Author Topic: Project Empire (Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expedition) 1962  (Read 25017 times)

Offline leovinus

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Note that the ARPA and DARPA histories cover a bunch of space-related subjects. Surprisingly, some things you know as NASA projects started out in ARPA (or passed through ARPA).

In the thread on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo Advanced Missions there was a comment on page 7 of the NOVA document attached to the post above about a "project EMPIRE" in a Mars context. As I think that NOVA, Nuclear rockets and Mars are interesting, I started to dive deeper. As I'd love to know more, I wondered whether some of you have access to original reports, articles, insights, the pros and cons of this 1960s Manned Mars mission? Discuss!

This is what I found so far.

A quote from Eyes on the Red Planet: Human Mars Mission Planning, 1952-1970, by Annie Platoff, 1999 pp 17-21,
Quote
In May 1962, MSFC awarded three contracts for work on human planetary missions. Known as Project EMPIRE, these studies addressed the human exploration of Mars and Venus. Each company that took part was awarded a $250,000 contract for a 6-month study incorporating 6,000 work-hours. The three EMPIRE contractors were Ford’s Aeronutronic Division, General Dynamics/Astronautics, and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. All studies were based upon the assumption that the Saturn V vehicle being developed for Apollo could be used to launch Mars missions to Earth orbit and that nuclear propulsion systems, also in the development stage at the time, would be available for the interplanetary portion of the journey.

While NSF had a few tangential threads such as Manned planetary flyby missions and Manned Circumnavigation of the Inner Solar System, and Astronautix has links to the three contractors as well, Ford Aeronutronic with Franklin P. Dixon, General Dynamics with Krafft
A. Ehricke
and Lockheed with Benjamin P. Martin, it is surprisingly hard to go into detail via the original contractor reports and NTRS.

In principle, the JSC History Collection and Archives should have copies. While their search engine gives some hits (attached) it is not clear whether those can be downloaded or require an in-person visit somewhere. I asked the librarian for help. Here some example references I was looking for
Quote
EMPIRE: A Study of Early Manned Interplanetary Expeditions, NASA Contractor Report 51709, Aeronutronic Division, Ford Motor Company, 21 December 1962.

"The EMPIRE Dual Planet Flyby Mission," Franklin P. Dixon, Aeronutronic Division, Philco Corporation; paper presented in Palo Alto, California, at the Engineering Problems of Manned Interplanetary Exploration conference, 30 September-1 October 1963.

"EMPIRE: Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions Part I: Aeronutronic and General Dynamics Studies," Frederick I. Ordway III, Mitchell R. Sharpe, and Ronald C. Wakeford, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, May 1993, pp. 179-190.

Summary Technical Report, Report No. GD | C AOK 65-002-1, NASA Contract NAS8-11327, June 8, 1965, p. 1-4,
13, 37, 56, 60 (Located in the JSC History Collection, JSC Files: Manned Mars Mission Studies, Box 4).
95 General Dynamics/Convair, Manned Mars and Venus Exploration Study, Final Report Volume 1:

North American Aviation, Space and Information Systems Division, Manned Mars and/or Venus Flyby Vehicle Systems Study, volume 1: Summary, SID 65-761-1, NASA Contract NAS9-3499, June 1965, p. 1-7 (Located in the JSC History Collection, JSC Files: Manned Mars Mission Studies, Box 4). Representatives from MSC, MSFC, and NASA Headquarters were involved in the technical panel for this study. C. Howard Robins, Memorandum: “Technical Management Panel for Mars-Venus Flyby Vehicle Systems Study,” March 3, 1964; W. E. Stoney, Jr., “Participation by Electromagnetic Systems Branch in the Technical Management of a Contracted Study of mars and/or Venus Flyby Vehicle Systems,” March 10, 1964; W. E. Stoney, Jr., “MSFC Participation in Technical Management of Mars-Venus Flyby Vehicle Systems Study,” April 3, 1964; and W. E. Stoney, Jr.,

Also, NTRS would be expected to be the "go to" sources for original documents. However, relevant reports below are not accessible. I sent a friendly enquiry to them to ask whether they can place them online again. Or maybe one of you has a copy?
Quote
19650082475,"Empire. a study of early manned interplanetary missions final report, may 26 - nov. 25, 1962",1962,,
19670091995,Study of early manned interplanetary missions /empire/,1962,,
19640048223,A study of manned interplanetary missions /empire follow-on/ condensed summary report,1964,,
19640048224,A study of early manned interplanetary missions /empire follow-on/. volume ii- summary report,1964,,
19640000998,The empire dual planet flyby mission,1963,,
19650058235,A study of early manned interplanetary missions /empire follow-on/,1964,,
19680093531,Empire project phase 4. Electro magnetic performance information research Final report,1968,,
19690085823,Empire electromagnetic performance information research,1969,,

Some other articles are:

Chapter 3: EMPIRE and After
https://history.nasa.gov/monograph21/Chapter%203.pdf
https://history.nasa.gov/monograph21/Bibliography_low.pdf

EMPIRE Building: Ford Aeronutronic's Mars/Venus Piloted Flyby Study (1962)
https://www.wired.com/2013/01/ford-aeronutronic-empire-1962/

Manned Mars landing mission by means of high-thrust rockets
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19660005414

Propulsion Systems for Manned Exploration of the Solar System
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19690025296

Finally, the Smithsonian here in Washington, DC, also has some EMPIRE papers as Krafft Ehricke was the project leader for General Dynamics. Does anyone know whether those are available in PDF/digitized or do you have to visit in person for a copy?
Quote
Krafft Arnold Ehricke Papers  Portions of this collection are digitized
https://sova.si.edu/record/NASM.2003.0025?t=C&q=National+Association+of+American+Balloon+Corps+Veterans&i=7
EMPIRE Follow-On Final Report, Vol. I – Condensed Summary Report (GDA report AOK 64-006, 1 Jan 1964)
EMPIRE Follow-On Final [Third] Presentation (GDA report AOK 64-002, 28 Jan 1964)
EMPIRE Follow-On – Parametric Mission Analysis (GDA report AOK 63-024, 30 Aug 1963)

Offline leovinus

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A few small updates.

Firstly, the NASA STI Information Desk informed me that they could not help to locate a subset of the eight NTRS EMPIRE reports listed above. It was worth a try. I was told that "These are not publicly available for distribution by NASA and we were unable to locate a copy elsewhere".

Secondly, we discussed searching NTRS many times here on NSF, e.g., List of selected NTRS documents from 1980 or before, NTRS on the Wayback Machine?, Missing NTRS Documents Used a bit of search-foo on archive.org and located one of the missing eight NTRS reports
Quote
19640000998,The empire dual planet flyby mission,1963,,
Obviously an Aeronutronic summary. Ran it through OCR for easier studying. While I am still reading, wanted to share this read in the meantime, attached.

Finally, as part of the Krafft Arnold Ehricke Papers, the Smithsonian seems to have the EMPIRE General Dynamics summary documents Volumes I to IV which includes
Quote
Summary Technical Report, Report No. GD | C AOK 65-002-1, NASA Contract NAS8-11327, June 8, 1965, p. 1-4,
13, 37, 56, 60 (Located in the JSC History Collection, JSC Files: Manned Mars Mission Studies, Box 4).
95 General Dynamics/Convair, Manned Mars and Venus Exploration Study, Final Report Volume 1:

https://sova.si.edu/search/within/NASM.2003.0025/?q=65-002&t=W&o=doc_position

Not in digital form but something to check out in future.

Offline Proponent

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These are not what you're looking for but might be related....

I have a couple volumes of a Boeing man-on-Mars study from 1968, as well as a few other things.

Offline leovinus

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These are not what you're looking for but might be related....

I have a couple volumes of a Boeing man-on-Mars study from 1968, as well as a few other things.
Will have a read, thanks. More perspective and content is always welcome!

In other updates, it seems to me that many sources will need a visit in person to digitize and learn more. Exception are the NTRS reports which are archived but not public. To make some progress, I FOIA’d four EMPIRE tech reports from post #1. Am curious to read more.

Offline libra

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This thread reminds I've heard of the UMPIRE / EMPIRE studies for a veeeery long time...
(2007 and my reading of Stephen Baxter Voyage, where they are negatively mentionned by alt-Buzz-Aldrin Muldoon)
... and yet it never dawned on me that the original documents were not available.

I mean, we have Boeing IMIS study from 1968; some bits of von Braun pitch to the Space Task Group early August 1969; but the EMPIRE / UMPIRE reports eluded everybody so far.

Of course they have been described in detail by both David Portree and Mark Wade's Astronautix.

Offline Proponent

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... we have Boeing IMIS study from 1968....

I have volumes 2 & 7 4 of Boeing's final report and would be happy to post if anyone is interested.  Does anyone have other volumes?
« Last Edit: 03/20/2022 04:39 pm by Proponent »

Offline theonlyspace

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I think they be interesting reading.  Thank you

Offline Proponent

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Offline leovinus

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This thread reminds I've heard of the UMPIRE / EMPIRE studies for a veeeery long time...
(2007 and my reading of Stephen Baxter Voyage, where they are negatively mentionned by alt-Buzz-Aldrin Muldoon)
... and yet it never dawned on me that the original documents were not available.

I mean, we have Boeing IMIS study from 1968; some bits of von Braun pitch to the Space Task Group early August 1969; but the EMPIRE / UMPIRE reports eluded everybody so far.

Of course they have been described in detail by both David Portree and Mark Wade's Astronautix.

TL;DR chasing 60s planetary mission reports is fantastic but some FOIAs are too expensive.

Firstly, while I was impressed by the histories and summaries of David Portree and Mark Wade, I worry they are based on very limited original and some secondary sources.

NASA historian David Portree gives some references to which sources he used. I saw the JBIN articles, and Vol I at Smithsonian mentioned. As an example the Smithsonian also lists Vol 2,3,4 but were does studied?

It would be absolutely fascinating to hear from those two authors what primary sources they read, what surprised them most, what they think is missing, etc. There are many many boxes at the a.o. Smithsonian.

Secondly, a little progress report on the four NTRS EMPIRE document FOIA I mentioned earlier. While NASA is very helpful, which is appreciated, I was advised that these four have not been declassified. The estimated review cost would be more than $2800, ouch. It probably also means that NASA historians like Dr. David Portree might not have read it? Or, in general, no one in the public reads any old limited access NTRS which is a shame.

While I could simplify the request to one EMPIRE final report only to make the request smaller in terms of pages that could still be half that cost. That would be 19650082475, “Empire. a study of early manned interplanetary missions final report”.

As these are conservative estimates, the cost might go down when looking at the one report but no guarantees. When i FOIA’d the Pioneer offline processing document there was no cost at all. So it comes down to question- is it worth it? As a hobby, I am happy to pay up to $100 but this is out of budget :/

While I can order the two EMPIRE overview articles from JBIN to read and satisfy my curiosity I feel that will not have enough details. These 60s early space studies are part of our USA and common space history and should be available for the public IMHO. But paying two grand to read it all is too much for me. 

While I can go in person to the Smithsonian to copy reports, probably for free, these cost to declassify NTRS reports make such a FOIA a no-go for a normal user.

Now , thinking about the community here. Some of you will have seen this before and maybe have advise? Proceed or drop it? Unless you NSF folks have a better idea then my request is dead in the water, and we are stuck with overview articles which cover only parts.

Thinking out of the box. Can we convince anyone to contribute ;) ? Elon has a few spare bucks to cover early Mars history? Maybe the final report disappoints but we can probably write an article out of it? Thanks for reading. Suggestions welcome.

Offline Blackstar

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There are ways to request documents via FOIA that don't include that full fee. You have to request a fee waiver and have a reason for doing so. (And usually you should agree to pay a minimum amount.)

It helps if you have a publication record. But also keep in mind that FOIA can take a long time.



(Addendum: just to let you know, Portree is not a "Dr." and the last time he worked for NASA as a contract historian was probably 15 years ago. He knows a lot, but he's not connected to NASA in any way, so it's not like he can go digging around internally.)
« Last Edit: 03/24/2022 06:43 pm by Blackstar »

Offline leovinus

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There are ways to request documents via FOIA that don't include that full fee. You have to request a fee waiver and have a reason for doing so. (And usually you should agree to pay a minimum amount.)

Thanks for the feedback. The fee waiver would have been nice but my situation as non-academic, independent researcher did not seem to allow that.

It helps if you have a publication record. But also keep in mind that FOIA can take a long time.

These reports are from the 60s and waiting a bit longer is fine :) As for the publication record, I have an almost three decade long record of papers and patents but not space literature related. Therefore not sure it would help.

(Addendum: just to let you know, Portree is not a "Dr." and the last time he worked for NASA as a contract historian was probably 15 years ago. He knows a lot, but he's not connected to NASA in any way, so it's not like he can go digging around internally.)

Thanks, noted. Where I am from, when unsure about academic status, you assume “Dr” or “prof” as a polite form to start communications.
« Last Edit: 03/24/2022 07:48 pm by leovinus »

Offline Phil Stooke

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More recently Portree was working for USGS at Flagstaff, in the archives there.  Now he is self-employed.

Offline Blackstar

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These reports are from the 60s and waiting a bit longer is fine :) As for the publication record, I have an almost three decade long record of papers and patents but not space literature related. Therefore not sure it would help.


Just request a media waiver and state that you are requesting these for scholarly publication. Agree to pay maybe $50-$100 in fees (copying fees). See what happens.

This stuff should be releasable. And if you don't request it, nobody will and it will stay in a locked filing cabinet for another decade or two.

Offline Blackstar

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I don't know much about how NASA treats NTRS. For instance, I don't know if they have a process to regularly review the oldest documents and publicly release them.

Many years ago, NASA historian Roger Launius started a project to identify the oldest classified documents that NASA had and to review them for release. But that was in the 1990s, when there was an attitude that government agencies should do more to declassify materials. Then some things happened that caused everybody to clench up and efforts like that stopped. Some of you may be familiar with the issue that happened with NTRS when a bunch of documents that had been publicly available for a very long time suddenly became restricted so that they could be re-reviewed. I think that only a portion of those then became public again and anything that might have been even slightly questionable was kept restricted, even though there are certainly copies in private hands (and almost certainly in Chinese government hands). The original NTRS hyperlinks all changed, which was really aggravating, and demonstrates that if you're sharing information, it's best to post the document as well as the link.

There was an even more egregious case with the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo paper files held at the National Archives in Fort Worth. Those materials were used by many authors for decades and formed the basis for a number of notable Apollo history books. They were then made restricted around 2011 or so. I don't know if they have been made public again. I did talk to a senior NASA historian about this at the time and he did not express much concern about it, which I found very disappointing.
« Last Edit: 03/25/2022 03:23 pm by Blackstar »

Offline leovinus

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This thread reminds I've heard of the UMPIRE / EMPIRE studies for a veeeery long time...
(2007 and my reading of Stephen Baxter Voyage, where they are negatively mentionned by alt-Buzz-Aldrin Muldoon)
... and yet it never dawned on me that the original documents were not available.

I mean, we have Boeing IMIS study from 1968; some bits of von Braun pitch to the Space Task Group early August 1969; but the EMPIRE / UMPIRE reports eluded everybody so far.

Of course they have been described in detail by both David Portree and Mark Wade's Astronautix.

TL;DR chasing 60s planetary mission reports is fantastic but some FOIAs are too expensive.


These reports are from the 60s and waiting a bit longer is fine :) As for the publication record, I have an almost three decade long record of papers and patents but not space literature related. Therefore not sure it would help.


Just request a media waiver and state that you are requesting these for scholarly publication. Agree to pay maybe $50-$100 in fees (copying fees). See what happens.

This stuff should be releasable. And if you don't request it, nobody will and it will stay in a locked filing cabinet for another decade or two.

Update on this FOIA process on "19650082475, “Empire. a study of early manned interplanetary missions final report"

The most public info we know related to 19650082475 was published above in post #2, 60 pages, as 19640000998.pdf. Also related and included  EMPIRE: EARLY MANNED PLANETARY-INTERPLANETARY ROUNDTRIP EXPEDITIONS Part I: Aeronutronic and General Dynamics Studies and THE EMPIRE DUAL PLANET FLYBY MISSION (EMPIRE PROGRAM FOR NASA - MISSION ANALYSIS AND SPACECRAFT SYNTHESES FOR MANNED CLOSE APPROACH TO VENUS AND MARS).

The report is an "L" or "limited" distribution contractor report, 183 pages, which sounds really interesting and detailed. While I did provide all public info I could find on this as background, we still have an estimate of about $1000 to make it go through export control, reviews, etc before public release. Why I would be happy to pay a minimum fee, it does not help the process along. The kicker is that there is >no guarantee< that the report would actually be released. Export control could veto I understand (and apologies if I understood wrong) and that relates to the whole report, not a part. Assigning probabilities to this worst-case scenario is difficult - 50%? 10%?

It is still being discussed with NASA FOIA and I thank them for their time and friendly understanding and discussion. Based on feedback above in this thread (thanks), I discussed also fee and media waivers but in my case it is not possible it seems. For me, paying $1000 without release guarantee is too rich which is why my request is coming to an end unfortunately.

(PS: There are actually ~24 EMPIRE related documents in the list of "L" NTRS documents that I see, and this FOIA is just about one.)

Is there a silver lining? Well, it seems that if someone with media/publishing/<relevant> credentials would file a new request for same report and get a fee waiver then the process would be started again. In that case, paying $0 and not having no guarantee the document will be released is more palatable. Does not work for me as independent researcher though. If that would work then there are about two dozen other NTRS EMPIRE report waiting as well which might be easier to release. Some are short I hear.

PS: I got some EMPIRE materials from the Ford archives (thanks). More on that later.

Offline leovinus

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One of the three EMPIRE contractors was the Ford Aeronutronic Division. The study for NASA was named "early manned interplanetary missions" or abbreviated "EMPIRE". At Ford, the main engineer seems to have been Franklin P. Dixon in the period may 26 - nov. 25, 1962. The location was Newport Beach, California.

In that context, I asked the Ford archives whether they have related documents, press releases, tech reports, lectures, anything. Attached the most relevant ones. No new information as far as I can see but I liked especially the file "1963 Empire Speech Dixon and Stimpson AR-84-56520-1963-4_043.pdf" which includes figures on EMPIRE re-entry capsules and vehicles, and which matches the JBIS summary article at Section 3.9, pp181-182, and the NTRS report 19640000998_1964000998.searchable.pdf from post #2 above, pp9-11,13-14,25,28.

The "Philco" is a long list of space projects from the time where Ford/Philco were involved with Space projects, from EMPIRE to Apollo.

EDIT: Modified the link with pointer to Ford Archives
« Last Edit: 04/07/2022 01:35 pm by leovinus »

Offline leovinus

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These are not what you're looking for but might be related....

I have a couple volumes of a Boeing man-on-Mars study from 1968, as well as a few other things.

Belated, now that I have more time to read, thanks again for these especially "196406 Manned Planetary--MSFC.pdf". That seems to be same as 19640017065 on NTRS and contains several EMPIRE related articles from all three contractors. I re-ran it though OCR again to facilitate searching and am happily reading this weekend.

Would someone know whether this "PROCEEDING OF THE SYMPOSIUM ON MANNED PLANETARY MISSIONS" was a one time thing or did they do it yearly?


Offline leovinus

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Couple of updates and new (to me) documents and locations.

Firstly, while the two JBIS summaries of the three contractor reports on EMPIRE are 20 pages total of goodness, there is a longer version of 60 pages at this link and part 2. For convenience, I combined and attached them to this post.

Secondly, there are notes on EMPIRE studies from the Ford Philco Aeronutronic main investigator, Franklin P. Dixon, here at History of rocketry and astronautics : proceedings of the twenty-second and twenty-third History Symposia of the International Academy of Astronautics, Bangalore, India, 1988, Málaga, Spain, 1989, "American Manned Planetary Studies 1962-198", pp421-447. You need an archive.org account to read the pages and borrow the book to read for free.

Thirdly, as I mentioned in my first post in this thread, the Smithsonian seems to have copies of the General Dynamics reports but as the reading rooms are closed, it will be a few months before I can check how complete those are. To be continued later.

Finally, I have a good lead on how to get copies of the full, three final EMPIRE reports. 1400+ pages, yeah! More than 20x more than what we have publicly in article form. It might require another FOIA and I am considering options at the moment on how to proceed best without running into the same hurdles as before :) More to come.

Online LittleBird

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Couple of updates and new (to me) documents and locations.

Firstly, while the two JBIS summaries of the three contractor reports on EMPIRE are 20 pages total of goodness,  ...


Thanks for the heads-up re the JBIS archive online in pdf. Last time I looked this was maybe 10-15 years worth so the fact it appears to be complete from 1980 https://bis-space.com/shop/product-category/magazines/journal-of-the-bis/papers/jbis-1980/ is good news indeed.

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