Project MARS: A Technical Tale by Wernher von Braun

Author:Wernher von Braun
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Collector's Guide Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2006-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12 — The Great Space Lift

General Braden concentrated his personal attention on the organization of the ferry service which would freight Operation Mars up to the orbit of departure. Already he had reduced the rocket vessels which served Lunetta from 30 to 12. Those 18 ships which he assigned to Operation Mars were immediately sent to United Spacecraft for the necessary modifications, which included complete removal of the passenger accommodations and the relatively small cargo bays from the top stages. Fifteen of the vessels were equipped with cargo tanks for the hydrazine and nitric acid propellants of the Mars vessels. The other three ships were rebuilt with wide doors and large, roomy cargo spaces for the bulky components of the Mars vessels to be assembled in the orbit. United Spacecraft further completed 28 more Siriuses as propellant freighters exclusively, giving Braden a fleet of 43 tankers and three cargo vessels.

The ferry plan provided that each vessel should average a trip every ten days, and actually, the top stage of each ship required but 12 hours or so for a round trip. The problem of salvaging the booster stages, particularly the second stage, with its drop into the ocean a full thousand miles from the launching site, was complicated by reason of the three days required by the salvage steamer to get back to the base. There were, nonetheless, some seven days available for inspection, repairs and reassembly of the various stages to prepare each ship for its next departure. Experience with the Lunetta ferry system indicated that such a schedule could be safely complied with, and matters were so arranged that the 950 Mars ferry flights could be carried out within about eighth months, even if as many as six ships should be concurrently out of commission for major repairs.

Braden's plans were synchronized exactly with spacecrafts' delivery schedule for the components of the Mars vessels and with the assembly schedule for the orbit of departure.

Accordingly, a few cargo flights delivered a number of tank frames and tanks, followed by one of the nacelles for the passenger vessels. This cabin was to serve as a primitive shelter for the assembly gang during their labors in space. Working in space suits, the men assembled the frames and located the tanks within them, ready to receive propellants.

This permitted the propellant loading operation to begin without delay, during which the tankers pumped their hydrazine and nitric acid into the prepared receptacles of the as yet incomplete Mars vessels. Two tankers were to be launched simultaneously every 12 hours and to lay alongside the storage tanks which they would fill through their delivery hoses within the ten hours preceding the arrival of the next shipment. Then they were to uncouple their hoses and apply to themselves a brief decelerative thrust in order to reenter the elliptical plunging path whose perigee would touch the atmosphere after the ship had gone half around the Earth. After another half circle in extended gliding flight they would return to their point of departure.

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