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Space/Science » in reply to A synopsis of why Phobos makes a good platform for exploring Mars

re: A synopsis of why Phobos makes a good platform for exploring Mars
Marsby — (archived)

Interesting, but the abstract ignores the issue of longer exposure to low g one of the great boogeymen standing in the way of missions to Mars and supposed justifcations for going to the Moon first. To prevent a much longer exposure to low g the misison profile would have to include only a short stay. Those types of missions (opposition versus conjunction class)actually increase cosmic ray exposure another boogeyman of Mars missions. Teleoperation doesn't seem like such a big deal if it's short term. I can see this as a precurser mission, but it seems to have a whole lot less relative value to me than Apollo 8 given the risks of such a long mission for so little payback. I need to read what Buzz has to say on the issue to get an idea of why a diehard Mars fan would actually support this.

Phobos would be far better however than our moon as a place to look for impact debris from the mother planet. It would probably be much more like antarctica than looking for meteorites at random elswehere which is what I think looking for Earthly debris on the Moon would be. The alternative though is simply target the type of bedrock you are interested in on Mars.

Regards,
Mark

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