Photograph, Electric Spaceship for Manned Mars Flight

In March 1966 Ernst Stuhlinger and his team of engineers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center presented their concept for an electric spaceship designed for human flight to Mars. The mission would use NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) nuclear-thermal rockets and low-thrust nuclear-electric propulsion. By combining the two technologies, the engineers hoped to magnify the advantages and lessen the disadvantages of both propulsion methods. Electric propulsion would require much less propellant than nuclear-thermal propulsion, thus reducing the mass of the vehicle, while the nuclear-thermal propulsion would diminish trip time. Stuhlinger and his team hoped to launch the vehicle in 1986, when the amount of energy needed to travel from Earth to Mars and back would be relatively small and a time of low solar activity.

NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center transferred this photograph to the Museum in 1976.