Author Topic: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars  (Read 15104 times)

Offline Krossbolt

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #20 on: 11/26/2022 03:20 am »
Thanks for the perspective, Ed.
Very timely and pertinent.
« Last Edit: 11/26/2022 03:20 am by Krossbolt »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #21 on: 11/26/2022 12:26 pm »
The majority of U.S. citizens were opposed to the Moon landings, let alone a Mars program.  Mars was dead on arrival.  Nixon could not afford to give it a second thought.  Why do you think you can go see all of those unflown Saturn V rockets and Apollo spacecraft today? 

Everybody should ask Santa Claus to get them a copy of John Logsdon's book "After Apollo?" which goes into this subject in detail. A key thing to understand is that when Nixon entered office in early 1969, he was following a president who had spent a huge amount of money on social programs, and a huge amount of money on fighting the war in Vietnam. Nixon was interested in reining in government spending, and so all his decisions were viewed through that lens. His advisors all viewed government programs from that perspective too. They had no interest in further big space programs. In fact, some of them viewed the efforts in space that ran from 1958-1968 as essentially an aberration, thinking that this was an era that was now ending and should end.

To spoil the big reveal in Logsdon's book, what is shocking is how much further some were willing to go with cutting back spaceflight. There was talk about ending human spaceflight completely, and even talk about eliminating NASA as a space agency--either turning it into a general technology agency, or getting rid of it and maybe handing a few space projects over to another government agency. Once you understand all of that, it is rather amazing that we got what we did with the space shuttle; it could have been a lot less.

Offline Airlocks

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #22 on: 11/26/2022 06:58 pm »
Well Apollo had just spent close from $26 billion for the worst possible reasons (in that order)
1- Beating the Soviets to the Moon for soft power (basically telling them: mine is bigger, it can reach as far as the Moon)
2- Engineering (see that huge rocket, 300 ft tall and 3500 tons heavy !)
3- Science, a veeeeeeeery distant third.

No surprise Tricky Dick was incensed. Plus he had some vested inferiority complex related to the Kennedys... although it kind of ironic he lost to JFK in 1960 yet reaped Apollo 11 benefits 9 years later. That wasn't JFK (nor LBJ, in passing) original plan, for sure.
They hoped ending two terms on a high note, late 1968... instead, 1968 was blood and war and chaos, every single day of that crazy, epic year.

One example: the last week of January 1968 saw North Korea and Vietnam erupt in chaos (USS Pueblo and Khe San and Tet offensive !) , to the point of one rather baffled LBJ advisor said "geez, at least the month of January is coming to an end". If only he had knew how bad the rest of that year would be !
« Last Edit: 11/26/2022 07:08 pm by Airlocks »

Offline AS_501

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #23 on: 11/26/2022 07:15 pm »
Perhaps it was good that a Mars mission was not attempted in those days.  Back then the Space Community had little or no understanding of the medical risks associated with space radiation, bone deterioration, muscle atrophy, etc.  Thanks to Blackstar and the contributors to this thread.  Fascinating stuff!
Launches attended:  Apollo 11, ASTP (@KSC, not Baikonur!), STS-41G, STS-125, EFT-1, Starlink G4-24, Artemis 1
Notable Spacecraft Observed:  Echo 1, Skylab/S-II, Salyuts 6&7, Mir Core/Complete, HST, ISS Zarya/Present, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Dragon Demo-2, Starlink G4-14 (8 hrs. post-launch), Tiangong

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #24 on: 11/27/2022 01:10 am »
Well Apollo had just spent close from $26 billion for the worst possible reasons (in that order)
1- Beating the Soviets to the Moon for soft power (basically telling them: mine is bigger, it can reach as far as the Moon)

As much as I like to be logical and rational in how I look at politics and international relations (kinda a requirement for me since I spent so many years in grad school studying them), I'm not sure I would agree that this was a bad thing to do. I do think that Apollo helped the United States accrue important power and a positive reputation that had some benefits in the following years. You can ask what would have happened if the United States had not successfully pursued Apollo. The United States' reputation by the end of the 1960s would have been much more defined by the Vietnam War.


Offline Airlocks

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #25 on: 11/27/2022 05:16 am »
I agree that was a bit harsch.  ;D Make no mistake, even if done for the wrong reasons, I like Apollo very much. What they achieved was mind-blowing.

Back in the 1950's no sci-fi in its right mind could see a lunar landing before the 1970's, best case.

Offline Proponent

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #26 on: 11/27/2022 08:59 pm »
You can ask what would have happened if the United States had not successfully pursued Apollo. The United States' reputation by the end of the 1960s would have been much more defined by the Vietnam War.

I have wondered how much a series of guest-astronaut flights in an extended Skylab program, similar to what the Soviets offered their allies on Salyut space stations, might have enhanced the US's post-Vietnam reputation.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #27 on: 11/28/2022 12:03 am »
I have wondered how much a series of guest-astronaut flights in an extended Skylab program, similar to what the Soviets offered their allies on Salyut space stations, might have enhanced the US's post-Vietnam reputation.

That is an intriguing idea. But that was happening only a decade later with shuttle. Would it have changed things much if it had started in the 1970s? I don't think so.

And this leads to the question of the value of space cooperation in shaping international cooperation. It doesn't seem to have much effect. At times it seems to exist by its own set of rules. Despite very bad relations between the US and Russia right now, ISS is unaffected.

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #28 on: 11/28/2022 01:53 am »
And this leads to the question of the value of space cooperation in shaping international cooperation. It doesn't seem to have much effect. At times it seems to exist by its own set of rules. Despite very bad relations between the US and Russia right now, ISS is unaffected.
It makes me, personally, feel better, knowing that some type of cooperation exists, that there is hope for a better future.

 - Ed Kyle

Online edzieba

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #29 on: 11/28/2022 08:17 am »
Well Apollo had just spent close from $26 billion for the worst possible reasons (in that order)
1- Beating the Soviets to the Moon for soft power (basically telling them: mine is bigger, it can reach as far as the Moon)

As much as I like to be logical and rational in how I look at politics and international relations (kinda a requirement for me since I spent so many years in grad school studying them), I'm not sure I would agree that this was a bad thing to do. I do think that Apollo helped the United States accrue important power and a positive reputation that had some benefits in the following years. You can ask what would have happened if the United States had not successfully pursued Apollo. The United States' reputation by the end of the 1960s would have been much more defined by the Vietnam War.
There are also the domestic economic benefits of driving money into raw technological R&D (the results of which were arguably greater than the money spent on Mercury + Gemini + Apollo), and the global economic impact of goading the CCCP into funding parallel development at the expense of more practical - i.e. ICBM and IRBM - rocket development programmes and other uses for those resources (though that may have been more a happy side-effect than an actual enumerated goal).

Online LittleBird

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #30 on: 11/28/2022 08:55 am »
There are also the domestic economic benefits of driving money into raw technological R&D (the results of which were arguably greater than the money spent on Mercury + Gemini + Apollo)

There's an strikingly unvarnished assertion of pretty much this argument in a recent JASON study of in space assembly of e.g. large optics in space, I'll post grab tonight, was interested in the way they put it. [Though thinking about it I think they were referring more to raw space R&D than raw R&D per se-a very important distinction that generated argument then and probably still does somewhere today.] [Edit: JASON study was FOIAd by Federation of American Scientists and is here,
https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/jason/assembly.pdf
quote is in grab below:]


Was also interested in the point made by Willis Shapley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Shapley in an interview [*] done for Young, Silcock and Dunn's book in 1969ish-he noted that all the main ICBM/SLBM programmes were starting to peak and Apollo kept the people employed (and, importantly, ready to be redeployed) without fuelling the arms race. Again I'll add short quote this eve [Edit: and will put in a new post, I think it links in an interesrting way to some other threads].

[* I do now wonder where the interviews for this book went. Hugo Young moved from the Sunday Times to the Guardian and was iirc the chair of the Scott Trust, his papers must exist somewhere. But interviews could just as plausibly have been done by Bryan Silcock. ]
« Last Edit: 11/28/2022 02:32 pm by LittleBird »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #31 on: 11/28/2022 03:13 pm »
There are also the domestic economic benefits of driving money into raw technological R&D (the results of which were arguably greater than the money spent on Mercury + Gemini + Apollo), and the global economic impact of goading the CCCP into funding parallel development at the expense of more practical - i.e. ICBM and IRBM - rocket development programmes and other uses for those resources (though that may have been more a happy side-effect than an actual enumerated goal).

I actually accept those arguments. And in fact, I've made similar arguments in essays for why Chinese human spaceflight spending (and even a Moon program) is something the West should not only accept, but encourage. Better to spend that money on stuff that isn't weapons.

That said, the whole economic/technology stimulus argument is a murky and contentious one. I don't think there's any consensus on it at all. The argument is usually (exclusively?) made by people who think space is inherently good. It's not an argument made by people approaching the subject from a neutral or objective perspective. I don't know if any economists have sought to tackle the subject at all. They have addressed things like Great Society spending and Vietnam War spending, and what those did. But I think almost all of them have ignored Apollo, just as most Cold War historians have ignored it.

Online LittleBird

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #32 on: 11/28/2022 05:36 pm »

Was also interested in the point made by Willis Shapley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Shapley in an interview [*] done for Young, Silcock and Dunn's book in 1969ish-he noted that all the main ICBM/SLBM programmes were starting to peak and Apollo kept the people employed (and, importantly, ready to be redeployed) without fuelling the arms race.

From pp 118-119 of Young et al, describing a time, 1961, when

With Atlas, Minuteman, Polaris and Titan, the four main elements of American strategic power, all moving towards completion, industry too, was, anticipating  harder times. There was, Shapley says, great concern about this: "Could we afford the consequences of such a decline in defence procurement?"
[...]
Shapley pithily describes the logic:


Quote
People realized that space was the answer. It was a way of keeping up the aerospace economy and responding to the demand for more missiles without escalating the arms race. The moon programme would produce the booster in the fastest possible time. By keeping the missile-makers busy on space boosters you were also keeping up their ability to return to military missiles if necessary. You were maintaining preparedness without overarming the country.

What struck me reading the Simon Ramo oral history that  leovinus has found is that Apollo was the third in a sequence of massive technical responses to perceived urgent threats, following the Manhattan project of the 40s and the ICBM projects of the 50s. Mars would have thus had to have been a 4th, in a way. Not an original thought I'm sure but I wonder where it has been framed that way, and what the comparisons tell us, if anything.




Offline Airlocks

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #33 on: 11/28/2022 06:30 pm »
Quote
What struck me reading the Simon Ramo oral history that  leovinus has found is that Apollo was the third in a sequence of massive technical responses to perceived urgent threats, following the Manhattan project of the 40s and the ICBM projects of the 50s. Mars would have thus had to have been a 4th, in a way. Not an original thought I'm sure but I wonder where it has been framed that way, and what the comparisons tell us, if anything.

Reminds me of Stephen Baxter's Voyage novel. He hints that exact point, along the way. When in the 1980's Mars compete for money with Reagan SDI. By the way, can't help thinking that SDI was an atempt at that "4th massive technical response" you mention.

Online LittleBird

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #34 on: 11/29/2022 08:40 am »
Quote
What struck me reading the Simon Ramo oral history that  leovinus has found is that Apollo was the third in a sequence of massive technical responses to perceived urgent threats, following the Manhattan project of the 40s and the ICBM projects of the 50s. Mars would have thus had to have been a 4th, in a way. Not an original thought I'm sure but I wonder where it has been framed that way, and what the comparisons tell us, if anything.

Reminds me of Stephen Baxter's Voyage novel. He hints that exact point, along the way. When in the 1980's Mars compete for money with Reagan SDI.
A book I enjoyed, but ended up being glad we didn't get Baxter's particular timeline ... I'd rather have Hubble, Viking, Voyager, JWST etc etc etc. But I imagine there are threads on counterfactual space, I'm sure libra can point us to them.

Whatever world a Mars mission could have happened in, it isn't one in which Mars and SDI had to seriously clash for money, imho. [Edit: Though of course, thinking about it, synergy between SDI and crewed Mars/moonbases etc etc was v much part of the visions of Keyworth, Mark, Lowell Wood et  al for several years.]

Quote
By the way, can't help thinking that SDI was an atempt at that "4th massive technical response" you mention.

More than an attempt, I'd say, being embedded as it was in a massive increase of defence spending. See the fascinating oral history interview with the then DARPA director Robert Cooper at https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/DARPA/15-F-0751_DARPA_Director_Robert_Cooper.pdf and grab below
« Last Edit: 11/29/2022 09:51 am by LittleBird »

Online LittleBird

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #35 on: 11/29/2022 08:45 am »
There are also the domestic economic benefits of driving money into raw technological R&D (the results of which were arguably greater than the money spent on Mercury + Gemini + Apollo), and the global economic impact of goading the CCCP into funding parallel development at the expense of more practical - i.e. ICBM and IRBM - rocket development programmes and other uses for those resources (though that may have been more a happy side-effect than an actual enumerated goal).

I actually accept those arguments. And in fact, I've made similar arguments in essays for why Chinese human spaceflight spending (and even a Moon program) is something the West should not only accept, but encourage. Better to spend that money on stuff that isn't weapons.

That said, the whole economic/technology stimulus argument is a murky and contentious one. I don't think there's any consensus on it at all. The argument is usually (exclusively?) made by people who think space is inherently good. It's not an argument made by people approaching the subject from a neutral or objective perspective. I don't know if any economists have sought to tackle the subject at all. They have addressed things like Great Society spending and Vietnam War spending, and what those did. But I think almost all of them have ignored Apollo, just as most Cold War historians have ignored it.

I'm guessing you are excluding socioeconomic writers ? Examples might include Amitai Etzioni's famous book from 60s, and people like Harold Nieburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Name_of_Science (see this  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1966.11454911 for a flavour of his concerns ).

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #36 on: 11/29/2022 01:00 pm »
I would not include Etzioni, because he was not doing analysis after the fact. He wrote a criticism beforehand.

As an aside, when I went to grad school, Etzioni had an office in the same suite where I worked at GWU. I only met him once or twice and had no opinion. However, he had a reputation for being a rather nasty guy, and he apparently fired his assistants and grad students regularly. He espoused a philosophy that was supposed to be community-based (everybody taking care of each other), but he didn't follow that philosophy himself.

Online LittleBird

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #37 on: 11/29/2022 01:16 pm »
I would not include Etzioni, because he was not doing analysis after the fact. He wrote a criticism beforehand.

<random ad hominem remark about living academic deleted>


And re your interesting comment:

Quote
    That said, the whole economic/technology stimulus argument is a murky and contentious one. I don't think there's any consensus on it at all. The argument is usually (exclusively?) made by people who think space is inherently good. It's not an argument made by people approaching the subject from a neutral or objective perspective. I don't know if any economists have sought to tackle the subject at all. They have addressed things like Great Society spending and Vietnam War spending, and what those did. But I think almost all of them have ignored Apollo, just as most Cold War historians have ignored it.


I was struck by the fact that I couldn't easily locate anything among my own book collection that fitted your description, which rather supports your claim, and what I could find was via places like Dale Carter's "The Final Frontier"-a book I enjoyed  but which I know better than to suggest to you as I think you'd like it even less than this reviewer did https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/abs/dale-carter-the-final-frontier-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-rocket-state-london-new-york-verso-1988-pp-280-isbn-0-86091-192-6-and-0-86091-908-0/2A6D360267E793A8CB88C8B0BF713155 and for rather different reasons.

When I was young one of the most common assertions of the impact of Apollo tended to be in terms of its management methods and its tools for exceptionally high reliability. I wonder how this has held up, and where TRW et al and the ICBMs stop and Apollo begins here ?
« Last Edit: 11/29/2022 04:38 pm by LittleBird »

Offline leovinus

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #38 on: 06/09/2023 06:18 pm »
Does this exist in pdf form on the internet?

I have a thick binder of this report. Before I toss it out, I want to make sure that it exists as a pdf on the internet somewhere. Does it?
On the quick, I do not see this as a pdf anywhere. Not on NTRS, or unlisted NTRS, or archive.org, etc. There is a physical copy at JSC here in Box 14 and Google has a PDF that it does not want to show us here. Also, David Portree wrote about this document in 2012 on Wired as "THE LAST MANNED MARS PLAN (1971)".
In other words, before you throw it out, if you could scan it and retain maybe :) ?


Offline leovinus

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Re: Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
« Reply #39 on: 06/09/2023 07:09 pm »
Does this exist in pdf form on the internet?

I have a thick binder of this report. Before I toss it out, I want to make sure that it exists as a pdf on the internet somewhere. Does it?
On the quick, I do not see this as a pdf anywhere. Not on NTRS, or unlisted NTRS, or archive.org, etc. There is a physical copy at JSC here in Box 14 and Google has a PDF that it does not want to show us here. Also, David Portree wrote about this document in 2012 on Wired as "THE LAST MANNED MARS PLAN (1971)".
In other words, before you throw it out, if you could scan it and retain maybe :) ?



Yeah, I can scan it and post it. Is there a thread on the Integrated Mars Plan on NSF? I could not find it using the search engine.
A new thread would be good as I do not see an old thread for it. There are
(this one) Boeing's 1968 Human Mission to Mars
Von Braun's late 1960s Mars "Integrated Plan"
"Mission to Mars Using Six 'Not So Easy' Pieces" • Mike Raftery
but nothing on the 1971 Mars concept and The last manned Mars plan which presumably is related to your document.
« Last Edit: 06/09/2023 07:11 pm by leovinus »

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