A Martian Argosy

"Martian Argosy" is a melding of current and classic ideas of how to get the first Mars Expeditions done. It incorporates a version of the inflatable TransHab that has been test flown in the last year for the main crew module of a nuclear thermal spacecraft, and a pretty standard ballistic lander. This is a bit of an "old school" or brute force approach, but its appealing from the point of view of robustness of the vehicles, and maneuverability. Mounting a fleet of three craft cruising together allows the ability to rescue the crew of one of the vehicles in an emergency in transit. Besides, it just looks cool!

Rendered in Lightwave, with the Mars terrain generated from Mars Orbiting Laser Altimetry data converted to grayscale by a LightWave plugin, then used as a displacement Map. I then painted the color map, using Mars maps and photography as reference.