Project Mars. A Technical Tale

The Project Mars is a technical specification for a manned mission to Mars that von Braun wrote in 1948. The expected launch date was 1965. He envisioned an "enormous scientific expedition" involving a fleet of ten spacecraft with 70 crew members that would spend 443 days on the surface of Mars before returning to Earth. The spacecraft, seven passenger ships and three cargo ships, would be assembled in Earth orbit using materials supplied by reusable space shuttles. Hohmann trajectories would be used to move from Earth- to Mars-orbit, and von Braun computed each rocket burn necessary to effect the required manoeuvres. Once in Mars orbit, the crew would use telescopes to find a suitable site for their base camp near the equator. A manned winged craft would detach itself from one of the orbiting ships and glide down to one of Mars' poles and use skis to land on the ice. The crew would then travel 6,500 km overland using crawlers to the identified base camp site and build a landing strip. Von Braun based his Mars Project on the large Antarctic expeditions of the day. For example, Operation Highjump (1946–1947) was a United States Navy program that included 4,700 men, 13 ships and 23 aircraft. Von Braun expected the Martian explorers to face similar problems and included a large multi-disciplined crew in his mission, and multiple ships and landers for redundancy to reduce risk to personnel.