Von Braun's Lost Ideas

At this time of a renewed Space Race with China, to get to the Moon's South Pole, we might want to look backward a bit. In the late 50s and early 60s, NASA's Wernher von Braun presented several ideas for long-term visits to the Moon. There's a good article that outlines the concepts from the US and USSR here. 

The German engineer's enormous lunar landers look dated, but far more stable and feasible than SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System. There were also plans for Project Horizon, with habitats buried under the lunar regolith. NASA moved away from these plans given the then-enormous expenses that lifting so much weight from Earth to orbit would incur.

Now launch costs are lower and we have several ideas for constructing building materials out of what we find on the Moon. I should be optimistic, Child of Apollo that I am. Yet I fear we are heading for disaster.

What von Braun proposed, but that got dropped then in order to beat the Russians and is not on the table now: build a reusable Moon or Mars exploration ship in orbit. The Russian space agency had such a plan, once, when their government was on friendly terms with the US. You can read about the Marsport plan here at Wikipedia. I've critiqued the idea of Starship and giantism before, but building a big ship that would go back and forth from Earth to the Moon or Mars makes great sense. The trick? Use small reusable rockets to build it from components in orbit, as we did with the ISS.

NASA currently plans a risky landing near the lunar South Pole, something Astronaut Victor Glover has critiqued, when he called instead for an equatorial landing where spots are safer and a quick return to Earth, in case of a medical emergency, more certain. The the hastiness of the US/China race, as well as the political imperative to get American boots on the regolith before our current President leaves office, seems to be pushing the agenda. 

Dr. von Braun's 1952 lander concept, and the real ones that followed two decades later, had broad legs for uncertain terrain. Allen B. Ury built a fabulous model of the idea.

I fear that the SpaceX's tall, narrow lander will simply topple over and kill its crew, ending the Artemis program and ceding space leadership to Beijing.

Images: Fantastic Plastic Models. They should build the real thing! 

 

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