Small Teams From Big Ships

"Planetary exploration in James Blish's Cities In Flight, in the multi-authored Star Trek and in the first three installments of Poul Anderson's Technic History." Discuss.

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.