Sally Ride was a member of the 1978 astronaut class, the first selected for Space Shuttle flights. On mission STS-7 (18-24 June 1983), she became the first American woman in space. Ride flew one more Shuttle mission – STS-41G (5-13 October 1984) – and served on the Rogers Commission investigating the 28 January 1986 Shuttle Challenger accident before James Fletcher, in his second stint as NASA Administrator, made her his Special Assistant for Strategic Planning on 18 August 1986. Fletcher charged Ride with drafting a new blueprint for NASA’s future. She had help from a small staff, a 12-member advisory panel led by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and a six-member space mission design team with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in Schaumburg, Illinois. The result of her 11-month study was a slim report called Leadership and America’s Future in Space.
On 22 July 1987, Ride testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications about her report. She told the Subcommittee that the “civilian space program faces a dilemma, aspiring toward the visions of the National Commission on Space, but faced with the realities of the Rogers Commission Report.” The National Commission on Space (NCOS), mandated by Congress and launched by President Ronald Reagan on 29 March 1985, had been meant to blueprint NASA’s future until about 2005. Headed by Thomas Paine, NASA Administrator from 1968 to 1970, it had produced instead a wide-ranging 50-year master plan for “free societies on new worlds” that would have been dismissed as unrealistic even had it not been unveiled in the chaotic aftermath of Challenger.
Whereas the NCOS report urged immediate adoption of its expansive (and expensive) “vision,” Ride outlined four much more limited “Leadership Initiatives” “as a basis for discussion.” In a partial break from the space station-moon-Mars progression that had ruled advanced planning since the 1950s, none of Ride’s proposals necessarily followed from the others, though by Fletcher’s order all would rely to some degree on NASA’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) Space Station. Her piloted Mars program, for example, could proceed without her permanent piloted lunar outpost, her robotic program to study Earth from space (“Mission to Planet Earth”), or her robotic Solar System exploration program (“Mission from Planet Earth”).
SAIC began to design the Ride Report’s piloted Mars program in January 1987. The company presented its final report to the NASA Headquarters Office of Exploration (nicknamed “Code Z” for its mail code) in November of that year. Fletcher had created Code Z in June 1987 and placed Ride in charge as his Acting Assistant Administrator for Exploration. By that time, Ride had announced that she would leave NASA in August. John Aaron, who replaced her as Code Z chief, made SAIC’s report the basis for Code Z’s piloted Mars and Phobos mission “Case Studies” in Fiscal Year 1988.
SAIC employed a split/sprint Mars mission design. The company credited a 1985 University of Texas/Texas A & M student design project with originating the split/sprint concept. The split/sprint mission would use a pair of spacecraft: an automated one-way cargo spacecraft launched first followed by a piloted spacecraft. Both would burn chemical propellants and rely on aerobraking.
The cargo spacecraft would follow a propellant-saving low-energy path to Mars. It would transport to Mars orbit propellants for the piloted spacecraft’s return to Earth. The piloted sprint spacecraft would leave LEO only after the cargo spacecraft was confirmed to have arrived safely in Mars orbit.
In order that its crew should be exposed to weightlessness, radiation, and isolation for as little time as possible, the piloted spacecraft would follow a roughly six-month path to Mars, would remain at the planet for only one month, and then would return to Earth in about six months. This would yield a piloted Mars mission duration of between 12 and 14 months.
In common with most other post-Challenger piloted Mars plans, the SAIC team aband