New Year, New History Fact · 3:01pm January 16th
Did you know that Dr. Von Braun had designed a manned mission to Mars as early as 1952? From what I understand the math still adds up, the mission would've worked. It would've been ridiculously expensive and take way too long to construct in orbit but it would've worked... a lot better than NASA's supposed planned Mars mission schedule.
The mission would have lasted 963 days, which probably looks like a massive amount of time, but for a Mars mission, I'd say that's pretty good, still long, probably longer than it needs to be, but fair. It would contain a crew of 70 aboard 7 crew ships, along with 3 cargo ships. Once they got to Mars they would first land on the Northern/Southern ice cap (either depending on which is larger at the time). The craft they would land in was a massive boat with a 500 foot wingspan. It would land on skis and the crew aboard would embark on rovers toward the equator.
Once they arrive at the equator they would set up more permanent habitation and clear rocks and lay out a landing strip for the other two landing boats. The other two would land, bringing the total surface crew to 50, leaving 20 in orbit. From this point they would stay on the surface for another 400 days before using the centers of the landing boats which doubled as return rockets to join the orbiting crew and return home.
Dr. Braun wanted to get this mission starting in 1965! He also revised it in 1956, making it much smaller, but still, fascinating.
