March in 90 days with the starship: a possible feat by optimizing the trajectories

In an article made public recently, the American physicist Jack Kingdon returned to the thorny problem of the duration of the inhabited journey to Mars and proposed a method to shorten it from 180 to 90 days. Its solution does not require the development of a nuclear motor vessel, but the implementation of complex logistics.

You have to be in mind that the planets of Mars and Terre are separated on average of approximately 200 million kilometers. With the means currently used for sending orbiters (Mars Hope, Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter …) and Rovers (Perseverance, Curiosity, etc.), six months of transport are necessary. Likewise, a inhabited mission should remain at least a year there so that Mars and the Earth is again close to space and start the return.

Las, such a trip would expose the crew at levels of radiation higher than what is generally accepted by NASA, around 1 SIEVERT (1000 msv) when the career limit is set at 600 mSv. The risk is therefore great to develop cancers, to undergo serious psychological damage, etc. It is one of the puzzles of such a trip. Reducing spatial transportation, where astronauts would be the most exposed to these radiation, is therefore a track explored for a long time.

The Lambert problem gives much faster solutions

Jack Kingdon, author of the study published in Natureshare of the so -called resolution method of Lambertdiscovered around 1760, and which is interested in the duration of a journey in the field of sunshine. His work has interested NASA which would be evaluating its feasibility.

This optimization of trajectories would imply fuel consumption much greater than for ordinary trajectories. So if there is no question here of nuclear engines To reach the red planet, a small technological leap is made as a condition, that here is:

• Using six starships, the giant SpaceX rocket still at the prototype stadium. Four would be used as cargo and two to transport the crew.
• 15 flight supplies would be necessary for the two inhabited vessels.

The four Cargos Starships would not need to be fast and follow the more classic and less energy -consuming trajectories. Thus, only four supplies would be necessary for each of them.

Once the 90 -day journey has been made, the starship should slow down before landing on Mars. For this, they would use the so -called “hyperbolic aerocapture” technique, the objective being to be as slowed as possible by the atmosphere, without having to burn ergols.

Imagine that the technique of fuel supply (refueling orbital) Either to the point, as Elon Musk hope, SpaceX and NASA which table on the Artemis program back on the Moon, how would astronauts come back from March?

The big affair would then consist of finding thousands of tonnes of fuel on the red planet, ie oxygen and methane. However in the current state, it is difficult to see how to extract such quantities of the Martian resources available. That said, many think-and Elon Musk had recognized him himself-that the pioneers of the Martian conquest will die there …

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