Highlighting a potential pattern in political grandstanding

Question:

What president put forth a proposal for the United States to go to Mars?

Answer:

If you said Barack Obama, you are correct. However… if you said George W. Bush? Technically, you are also correct.

What Mars might look like with water

On Tuesday, October 11, 2016, President Barack Obama penned an op-ed championing the idea that America should put men on Mars by the 2030s. This comes two weeks after Elon Musk unveiled SpaceX’s ambitious, similar plans and only a week after Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, hinted at Space Race 2.0 when he said:

The optimistic part of me loves all this talk of space exploration and going to Mars. But my pessimistic side fears that’s all this is: talk.

Why? Because back in 2004, President George W. Bush:

Bush’s plan suggested that this would be a jumping off point that would:

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Obama was merely extending what Bush put forth. The reality is Obama canceled Bush’s Constellation program in 2010 because it was ‘behind schedule and lacking in innovation’. Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), clarified that this was in no way suggesting a lack of ambition:

So, the question becomes:

What will the next president do with Obama’s Mars initiative?

If it’s President Trump, it seems likely that he would cancel them purely out of political grandstanding as Kohlenberger’s not-so-subtle undertone above suggests the Obama administration did with Bush’s Constellation — which Leroy Chaio seems to confirm:

Now, if it’s President Clinton don’t be surprised if she does the same thing, pivoting away from Mars and back to the moon because of its globally unifying appeal:

In either scenario, it almost seems likely that our next president will surely replace Obama’s Mars initiative with their own version of it. I can see a pattern where they cut bait on his plan early on, relative to some attempt to balance the budget, and save their own Mars/moon/space plan for the last year of a term (as both Bush and Obama did) in an effort to create some sort of a legacy.

Then whomever takes over for them will do the same, rinse and repeat.

I genuinely hope I’m wrong in regards to that but I can’t help but wonder if nothing will happen until we get a president with the vision and spine to see us through to Mars during their term(s) like JFK did with the moon.

So to all you lovers of space who want to see a renaissance of exploration:

When does the Elon Musk write-in for president campaign begin?