Elon Musk is still locking down x-Twitter; luckily, nitter.net seems to be bypassing that lock (back to midJuly). Now I can read Nyrath again a team of six proposes, instead of a manned Mars mission, an asteroid mission. The brief is in Powerpoint form (pdf). Brent W. Barbee is the primary author; the most-famous on the list is probably Rob "Lando" Landis.
The team figures that a NEA mission would take ~150 days = five months and be more-abortable than a Deimos mission, and wouldn't have to land and launch from a whole planet. Also the asteroids are better targets for space industry... like, perhaps, making room-temperature low-pressure (or no-pressure) superconductors. (I refuse to comment further until the weekend. OR EVER 8/14: Eff off, science-twitter.)
They want chemical rockets, LOx and methane, for ISP and thrust. They'd use the Starship to get up there. With a five month stint in space they hope not to care about gravity and shielding.
For my part I wouldn't do it, unless it's to shuttle miners to an asteroid as is itself prepped for human settlement... by spinning and hollowing out an interior. So I'd aim at a C-class as stands to own some ices.
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