Closest to Mars

As we all know, Mars will be historically close to Earth in
a couple of days. There will be a single instant at which
the two planets are closest. What human beings will be
closer to Mars than anyone has been for 60,000 years?
That is, what part of Earth will be directly under Mars
at that instant, and who will be the highest? Someone
at sea level, on a mountain, in an airplane that happens
to be in the right place at the right time? Or do those
lucky guys in the ISS just happen to be passing by just
then?

Bob Munck

Yeah, but the problem is, the ISS is in danger of being swept up into Mars'
gravitational field and will end up orbiting Mars and Mars will take the ISS
with it as it goes back into deep space and maybe the Astronauts can
configure the Soyuz to somehow land on Mars if they pointed the reentry end
of the Soyuz the other way but still kept the service module so that they
would only need a little thrust to break orbit and then they would use the
rest of the retro-thrusters to cushion the landing on Mars and they would be
the first men on Mars but then they would have to cannibalize all the
equipment of the Soyuz to survive maybe they could use the solar panels to
power the fuel cell to crack the water from the Martian ice and they could
maybe bring some seeds from the ISS to plant so they would have food and
they could surive there as the first Mars base and maybe they could then
make bricks and build Roman style vaults like Bob Zubrin proposed or maybe
they could refuel the Soyuz with the cracked water and they could fly back
to Earth and this could be the first Mars mission ever.
Of course, that's about as close to a Manned Mars Mission as we're going to
see in our lifetimes, and it's about as likely.
I gotta lay off this Jolt Cola.
"Robert Munck" wrote in message
news
As we all know, Mars will be historically close to Earth in
a couple of days. There will be a single instant at which
the two planets are closest. What human beings will be
closer to Mars than anyone has been for 60,000 years?
That is, what part of Earth will be directly under Mars
at that instant, and who will be the highest? Someone
at sea level, on a mountain, in an airplane that happens
to be in the right place at the right time? Or do those
lucky guys in the ISS just happen to be passing by just
then?

Bob Munck