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Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 19th 07, 07:31 PM posted to sci.space.policy
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

Time Magazine, Friday, Jul. 25, 1969:
Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,901107,00.html

  #2  
Old March 19th 07, 09:21 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Joe Strout
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

In article .com,
" wrote:

Time Magazine, Friday, Jul. 25, 1969:
Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,901107,00.html


Yeah, they had a lot of ideas back then that turned out quite
unrealistic -- not in terms of physics and engineering, so much as in
economics and politics.

Which reminds me... where's my "Man Conquers Space" DVD?!?

Best,
- Joe
  #3  
Old March 19th 07, 09:46 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Rand Simberg[_1_]
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:21:40 -0600, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article .com,
" wrote:

Time Magazine, Friday, Jul. 25, 1969:
Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,901107,00.html


Yeah, they had a lot of ideas back then that turned out quite
unrealistic -- not in terms of physics and engineering, so much as in
economics and politics.


They weren't unrealistic. We could have. If we'd wanted to...

Von Braun was speaking from the standpoint of technical capability,
not political sustainability.
  #6  
Old March 20th 07, 01:49 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Pat Flannery
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982



Joe Strout wrote:
Which reminds me... where's my "Man Conquers Space" DVD?!?


A platypus ate it. :-)

Pat
  #7  
Old March 20th 07, 02:38 AM posted to sci.space.policy
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

if nasa funding had remainded at apollo 11 rate, even without
inflation increase we could of had a permanent station, moon base,
near earth asteroid human landings, mars, and beyond

the vietnam war sucked lots of money away from nasa and other stuff.
LBJs great society spending caused increased federal spending and tax
increase, which helped discourage couples from having more kids. the
baby boom became the baby bust which is the root cause of the coming
social security crisis.


  #8  
Old March 20th 07, 03:29 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Len[_2_]
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

On Mar 19, 9:38 pm, " wrote:
if nasa funding had remainded at apollo 11 rate, even without
inflation increase we could of had a permanent station, moon base,
near earth asteroid human landings, mars, and beyond

the vietnam war sucked lots of money away from nasa and other stuff.
LBJs great society spending caused increased federal spending and tax
increase, which helped discourage couples from having more kids. the
baby boom became the baby bust which is the root cause of the coming
social security crisis.


There is more than one approach to deep-space
exploration. One way would have been the Von Braun
way, which, IMO, could have worked with continued
funding at the Apollo level.

However, another approach would have been to
solve the frequent, reliable, low-cost access to LEO
problem first. We have yet to do this. When
this problem is solved, we can afford manned
missions to Mars within very modest budgets.

In 1967, I proposed a study (not construction) of
what might be done with a frequent, reliable,
low-cost access to LEO. One of the many
applications that I felt possible was a three-ship,
100-person Mars expedition that I believed could
be done for far less than Apollo-level funding.

The key is--and always has been--frequent,
reliable, low-cost access to LEO.

When space transprortation is expensive, the
dominant cost of space missions is likely to be
the cost of payloads. When space transportation
costs become low, the dominant cost of space
missions--at least deep-space missions--is likely
to be transportation to LEO.

Len

  #9  
Old March 20th 07, 11:31 PM posted to sci.space.policy
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

Read it and weep

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/396/1
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/probirth.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...ear_propulsion)
http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/orion.htm
http://www.gl.iit.edu/wadc/history/spacerace/index.html
http://trashotron.com/agony/columns/05-24-02.htm

We have had the capacity since the 1940s to do whatever we wanted in
the solar system. Eisenhower worked diligently to constrain and
undermine the efforts of space enthusiasts. His concern was two
fold. The first was the impact spending by the US economy on space
ventures that would never payback what they cost. Second, was the
effective declassification of all presently classified information
related to missile nuclear and space technologies. Later concerns of
maintaining control of space based assets and unwanted sociological
impacts were cited as reasons to constrain space spending. The
example of the environmental movement arising as a result of the photo
of Earth taken from the vicinity of the moon is frequently cited as an
unintended consequence of Apollo. The potential of a new age
religious movement similar in scope and disruptive power of the
Mormons at the end of the Civil War is also cited. Witness that many
of the Apollo astronauts were moved emotionally by their journeys to
enter religious orders or create religious like movements like the
Noetic Institute. Clearly long-term spaceflight involving humans have
the potential for highly disruptive social effects. Finally, the more
people doing more complex things farther from earth the greater the
probability of catastrophic failure. This is a political non-
starter. Apollo 13 was instructive here. After that accident the
agency and the President cancelled additional planned moon visits and
planned moon bases along with high risk activities like a rocket belt
on the moon.

Basically, the United States suffered from a failure of vision. A
failure of true leadership. And it is reaping the consequences in a
war against an 11th century dogma that offers its followers a
consistent antiquated vision.

Had the US boldly taken the challenges and accepted the risks of space
exploration at any point after 1948, the US would find itself the
unchallenged leader of the world. Not only because of the investment
in new technology, not only because of the new and deep insights into
the human condition on this planet, not only due to access to rich
resources of energy material and information offworld, but also
because of the deep spiritual awakening that would have taken place
and informed a world community in ways it needs to be informed in the
modern age, from a relevant and modern source.

As Jacob Brownowski was fond of saying, the Ascent of Man has every
right to change its leaders. There is no reason that 100 or 1000
years from now that the Ascent of Man should be European, White and
Christian. All cultures, all people, no matter how promising their
beginnings, all at some point have a failure of nerve. It is sad that
on the subject of space travvel, we lost our nerve way too soon.

For the United States that began with Eisenhower and has continued to
the present day, despite the best efforts of many who do understand
what true vision and leadership are all about. Despite the
availability over the past 60 years of technical means to gain mastery
of the entire solar system.

Its not economics, its not politics, its not technology, its failure
of something more basic in our culture. Had we the will we have the
money and the means to do this, and the means to make it pay. We
cannot predict the consequences of success, so we choose not to engage
in the enterprise to start with, we merely lack the nerve as a culture
to accept the risks of success in this venue. And that's too bad for
us and the world at large. And will lead ultimately to our demise
unless corrected.


..



  #10  
Old April 7th 07, 01:52 PM posted to sci.space.policy
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Default Wernher von Braun: Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1952.htm

He thought we could go to Mars by 1965. And before that, 1960. Like
he told Kennedy, the only thing we lack is the will to do it.

Actually, if we folded togethrer the Moonbase called for in project
Horizon

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/hornlerv.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonander.htm

and Mars expedition, we could have had both well before 1965.

This would have captured the hearts and minds of every young person on
Earth and combined with artistic and spiritual insights of the
returning population of folks from the frontier, would have informed
and enlightened the 20th century.

Had Truman or Eisenhower agreed to spend $40 billion (1947 dollars)
from 1947 through 1957 we could have had a temporary outpost on Mars
and a permanent settlement on the moon and likely wouldn't have had an
energy shortage (powersats by 1965) in the 1970s or fallen behind the
Japanese and Germans in consumer electronics design and innovation
(advanced AI/robotics/communications)

By comparison, the US government still on a war footing following the
end of World War 2 and the Korean War (Cold War) spent over $2,000
billion (1947 dollars) building tens of thousands nuclear weapons and
tens of thousands long range rockets and the support infrastructure
for them. .

A civilian program focused on the goals von Braun outlined would have
created a world where the US was still the dominant economic player in
the world, where our dollar was still strong,backed by an immense
productive and creative capacity, and with the fall of the Soviet
Union, we . Continued spending at the $4 billion (1947 dollars) per
year through 2000 (as opposed to $100 billion per year (1947 dollars)
for nuclear rocket forces) would have produced an aerospace
infrastructure very much like that shown in the move 2001: A Space
Odyssey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A..._Odyssey_(film)

And the US wouldn't need a star wars style space shield because a
rocket base on the moon, days away by rocket, would be impervious to a
first strike, and in conjunction with later deployment of advanced
space sensing, space communications and non nuclear kinetic kill
vehicles on orbit supporting remotely controlled robot soldiers would,
provide the basis to enforce a US dominated global peace though
military police and emergency services support world wide.

The only thing that's different between today and 1947 is that the US
is far weaker economically, politically, and technologically today
than we were then. So, our ability to maintain control and benefit
assymetrically from growth in space - so as to maintain a geopolitical
climate favorable to US dominance is severely eroded. In fact, a
dmoninant US is today seen as an undesireable goal generally outside
the US. So, US dominance if pursued at all is pursued quietly through
covert means. It is interesting that those who worried the most about
the US spending too much on space were worried about the impact of
space spending on the US economy and US tehnical leadership.

If the number of US aerospace engineers were 200,000 instead of 2,000
- and we had spent the past half century settling the solar system,the
US would be in far better shape today in every way than we currently
find ourselves.

Ha. That's why kids wondering if we can go to Mars by 2020 **** me
off. The short answer is no. We've ruined our economy by not paying
attention to fundamentals and given the keys to our kingdom to people
in China, Japan, Europe, and provided absolutely no visionary
leadership for our youth for two generations.

That's what we get for putting the industrialists and military in
charge of our long-term strategic planning.


 




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