E.P. Grondine wrote:
By the way, musing on your earlier posts, von Braun intended to manufacture his fuel for Earth return from the Martian water ice which he imagined to exist, and this proposal was eirily similar to Zubrin's current much more realistic plans for fuel manufacture from the Martian atmosphere.
My reply:
You are wrong! The mission plan called for the assembly in space of three enormous winged spacecraft. BTW at that time they believe the Martian atmosphere to be about 10 percent of ours. One spaceplane would be sent to the North pole to land on the smooth ice sheets on skids! Then it's crew would drive a tractor to the mid-latitudes and build a landing strip for the other two to land on! After exploring in full pressure spacesuits they would get into the spaceplanes and rotate the middle section to vertical and launch those to return to Earth!
BTW there is H2O ice and CO2 ice at the Northern Polar Cap of Mars.
--Chris Vancil
Space/Science » in reply to First things first: the Moon
von Braun's Mars Mission Plan
The whole thread (37 posts)
- THE COMING NASA BUDGET CUTS
- Perhaps you can peddle your dystopic plot over at the SFWA website?
- Interesting angle and rationale
- Good Point, SIM. We either stick together or we all get stuck on earth.
- Re: TPS-NSS-BIS-MS, etc....
- The Importance of Focus, Tolerance, & Working Together
- I'm starting to be convinced.
- Just adding fuel to the fire guys
- Ed you already posted this below