Why would you need to avoid landing on Phobos in the first place? You could throw a baseball into orbit from there. And you'd be constanly expending fuel in orbit. It's hard to stay place when you keep reeling rocks up.
I assume this is on the basis that Phobos regolith might be abrasive and disruptive in the way lunar regolith is.On the other hand, it might be preferable to bury the habitat module in the regolith for radiation protection. Radiation versus abrasive dust?
Quote from: Nomadd on 03/09/2012 04:02 pm Why would you need to avoid landing on Phobos in the first place? You could throw a baseball into orbit from there. And you'd be constanly expending fuel in orbit. It's hard to stay place when you keep reeling rocks up. You didn't read the article, did you?This is about staying at Mars-Phobos Lagrange point which would mean you don't need to constantly expend fuel (i.e. it's like the Earth space elevator concept, except without the need for anything exotic like nanotubes and while having a tether four orders of magnitude shorter) except for typical station-keeping purposes. You are held in gravitational balance between Mars and Phobos.If you are anchored to the surface (either with a harpoon-type method or with having 1/4 or your total spacecraft mass resting on the surface of Phobos), you are totally stable and don't even need standard station-keeping (i.e. set it and forget it).Regolith could also be used to anchor the bottom of the tether.