Texas. With nothing to do, in a military camp, Wehrner von Braun asks for paper, pencil, and a slide rule, and in two years he quickly writes a treatise on astronautics: Das Marsprojekt (The Mars Project). It will be published in West Germany in 1949 in Welt Und Raumfahrt, the glorious German rocketry and space magazine. The book also discusses an orbiting space station, which von Braun calls “Lunetta” (yes, with the Italian name), which serves as the base for assembling and launching the expedition to Mars, consisting of ten spaceships weighing 3,270 tons each, plus other light vehicles for a total of 70 astronauts! He estimates the number of flights to assemble the Martian mission at around 1,000.
