Word: space
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even as the celebration went on, the thoughts of space experts turned to future Mars odysseys. Scientists and engineers in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are involved in the design of complex unmanned craft that will travel to the planet. Some American scientists are even conducting tests on a model of the robotic vehicle that may one day rove the Martian surface. Others are considering the ships that will carry human crews to Mars, the orbiting space station needed to launch them, the size and safety of the crews and the most practical routes through space. Though some...
While the American space program has been crippled since the Challenger disaster in January 1986, Soviet cosmonauts have been gaining invaluable experience aboard the orbiting Salyut and Mir space stations. And though U.S. astronauts are scheduled to return to space this September in the shuttle Discovery, which was wheeled to its Kennedy Space Center launching pad last week, NASA Administrator James Fletcher concedes that the Soviets are now "way ahead of us in manned flight." If each nation goes its own way, he predicts, the Soviets could land humans on Mars at least five years before the U.S. could...
...listed the names of a glittering array of such prominent Americans as Walter Cronkite, Jimmy Carter, Utah Senator Jake Garn, Nobel Laureate Physicist Hans Bethe and Notre Dame's former president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh. All of them have signed the Society's "Mars Declaration," which advocates a U.S. space program that would lead to the human exploration of Mars...
...Congress, too, support is growing, despite strong opposition from those who fear that a manned Mars trip would soak up funds needed for social programs, unmanned scientific space probes and military projects, among other things. Democratic Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii has even written a book, The Mars Project, that strongly advocates the space journey...
...reasons alone, Mars enthusiasts say, further exploration of the Red Planet, both unmanned and manned, is scientifically justified. "There is a growing sense of purpose being attached to a manned flight to Mars, both in the Soviet Union and the U.S.," says Vyacheslav Balebanov, a deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Like most of his counterparts in the U.S., he would prefer a measured, logical, step-by- step program to a more hazardous, hastily mounted manned mission. "We must start to explore Mars in detail before such a flight is possible," he says...