How We Planned to go to Mars by 1982 - The early Manned Missions

With all the talk of manned Mars missions by Elon Musk and SpaceX and more recently NASA it's easy to forget that Mars isn't a recent obsession now before we get into the details, this video is a little different because this is my first collaboration and part two of this series will be done by Isaac Arthur who will be looking at the Mars missions from the roots of sci-fi in the 1990s to those which are proposed for the coming decades there's a link in the description that will take you there directly and if you've come over from Isaac's channel, welcome to curious droid and the first part of the manned Mars missions that were planned for the post Apollo period but never got off the ground and I hope you can take a little time to have a look around this channel and also some of you have our videos and hopefully like and subscribe. Now if you haven't heard or seen Isaac's channel then I recommend you hop on over there after you've watched this of course because this is a kind of sets up for his video but his channel deals with the science and futurism and covers a whole load of things that I've never even thought of but I found highly informative and very entertaining, well worth a visit if you like your futurism on the grand scale. Ever since Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth and Robert Esnault-Pelterie discovered the principles of rocketry and Astronautics in the early twentieth century we've been planning on going to Mars though back then it was much more of an academic issue with a large dose of science fiction but with the development of a V2 rocket led by Verna von Braun whilst he was working for Germans in the 1940s the possibility of space travel became a reality. By 1948 when Von Braun was working for the US developing its rocket capability he'd published a book called the Mars Project, this has become probably the most influential book on the subject of manned Mars missions even though it was a rather grandiose scheme which called for a fleet of 10 spacecraft carrying 70 or more people. Von Braun used the idea that if Columbus had set off to find the new world with just a single ship and he would probably have never made it back to Spain. Although his book was looked upon as Sci-fi by some, von braun provided detailed calculations to support his theories and many of the ideas he put forward like reusable shuttles, orbital assembly and multiple spacecraft have greatly influenced nasa's long-term plans for manned interplanetary missions even if they have been greatly cut down in scale. He also covered the main problems of getting men to Mars, such as the effect of weightlessness on the human body, radiation from a Sun and cosmic rays, using spacesuits to move from one ship to another if one were to be disabled and also the psychological effects of having people live in enclosed space for long periods of time. Back in the 1950s and 60s there was still the belief that if you're going to go and do a space mission when you go big. Just like Apollo was a huge effort employing around 400,000 people the Mars proposals from both the US and the Soviets were equally large especially when national pride was at stake and the spin-off was a range of new advanced weapons. In the Soviet Union their answer of Saturn 5, the ill-fated N1 rocket had actually been designed by Sergey Korolyov in the 1950s to launch a manned Mars mission. The first serious Mars planning done by the Soviets was headed by Mikhail Tikhonravov In 1956 and was known as the MPK or Martian Piloted Complex. This would have a crew on a 30-month mission to land on the Martian surface and stay there for just over a year before returning. There were even plans for a nuclear-powered Mars train to be made up of five modules which would travel across the Martian surface. By 1959 a group within the OKB-1 design bureau had started development of an interplanetary spacecraft called the TMK which was to carry a three-man crew for a Mars flyby and drop remote control Landers to the surface. A launch date was penciled in for June 8th 1971 and returning to Earth over three years later. To overcome the effects of weightlessness it was proposed that the TMK would rotate about its axis to create a form of artificial gravity a bit like the space station in the film 2001, however because of its small diameter the Coriolis forces created could have induced nausea which would have been worse than the weightlessness itself. Radiation was still an unknown quantity but with data from unmanned probes it was thought that the cumulative radiation dose for a return mission to Mars would have been within safe levels but that didn't account for solar flares this was to be addressed by having a radiation shelter which was a shielded tube in the center of a craft with simplified instruments and controls. Even as far back as the 1950s it was realized that chemical rockets were just on the verge of feasibility when trying to get a manned mission to Mars and back again and that nuclear on the other hand would provide greater power with much lower mass making for significantly shorter transit times and the secondary abilities to generate electrical power once at Mars. In 1954 Ernst Stuhlinger who was working on Von Braun's team became interested in electrical propulsion after reviewing a paper on a subject by Herman J. Oberth. Stuhlinger believed that a spacecraft could be designed that would give greater thrust than a chemical rocket if it's set off from orbit. The nuclear electric engine became the interplanetary propulsion system favored by the Soviet chief designer Sergey Korolev, basically a nuclear reactor creating electricity to drive a plasma ion thruster. By 1962 in the U.S. NASA commissioned the project EMPIRE studies to look into the human exploration of Mars and what would be required. Three companies were involved Ford's aeronautic division, General Dynamics and Lockheed missiles of space. Ford suggested a dual flyby of both Venus and then onto Mars by launching and arriving relative to Mars at the midpoint of the to planetary trajectory, a sort of planetary double-whammy. They suggested using either a Saturn 5, nova or supernova rockets to launch into orbit and then the nuclear injection stage and chemical rocket maneuvering. The whole mission would last around 21 months and cost $12.6 Billion around about $100 billion in todays money plus the cost of launch vehicle development. General Dynamics suggested just a Mars mission with a crew of around about eight and again using a Saturn V and nerva nuclear engine option. They said that with nuclear engines and an optimal launch date of 1973 to 75 when Mars would be at its closest approach the whole mission could be reduced to 400-450 days including a 30-50 day stay in the Martian orbit with a possible landing and sample return. The team said that it would require 8 Saturn Vs to assemble a Mars mission vehicle and would have a payload around 450 tons. Their proposal would be over a ten-year period from 1965 to 1975 and cost $24.5 billion $196 billion in today's money. Lockheed proposal was for a mission to Mars that would last 670 days for up to a crew of 12 and will be a precursor to later missions that would land on the Martian surface. Again it would use for Saturn V nuclear Nerva propulsion combination but one interesting difference here was that the team suggested that a craft rotating at three revolutions per minute could generate 0.4g of gravity during the interplanetary phase to help offset the effect of weightlessness pretty much like with TMK in the russian solution. Although none of the Empire missions moved beyond the initial design phase, it was the first time since the Mars project that detailed proposals were carried out and shared with the rest of a space community, this in time would convince many in NASA that manned missions to Mars were feasible. By 1969 Von Braun had been refining his own ideas for Mars. His final plans had two ships each with a six-man crew and would fly in a convoy with the entire setup apart from the Mars Lander being able to be reusable for future missions. After the first moon landings there was a brief enthusiasm for more manned spaceflight Von Braun proposed his vision of a manned Mars mission as part of a post apollo integrated plan which included a manned shuttle in its original form by 1975, space stations there after, plus continued development of a saturn V as the launch stage and the Nerva nuclear thermal upper stage for the interplanetary part of the journey. The beauty of this setup was that the proven space station modules would be used as the living quarters for the Mars missions, the Saturn V was by now a well proven way to get the main parts into orbit and the nerva nuclear engine had been tested and was ready to be put into space. The only new hardware required would be the Mars Lander. Testing was envisaged starting in 1978 with the first Mars mission in 1982. The shuttle would be used to refurbish the Mars crafting space with further missions planned for 1983, 86 and 88 with a 50-person Mars base by 1989. however as we know things didn't go according to plan there was resistance from senior figures within NASA to manned missions beyond the moon. By the early 1970s the public's interesting space had, waned the war in Vietnam was like a political albatross around the neck of the US government and was costing a fortune. There was little public appetite for more hugely expensive space missions, studies put the cost of a Mars mission between $12 and $32 billion or between $93 and $250 billion in today's money. Mars was seen as a dead and pretty uninteresting place which was confirmed rather ironically by the Mariner 7 flyby the day after Von Braun's big 1969 Mars presentation to NASA. With a change of administration in 1972 and even with vice president Spiro Agnew's endorsement of a Mars mission, Nixon slashed NASA's budget and the only thing left of a post Apollo plan was the much repurposed Space Shuttle and the leftover Saturn V rockets which were used for the Skylab space station. The nerva nuclear engine which was so reliant upon the post Apollo plan was also scrapped. In the Soviet Union the failure to produce a workable N1 rocket and with similar economic issues to the US the Soviet Mars projects were also shelved indefinitely with the development of the N1's replacement the giant Energia rocket in the mid 1970s and 80s and the Soviet Space Shuttle Buran there was a brief flurry of interest in Mars missions once more but after the collapse of a Soviet Union both the Energia rocket and the remaining ideas for Mars missions were also shelved. Although there were successful robotic missions to Mars in the following decades interest in manned missions in the 1980s and 90s was limited to the die-hard planetary scientists and enthusiasts. Even sci-fi gave up on Mars during this time as it slipped from much of a public's consciousness and this is where our part one of the story ends and we hand you over to Isaacs SFIA channel for part two of the series. However we aren't quite done yet the logistics of planning a mission as complex as sending men to Mars back in the day where most of the working out was done with a slide rule is truly amazing just like Apollo it would have been a massive undertaking bringing together thousands of scientists engineers and mathematicians and is truly incredible to imagine the full complexity of the operation. To begin to get a grasp of how these things working in the trenches you might start small for instance how fast must we launch an object from the surface of the earth to get into space you can look up the answer if you want but if you like me you want to create things yourself. Our sponsor for this collaboration brilliant.org is dedicated to just that, turning you into a living breathing and most importantly calculating scientist. Head over there and prove for yourself just what it takes to get an object up and off of a plate and headed towards a new home like Mars. Having a strong math and science skills set is crucial because it opens up so many ways to explore the universe. To support curious droid and to learn more about brilliant go to brilliant.org/curiousdroid and sign up for free. Also if you're ready to launch off of a planet the first 200 people will get 20% discount off of the annual premium subscription.

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 723,390

Rating: 4.9201999 out of 5

Keywords: Mars, werner von braun, mars missions, manned mars mission, Elon musk, SpaceX, nasa, Isaac Arthur, sfia, v2, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert H. Goddard, Hermann Oberth, Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Saturn V, N1 Rocket, energia, buran, Mikhail Tikhonravov, nerva, OKB1, MPK, TMK, Ernst Stuhlinger, ion drive, nuclear rocket, 1982, curious droid, space, curious-droid.com, paul shillito, rocket, ford, General Dynamics, empire, post apollo plan, Brilliant.org

Id: Pv7aigOzQKo

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/iZeitgeist]

Project Empire was really something else! I hadn't heard of it before, but it's amazing how many people and big names were involved. A part of me is disappointed that none of these ever made it much past the drawing board, but I'm really hoping we're seeing the beginning of a new wave of Mars excitement with SapceX and Boeing in the picture.