Mars Project History

The Mars Project 1948 to 1956
A. A. Jackson
Fifty Third Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics,
October 21 – 25, 2019, Washington, DC , United States
Paper IAC-19-E4.2.03

The history of how Wernher von Braun wrote Project Mars.

The basic outline of von Braun’s efforts is well known, but there are a few new nuggets in this paper. Von Braun’s Peenemunde cronies helped with the technical details of Project Mars technical appendix. Von Braun himself must have helped with drawings of the Mars ships that appear on the cover of University of Illinois’ The Mars Project, the confusingly named edition of Project Mars technical appendix.

This paper claims that somehow, von Braun got copies of Astounding, a pulp sci fi magazine, during WW2, but von Braun seems not to have read Robert Heinlein’s Destination Moon, which is apparently quite like Project Mars. I’m guessing that means von Braun probably did not read Space Cadet either, which means he and Heinlein independently thought of orbital atomic bombardment of commies.

Jackson ties together the books Across the Space Frontier, Conquest of the Moon, the Collier’s magazine series, The Wonderful World of Disney’s 3 episodes, and both editions of The Exploration of Mars. This is a unique contribution.

This paper shows how von Braun’s space program changed as new technical information became available.

PDF of this document.