FDR as a young man via Daily Beast

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt explored the possibility of sending refugees from WWII to the planets Mars or Venus. The highly secretive research was titled the “M” project for FDR: studies on migration and settlement and was headed by anthropologist Henry Fields. 

The 66-volume study of population problems was eventually declassified and re-discovered by Mother Jones reporters in 1983 at the Temple University Library in West Philadelphia. According to Fields,

“Roosevelt ordered the massive research project so his administration would be prepared to deal with the millions of people left homeless as well as ‘surplus’ population in the postwar world.”

In addition to exploring remote areas of Africa or the Caribbean, one of the chapters of the report was “Interstellar Migration,” which claimed that “temporary quarters may eventually be established on Venus or Mars.”