Milestones of Science Books

BRAUN, Wernher von.

Das Marsprojekt. Studie einer interplanetarischen Expedition. (Ein Sonderheft der Zeitschrift "Weltraumfahrt").

Frankfurt am Main: Umschau Verlag, 1952.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. Item #003997

8vo (210 x 148 mm). [2], 81 [1], [4] pp. Text illustrations, tables and diagrams throughout, final leaf of publisher's advertisements. Original publisher's pictorial wrappers (light rubbing to extremities, small patch of blank paper over spine chipped off). First blank leaf and last leaf verso blank mounted to the wrappers. Text generally clean and unmarked with some browning of paper (stronger at outer margins). Provenance: from a private German collection. ----

VERY RARE FIRST EDITION and the first book publication by the rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun (1912-1977). Written in 1948, it is an extremely visionary but technically sound study on the realization of a Mars expedition. It is the first time that such a serious study of the technical requirements for a manned flight to Mars was published. It speculated on an actual rocket launch in 1965.
The huge scientific expedition to Mars outlined by von Braun envisaged a fleet of 10 spacecrafts (7 for passengers and 3 supply rockets, all of which were to be assembled in orbit) and a crew of 70 men in total. Von Braun calculated the size and weight of the ships for the journey to Mars and back to Earth and calculated a fuel requirement of 5,320,000 tons. Once in Mars orbit, the crew would use a telescope to identify a suitable landing site for the base camp near the equator. A manned aircraft would then enter the Martian atmosphere from orbit and glide to one of the snow-covered poles, where it would gently touch down on the snow. It was then planned to cover the 6,500 km journey from the pole to the planned base camp with a tracked vehicle and to create a landing strip there. The space travel companions who had remained in orbit until then would then fly down to the landing strip in their space gliders and join the pioneers. The space travelers would later use the same gliders to leave Mars and return to Earth. In the introduction to the book, von Braun explains that the description of the manned Mars mission is not yet complete and that further details still need to be clarified. Examples of the problems still to be solved include the orbit of Mars, the difficulties of interplanetary navigation, meteorite showers and the effects of the long journey on the human body. Other aspects that von Braun was not aware of, and could not have been aware of given the knowledge available at the time in 1948, included the nature of the Martian atmosphere and the lack of density of the Martian air for a smooth descent from orbit, as well as exposure to cosmic radiation. The Van Allen belt, which protects the Earth from this radiation, was only discovered later. (Wikisource). Bibliography: Hübner 552. - Visit our website to see more images!

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