So the Mars first club seem to be trying to recreate Apllo and have forgotten the lack of a long term goal doomed us to many years of mediorcarcy after the moon landings.
Well said.
A far better solution would be to set up a base on Phobos.
Well...I'll deal with the parts I disagree with first.
It's well placed to serve as a waystation for ships moving from Earth to Belt without worrying about Mars' gravity well
That's partly true - you still have to spend about 1000m/s (for a high-impulse motor) to escape Mars' gravity from Phobos. Low-thrust electric motors significantly increase delta-V requirements.
Worse, though, you have to stop at Mars for this waystation. New Horizons blew past Jupiter (5AUs!) in one year because it wasn't restricting its velocity to something onboard fuel could stop at Mars or Jupiter. I mean, NASA hardly had time to finish checking out its systems and get New Horizons to pivot and moon Dejah Thoris before it was blitzing toward the Belt.
In other words, if you take the time to get a ship up to useful interplanetary speeds, then you have the problem of stopping it. Stopping and restarting from a waystation doesn't help with fuel and supplies, it exacerbates the problem because you lose kps (perhaps tens of kps, depending on the engine technology) doing so.
The delta-V between Phobos orbit & the Belt is minimal too.
See above. If you're making a fresh start from Phobos, sure. But if you launched from Earth, not so much, and multi-AU interplanetary flight will benefit from every extra KPS.
, close enough to be a useful base for anyone who does want to explore Mars, and both the well and the Martian atmosphere make it much easier to rendevous in Mars orbit, or change your trajectory, for free.
And here's a part I agree with.
Phobos, IMO, is a good destination if you are NOT going to the Belt
and it is confirmed to have water/hydrates. It is, IMO, even better than near-Earth asteroids because, for the most part, travel times aren't much longer. (Near-Earth asteroids aren't hovering near Earth, but rather pass near once or twice a year.) If you're patient, total delta-V to get to Phobos is less than landing on Luna because you don't have large capture and landing burns, let alone takeoffs. It would be quite reasonable for large interplanetary spacecraft to park at the Mars-Sol L1 point and send modest shuttles to Phobos. And, yes, it is a handy place for the big-budget types that want to visit Mars for rocks and flags. Phobos isn't necessarily metal-rich, but it could be a handy start.
Besides, I want a condo about two thirds of the way up Strickney crater. Imagine the view ...
My dream view? Glad you asked. :)
I want to see an orbital tether in Earth orbit. Not a full space elevator, but something several thousand kilometers long. Tidal forces will keep it pointed at Earth, allowing you to suspend a sizable landing pad at the "low" end. Such things can offer several kps assists to spacecraft launching from Earth. And if you knock 1-3kps off orbital velocity requirements, SSTOs (or "Single Stage To Tethers," SSTTs) get vastly easier to build.
Because only the center of mass (a couple thousand kilometers up) is at zero-G, the high and low ends actually feel some noticeable acceleration. The low end, without enough centripetal force to fully cancel gravity, experiences real, if reduced, planetary gravity. The high end has an excess of centripetal force, so it feels an outward "gravity." If the tether offers about a 2.4kps launch assist, the low platform (at 90-150km altitude) will experience about 0.5G.
And I want to be on the low end. I imagine it as a large landing deck, like an aircraft carrier, so aerodyne shuttles can land and roll around conventionally (albeit without air - it's a zero-G docking at the shuttle's apogee). But underneath? Lacking decent artwork, imagine inverted
Disney Contemporary Resorts dangling from under the landing deck. Glass walled, glass floored (for the lucky, ultra-rich folks with the bottom apartments). Maybe several such "stalagtite buildings" under the deck, to maximize the view of the ground below for as many paying customers as possible.
Mars seen from orbit is nice, but there's more variety to Earth seen from about 100km up.
Would it be possible to haul current-tech space station modules to the Belt to set up a mining base? If we could do that, possibly with unmanned ships to deploy the first components, an expedition would be far more feasible. Basically, just move the ISS to the Belt and add a greenhouse and a solar smelter.
It would take a lot of gas to do so (more than can be feasibly launched with existing rockets unless you had an obscene budget), and take very long flight times (a couple of years) with high expenses because of safety problems. If something goes wrong on the ISS on their 3- to 6-month missions, people jump in the docked Soyuz capsules and drop to Earth. If something goes wrong on the ISS half way to the Belt, they die. That requires additional engineering that drives up the costs.
Then there's the problem of what you're getting out of the mining experience: nothing currently technology can extract is worth shipping home. The point of settling the Belt is to settle the Belt, not a turn a profit at home.
