Larry said:

>Coming from a military background, I used the acronym C2 for "command
>and control." It has nothing to do with boosters except perhaps in the cruise
>phase to Mars...

The expression "C3" is often used in spacecraft trajectory design. C3 is specific energy and defined as:

0.5 * V * V

Where "V" is velocity.

>If you have 4 MER-type rovers on Mars, you're going to need a more
>personnel to operate them than is currently available. JPL may be
>able to streamline the crew size somewhat but it has to be more
>than they have today. You'll also probably need to upgrade the
>ground computer systems to handle the increased workload.

NASA Ames has (or had) a mission ops center for controlling nterplanetary spacecraft. Pioneer 10, 11 and Pioneer Venus were run from NASA Ames. I believe(?) the mission ops for Lunar Prospector was also run out of NASA Ames. The big radio telescopes at Stanford University and other universities could be contracted to augment the Deep Space Network if the work load became excessive.

Gary