The Mars Project

This article is about the 1952 scientic book. For Mars etarium in New York City in 1951.[1] The appendix was
projects, see exploration of Mars.
also published in a special edition of the German space
ight journal Weltraumfahrt in 1952, and later that year
The Mars Project (German: Das Marsprojekt) is a non- in hardback by Umschau Verlag in West Germany as Das
Marsprojekt. It was translated into English by Henry J.
ction scientic book by the German (later Germanby the
American) rocket physicist, astronautics engineer and White and published in the United States in 1953
University of Illinois Press as The Mars Project.[1][2][4]
space architect, Wernher von Braun. It was translated
from the original German by Henry J. White and rst
published in English by the University of Illinois Press
in 1953.
2 Synopsis
The Mars Project is a technical specication for a manned
expedition to Mars. It was written by von Braun in 1948
and was the rst technically comprehensive design for
such an expedition.[1] The book has been described as
the most inuential book on planning human missions
to Mars.[2]

The Mars Project is a technical specication for a manned

mission to Mars that von Braun wrote in 1948, with a provisional launch date of 1965.[1] He envisioned an enormous scientic expedition involving a eet of ten spacecraft with 70 crew members that would spend 443 days
on the surface of Mars before returning to Earth.[1] The
spacecraft, seven passenger ships, and three cargo ships,
would all be assembled in Earth orbit using materials supplied by reusable space shuttles. The eet would use a
nitric acid/hydrazine propellant that, although corrosive
and toxic, could be stored without refrigeration during
the three-year round-trip to Mars. Von Braun calculated
the size and weight of each ship, and how much fuel
each of them would require for the round trip (5,320,000
metric tons). Hohmann trajectories would be used to
move from Earth- to Mars-orbit, and von Braun computed each rocket burn necessary to perform the required
manoeuvres.[4]

Background

Wernher von Braun developed a fascination for interplanetary ight while he was still at school in Germany. In
1930 he went to university in Berlin to study engineering,
and there he joined the Spaceight Society (Verein fr
Raumschiahrt) and later worked on the design of liquidfuel rockets. Shortly before the outbreak of World War
II, von Braun was recruited by the German Army to assist
in the building of long-range military rockets. He quickly
rose through the ranks and became technical leader of the
team that developed the V-2 rocket. Towards the end of
the war over a thousand V-2s were launched from Germany and bombed England.[3] In 1944 von Braun was
arrested by the Gestapo and charged with proposing the
building of interplanetary spacecraft instead of military
weapons, but he was released after two weeks. As the
war drew to a close in early 1945 von Braun and his rocket
team ed the advancing Red Army, and later surrendered
to American troops. Von Braun and his scientists, plus
100 V-2s, were shipped to the U.S. Armys rocket re- An artists conception from 2007 depicting long-range explosearch facility at Fort Bliss in New Mexico.[3]
ration on the surface of Mars using pressurized rovers.
In 1948 the U.S. Armys V-2 test program was completed
and von Braun used his spare time to write a science ction novel about a manned mission to Mars. He based
his story on comprehensive engineering diagrams and
calculations, which he included in an appendix to the
manuscript. The novel was not published, but the appendix formed the basis of a lecture von Braun gave at the
First Symposium on Spaceight held at the Hayden Plan-

Once in Mars orbit, the crew would use telescopes to nd

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 identied base
camp site and build a landing strip. The rest of the ground
1

REFERENCES

crew would descend from orbit to the landing strip in

wheeled gliders. A skeleton crew would remain behind
in the orbiting ships. The gliders would also serve as ascent craft to return the crew to the mother ships at the end
of the ground mission.[1][4]
Von Braun based his Mars Project on the large Antarctic
expeditions of the day. For example, Operation Highjump (19461947) was a United States Navy program
that included 4,700 men, 13 ships and 23 aircraft. At the
time, Antarctic explorers were cut o from the rest of the
world and the necessary skills had to be on hand to deal
with any problem that arose. Von Braun expected the
Martian explorers to face similar problems and included
a large multi-disciplined crew in his mission, as well as
multiple ships and landers for redundancy to reduce risk
to personnel.[4]

Shortcomings

In his introduction to The Mars Project, von Braun stated

that his study was not yet complete. He said that he had
omitted the details of some topics that would need to be Walt Disney (left) and Wernher von Braun in 1954.
addressed further, including the eccentric orbit of Mars,
interplanetary astronavigation, meteor showers, and the
attention of the general public when they published a selong-term eects of spaceight on humans.[2]
ries of eight articles on space ight and exploration. Von
There are other shortcomings in The Mars Project that Braun contributed to many of the articles, which were ilvon Braun could not have anticipated in 1948. He had not lustrated with paintings by space artists Chesley Bonestell
planned on any unmanned exploratory missions to Mars and others.[1] The success of the Colliers series made von
taking place before the rst manned expedition, and he Braun a household name, and he appeared on several TV
had not foreseen the technological advances that would shows. He also collaborated with Walt Disney and aptake place, or the development of robot spacecraft.[4] It peared in three episodes of Disneys Tomorrowland TV
was not until 1965 that the unmanned Mariner 4 space- program.[5] The two other shows that featured von Braun
craft found that the density of the Martian atmosphere were Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond.[5]
was only one tenth of what had been estimated, making
it clear that the huge winged gliders planned by von Braun In 1956 von Braun revised his Mars Plan and scaled down
would not have had enough lift to be able to descend safely the size of the mission to two ships and 12 crew. He
onto the surface of Mars.[1] The danger of high energy so- published his results in a new book, The Exploration of
science writer
lar and cosmic radiation beyond low Earth orbit was not Mars with co-author German-American
[6]
and
space
advocate,
Willy
Ley.
The
original Mars
known in 1948. The Van Allen radiation belts that proProject
was
later
republished
by
the
University
of Illitect Earth from solar radiation were discovered only in
nois
Press
in
1962,
and
again
in
1991,
with
a
foreword
by
1958, and von Braun did not plan for the protection of
NASA,
American
scientist
and
the
third
Administrator
of
the crews from such radiation, whether in space or on the
Thomas O. Paine. Von Brauns unpublished science cMartian surface.[1]
tion novel from 1948 was eventually published in Canada
by Apogee Books in December 2006 as Project Mars: A
Technical Tale. It included his technical papers on the
4 Inuence
proposed project and paintings by Chesley Bonestell.[3][7]
The Mars Project was the rst technical study on the feasibility of a manned mission to Mars, and has been regarded as the most inuential book on planning such
missions.[2] Mark Wade wrote in Encyclopedia Astronautica, What is astonishing is that von Brauns scenario is
still valid today.[1]
Between 1952 and 1954, one of Americas most popular
magazines,[4] Colliers brought von Brauns ideas to the

5 References
von Braun, Wernher (1991) [1952]. The Mars
Project (2nd ed.). University of Illinois Press. ISBN
978-0-252-06227-8.
[1] Wade, Mark. Von Braun Mars Expedition 1952.

Encyclopedia Astronautica. Retrieved 2010-02-26.

[2] Plato, Annie (July 2001). Eyes on the Red Planet: Human Mars Mission Planning, 19521970 (PDF). NASA
Johnson Space Center. Chapter 2, pp. 48. Retrieved
2010-03-02.
[3] Paine, Thomas O. (1991) [1952]. Forward. In von
Braun, Wernher. The Mars Project (2nd ed.). University
of Illinois Press. pp. viixiii. ISBN 978-0-252-06227-8.
[4] Portree, David S. F. (February 2001). Humans to Mars.
NASA History Oce. Chapter 1, pp. 12. Retrieved
2010-03-04.
[5] Wright, Mike (1993). The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Inuence on Space Exploration. Marshall
Space Flight Center History Oce. Retrieved 2010-03-03.
[6] Wade, Mark. Von Braun Mars Expedition 1956.
Encyclopedia Astronautica. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
[7] von Braun, Wernher (2006). Project Mars: A Technical
Tale. Apogee Books. p. 279. ISBN 0-9738203-3-0.

External links
The Mars Project publication history. Google Books
60th anniversary digital reprinting of Colliers Space
Series, Houston Section of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

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The Mars Project Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mars_Project?oldid=746125522 Contributors: JFG, Bruce1ee, Arado, Hydrargyrum, Moe Epsilon, Nickst, Chris the speller, John, Vgy7ujm, Muadd, Fyrberd, Cydebot, Grahamec, Mato, Robsmyth40, Aajacksoniv, Schwabac, Phantom in ca, Yobot, FuturePrefect, Moonraker, JKim, FMC cellulose 20, Joefromrandb, Helpful Pixie Bot, Monkbot,
Deneb in Cygnus and Anonymous: 11

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