Chris,

I emailed you directly about your purchase of Leaving Earth. Please respond to me directly by email.

Thanks, Bob – I’ll check that out. I didn”t mean to dismiss the idea entirely, I was just wondering if it would be of much value on its own – as I said, if it’s part of a plan to go ahead & eventually land humans on Mars, I could see the value of a flyby first…

Blair and Chris,

Both of you should really read Leaving Earth. The amount of knowledge we would gain from a fly-by is practically immeasurable, none of which could be gained by robotic missions. And I’m not talking about knowledge about Mars but about the engineering and medical information needed to build and fly humans to another world.

It is this lack of knowledge that makes me doubt their fly-date of 2018. Much of this research has to first go on in Earth orbit, in an orbiting prototype interplanetary spaceship falsely called a “space station.” Such research takes time, as to find out if you can survive for two years in space you have to live two years in space.

Good point – what could we learn from a manned Mars flyby that we don’t already know from all the various robotic landers & orbiters? When Apollo 8 did its circumlunar flight to the Moon, it showed we could get there & back, and safely, and Apollo 10 demonstrated the Lunar Lander’s capabilities, but these were steps in the ultimate goal of a manned landing. It would be interesting to do, and probably fascinating for the astronauts onboard to view Mars from only 100 mi, but otherwise, what would be the point, unless there was a “next step”? I guess if it could be demonstrated that a human crew could survive the time frame of a round trip, that would be something positive, and maybe provide valuable data for a future manned Mars landing. But it sounds like this is more of a one-off stunt.