Getting into orbit around mars is ALOT easier than landing on /taking off from the surface.
As someone else mentioned, you are now close enough that real time remote control of robots/probes is much more practical than from earth.
If you are going to hang around/on mars for a few months to a year and a half, you need good shielding from radiation. Land on mars and you’ll need (like) to cover you habitat with tons of sand and rocks. Which on mars will weigh alot. On phobos, that material will weigh virtually nothing.
Phobos will also (likely) be a great source of oxygen, which is the majority of your rocket fuel mass. It might also be a source of hydrogen and/or carbon which is the rest of your rocket mass.
OK, that argument I can see. You wouldn’t even need to dig in: Most of your field of view would be filled by Phobos itself or Mars, if you land on the near side (which you would).
Hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, however, would almost certainly be a lot easier to come by on Mars than on Phobos. There’s plenty of water on the surface of the planet, just waiting to be scooped up, but I can’t imagine there’s any significant amount on either of the moons.
Yes, but you have to land your processesor on mars, fill up a big rocket with fuel, and then use most? of the fuel to get some of the fuel back into orbit.
You also have to use more fuel to get from earth, because you not only take the processor to mars, you have to land it, as well as the fact described above you need to take bigger tanks too.
When it comes to planes and spaceships, these sorta things tend to snowball.
Now, its true that its probably harder get the raw materials out of Phobos (or Deimos), but then again it may not be a big deal considering the above advantages.
I am not saying its a slam dunk choice by any means, but IMO its certainly not anywhere near “why the hell would you want to do that”?
Which I dont like actually. I want boots on the ground so to speak damnit!
No, the near side of Phobos isn’t always in shadow.
Another way to think about it is that on the near side of Phobos, Mars totally eclipses the sun very frequently.
On Earth, the Moon eclipses the sun very rarely and only for very small regions. On the Moon, the Earth eclipses the sun more frequently, and over very large regions.
On Mars, Phobos can’t totally eclipse the sun because Phobos appears smaller than the sun. On Phobos, Mars is much much much larger than the sun and totally eclipses the Sun frequently. How frequently that is, I couldn’t say, but probably every day.
So you get some sun at dawn, then Mars eclipses the sun, then you get some sun at dusk, then it’s night, then start over.
Its true (assuming Phobos is tidally locked?) that if you are on the side that faces mars, you arent going to often get direct sunlight because mars is usually in the way.
However, for about half the orbit, you are going to face the lighted side of mars, which is filling MOST of your visible sky. When the sunlight side of mars is the side you see, its gonna be pretty darn bright. Roughly speaking, its gonna be about half as bright on the surface of phobos as it is at the surface of mars.
It won’t be like high noon, but it wont even be remotely dark either. Think an overcast day on earth.
But they are talking radiation shielding, which isn’t going to be that much of an issue, because the radiation that you have to shield from doesn’t rebound well from the surface of a planet…
OK, Mars has a diameter of 6786 km, and Phobos is 9370 km away from the (center of) the planet. That means that Mars fills about 40 degrees of Phobos’ sky, leaving about 70 degrees of open sky on either side. So it won’t actually provide as much shielding as I had thought. You could get away with a steep-walled open pit, though, rather than a fully-enclosed cave.
It could prove to be a source of valuable minerals. The Chinese-Russian mission will be analyzing the soil. To be economical, I suppose it would have to be made of palladium.
There is also the possibility that it is a derelict death-star.