Why I Wrote Children of Apollo

By Mark R. Whittington

A lot of people have asked me why I wrote Children of Apollo to begin with. Aside from a desire to make money on royalties, my desire was to answer two of the most haunting questions of the last century. Why didn’t the Apollo Program lead to a space faring civilization, with people living on other worlds, and space craft voyaging further and further out to the planets and hence the stars? The second question stems from the first. Could things have turned out different?

The answer to the first question is that the Apollo Program, born of the Cold War politics of the early 1960s, perished of the Vietnam era politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Neil Armstrong had barely lifted his foot from the surface of the Moon when people began to decide that we now needed to spend more money on social programs and less on space adventures. We had beaten the Soviets, now it was time to help the poor, clean the environment, and so on. Liberal politicians and the media encouraged the attitude. Some did that because they believed the proposition that every dollar spent on space was food taken from the mouths of the hungry. Others, with more sinister motives, saw an irresistible issue. Then Senator Walter Mondale expressed the latter very well, in the wake of the Apollo Fire, when he said, “I don’t give a hoot in hell for the program or your future. I intend to ride this thing for all the political advantage I can get.”

So what about then President Nixon? What was his attitude? Most people blame him for the truncation of the Apollo program and the deferment of things like lunar bases and Mars expeditions. I think the truth was a little more complicated than that. I think Nixon might well have supported a more vigorous space program had the political situation permitted it. As it was he hit upon what at the time seemed a good plan. The plan was to build a space shuttle, lower the cost of space travel drastically, and then proceed with lunar bases, Mars expeditions, and so on. Just because that plan didn’t work is no reason to conclude it wasn’t a good one. Many people still are trying to think of ways to execute that plan.

Given the political situation, could Nixon have made any other decision than he had made? I write a scenario in Children of Apollo in which he does. I give him the motive of finding out that the space race had caused strains in the Soviet economy and military. I give him the means by proposing joint space missions with the Russians, the better to advance peace and détente. Nixon proposes huge spending increases for NASA as a “bargaining chip” and at the same time takes measures to make certain that agreement is actually never reached.

Two things occur. First, the opposition on the left to the space program virtually collapses. We saw an example of this in real history. In 1993, President Clinton brought in the Russians as partners on the International Space Station. Attempts to cut off funding for the space station, which that year came within one vote of succeeding, subsequently fizzled. The one thing the left loves far more even that social programs, is anything that is perceived as furthering the cause of world peace. In the book, this collapse is not universal and that fact is crucial to the plot.

The second thing that happens is that the Soviets redouble their efforts to catch and then surpass the United States. The Soviets also begin active measures to try to slow the United States down. That too is a crucial part of the plot for Children of Apollo.

So what would the world be like had we proceeded with plans to settle the Moon and explore the planets? I suspect it would have been a better world, slightly more technologically advanced, filled with high adventure and purpose, It would be a world with a frontier, which hasn’t been the case since the American West was settled over a century ago.

Still, one other question remains. If Nixon had made a different decision, and the Congress and the nation had followed him, would it have been enough? Or would all that have been accomplished have been the buying of time? Programs, like Apollo, which are born in politics, are always in danger of dying by politics. If we had settled the Moon in the 1970s, gone to Mars in the 1980s, would the politicians have still found a reason to defund, pull back, and turn inward at some future date? Or would we have found a permanent rationale for exploring and settling the high frontier of space, perhaps based on commerce?

I don’t know the answer to that question. All I can suggest is, buy the book, read it, and decide for yourself.

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