IT is April 1986, one year since the giant spacecraft blasted out of orbit around earth and headed into deep space, propelled by powerful nuclear engines. The earth is now so far away that it looks no bigger than a bright star. On board, the crew is too busy for sentimental homeward glances. In a few minutes, three astronauts will enter a smaller spacecraft and cast off from the mother ship to start the final lap of a momentous journey. Their little craft will carry the space travelers to man's first landing on the surface of Mars.
Though the scenario has the ring of fiction, it could become fact—in the unlikely event that the U.S. Congress has a change of heart and next year appropriates funds* for a manned trip to Mars. If that approval were given, NASA's dreamer planners would not be unprepared. They have already spelled out in detail a daring program that could land Americans on the Red Planet by the mid-1980s.
White-Hot Gas. The Mars expedition would make a twelve-day lunar-landing mission look like a Sunday excursion. If all could be in readiness by 1985, for example, the Mars astronauts would be blasted out of orbit on April 5, when the earth, Venus and Mars will be in ideal positions for the mission. Their craft would swing by Venus on Sept. 10, 1985, getting a valuable gravitational boost that would speed it to Mars by April 10, 1986. The expedition would depart from Mars on May 20 and arrive back in earth orbit on Nov. 15, 1986—590 days after leaving.
The ambitious mission, as planned, will require two command ships, each carrying a crew of six. If one craft becomes disabled, the other can safely return all of the astronauts to earth. Unlike lunar missions, the journey will not begin directly from earth; that would require boosters too huge to be practical. Instead, the two cylindrical ships will be lofted piecemeal into earth orbit by Saturn-type boosters. There, the separate parts will be latched together. Finally, a space shuttle will bring up the astronauts as well as their fuel and supplies.
Propulsion for the Mars craft will come from an engine not yet developed, perhaps the proposed NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications). It consists of a small nuclear reactor that heats liquid hydrogen until it is expelled as a jet of white-hot gas. To kick out of earth orbit (which requires much less thrust than an earth launch), the 270-ft.-long ships will fire—and then discard—the two outboard NERVAs strapped to their sides; the main booster, at the center of the engine cluster, will be retained. Then, as the two ships pull away from earth orbit, they will be docked end to end to form a single unit within which the crews can pass back and forth through airlocks.