Mars Indirect

I'll take this space to follow up Gurrea-Zubrin. Here is a case for Deimos Direct. Mars can wait. So can Phobos.

Deimos, so Winchell Chung tells us, is a (far) better launchpad for asteroidal missions and even for supplying fuel to depots in high Earth orbit. Some Deimian missions can be on the Aldrin Cycler plan, dumping the main cargo onto Deimos and returning the (enlightened) Starship shell to aforementioned HEO for pickup and investigation. Deimos then does stuff like unrolling a tether and manufacturing the Mars-to-Earth propellant. Or supply lasers.

INTERJECT 6/22: A decent Deimos presence will take work, I concede.

Specifically Deimos clocks in with Gurrea's "Contingency Gamma". The crewed ship doesn't even try Mars, so doesn't care if there's a sandstorm. Mars gets its visitors - whenever. Deimos has its own "Omicron" and "Omega" issues, with Raptor failures or other potential blocks from returning to Earth; broken tech, at least, should be mitigated by multiple supply-runs from Earth.

A Deimos base with dangling tether leaves less propellant for the eventual Martians to make. Also, dropping cargo to Mars is a sight easier from Deimos than from Earth. A pit-stop between Mars and our own HEO does add a point-of-failure, but I think it overall makes life easier for Matt Damon.

Gurrea went Spanish for his expedition right to this new world so, I'd go Português for the Deimos mark: call this mission, the Gonçalo Velho Cabral. (The first cycler will be the Aldrin obviously.) I don't know offhand what Cabral named his caravel.

As to that point-of-failure, Mars-Indirect gets its own Continency Pi: Deimos offline. Say some asteroid damages Deimos or the Deimians go on strike/mutiny. Say China (or actual Portugal, lol) got to Deimos first where they charge toll. In this case, MD3 has already set up enough propellant and has its own Starship, that they can just run right to an Earth transfer, giving to Deimos the proverbial finger.