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One thing that has worried me about both Mars Direct and DRM is the possibility of an off target landing making it difficult for the crew to meet up with their supplies. Aerocapture and re-entery are certianly tricky and a failure here can put the crew hundreds of kilometers away from there supplies and return vehicle. Even if the failure is not so great (only tens of kilometers) it is still very inconvient.
However once the landing vehicle is down, moving it is tricky. It weighs several tons, even on Mars, and the surface bettwen it and it's destination is unimproved and unmapped. While it may be possible to slowly drag/haul it with a rover, the terrain might be impassible to vehicles, so what to do?
Reading some of Rob's excelent fiction contains an excelent idea. The lander is going to have an engine on it, both for some orbital manuvering and for the final stage of it's decent. So why not use it? If fuel is avaliable at the base (and it should be) it might be possible to refuel the lander and FLY it over to the rest of the base camp.
Just some brainstorming, what do you guys think?
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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Solution to landing once entry point has been determined to be correct from aerocapture, is to use steerable parachutes and overhead images from satelites.
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Would it be too much to put wheels on them? Nothing fancy, just something that will allow it to be towed by something.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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No, once the lander is down, that is pretty much it. Its too heavy to tow far, that would require too much energy and the rover/tractor couldn't make any practical speed.
Making a "hop" with the lander from your missed landing site to the desired location would require too much fuel, it takes alot of fuel to get into a high-altitude ballistic trajectory.
Frankly, I think this is one risk that it not worth trying to avoid for two reasons, first off is that there is no easy way to move the HAB and the safety improvement is not worth it, and the second is that if we can't land within a long walk of the desired location then we don't have any business sending humans to Mars yet.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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A choice would be to increase the number of cargo to manned hab landers so as to decrease the likelyhood of this occuring. Yes this does add cost but it does give a little more that may be needed if not for that mission but for the next to build from.
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