Comments on: Our 20th Century Space Legacy – Part 8: Revisiting Mars After Viking https://techsomogro.com/20th-century-space-legacy-part-8-revisiting-mars-viking/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=20th-century-space-legacy-part-8-revisiting-mars-viking Science, Technology and the Future Mon, 03 Dec 2012 21:22:37 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 By: Frank Sowa https://techsomogro.com/20th-century-space-legacy-part-8-revisiting-mars-viking/#comment-107 Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:29:01 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=3747#comment-107 My dad was the NASA inventor of the ballute system (the type of parachute) that landed the two Viking Landers on Mars. The Mars missions were NOT discontinued because they didn’t find ‘life on Mars.’ That is a stupid myth.

They found life, and the reports show that.

Richard M. Nixon, facing exponential growth in paying deficits run up by the Vietnam War ended the priority of deep space missions (Mars included). The hawks were concerned we “might lose” in Vietnam, and so they threw money at that problem.

Nixon saw the drive into space as a Democrat program. He saw it as something that glorified the Kennedy name (and he felt he wold run against a Kennedy – again … and he didn’t want to lose, as JFK’s victory left a bad taste in his mouth). The Nixon Administration made massive cuts in the mid-70’s to pay for the Vietnam War. That is the real truth.

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