This video was posted on YouTube some six-ish years ago, but remains worthy of viewing and discussion. It’s a General Dynamics film to NASA from late 1962/early 1963 discussing the study of Early Manned Interplanetary Missions (EMPIRE), NAS8-5026. It describes the future as it should have been… and as how Krafft Ehricke, the presenter of the film and one of the driving forces behind the program, saw it:
1: Manned landing on the moon by the end of the 60’s.
2: Initial manned flights to (flybys and orbits) Venus and Mars in the early 70s
3: Entire solar system explored robotically by the end of the 1980’s
4: Manned mission to Pluto by 1995
Ehricke’s view of the future of space flight from the standpoint of the mid-1960’s was previously shown HERE.
The original film included a number of bits of concept art of both manned and unmanned spacecraft. Sadly no Orion vehicles are on display (it is name-dropped), but the Mars lander/excursion module was of the kind originally proposed for Orion. This was pre-Mariner when the Martian atmosphere was *massively* over-estimated; these landers and their dinky parachutes would, with the real Martian atmosphere, have made impressive craters in the surface.
The movie sells exploration without offering much cause to *be* exploring. Ehricke is all about the diagrams and figures and deadlines, and any “sense of wonder” is lost. He needed people like Carl Sagan and Eugene Shoemaker in his film, someone to throw to now and then to indicate any reason to visit say, Mars or Jupiter besides these being names to cross off on our dance card.
Maybe all that was in the Classified version of the film? “And here on Phobos vee vill of cuss exterminate the Leather Goddesses who have *ravaged* Upper Sandusky for *far* too long.”