Collier’s Space Flight Series
(1952 – 1954)
by
Al Jackson
Updated April 28 2004
The Three Stage Ferry
I was 11, a week from being 12 years old. It was in the mailbox.
‘It’ was October 18 1952 issue of Collier’s magazine. I had
seen the movie Destination Moon; I had my copy
of Fletcher Pratt and Jack Coggins’ ROCKETS
JETS, GUIDED MISSILES AND SPACE SHIPS. Where was the bullet
shape? The fins? The needle
nose? This was not right! This was supposed to
be a space ship! It was ugly!
Yet! That lighting, the color, that splash of molten rock! The detail! How
could something so ugly ... catch my imagination? So real?
I took that issue to my room, ugly! It lay about most of the day.
Well... eventually I had to read it. That week I must
have read that issue 20 times!
Air! If you don’t have air, you don’t need aerodynamics. I thought
about Willy Ley and Wernher
von Braun’s words. Yeah! To land on the moon you don’t need
a bullet shape. Almost any shape will do.
Landing on the Moon
March 22 2002 marked the 50 year anniversary of the most influential feat of
popular science writing ever. The March 22 1952 issue of Collier’s stands
a landmark in the history of space flight. Collier’s magazines from March
1952 to April 1954 outlined an amazing dream. There was a huge vertical
three-stage launch vehicle with its horizontal landing ferry space
ship, a large toroidal space station,
orbital transport ships, a base on the moon, exploration of the
moon, and ultimately a manned expedition to Mars. Even thought the
exposition in each issue was brief, all aspects of manned space
flight were covered. Besides the hardware there was coverage of the
medical/psychological and training elements of manned
space flight, even the legal aspects of manned exploration of earth orbit
and the moon. The prose in the Collier’s issues was simple, direct and clear. The illustrations on the covers and pages
conveyed an immense sense of detailed design. Even if those articles were fairly
short the amount of information contained in the paintings and drawings
enfolded a mind boggling amount of depth of thought.
Third stage ferry, space station, taxi and telescope in orbit
The March
22 issue of Colliers dealt with the design and building of the
space station. The basic building blocks ferry ship and were incredible, in the words of Wernher von Braun:
“Imagine
the size of this huge three-stage rocket ship: it stands
265 feet tall, approximately the height of a 24-story building. It base
measures 64 feet in diameter. And the over all
weight of this monster rocket ship is 14,000,000 pounds, or 7,000 lbs –
about the same weight of a light cruiser.” Hardly mentioned is that in
the building and testing this ferry ship, man would have made his first orbital
flight!
Only 15
years later von Braun led his Marshall Space Flight Center crew to design and build the Saturn 5.
Most interesting
is how von Braun had expanded his idea of a Mars expedition (more
on that below). He now recognized the importance of establishing what we call a ‘node’ in low earth orbit and
introduced the space station. Important for many reasons the von Braun space
station would serve as an assembly point for expeditions to the Moon and Mars.
This was important logistical concept and
solution to a crucial mass ratio problem. At the time thought to be more
economic to launch from earth orbit than from a deep potential well.
Cutaway view of the Ferry Cabin (painting by Fred Freeman)
The design of a
total manned space flight mission had occurred before,
in 1939 The British Interplanetary Society had planned out a mission to
the moon. The scale of the Collier’s space flight series was titanic. The
space station and Moon expedition , and then the
vision of a grand flotilla of ten space ships that would go to Mars for an
expedition time of 2 years, with 70 explorers! Fifty men go to the
surface, 20 stay in orbit. Everything is worked out, even the 950! ferry flights needed to assemble the ten space ships. In the
Collier’s series the build up to the Mars expedition is elaborated. First
the Space Station is built, with the following logical Moon exploration.
The Grand Flotilla to Mars
One has
the impression by the end of the lunar exploration, in the Collier’s
series, that mankind has a permanent foothold in space.
The full realization ,1952 to 1954, of this Collier’s series is
astounding, not less due to the illustration artistry of Chesley Bonestell. Bonestell ,who
was already famous for his paintings with astronomical settings.
The Collier’s series exceeded any illustration work he had ever
done. The composition, point of view, color and , indeed, ‘sense of wonder’ are
probably the greatest examples of ‘space art’
ever done. (Let us not for get the wonderful illustration work done by the artists Fred Freeman and Rolf Klep).
The English version of Das Marsprojekt
The
1952-1954 space flight series is preceded by an interesting sequence of events.
The Mars Expedition appeared in 1954, but the 1952- 1953 Collier’s series, was kind of back fill. Von Braun and
Peenemünde colleagues * had
envisioned the ferry ships and the interplanetary passenger-cargo
vehicles in 1948. This Mars ‘paper mission’ appeared as the last installment of the Collier’s series
April 30, 1954 , but had been worked out six years before!
Dr. von Braun’s Mars
paper project was worked on between the end of 1947 and through out 1948. It
was published in special edition of the German space flight journal Weltraumfahrt in 1952, later that year in a hardback
edition. Lucky for me I bought a copy of the
English translation in 1953, from the
This slim little
volume details the design of the earth-to-orbit ferry vessels, the
passenger/cargo ships and the Martian landing ‘boats’. The chapter
headings are, (a) THREE-STAGE FERRY VESSELS, (b)
SPACE SHIPS, (c) LANDING BOATS, (d) FERRY FLIGHTS AND GENERAL LOGISTICS,
(e) POWER PLANT PERFORMANCE and (f) INTERPLANETARY RADIO COMMUNICATION.
Das Marsprojekt
is an amazing technical conception for 1948! Von Braun implies the
reason for the size of the Mars mission design
,in his introduction, when he talks about
Later in the
Collier’s series space taxies and space suits were invented. Expanding
the 1948 ships and mission design to a space station and lunar expedition was a
logical extension of the original conception.
All
in all the Collier’s space series influenced thousands of
people, some who became wonder struck supporters and some who
became active participants in American space history. Like me!
*Though
fully acknowledged , one notes, strong contributions
were made to Das Marsprojekt by Krafft Ehricke, Dr. Hans Friedrich, Dr. Josef Jenissen,
Dr. Joachim Mühlner, Dr. Adolf Thiel
and Dr. Carl Wagner.
All Chesley Bonestell art (c) copyright Bonestell Space Art, used with permission
References
(1) Pratt, Fletcher. Illustrated by Coggins, Jack. Rockets , Jets, Guided Missiles and Space
Ships.
(2) The Collier’s Space
Flight Series:
March 22, 1952: Man Will
Conquer Space Soon, a collection of eight articles .
October 18, 1952: Man on the
Moon, The Journey, and Inside the Moon Ship
October 25, 1952: Man on the
Moon, Inside the Lunar Base
February 28, 1953:
World’s First Space Suit
March 7, 1953: Testing the
Men in Space
March 14, 1953: How Man Will
Meet Emergency in Space
June 27, 1953: Baby Space
Station
April 30, 1954: Can We Get to
Mars? and Is There Life on Mars
(3) Across the Space Frontier,
Ryan, Cornelius (Ed.). Published by The Viking Press
(4) Conquest of the Moon, ed. Ryan (New York: Viking Press. 1953), Von
Braun, Wernher; Whipple, Fred L.; Ley, Willy; Kaplan,
Joseph; Haber, Heinz; Schachter, Oscar; Edited By
Cornelius Ryan, Full-color Illustrations By Chesley
Bonestell, Fred Freeman, & Rolf Klep
(5) Das
Marsprojekt; Werner von Braun
Studie einer interplanetrischen Expedition. Sonderheft der ZeitschriftWeltraumfahrt.
Frankfurt: Umschau Verlag,
1952
(6) The Mars Project , University of
(8) http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/
(9) http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm
(10) A Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology.
Schuetz, Melvin H. Parkland,
(11)
Project MARS: A Technical
Tale (Paperback), Wernher von Braun , Publisher:
Collector's Guide Publishing Inc (December 1, 2006)
Additional Illustrations
(1)There exist some of
von Braun’s original engineering sketches , as
shown here.
One can almost see
von Braun and Krafft Ehricke
discussing these concepts. One might note that the engineering drawing on
the
Interesing, later on
the Disney show and the Exploration of Mars book with Willey Ley von Braun revised the Ferry and the whole Martian
expedition down sized to two vehicles.
von
Braun’s drawing of the Ferry Ship
von
Braun drawings of Moon Ship and some details
von Braun drawings of
Ferry and painting of the Mars ships
von Braun and the revisedvon
Ferry
A beautiful Bonestell of the revised Mars Lander from the
von Braun /Ley 1956 book
Training Centrifuge and Simulator
Cut-Away view of Cabin / Escape Practice
Cut-Away view of Lunar Ship Crew Cabin
(4) The following painting by Bonestell is my favorite of all his wonderful work for this series.
The fleet in orbit about Mars , one of the Landers departing.
