Granted, every design has its drawbacks. If the goal was to study Mars remotely in great detail before ever setting foot there, I would agree that other types of rovers would be useful. However, that is a particularly wasteful agenda in both time and resources. Such detailed study would be of no practical use to us if we are not there to take advantage of it. In the meantime, limited funds and resources would be diverted away from manned exploration of Mars, and manned missions would be delayed unnecessarily, perhaps for decades. Again, there is nothing that Big Al could not find that would be of any significance to the building of the first colonies on Mars. Once the colonists are there and able to make use of the fine details these agile little rovers would discover is the time to send them out exploring. <br /><br /><font color="yellow"> Your 40mph rover will just have very limited applications, the entire mars is not flatlands by far, moon even less so. </font><br /><br />For that very reason, it would not be practical to establish a base where wheeled vehicles could not travel freely. For ordinary utilitarian use around the base and surrounding area, wheeled vehicles would be the standard. Therefore, using wheeled vehicles to scout the area would be reasonable and practical.<br /><br /><font color="yellow"> If you want mapping/surveillance of wide area, flying or orbiting vehicle makes most sense. </font><br /><br />For wide area, yes. Our best orbiting cameras do not seem to be able to get high enough resolution to provide any useful detail. As for flying, do you realize the extreme limitations imposed by the Martian environment? With 6% atmospheric density and .38 gravity, aircraft on Mars would have to have wings which are 6.3 times larger to lift the same mass (which includes the mass of the wings).<br /><br /><font color="yellow"> If you want to explore a mixture of terrains close up, legged vehicle will win. </font><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p style="margin-top:0in;margin-left:0in;margin-right:0in" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="2" color="#ff0000"><strong>Our Solar System must be passing through a Non Sequitur area of space.</strong></font></p> </div>