Comments on: Wernher von Braun’s Martian Chronicles

By: Bob Bello

Bob Bello — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:49:14 +0000

This should be called “The Amazing Future of The Past!” ;-)

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:03:00 +0000

…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.

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:00:03 +0000

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!

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:45:40 +0000

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

By: Paul Drye

Paul Drye — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 23:40:21 +0000

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.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:13:10 +0000

@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.

By: Matt Novak

Matt Novak — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:31:44 +0000

@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.

By: DBenson

DBenson — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:26:53 +0000

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.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:14:56 +0000

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.