As Proposed by Wernher Von Braun and Willy Ley

In the early nineteen fifties, after the accomplishments of the V-2 rocket and the Glenn Martin Viking rocket, anything seemed possible to those who were designing the future of space flight. They let their imaginations soar. In 1949, Cornelius Ryan, editor of Collier's Magazine (and famous for The Longest Day), hosted a series of sort of a symposia; the symposia were for publication only (they were not "symposia" held in person by their contributors), about the future possibilities of space flight. He invited the leading authorities to contribute. A series of magazine articles in Collier's magazine followed, and then, quickly, on the heels of these articles, Viking Press published greatly expanded versions of these articles in book forms.

The technology of the liquid propellent rocket had just been developed. Most notably, the engines that revolutionized the science of liquid propellent rocket propulsion were the following: firstly, the engine that powered one of the so called "Vengeance Weapons" of Hitler, the V-2 rocket; next came the very efficient Walther liquid propellant rocket engine for the ME-163 "Komet" rocket propelled fighter plane; then, considerably later, came the engine that propelled the Glenn Martin rocket known as the "Viking" (an entirely "home grown" and developed vehicle, here in the United States). Unfortunately for Hitler, neither the ME-163 nor the Arado 234 nor the ME-262 were available in numbers to sweep the skies clean of Lancasters, Stirlings, and Flying Fortress bombers.

However, America (and, as we are well aware of, the Soviet Union) were the heirs of this new, reliable and high performance rocket engine technology development.

Surprisingly, one of the most well engineered of these three rocket engines was the one that powered the little "Komet" fighter that the Nazis had intended to pit against the giant clouds of bombers that blanketed the skies over Germany (on one occasion, the allies managed to put a clowd of Lancasters and Flying fortresses over Germany numbering 1,400!!!!; This must have frightened Berliners out of their wits, to look up and see the sky black with aluminum).

The little engine that powered the ME-163 Komet would have made a perfect third stage engine for a satellite launcher, the kind of launcher that would have launched the first small earth satellites. It was was extraordinarily efficient, a marvel of engineering. It was two decades ahead of its time.

However, it was not to fall to Germany to pioneer space flight; but rather, only her rocket scientists.

Wernher Von Braun came to the United States after the war, and spearheaded the development of the intermediate range ballistic missile known as the "Redstone". While he was doing this, he was busy telling America how they could rule the world with a giant space station circling the globe every two hours in a polar orbit.

Was anyone listening to him, seriously? NO. Too bad for us; we might have gained a 20 year lead that we would have never lost; hindsight is perfect "20-20 vision".

In any case, he and Willy Ley, with the help of Cornelius Ryan, (and Walt Disney Productions, oddly enough) made their case in the popular press. Unfortunately, no groundswell of support developed to implement their plans.

The truth is that he succeeded in only persuading America to launch plans to develop and launch "MOUSE"- an acronym for "Minimum Orbital Unmanned Satellite Experimental" vehicle. Trouble is, we got started too late; The Soviets were there before us!!! And in a very big way!

They'd developed a huge liquid propellent rocket (though they did not use it to launch their first satellite, Sputnik one). This giant rocket had TWENTY (20) large liquid propellent liquid rocket engines in its first stage. It is still used to launch the "Progress" space ships that take our astronauts to the International Space Station!

So We were Caught Asleep

The reason the Soviets developed such a heavy lift rocket is because the first hydrogen bombs (thermonuclear warheads) were extraordinarily heavy; we decided to wait until the thermonuclear weapon could be made lighter. Where was the wisdom in that? Someone tell me. Convair wanted to wait to build a lighter Atlas missile. Explain that to me. Why did the government accept this from Convair? The Soviets didn't shrink from the task of meeting the challenge. 20 large engines!

In any case, Von Braun and Willy Ley were promoting some outrageous heresies: they said that we could go to the Moon, and then Mars, easily, and fairly soon!

The key to their plan was their giant "WHEEL"- their giant space station, in its 2 hour orbit, 1,075 miles above the earth, in a polar orbit, so that no land mass beneath could escape its surveillance capabilities. No one could ever surprise us with a Pearl Harbour again!

But more importantly for Von Braun and Willy Ley, this station would be the staging point for their manned interplanetary expeditions! Although they planned their huge Lunar expedition first, we will first consider their Mars expedition -- 50 men were to have gone, in 3 ships assembled in orbit that were over 18 stories tall, each one heavier than the Saturn V moon rocket that sent Niel Armstrong to the moon! Dreamers! Where did they think the money would come from? The printing presses?

Project Problems

The problem with their whole project was NITRIC ACID AND HYDRAZINE: the best fuels they could come up with at the time (1952) to power both their interplanetary space ships and also their GIGANTIC re-supply orbital rockets to haul up all of the materials to assemble the wheel, and resupply it, and all of the materials to build the interplanetary space ships, etc, were these low performance fuels. The problem with the combination of Nitric Acid and Hydrazine is its relatively low specific impulse; that is why, among other things, they had to propose such ludicrously large re-supply space ships. Let us look at their orbital ferry (the equivalent of our modern space shuttle). Their huge three stage orbital re-supply ships dwarfed any rocket ever imagined or ever built.

The statistics for it boggle the imagination. It was twice as heavy, and three times as powerful, as the Saturn V moon rocket that sent Niel Armstrong to the Moon (the largest rocket that America, or any other nation, ever built). It had to be big to employ the ineffficient fuels of Nitric Acid and Hydrazine.

Here is the giant three stage re-supply rocket proposed by Wernher Von Braun and Willy Ley to build the giant wheel space station, keep it supplied, and haul up the parts to the Lunar and interplanetary space ships.

We have seen the thinking of the rocket experts who were the driving force behind the early proposals for a large, national space program in the early nineteen fifties. It is true that they did not foresee the revolution in the miniaturization of electronics and mechanics that would have obsoleted (and did obsolete) the concept of the giant manned space station that they proposed, the giant wheel shaped space station that would rotate to produce artificial gravity. By the way, this is a sound engineering concept: the rotation of a large manned space station to provide artificial gravity: the reason that we do not do this now is of course because we cannot afford to do it.

In the event, we are not as interested in whether the giant space station would have been a good (or cost effective) platform to spy on other countries, to prevent them from massing a surprise military assault onto us, as we are in the idea of the station as a staging area for the first manned interplanetary flight. Inasmuch as Wernher Von Braun and Willy Ley presupposed not only their grandiose expedition to the moon, but also to Mars, upon the use of a very low performance fuels (Nitric Acid), we will understand why both of these expeditions had to depart from earth orbit, rather than the surface of the earth (as the first successful manned expeditions to the moon did).

The architects of the first "space program" fully realized the limitations of Nitric Acid and Hydrazine as fuels; that is why there is this following remark in The Conquest of the Moon, another Viking Press book resulting from the Colliers's magazine symposia about the first space program: "It is commonly believed that men will fly directly between the earth and the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility".

This remark was made long before the rocket scientists considered, very seriously, the proposition of using liquid hydrogen and oxygen as fuels for the upper stages of a rocket designed to fly from the earth to the moon and back. In the event, we did exactly what they predicted that we would not do: go to the moon directly from the earth and back, made possible by fuels that they could not, at the time, imagine that we would (or could) successfully employ; remarkably because Eugene and Brett Sanger proposed to the Nazis that they could use these fuels for orbital bombers, for spaceflight, for military purposes.

Here we will show a view of the third stage of the COLOSSAL three stage rocket ship (staging, dropping the spent, recoverable second stage) used to provide the construction materials for the giant space station, and later, the construction materials for both the planned Lunar and Planetary expeditions, using only Nitric Acid and Hydrazine as fuels for everything- enormously ambitious programs, but programs which could have been accomplished, taking into account the enormous expense of having used such inefficient rocket fuels.

Here is the third stage of one of the giant re-supply rockets, emerging from staging with the second stage. Remember, each of the stages had not only an "Inconel" (or Titanium), annular, shroud parachute to retard its speed, to recover it, but also an annular arrangement of solid fuel rockets, to cushion the very last instants of touchdown on the water, after which they would be towed back to Johnston Island for re-furbishing, for the next flights. The engine bells of the second stage are still glowing from the heat of their just ceased operation.

The 1956 Mars Expedition Proposed by Von Braun and Ley

Part 1: Mission Introduction
Part 1: Mars Departure: 10,075 Miles Above Earth
Part 1: Power Maneuver for Martian Orbit