"Reed Snellenberger" wrote in
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"John Cody" wrote in news:J_nLb.879$ql3.729
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UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International

The first manned Mars expeditions would attempt to orbit the red
planet in advance of landings -- much as Apollo 8 and 10 orbited the
moon but did not land. The orbital flights would conduct photo
reconnaissance of the Martian surface before sending landing craft,
said sources familiar with the plan's details.

What exactly would be the point of this? Anyone?


Learning how to operate long-duration/long-range manned missions, for one
thing. This will be a difficult enough job -- the ship & crew will have
to be essentially autonomous due to the comm lag alone, and we've never
operated like that in the past. We can also use the practice at
developing re-supply strategies for these missions -- developing
something like a Mars-capable Progress-equivalent might simplify mission
planning (you don't have to take everything with you at the start).

It makes a lot of sense to avoid adding a landing to the missions at
first. Performing the reconnaissance will be useful (particularly if
some small probes can be sent that allow essentially "ad-hoc" surface
exploration), but would really just be "what we do while we're waiting to
come back" -- the real mission will be getting there, staying there for a
while, and getting back in one piece.


I'm not wholly against the idea of a crewed Mars orbital mission
(particularly if it includes flybys/landings on Phobos and/or Deimos as a
bonus). It was the mention of 'photo reconnaissance of the Martian surface'
as the primary aim (as opposed to Phobos science or the real-time
teleoperation of Martian robots) that confused me. Is there *really*
anything useful we could learn about Mars that could be obtained by the
early 21st century equivalent of an astronaut pointing a Hasselblad at one
of the LM windows?


Why not send the first long-duration mission to a NEA?


John Cody