July 30, 2012
Wernher von Braun’s Martian Chronicles
Astronauts plan for a trip to the Martian equator over snowy terrain (1954)
Assuming everything goes according to plan, NASA’s Curiosity rover will touch down on the surface of Mars this Sunday, August 5th at 10:31 PDT. Curiosity travels in the cosmic wake of not only the pioneering landers and rovers that have made journeys to Mars before, but also the innumerable visionaries who showed us how we might get there —well before it was possible.
From 1952 until 1954, the weekly magazine Collier’s published a series of articles on space exploration spread out across eight issues. Several of the articles were written by Wernher von Braun, the former Third Reich rocket scientist who began working for the U.S. after WWII. The Collier’s series is said to have inspired countless popular visions of space travel. This impact was in no small part due to the gorgeous, colorful illustrations done by Chesley Bonestell, Fred Freeman and Rolf Klep.
The last of the Collier’s space-themed series was the April 30, 1954, issue that featured a cover showing the planet Mars and two headlines: “Can We Get to Mars?” and directly underneath: “Is There Life on Mars?” The article, “Can We Get to Mars?,” by von Braun is a fascinating read that looks at everything from the impact of meteors on spacecraft to the stresses of living in cramped quarters during such a long journey. Even when astronauts finally arrived on Mars, they’d still be subjected to claustrophobic living conditions, as you can see from the illustration above by Fred Freeman. The astronauts—who in this illustration have landed on an icy Martian pole—live in inflatable, pressurized spheres that are mounted on tractors.
Cover of the April 30, 1954 issue of Collier’s
Von Braun’s story in the 1954 issue explained that he didn’t believe he’d see a man on Mars within his lifetime. In fact, von Braun believed that it would likely be 100 years before a human foot would touch Martian soil. But there was absolutely no doubt that we would get there.
Will man ever go to Mars? I am sure he will—but it will be a century or more before he’s ready. In that time scientists and engineers will learn more about the physical and mental rigors of interplanetary flight—and about the unknown dangers of life on another planet. Some of that information may become available within the next 25 years or so, through the erection of a space station above the earth (where telescope viewings will not be blurred by the earth’s atmosphere) and through the subsequent exploration of the moon, as described in previous issues of Collier’s.
But unlike NASA’s current Mars mission, von Braun’s vision for travel included humans rather than simply rovers. As Erik Conway, historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains, “There have also always been—since at least Wernher von Braun—people proposing expeditions to Mars with humans, with astronauts. Von Braun’s idea was to send a flotilla of spacecraft, not just one. As you’ve seen in the Collier’s magazines and so on, he was a big promoter of that. And that affected how the American public saw Mars as well. So it was being promoted as a future abode of life for us humans—and it still is in a lot of the enthusiast literature. That hasn’t changed. It’s just the funding isn’t there to actually accomplish it.”
The funding may not be there today, but the space interest revival we’re currently seeing under the unofficial leadership of astrophysicist and media personality Neil deGrasse Tyson could very well help change that. Look for a reboot of the late Carl Sagan’s 1980 mini-series Cosmos in 2013, starring Tyson.
For now, we’ll just have to settle for the exciting discoveries that (hopefully) will be beaming down from Mars next week and some good old fashioned space art. Below are samples of the amazing illustrations from the April 30, 1954 issue of Collier’s by Bonestell, Freeman and Klep.
Workers assembling 10 rocket ships for a mission to Mars
Wernher von Braun imagined that spacecraft would be assembled 1,000 miles from earth near a wheel-shaped space station.
Spacecraft being assembled near the wheel-shaped space station, as envisioned by Wernher von Braun
The cropped illustration above, by Chesley Bonestell shows four of the ten spacecraft von Braun imagined would undertake the journey.
The first landing party takes off for Mars. Two other landing planes will wait until runway is prepared for them, and the remaining seven ships will stay in 600-mile orbit. Arms on cargo ships hold screenlike dish antenna (for communication), trough-shaped solar mirrors (for power).
Charting a course to Mars in a 1954 issue of Collier’s
The illustration above by Rolf Klep explains how the earth and Mars must be positioned in order for a successful flight to occur.
This illustration above of astronauts preparing for their return flight was done by Chesley Bonestell.
After 15 month exploration, the Mars expedition prepares for return flight to earth. Two landing planes are set on tails, with wings and landing gear removed. They will rocket back to the 600-mile orbit on first leg of journey
This illustration, by Fred Freeman shows all ten spacecraft as they travel to Mars.
Illustration shows how the landing planes are assembled in 600-mile Martian orbit. Pointed noses are removed from three of 10 ships that made trip from earth; wings and landing gear are fitted to them. Cutaway of plane in the foreground shows personnel, tractors in ship
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This was before good information was available on the mass of the Martian atmosphere. The actual value turned out to be much less than vB assumed, rendering lifting landing impractical.
I seem to recall reading that these articles spurred Disneyland’s famous “Man in Space” episodes. Von Braun figured prominently, seizing the opportunity to promote space travel to an even bigger audience.
The first episode ended with a stylish animated vision of man’s first space flight — a concept much closer to the space shuttle than the one-man capsules that were actually used. The second offered a manned flight around the moon, proposing that a permanent space station was a necessary prior step. The moon orbit, I understand, incorporated moonscapes from the old Flight to the Moon attraction at Disneyland park.
The final episode, “Mars and Beyond”, offered an updated version of von Braun’s Colliers mission: a fleet of nuclear-powered ships that looked a bit like umbrellas. The actual lander would be a small module, lowered by parachutes and boosted by rockets. Very much like what eventually was used on the moon, except for the chute.
@DBenson You’re right. The Disney Treasures DVD “Tomorrowland” has those episodes and they’re phenomenal: http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Treasures-Tomorrow-Beyond/dp/B0000BWVAI
The weird thing about the Man in Space series that I only recently realized was that they weren’t broadcast in color. Today, when you watch the animation (directed by Ward Kimball who’s incredible and I’m excited for a biography that’s supposedly to be coming out soon) you see this rich mix of color. I was recently at the Paley Center in L.A. watching old TV episodes and they had a b/w version of Mars and Beyond. It loses so much of its punch without color.
@Matt Novak
The episodes were filmed in color because Disney (ever the wise businessman) was thinking ahead to other markets. It enabled him to re-release the more popular series (like Davey Crockett) as film features.
The closest Wernher von Braun got to getting his Mars mission was as part of NASA’s Integrated Program Plan that they proposed to Nixon a couple of months after Apollo 11. For one thing, he managed to get the tonnage to low earth orbit down from 37,200 to 1452. Which helps. A lot.
If you’ll excuse a little self-linkage, Curiosity inspired me to write about *that* mission since I knew it would be dragging the older Collier’s mission out of everyone else:
https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/mars-expedition-1969-nasas-waterloo/
Unfortunately for him NASA ran up against, well, pretty much everything. All that survived by mid-1970 was a few more Apollo moon landings, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle. No space station, no Moon base, no nuclear rockets, no Mars landings. Ah well.
The version of the project presented on the Disneyland show was a little different from the original Collier’s plan; while still titanic by any modern standard, it was somewhat scaled down, and used nuclear-electric ion propulsion for the fleet and vertical rocket landers. The later plan was actually conceived by Ernst Stuhlinger:
http://astronautix.com/craft/stus1957.htm
It’s also interesting to note that while we remember the space dreams of this era as failed promises, von Braun was proposing this initial plan for the 2050s, which are still some way off even for us, not for his near future. It was only by the time of astronauts walking on the Moon that the proposed time scale got really compressed, with crewed Mars landings in the 1980s!
…hmm, I guess Stuhlinger’s expedition actually had more crew than von Braun’s initial plan. I might have been confusing it with von Braun’s own scaled-down version.
This should be called “The Amazing Future of The Past!” ;-)