The pieces in place

October 26th, 1963; Baikonur Kosmodrone.

“Welcome to the brief update on the Kerbinian Mars program, everyone”, Gene began his brief press briefing.

“As some may know, around 1½ month ago – September 14th to be exact – we had the first of our many payloads launched last window arrive at Mars. More precisely, the first two payloads to arrive were the regular supply pods followed shortly by the reserve fuel pod and the Mars Station 1 main section and laboratory module”.

“The arrivals were very close and our mission planners did a superb job of having all payloads arrive at Mars within just an 11 day window, and we could mark all payloads successfully captured into a highly elliptical Mars orbit just after lunchtime on September 25th”.

“After this, we did spend another month ensuring that the main section of Mars Station 1 was placed into a correctly inclined equatorial orbit at roughly 1800-by-1800 km altitude – and that all other payloads were placed in parking orbits with matching inclination and intersecting the orbit of the main section of Mars Station 1, so they are all ready for final rendezvous and docking when the first crews are on site”.

“We are still debating whether we should keep the station in a strictly non-elliptical orbit or if we should make it slightly elliptical to pass lower above Mars – for science of course”.

“The orbital inclination is fully equatorial in order to better align with our existing nearly areostationary communications network around Mars, as well as streamline future surface missions by keeping the waypoint station in a fixed orbit relative to the surface”.

“It does provide some challenges for the transits, but these are not bigger than what normally occurs during our Mars launches, and the most challenging aspect will be that exploration of the Martian moons will take a bit more fuel to accomplish – if not planned diligently”.

“That is all for today ladies and gentlemen, please direct any inquiries to the Mars office of the KSA, thank you”.