E.P. Grondine wrote:
My memory is just so far gone... why here I thought there were something like 10 ships in von Braun's Mars fleet, with some remaining in orbit...

Chris' reply:
You're thinking of the Disney ion drive fleet of ships from the early 1960s.

E.P. Grondine wrote:
but then I guess it depends upon which one of von Braun's Mars plans from which year you are talking about...

Chris' reply:
The only major change Von Braun made to his plan was to drop the first ship going to the Polar Cap because by the time the series went to book his knew the polar ices were rough.

E.P. Grondine wrote:
Seems to me that all the landing ships were going to land on the smooth water ice which von Braun imagined to exist on Mars... at least Collier's showed it that way... with the tractors simply for exploration... the tractors also featured inflatable living areas... no radiation problem there...

Chris' reply:
You're wrong!
They had no idea at that time what the radiation levels on Mars would be. But inflatable structure can be built today that would provide more than adequate radiation protect.

E.P. Grondine wrote:
Full pressure suits? At 10% Earth atmosphere? The ones Collier's showed sure didn't look like Apollo Moon suits... and neither do the ones the Mars Society folks dance around in today... add about 75 kg in lead to them, and then dance...

Chris' reply:
Gee ha think? The Apollo era wasn't for another 15 years and no one during the early 1950s had a clue what to expect as to micro-meteorites or radiation spacesuits were just pressure suits with overalls. In this case blue overalls. Nice transition, btw, FMARS and MDRS suits aren't spacesuits. If you want us to use real suit fork over a few hundred million USD.

--Chris Vancil