JF Mezei wrote:

Question:

Say you have an expedition ship to Mars.

That ship can't de-orbit and land at Mars or Earth.

So you obviously need landing crafts at both ends (and a laucher on mars
to return to expedition ship).

Since the return to earth craft will be needed only at the very end and
be useless for rest of the journey, is there a point in carrying it all
the way from Earth to Mars and from Mars back to earth ?

Considering with experiemces with LEM/Apollo, and will ISS with many
ships going there, would it be sufficiently technically and politically
acceptable to send a Mars expedition out without an earth landing
capsule, and only have it rendez-vous upon their return to earth orbit
(elliptical or circular).

This would save on having to carry otherwise useless mass for 99% of
mission, and get a "fresh" re-entry ship upon return that would be
undamaged from possible micro meteorite strikes, sun's radiation and aging.


The old saying is that Earth Orbit is halfway to anywhere, so it's
probably a wash whether you take it with you to Mars and back or
whether you send it back down to Earth and get a new one when you get
back.


If earth rendez-vous on the return trip is possible, then design of
re-entry capsule become much closer to that of Dragon/Shuttle than of
Orion in terms of heat shields etc.


Why?


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn