From visionary to forgotten: The unrealized Mars missions
Many years before President Trump's declaration to send an American manned mission to Mars, Wernher von Braun developed the Red Planet exploration plan, Das Marsprojekt. The Russians also prepared their own TMK-E mission, during which a nuclear train was supposed to travel on Mars.
Twenty years before Neil Armstrong uttered his memorable words on the Moon about one small step for man but a giant leap for mankind, Wernher von Braun presented an ambitious plan for manned exploration of Mars.
This German engineer and rocket constructor, during World War II, was responsible, as an SS officer with the rank of Sturmbannführer, for utilising the slave labour of concentration camp prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora.
After the war, as a valuable specialist, he was included in the American Paperclip programme and—despite his Nazi past—was transferred to the United States. In 1955, he obtained citizenship, making invaluable contributions to the American space programme.
However, before that happened, in 1948 von Braun, based on the visionary works of rocket technology pioneer Hermann Oberth, wrote the novel Das Marsprojekt, describing a manned mission to Mars. This was not an ordinary literary work, as the solutions and ideas presented in it were based on calculations and the expert knowledge of a rocket expert.
10 spacecraft of von Braun
Von Braun's Mars expedition plan was impressive in its scope. The visionary proposed that the manned mission to the Red Planet would include as many as 70 people. The expedition was to be divided into seven 10-person teams, travelling in separate spacecraft, each equipped with a spherical, 20-metre living space. One ship was supposed to weigh 4,080 tonnes.
The launch of such large objects from Earth was excluded, so they were supposed to be constructed in Earth's orbit. The operation of the massive construction site that Earth's orbit would become was to be supported by 20 shuttles, each needing to make about 1,000 flights.
The seven crewed ships were to be supplemented by three unmanned ones, transporting essential equipment. The space expedition was supposed to use toxic and hazardous hydrazine as fuel, and to optimise fuel consumption, von Braun proposed that the spacecraft perform a Hohmann transfer manoeuvre, which would allow the expedition to reach Mars after a 260-day flight.
The plan called for the landing of the first—pioneering—group of astronauts in the vicinity of one of the poles. The pioneers were to use a single-use lander, which did not have the capability of re-launch but allowed for the transport of larger masses of equipment.
This group was to traverse about 6,500 kilometres on Mars' surface to prepare the base and landing site for the others. A total of 50 people were supposed to land on Mars. A 20-person team was to remain in orbit, conducting research and monitoring the spacecraft in anticipation of the rest of the crew’s return.
After 460 days on Mars, the crew—using two landers—was to return to the orbiting spacecraft and head back to Earth onboard them. The entire expedition was supposed to take almost 2.5 years. Due to the scale of the venture, its realisation never commenced, and the resources and energy of the American space industry were redirected in subsequent years to the prestigious Apollo programme.
TMK-E expedition
Its success led to the Soviet Union—after losing the "Moon race"—beginning work on an expedition intended to overshadow the success of the Americans. Instead of being second on the Moon, the Russians decided to be the first on Mars.
For this purpose, they developed an expedition named TMK-E. The Russians planned to send the entire crew and equipment in a single, 175-metre-long spacecraft, which—like von Braun's spacecraft—was to be built in Earth's orbit.
The 175-metre giant named TMK (Heavy Interplanetary Spacecraft) was supposed to take a 6-person crew to Mars, as well as the most extraordinary element of the expedition: a nuclear, space train.
Nuclear train on Mars
The plan predicted that the expedition would land in the region of one of the poles. People were supposed to descend onto the surface of the Red Planet in two landers, and in four more—components of the "Martian train", as the multi-module vehicle was called.
It was a mobile base, consisting of five segments: the first was to be occupied by people and equipment for Mars research. The second was intended for various types of unmanned vehicles. The third and fourth modules contained rockets, which the expedition would use to return to an orbiting Mars base-ship, and the fifth was where the nuclear reactor would work, providing the energy needed for the entire expedition to survive.
Transporting the equipment needed for the Martian expedition to Earth's orbit was supposed to require about 30 N1 rocket flights—the Soviet equivalent of American Saturn rockets. Unfortunately, the key element of the entire programme, as well as the pillar of the Soviet space programme, the N1 rocket, failed.
The 105-metre rocket was supposed to offer the capability of launching even 90,000 kilograms of cargo to low Earth orbit. Unfortunately, its complex propulsion, the death of the chief designer, and then a series of four failed attempts, each ending in catastrophe, ultimately buried both the Soviet lunar programme and the planned manned expedition to Mars.
Although the idea was revisited many times in subsequent decades, we had to wait until the third decade of the 21st century for plans with a chance of realisation.
