Lisias
Space Traveller Wanna-be
More accurate: about 5 years to Jupiter. And you sure don't want to try an accelerated transfer to Jupiter, because a Orbit insertion into a Europa orbit is already costly enough.
My "sources" (aka, pages I found by googling =P ) says somewhat less than 6 years for Jupiter, and about 7 months to Mars.
This value is highly dependant from the date of the departure/arrive, no? Jupiter and Sun will be the closest again by 2022 (right now the distance is about 10% greater), so the [next] launch window for the shortest [low energy] trip would be from next year to 2017...
I found this site where a very nice Solar System Simulator can be found.
---------- Post added at 11:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 AM ----------
It is possible to achieve two years to Jupiter; all that's required is a sufficiently powerful rocket. The SLS capable of launching orbiters directly to the outer planets, and maybe even the Falcon Heavy.
In order to do that, you will need to carry approximately the same amount of fuel you would spend to accelerate the vessel alone (Mass/Energy conservation). So you will need to spend a huge amount of fuel to accelerate your vessel *and also* the fuel needed to de-accelerate it.
And I'm ignoring the fact of the astronauts probably wanting to go back home eventually.
So you will have to spend a really outrageous amount of fuel in order to accelerate your vessel that will be carrying fuel to deaccelerate it while carrying also the fuel to accelerate back home while still carrying the needed fuel to deaccelerate again, or it will overshot Earth.
I misunderstood the discussion. I saw Ripley arguing about Mars being the next place a human is aiming to set foot on, then boogabooga arguing about Mars not necessarily being the next target, and I took from there.
Unmanned missions don't have to go back home - but powered unmanned missions still have to deaccelerate or it will overshot the target.
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