I am about to launch a fast manned mission to mars and am still coming up short of fuel in my calculations. I want to do a fairly straight trip using about 10km/s dv. This will be from lunar orbit so it will be pretty fast. I am leaving around December 11 this year so the planets are reasonably close.
This page: http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/StarFAQ10.htm#q169 says on a non-hohmann trip to Mars from Earth the spacecraft will need to cancel 30km/s speed on arrival. When I launched an unmanned probe at about 7km/s dv from lunar orbit I found that to be seemingly true before I even read the article.
There are a couple of questions raised then. Is there any way to avoid having to slow down by 30km/s? Why is the 30km/s speed present at all when the average orbital speed difference between the two planets is less than 6km/s?
I want to clarify that with transx I can approach Mars very close at these speeds, but I am just moving way too fast. Aerobraking I have thought of but that is a last resort.
This topic is very confusing and is one of my last problems before I cast off. Thanks for any help.
I might add that the nature of the topic of this forum is such that each post must be well though out before posting. The 3 minute log out or whatever it is has surely left many people thinking they have lost a long winded post so that default needs to be changed.
This page: http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/StarFAQ10.htm#q169 says on a non-hohmann trip to Mars from Earth the spacecraft will need to cancel 30km/s speed on arrival. When I launched an unmanned probe at about 7km/s dv from lunar orbit I found that to be seemingly true before I even read the article.
There are a couple of questions raised then. Is there any way to avoid having to slow down by 30km/s? Why is the 30km/s speed present at all when the average orbital speed difference between the two planets is less than 6km/s?
I want to clarify that with transx I can approach Mars very close at these speeds, but I am just moving way too fast. Aerobraking I have thought of but that is a last resort.
This topic is very confusing and is one of my last problems before I cast off. Thanks for any help.
I might add that the nature of the topic of this forum is such that each post must be well though out before posting. The 3 minute log out or whatever it is has surely left many people thinking they have lost a long winded post so that default needs to be changed.