by STEVE WEINTZ

In the early Space Age, everything seemed possible — no matter how crazy.

Which is why, in the 1960s, one American engineer seriously designed a space rocket to transport troops wearing jetpacks. This far-out concept aimed to lob Marine jet-battalions into space and land them on the other side of the world in less than an hour.

It was all about ending what the U.S. military calls the “tyranny of distance.” That is, moving soldiers and material overseas in a short amount of time.

Today, the Pentagon invests billions of dollars in bases, cargo ships and heavy transport planes to give the military unmatched global reach. But it still takes hours — even weeks — to transport troops and equipment around the world.

Rockets and ballistic missiles cross those distances in minutes. What if — instead of warheads — they carried soldiers into battle?

Marine general Wallace Greene, Jr., publicly proposed a ballistic transport system when Pres. John F. Kennedy nominated him to lead the Marine Corps in October 1963.

“The impact of this application of space technology on the projection of national military power is staggering to contemplate,” Greene said.

But not surprisingly, it was rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun who first tinkered with ballistic troop transports. In 1956, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency — under Von Braun’s direction — proposed to loft an 18-man troop capsule into space with a Jupiter rocket.

Two years later, the agency replaced the Jupiter with a more powerful Redstone rocket. Both early concepts relied on parachutes and retrorockets to get the troops safely to the ground. However, the transport concepts had short ranges, roughly equivalent to a helicopter.

But Philip Bono—a maverick rocket scientist at Douglas Aircraft — imagined something much grander.