The Space Race
January 25, 2026 · 5 min read
NASA's 80 Year Old Abandoned Plan To Colonize Mars
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Key Takeaways
- 1What if NASA had colonized Mars in the 1970s?
- 2Our journey begins in the 1940s with a vision from Dr.
- 3In his free time, von Braun completed a work that would come to be known as Project Mars - a 280-page novel that outlined his plan for a crewed mis...
- 4According to Project Mars, the first stage would be establishing a large-scale human presence in low Earth orbit.
- 5From orbit, a massive fleet of transport ships, cargo haulers, and Mars landers would be assembled 1,000 miles above Earth.
Overview
What if NASA had colonized Mars in the 1970s? This might sound like science fiction, but there was a very real plan in place that would have extended the Apollo moon landings all the way to Mars using rocket technology that was available at the time. This was the blueprint for human colonization of the red planet before the end of the 20th century.
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