Space stuff...

The sky crane was to land the package softly and make sure the landing stage didn't squash it.

I just checked, the aero braking took the velocity down from approx 5,800m/s to 470m/s. Then the parachutes brought it down to 100m/s. Then the sky crane took it the last 1km to the ground.

Like I said.
We're talking about landing, not flying around and around.

Current tech cannot land anything "human size-rated" without rockets.

Which means taking the fuel with you.

And, for your 100t payload, lots of it.

Not happening any time soon.
 
Like I said.
We're talking about landing, not flying around and around.

Current tech cannot land anything "human size-rated" without rockets.

Which means taking the fuel with you.

And, for your 100t payload, lots of it.

Not happening any time soon.
But we’ve landed on the moon decades ago…
 
Now consider the challenge of doing that, but with a 100t payload.
I doubt we're planning on landing 100 tons at a time on Mars any time soon.

100 tons in low earth orbit probably means around 50 to transfer orbit, then maybe 12.5 landed on Mars using Curiosity as an example of around 1/4 mass to vehicle.

A mars ascent vehicle probably starts at 22 tons, so the return vehicle might need two launches from earth to put it together in earth orbit.
 
You best get a job with NASA then, put them straight (y)
That's from their documents.

The Mars entry for curiosity was aerobraked until it could deploy parachutes then used some little rockets to hover whilst it lowered the lander and then fly off to the side a bit. They hit the atmosphere at transfer speeds and no rockets fired until they'd slowed to below the speed of someone doing a skydive.
 
IIRC, over half of what we've tried to land on Mars, we've either smashed into the surface or missed the planet completely.
That because they have all been prevented by aliens.
And that's stuff weighing a tonne or so at most.

You can't land a microwave oven - intact anyway - on Mars with just a parachute.
Much less humans, or a 100t habitation module......
 
That's from their documents.

The Mars entry for curiosity was aerobraked until it could deploy parachutes then used some little rockets to hover whilst it lowered the lander and then fly off to the side a bit. They hit the atmosphere at transfer speeds.

Good.
1 tonne.

Even apollo 11 was 5 tonnes, and they could barely swing a cat in that. And they were only in the lander for a couple of days.

To land and live on mars, it's going to have to be a sight bigger than that.
 
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