From Russell Robles-Thome
In Stuart Clark’s article on the possibility of sending exploratory missions to Mars’s moon, Phobos, Scott Maxwell suggests that he would be happy to go to Mars and that NASA need not worry about bringing him back (30 January, p 28). We need not consider such a suggestion to be suicide exploration. The pertinent question is whether it is easier and cheaper to send a mission equipped to survive many years on the planet, than to equip it with the ability to return home.
After all, 10 years down the line, we ought to be able to bring someone back more cheaply than we can today.
Edinburgh, UK
