Pigs in space

Teslarati lays it out: the first visitors to Mars will be using the Starship lander as a habitat (pdf). Before they even get there, Elon is to send many loads of cargo.

The Starship itself isn't, er, quite done yet; although the hard part seems mostly complete over this very year. Teslarati cites massive, ceramic, non-ablative heat shield technology (and a robot-built propellant-factory). I expect that shield is for landing . . . meaning, back here on Earth. The rockets won't need it for the Moon and I am unsure about Mars. However. The Martians (and loonies) need that tech if they're ever to stand on a 9.8 m/s² surface again which - yeah, the voters will want that.

As to the trainschedule the assumption thus far is that nonhuman cargo can take the literal long (Hohmann: 259 days porkchops willing) way around. Humans would rather arrive sooner but with this much mass all at once, NERVA (let alone neutron-directed fusion) won't be ready by the middle 2020s. Even if we could trim off a few weeks, the journey will still take that many weeks more.

Such "Starships" as land from space to Earth-surface can be habitats also from Earth-space to Mars-space. Artificial gravity at a reasonably Venerean 8.5 m/s² can be provided by spinning them around a central axle, at a reasonable distance to minimise Coriolis.

I recommend that one unmanned "Mars" mission, if it doesn't have to land, actually be a pigged mission: send literal guinea-pigs on an Earth-Mars-Earth trajectory. This vessel then returns to Earth, hopefully with live and healthy rodents at the end of it.

It is flyby (so doesn't care about vinf at Mars) and also isn't going BACK to Mars (so doesn't care about the turn-angle down here). As free-return it isn't Hohmann.

Ideal would be the selfsame 1L1 / 1-0-1-6 cycler which Aldrin plotted out. 146 days to Mars; with the foreknowledge that it's a much longer trip past Mars to aphelion and back. Elon doesn't like it for humans. But if just for rodents Elon would get his ship back, and maybe his rodents back too. Our squeakies will have to take that hit on vinf to reïnject to Earth's orbit: 6.54 km/s. (PS. I have small hopes for Martin Shoemaker's shipbuilding. We humans were better taking the McConaghy.) Anything's better than Robert Zubrin's $2.15 billion cuckshed.

Docking with an Earth-orbit space-station might be enough for this mission's purpose. Does it even need to be a full semipermanent station or just another Starship? Either way the Starship which tests this longterm flight need not be the same physical Starship that lands back on Earth.