HOUSTON – Sometimes it doesn’t pay to think big.

The "Report of the 90-day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars," commonly referred to as the "90-Day Report," began as an initiative from President George Bush in July 1989 when he proposed a "long-range, continuing commitment" to:

• Completing Space Station Freedom in the 1990s as "a critical next step in all our space endeavors."
• Returning to the moon and establishing a permanent, manned base there.
• Sending astronauts to Mars.

Bush hoped to set course much like President Kennedy had done with a commitment to go to the Moon.

The plan drew fire immediately because of its complexities, duration of development and cost of more than $500 billion.

The plan involved using the never-built Space Station Freedom to act as an assembly area for Moon-bound spaceships (see graphic below).

Heavy-lift rockets and shuttle flights would deliver the material to assemble the ships. The Moon-bound ships would set up a colony there and an orbiting facility to build the Mars-bound ships.

The Mars-bound spaceships, resembling fictional spacecraft "Battlestar Galactica," would contain everything needed for the 18-month round trip. Astronauts would spend two weeks on the surface before returning to the orbiting mother ship and heading back to Earth.

The National Research Council analyzed the report and found that, for success, it would require long-term financial commitment from the U.S. government, rather than budgeting yearly, and that a lot of the development costs such as nuclear propulsion remained uncertain. Congress, to no one’s surprise, refused to go along. After all, part of their job is approving the government’s annual budget.

Politically, the report never got very far. Far more ambitious than the Apollo program, the "90-Day Report" suffered from bad timing. It arrived at the Cold War’s end and was presented to a budget-conscious government. It was never taken very seriously and faded from the scene not long after it was issued.