President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration speech held few surprises.
For the most part, he restated themes developed in his first term as president and in his subsequent campaigns to reclaim the office.
However, he delivered one statement that surprised many—and delighted Elon Musk:
“And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” (1)
President Trump reached back to the 19th century days of expansion on the Western Frontier when he referred to “manifest destiny.” This phrase expresses the idea that part of what “makes the United States great” is a restless commitment to expanding, to moving outward on the frontier, wherever that might be.
Many space advocates have abandoned the frontier metaphor in recent years. It brings up negative images of decimating the Indigenous population, destroying the environment, and embracing uncontrolled economic growth. However, Manifest Destiny will apparently constitute the primary metaphor for space exploration during the next four years, with a clear and uncompromising goal: landing American astronauts on Mars.
What does this mean for NASA, and for space exploration in general?
Well, the first relevant question is this: can the President’s inaugural pledge be realized? Most so-called “experts” are saying, no, it cannot be done in four years, forget about it. The only spacecraft remotely able to make the trip is Starship, which needs much more testing before it is certified to take humans anywhere in the solar system. Even if you have the spacecraft, the logistics of getting people to Mars are daunting, not to mention the challenge of landing there. Radiation could wreak havoc with the astronauts’ health, as could the demands on the human body of weightlessness en route to Mars, succeeded by a gravity field about 40 percent of Earth’s. Moreover, we would like to know a lot more about the psychological challenges that would face the astronauts on a multi-year journey.
However, similar experts said that reusable rockets were an impossible dream. We now know that they were wrong, and “presidential advisor” Elon Musk had a lot to do with that. We also have an historical example that might be more relevant than reusable rockets: Apollo.
When President John F. Kennedy announced at a joint session of Congress in 1961 that the United States would send a man to the Moon and return him safely before the end of the decade, no one at NASA knew exactly how to do that. However, the fledgling space agency, aided by presidential support, a robust budget, and plenty of help from the aerospace industry, landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon eight years later.
Today, the United States has much more spaceflight expertise and superior technology than that which existed in the 1960’s. Elon Musk himself leads the company most likely to be able to make it happen—and he possesses enormous resources to dedicate to his dream. The titular NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, is apparently not in disagreement with Trump and Musk: Billionaire-pilot Jared Isaacman, who headed a team of independent astronauts that just touched down from an incredible Earth-orbiting demo flight, says he aims to help safeguard human civilization by spreading it across other planets, starting with Mars. (2)
So, maybe it can be done.
The next relevant question is, “Should it be done? Should a significant portion of NASA’s and SpaceX’s resources go into a Mars mission?”
We will address this question in Part Two of our series to be published on February 10th, 2025.
References
- The Inaugural Address, https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/the-inaugural-address/
- Kevin H. Platt, Forbes, October 24, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinholdenplatt/2024/10/23/space-pilot-aims-to-save-civilization-by-spreading-it-to-more-planets/
About the Author
Frank White is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and a Rhodes Scholar. He earned an M.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University, where he was a member of New College. The fourth edition of Frank’s best-known book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, was published by Multiverse Publishing, a division of Multiverse Media LLC, in 2022. Frank is president of The Human Space Program, Inc., a nonprofit organization based on an idea initially proposed in The Overview Effect. The Overview Effect® is a registered trademark owned by William Frank White.
(c) Copyright Frank White, 2025, All Rights Reserved. Published with permission by Above Space
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