contingent though it might be, it was — against all the odds — a decision to send Americans to Mars.

A cleaning woman knocked and entered, towing a heavy vacuum cleaner. Josephson turned off his tape recorder. Millie Jacks grinned at Josephson; she was used to seeing him work as late as this.

“I hear we’re going to Mars, Dr. Josephson?”

“Looks like it, Millie.”

“Hoo!” Millie chortled her disbelief. But then, she’d been shaking her head over everything NASA had done since 1966; Josephson sometimes wondered if she actually believed that men had been to the Moon, that it wasn’t all some kind of stunt.

Of course, what would be unbelievable — what would really make Millie shake her head — would be if we got a few blackfaces, even female ones, among the Mars crews.

Maybe it will change. Maybe it will be a different world, when we fly to Mars in 1982. Wednesday, January 5, 1972

…I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of systems and technologies designed to take American astronauts on landing missions to Mars. This system will center on a new generation of rockets, exploiting nuclear power, which will revolutionize and routinize long-haul interplanetary flights.

The year 1971 was a year of conclusion for America’s current series of manned flights to the Moon. Much was achieved in the three successful landing missions — in fact, the scientific results of the third mission have been shown to greatly outweigh the return from all earlier manned spaceflights, to Earth orbit or the Moon. But it also brought us to an important decision point — a point of assessing what our space horizons are as Apollo ends, and of determining where we go from here.

In the scientific arena, the past decade of experience has taught us that spacecraft are an irreplaceable tool for learning about our near-space environment, the Moon, and the planets, besides being an important aid to our studies of the sun and stars. In utilizing space to successfully meet needs on Earth, we have seen the tremendous potential of satellites for international communications and worldwide forecasting, and global resource monitoring.