That’s true, and I hadn’t thought of that. I can imagine putting a Skylab-type craft into orbit around Mars and running rovers through there, or doing preliminary work on samples before sending stuff back to Earth. I suppose I’m stuck on the words Mars flyby, which I admit your summary didn’t use. It might be the fault of the news service I read rather than in the actual plan. Putting people into orbit around Mars (or on a mini-base on Phobos) would make a lot more sense to me than zinging them on through the system.
The article I read specifically said, “The first proposed mission might just put people in orbit around Mars rather than landing them, much like the earlier Apollo missions which orbited the moon without landing.”
There would be lots to accomplish in orbit. For instance, I can imagine that we’d want to send supplies first in a robotic ship and put that into orbit (or maybe several of them), and then the manned mission would rendevous and dock with them in Mars orbit, and perhaps even assemble a larger space station there out of pieces sent on multiple missions.
If you did that, then at some time in the future at our leisure we could send a lander module.