Bother

[james_davis_nicoll]

We don't know how to safely land a large payload on Mars.

Nicked from the Bad Astronomer

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I can see one issue; scattering. The article discussed how Mars' atmosphere made decent paths somewhat unpredictable. Dropping a large number of small packages means huge dispersion. (Think of parachute drops during World War Two... now scale that up to supersonic speeds of decent.) It could be ruinous to have all that equipment strewn randomly over a drop zone the size of Nebraska.

-- Steve has this horrible mental image of astronauts scattered hither and yon over the Martian landscape, trying to find the bulk containers of breathing mix...

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

There's a good story in that.