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Imagine a world where NASA's Apollo mission
never stopped at the Moon. What if

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we had continued to push deeper into
the Solar System with human exploration. Do

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you think NASA really could have landed
people on Mars with nineteen seventies technology.

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Well, the top aerospace scientists of
the day certainly believed that they could,

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and they were so confident in that
ability that not just one, but several

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plans were drawn up over the years
that would serve as a blueprint for human

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colonization of the planet Mars before the
end of the twentieth century. So today

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we are bringing those old visions back
to life for a bit of science fiction

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escapism. This is the retrofuturistic mission
to Mars that never was. This is

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the space race. Let's begin our
journey in the nineteen forties with a vision

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straight from the mind of doctor Werner
von Braun, also known as the father

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of rocket science and the architect behind
NASA's Apollo program that landed the first met

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on the Moon. Von Bron got
his start in rocketry, designing ballistic missiles

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for the Nazi Army in his home
country of Germany. Von Bron invented the

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V two rocket, which was the
first ever long range guided missile. Following

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the war, von Bron would be
recruited by the United States military and eventually

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transferred to NASA, where he would
serve as the director of the Marshall Space

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Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The United States hired a lot of Nazis

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back in the late forties and early
fifties, which is a whole other video.

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Anyway, In his free time between
serving Adolph and Uncle sam Berna,

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von Braun completed a work that would
come to be known as Project Mars.

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This was a two hundred and eighty
page novel that outlined von Bron's plan for

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a crude mission to the Red planet
using rocket technology that he was actively developing

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at the time. Most of the
book is just a fictional story about the

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first crew of people traveling to Mars, kind of like a science fiction novel,

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except writ by an actual genius rocket
scientist with a lot of insider knowledge.

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The story section of the novel is
bonkers. It's all about human society

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in the not so distant future that
is finally united in the aftermath of a

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catastrophic third World War. Except world
piece is maintained by a giant death star

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like orbital weapon that instantly obliterates anyone
on Earth who steps out of line.

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I guess you can take the rocket
scientist out of the violent fascist regime,

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but you can't take the violent fascism
out of the rocket scientist anyway. Beyond

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the Nazi and space fan fiction aspect, von Bron filled the later pages of

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his book with all of the formulas
and calculations that would be required to achieve

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Project Mars. The math was there
written by the same hand that would go

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on to design the Apollo Moon missions, so it feels like a very legitimate

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blueprint for interplanetary travel. Most importantly, von Bron had all of his ideas

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illustrated in the most amazing retrofuturistic technology, the art style that would clearly go

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on to influence generations of science fiction
from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey

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to Star Wars to Elon Musk.
I mean, look at von Bron's Mars

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rocket and then look at the starship. According to Project Mars, the first

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stage of the mission is to establish
a large scale human presence in low Earth

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orbit. That means gigantic ring shaped
stations that rotate slowly to generate artificial gravity,

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and an orbital construction yard where the
marsh Fleet would be assembled. One

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of von Bron's most famous rocket designs
was the massive Faery Rocket, a fully

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reusable spaceplane and booster system that would
make frequent trips from the Earth's surface,

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carrying up materials for the orbital construction
projects. From orbit, a massive fleet

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of transportation ships, cargo haulers and
mars Landers would be assembled one thousand miles

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above the Earth. According to von
Bron's design, the crew would live in

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these big spherical sections of the ships, and each one would be by a

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cluster of liquid fueled rocket engines supported
by the massive network of fuel tanks that

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made up the body of the vehicle. At the time, Vonbron was a

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big fan of hypergolic propellants, which
are chemicals that will self combust when combined

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under pressure. It's a very easy
way to start a rocket engine in the

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vacuum of space, and it's still
commonly used to this day. The Draco

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thrusters on a SpaceX Dragon capsule are
very small hypergallic rocket engines. Once ready,

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the mars Fleet would fire their engines
to break free from Earth's gravity and

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insert themselves into a direct trajectory for
Mars, using the home and transfer window

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to achieve the shortest distance between the
two planets. Von Bron imagined that it

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would be two hundred and sixty days
or eight and a half months between leaving

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Earth orbit and entering Mars orbit.
On approach to Mars, the ships would

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turn around and fire their engines again
to reduce velocity and settle into a low

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orbit around Mars of six hundred and
twenty miles above the surface. From here,

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the Mars Lander vehicles would separate from
their main engines and fuel tanks to

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prepare for landing. In von Brun's
estimation, these vehicles would function as gliders

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through the Martian atmosphere and allow the
crew to make a controlled soft touchdown on

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the planet's surface. After landing,
the main body of the vehicle would be

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separated from its glider wings and brought
into a vertical position, and now the

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crew in their spacesuits would set up
their ground station on Mars using supplies that

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had been brought down in the massive
lander vehicle. These first people would explore

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the planet and begin to establish the
first human colony on Mars. With their

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mission complete, the vertical rockets would
blast off from the surface and rejoin the

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fleet that has been waiting in orbit. With the crew returned to their transport

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ships, the fleet makes another burn
of their rocket engines to set a return

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trajectory for Earth. Sounds easy enough, right, and in the late nineteen

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forties when this plan was created,
everything that we just went over seemed abundantly

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possible to any well informed rocket scientist. The biggest problem was that we didn't

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actually know very much at all about
the planet Mars in those days. Even

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von Bron himself, with all of
his genius, was sure that we could

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find ancient canals of running water,
lush vegetation, and lakes on Mars,

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even an advanced species of aliens.
And to be fair, von Bron got

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most of his assumptions right, but
made a couple of fatal mistakes. Aside

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from there being no life on Mars, there's also virtually zero atmosphere, less

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than one percent the density of Earth, so a gigantic glider winged rocket plane

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like von Bron imagined as his Mars
Lander would have never worked in practice.

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Moving on to the later nineteen fifties, the plan for human spaceflight to Mars

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was becoming a little more refined,
and some cutting edge new technologies had entered

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the game. For the United States, this was the dawn of the Atomic

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Age. Nuclear energy had finally been
harnessed to generate electricity, and people at

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the time started to believe that nuclear
power would become this unlimited energy source that

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could power America into the space age. Of course, rocket scientists were already

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looking at this technology as a way
to power spaceships on long duration flights into

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deep space. So we're going to
bring in some designs by atomic scientist doctor

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Ernst Stulinger. He was a close
colleague of Verna von Braun and a fellow

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Nazi turned US government asset. Stullinger
had updated von Bron's Project Mars concept for

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the atomic era. He replaced the
hypergolic chemical rocket ships from von Bron's illustrations

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with his own nuclear electric spacecraft.
Stullinger's Mars plan was so highly regarded that

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it ended up on American TV in
nineteen fifty seven. While Disney had a

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weekly television program back in the day
called Disneyland, which was an anthology series

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that covered all kinds of different topics. For one episode, Disney wanted to

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feature the planets of the Solar System
in an episode titled Mars and Beyond.

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They drew up all of these wild
animations that imagined what aliens from Mercury,

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Mars, and Venus might look like. It's awesome, super creative, and

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really shows just how curious people of
the time were about the nature of the

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Solar System. Anyway. To add
in a more grounded take on interplanetary exploration,

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Disney featured a segment with von Braun
and Stulinger where they showed off models

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and illustrations of Stulinger's atomic electric Mars
Transport, explaining how the human journey to

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Mars would play out. Much like
in Project Mars, the components and materials

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of the giant nuclear ship would be
transported into space by the chemical fueled ferry

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rocket, where they would be assembled
at an orbital construction yard. At its

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widest point, the nuclear electric ship
would be five hundred feet across, and

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it would carry a separate Mars landing
vehicle along with it. At the bottom

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of the ship's long central pillar is
the nuclear reactor. By the process of

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nuclear fission or splitting the atom,
the reactor will generate a constant supply of

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thermal energy. That heat will boil
a reservoir of silicon oil into steam that

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will travel up the central pipe and
drive a turbine generator, which will convert

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the rotational energy into electricity that will
power the entire ship. The giant circular

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panel at the top of the craft
will function as a condenser that traps the

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steam and cools it back to a
liquid state so that it can be reused

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in the atomic generator over and over
again. The ship's main engine is located

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halfway down the main pillar. It
would have a platinum metal grid that would

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be electrically charged with energy from the
steam turbine. Then, vaporized particles of

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the metallic ele cessium would be blown
into the ultra hot grid, which would

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ionize the cessium atoms and create an
electrical field that blasted the atoms out into

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space at high velocity. This will
create thrust to move the space ship in

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the opposite direction of the particle flow. It would be a relatively low amount

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of thrust, but the efficiency of
the electrical engine would allow it to continuously

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operate for the entire duration of the
flight. This is pretty much the same

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way that modern ion thrusters operate on
our existing space probes and satellites, So

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credit to Stooling or for nailing the
technology seventy years ago. At the top

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of the ship, in the center
of the condenser circle is the cargo space

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and crew quarters for up to twenty
passengers. Mounted on the front side of

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the ion engine is the Mars landing
craft. Once the main ship settles into

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Mars orbit, the lander will release
and fire its engine for a descent into

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the Mars atmosphere. Here's another area
where Stooling are improved on von Bron's design.

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Instead of a glider, the Mars
Lander will deploy a giant parachute.

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This is a much more effective airbrake, but still not enough to land softly

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in the Martian atmosphere, So before
touchdown, the main rocket motors will fire

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a landing burn just like a SpaceX
Falcon nine, and slow the craft for

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a safe landing. This combination of
parachute and propulsive touchdown is the same method

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that NASA used with their most recent
Mars Lander. Once the landing party has

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completed their surface exploration, they return
to the lander and blast off in an

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ascent module that is built into the
top of the vehicle. This is essentially

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the same method used by Apollo astronauts
to lift off from the surface of the

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Moon. Using the nuclear electric thruster, the journey to Mars would be much

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longer than with a high thrust chemical
burn. We're looking at thirteen months in

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transit. It's going to take four
months just to build up enough velocity to

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escape Earth's gravity, then set even
more months to reach Mars, and then

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two months to slow down and settle
into Mars orbit. Stullinger imagined that a

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fleet of six nuclear ships would embark
on this odyssey into deep space. And

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again, at this time, no
one was really sure what we might find

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on the surface of Mars. There
could be anything from low level vegetation to

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lizards and insects, to the ruins
of a long dead civilization. They had

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no way to know for sure,
but they were determined to find out by

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sending people to the Red planet.
Now Stillinger's technology was pretty sound, and

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most of his plans still hold up
in the modern day, the biggest flaw

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being the extremely slow transit time of
over one year just to arrive at Mars.

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We know now that this is far
too long to expose people to the

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microgravity environment and cosmic radiation of outer
space. So that was a problem,

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but the ideas presented in Mars and
Beyond were moving in the right direction.

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Moving on to the nineteen sixties,
and things are going spectacularly well at NASA's

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human spaceflight program. Mercury and Gemini
were successful at getting the first American into

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space, reaching orbital velocity and conducting
extra vehicular spacewalks. The Apollo program is

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moving ahead at full steam, and
our old pal Vernivon Bron is putting the

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finishing touches on his Saturn five rocket
that will power the first men to the

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Moon and bring them home again.
This is the high water mark for human

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spaceflight, and NASA is already turning
their attention to the next step beyond Apollo.

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They want to send people to the
planet Mars, and they want to

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do it sometime in the early nineteen
eighties. This led to a new wave

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of Mars mission proposals. Everyone wanted
in on the action. Even the Ford

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Motor Company submitted their own proposal for
a Mars transportation system. We are going

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to focus specifically right now on a
white paper from the Boeing Arrows Based division

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in nineteen sixty eight. This is
probably the most legitimate mission design coming from

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a company that was already heavily involved
in the spaceflight program and would continue to

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be for decades to follow. What
Boeing brought to the party was a design

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for a nuclear thermal rocket propulsion stage. This is a much different beast to

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the nuclear electric ion thruster that we
talked about earlier. So we have the

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same idea with the nuclear fission reactor, but instead of using the heat to

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make steam and then using the steam
to make electricity and all that, we

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just take the red hot nuclear reactor
core and pump liquid hydrogen fuel right into

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it. At ultracold cryogenic temperatures,
hydrogen is converted into a liquid state.

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This densifies the atoms and creates a
highly energetic propellant. Von Braun had just

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figured out how to cryogenically liquefy both
hydrogen and oxygen for the propulsion system of

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his Saturn five. This unlocked signal
efficantly more power than his previous hypergolic fuel

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sources. Anyway, once this densified
liquid hydrogen hits the super hot nuclear reactor,

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it's going to rapidly expand back into
a low density gas, which is

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then channeled out through the engine nozzle
as exhaust and creates thrust. So this

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is like halfway in between a conventional
rocket engine and an electric ion thruster,

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providing an ideal combination of both thrust
and efficiency. And this nuclear rocket technology

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is something that NASA was already developing
under Project Nerva. Boeing's interplanetary spacecraft concept

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fixed the last major problem with sending
a crew to Mars. According to their

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calculation at the time, it would
take less than two hundred days to reach

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orbit around Mars. Getting back again
would be a much lower process due to

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the majority of propellant stages being used
up on the outbound trip. We're still

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looking at around six hundred days of
total travel time, give or take a

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few weeks depending on the year of
the launch, but overall that's pretty good.

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Much like the previous Mars ships we
looked at, the Bowing interplanetary spacecraft

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would need to be assembled in orbit, with the five nuclear propulsion modules being

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so gigantic that each one would require
a Saturn five rocket equipped with four additional

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side boosters just to reach orbit.
Like most rockets, the majority of this

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structure is being taken up by engines
and fuel tanks, so it's just the

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very top section that contains the three
crew modules. In the middle is the

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mission module. This is the primary
crew quarters for the journey to Mars and

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back. It's a cylindrical pressure vessel
that is divided into four decks and can

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support a crew of six people.
At the top of the stack is the

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Mars Excursion Module. This vehicle has
a descent stage for landing on Mars and

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ascent stage for returning to the main
ship. The Mars Excursion Module would support

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a crew of three people for a
thirty day exploration of the Martian surface.

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At the bottom of the stack is
the Earth Entry Module. This one is

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only used to get the full crew
of six people back down to Earth on

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the very last day of the mission. It works just like every other Earth

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re entry capsule, with a heat
shield and a parachute system. So here's

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the mission profile. Once the full
vehicle is assembled and ready to go in

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Earth orbit, it's going to fire
up one massive departure burn from the first

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stage engines. This consists of three
nuclear propulsion modules burning in unison that's going

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to provide all of the thrust required
to reach Mars very quickly. Then on

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approach to Mars, the rocket is
going to flip around and fire up the

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second stage, which is just a
single nuclear propulsion module, and that is

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going to provide the velocity change needed
for an orbital insertion. From here,

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the three person landing party transfers into
the Mars Excursion module and separates from the

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main vehicle. The excursion module has
a main engine that will perform the de

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orbit burn to bring it down through
the Mars atmosphere, and at that point

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it's going to deploy a main parachute
that slows down as much as possible before

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the descent stage engines fire up for
the landing burn and soft touchdown. After

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spending thirty days on Mars, the
crew will leave the descent stage behind and

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return in the ascent stage of the
module. This uses four side boosters to

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get off the ground, which are
then separated, and the stage to ascend

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engine takes the module into orbit to
meet back up with the main ship.

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Now all that's left is to fire
up the final nuclear engine and perform a

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departure burn to return to Earth.
On arrival, the Earth entry module will

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separate and come back down for a
splash down landing in the ocean. So

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that all sounds like a pretty solid
plan. It would be a massive undertaking

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and would be incredibly difficult to pull
off. I mean five launches of the

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gigantic and fully expendable Saturn five just
to make one also fully expendable interplanetary spacecraft.

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That's just a lot of resources to
spend on one vehicle that may or

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may not have succeeded. But everything
we just went through should have at least

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been possible even with nineteen seventies technology. So why did NASA never send people

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to Mars? Well, it's complicated, there's no one answer. By the

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early seventies, John F. Kennedy
and his ambitious dreams for the future were

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long dead. They even shot the
guy's little brother. It was terrible.

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The Democratic Party had been voted out
and replaced with a Republican government. The

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war in Vietnam was getting worse and
worse, with no sign of an end.

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The public had already lost much of
their interest in space exploration, and

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NASA was receiving a much smaller percentage
of the federal budget. To work with.

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So it came down to President Richard
Nixon. He had two proposals sitting

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on his desk, one to spanned
the Apollo program to explore Mars, and

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the other to develop the space Shuttle
program. There was not enough money to do both