While the pre-Apollo Wernher von Braun manned Mars mission plan is well known through the Collier's magazine and von Braun's now published Project Mars: A Technical tale, the German born rocket engineer also developed long range plans for the Nixon administration that included a 1982 manned Mars mission
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The images in this blog post are from the 4 August 1969 presentation to the then US president Richard Nixon's Space Task Group
Gone are the winged interplanetary rockets seen in Project Mars that glide to a landing on the Martian surface after using huge tanks of chemical propellant to reach the red planet, now nuclear powered departure stages are launched and assembled in low Earth orbit while a Space Shuttle ferries the crew to the completed Marship
While only the Shuttle survived the integrated programme plan the presentation gives an idea of how Apollo had changed von Braun's thinking with the introduction of manned landers that are in a re-entry capsule type configuration for touching down on Mars
The schedule below shows details such as the 1977 test date for the Marship's nuclear propulsion, a 1974 test flight date for the Space Shuttle and an orbiter flight rate of 100 missions a year by 1980
While the image below shows a simple timetable with permanently manned outposts in Earth, lunar and Martian orbit and on the Moon and Mars' surfaces with almost 250 people manning these by 1990
This alternate timeline for US space exploration was the basis for the 1997 Stephen Baxter book Voyage. Von Braun's plans are the also discussed in this 2001 NASA paper and this International Academy of Astronauts paper
Flight International's 14 August 1969 issue also reported this manned Mars mission plan. On pages 263 and 264 the then NASA administrator Thomas Paine is said to have told a 1 August press conference that for a manned flight to Mars a decision would have to be
made "not later than 1976" to ensure the launch of a crew of 12 in the early 1980s
on October 16, 2008 2:46 AM | Reply
The date is fascinating. It coincides with that postulated in the Old Auntie Beeb radio program "Journey into Space: The Red Planet" back in '55-56 by Charles Chilton! Turned ME into a space nut!'Course when von Braun's plan was formulated, 3 Mile Island hadn't occured, BUT NERVA was almost about to be cancelled - like the Saturn LV before the Shuttle came into being, and now the ET production line so DIRECTv.2.02 becomes a non-starter and NASA reinvents the wheel at ENORMOUS cost - so this idea was also just a pipe dream. Good thing the same approach wasn't taken with Apollo/Saturn....or is it...come back Wehrner, from the grave if neccessary, but at least we'll have someone that knew what he was doing and retained flexibility when a better idea camesup: unlike the current NASA "Top" Brass. I was hoping for a Mars landing before "I got old" but, too late!
on November 14, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply
Your diagram, on page http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2008/09/von-brauns-1982-nasa-manned-ma.html, labeled 1970-1990, is only half the diagram, only listing the years 80-89.