The Dreamers Early Mars mission architectures As long as humanity knew of its existence, we have dreamed of going to Mars. It's no surprise then, that detailed plans for early Mars expeditions date back to the 1950s, even earlier in some cases. Lets start off with the original Mars Expedition plan: Wernher Von Braun's The Mars Project. Conceived in 1948, and first published in 1952, this book is considered the father of every planned Mars expedition since. In The Mars Project, Von Braun outlines an "enormous scientific expedition" consisting of a fleet of 10 spacecraft, each carrying 70 crew members. They would be assembled in low orbit using reusable space shuttles, before departing for Mars. Von Braun calculated that for the entire journey, the ships would each need 5.32 million tons of propellent. Once in low orbit over Mars, a manned, winged, landing craft would undock from one of the orbital ships and make the perilous journey down to the surface, landing on the smooth ice at Mars's poles. They would then travel, according to Von Braun, 6,500 km overland using tank like contraptions, before building a landing strip at the equator so that the rest of the crew could descend to the surface in their own descent ships (or "landing boats" as he called them). Using cables and a lot of work, the ships would then be turned upright, and their wings would be blown off. That would enable the crew to use the ships as conventional ascent rockets to return to low orbit and use the orbiting fleet to get home. The crew would end up spending a total of about 443 days on the Martian surface. While this mission plan was revolutionary at the time, only sections of it (admittedly big ones) hold up today. Mars's atmosphere turned out to be too thin to glide through, and the dangers of cosmic radiation were not known at the time. Nevertheless, The Mars Project remains the most influential conceptual Mars mission ever published. The next major work on Mars missions was carried out by General Atomics, with Project Orion. Project Orion was a proposal for a huge nuclear powered spacecraft that would use nuclear detonations behind the ship to generate thrust. The actual use of a so called "Orion Drive" was far greater than just Mars expeditions, with plans for giant space battleships and even voyages to nearby stars being drawn up. This project actually got very far into development, with several test flights using conventional explosives being performed. Unfortunately, the project only ran from 1957 to 1965, and was cancelled after the introduction of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Fun Fact: In a follow-up book to The Mars Project, Von Braun hypothesised that the title given to a leader of the new Martian colonies wound not be The President, but rather The Elon.
In the timespan from the early 60s to the late 70s, hundreds of varied Mars mission plans were drawn up by companies including TRW, North American, Philico, Lockheed, Douglas, General Dynamics, and many more, including NASA itself. After the success of the Apollo program, Von Braun started again advocating for Mars missions, using several Saturn V boosters to assemble an interplanetary spacecraft in low orbit, powered by NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications) nuclear rocket motors (not Orion drives, just conventional nuclear rockets). Nixon however made it clear that the Space Shuttle was the direction NASA was headed, and so Von Braun proposed a variant on his plan that used Shuttles to assemble the spacecraft, reminiscent of his original plans in 1948. But it was never to be. After all of his proposals were rejected, Von Braun retired from NASA in 1972, upset with the direction the agency was taking now that the Moon landing goal had been accomplished. By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
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