Originally Posted by
ATSA1
OK, so we send a bunch of Geologists instead of Pilots...but its a long way to Mars...how do we keep them alive, and hopefully sane?
The life support alone, to keep half a dozen people sustained, but doing essentially nothing is hugely wasteful...
They will only be systems operators at best, so why not manage it all from the comfort of Mission Control?
Why go at all? One for the philosophers - Apollo's timescale was driven purely for political reasons.
If we do go then geologists/medics/scientists starting to take precedence over pilots is something that started a long time ago on Apollo 17 when Joe Engle (pilot, had some training in geology) was bumped off the flight after some heavy lobbying in favour of Harrison Schmitt...
Which brings us on to how long it can take to "manage" things, especially dynamic events from Mission Control in real time when the time for a radio signal to get to Mars from Earth is a minimum about 3 minutes, at max over 20 minutes .. IMHO I think they'll keep an aviation professional in crews for a while, on the pretence that they can deal with anything unexpected needing a very prompt input..
Similarly putting your geologist(s) on the spot means you don't have to move your rover around in small steps, pausing for geologists back on Earth to decide whether or not you need to send the thing back to look at that really tasty pebble you drove past ten minutes ago..
Perseverance Rover Map
Moving around on Mars