In Cities In Flight, cities from Earth fly between stars faster than light and land on planets.
In Star Trek, the Enterprise orbits a planet while a small team led by the captain, who should remain on the bridge, "transports" (teleports) to the planetary surface although, on two missions, a shuttlecraft is used and the captain is not involved.
In Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game," a large light sail ship orbits Saturn while a team of four lands on Iapetus in a small spacecraft.
In Anderson's "Wings of Victory," the Olga orbits Ythri while three land in a boat.
In Anderson's "The Problem of Pain," a spaceship that cannot be spared to linger in orbit sets about a hundred explorers onto the largest continent of Gray/Avalon where they establish a base, then disperse across the planet. A group of four Ythrians and two human beings among others in a camp on the southern shore does not have access to the camp's single aircraft but instead travels by boat to explore a floating island of atlantis weed. High solar energy and rapid planetary rotation raise an unpredicted violent hurricane. Read on: "The Problem of Pain," pp. 34-46.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly! For reasons having to do with maintaining continuity of command and discipline, captains are not supposed to risk themselves without need in the preliminary exploration of new planets.
I assume those 100 explorers, scientists, technicians, etc., had a few FTL messenger torps to send off in case of need, if a really dire emergency came along.
Ad astra! Sean
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