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Mars Mission

A mission to Mars might use the following strategy:

Mine ice on the moon.

Launch the ice from the moon into space.

Use solar energy to convert ice into hydrogen and oxygen and then liquify it. This is now rocket fuel.

Use this fuel to send supplies to Mars. The supplies will go to Mars with a slow trajectory and the astronauts will go later using a faster trajectory. Using the Oberth effect, it's possible to move a heavy spacecraft to Mars using two light nudges from the rockets, but the travel time is long.

Launch a rocket from the Earth and place it in an Oberth-style elliptical orbit. Fuel the rocket with ice from the moon. This is the rocket that will go to Mars.

Launch the astronauts from Earth and place them on board the Mars rocket.

When the fully-fueled Mars rocket is at perigee, fire the rocket so that it escapes the Earth and heads for Mars. This is the "Oberth maneuver".

Upon arriving at Mars, use an inverse Oberth maneuver to place the rocket into an elliptical orbit around Mars.

The spacecraft must now fire its rockets again to go from an elliptical orbit to a circular low-Mars orbit. It can use fuel that was sent ahead of time from the Earth for this maneuver.

Once the spacecraft is in low-Mars orbit, the astronauts can drop to the surface of Mars using the atmosphere for breaking.

On Mars, ice is used to fuel the rocket that will lift the astronauts into low-Mars orbit.

Once exploration is complete, the astronauts return to the spacecraft.

Using fuel sent ahead of time from the Earth, the spacecraft goes from a low-Mars orbit to an elliptical orbit.

The spacecraft refuels again and uses an Oberth maneuver to depart Mars. Upon reaching Earth, an inverse Oberth maneuver is used to place the spacecraft in an Earth elliptical orbit.

With this mission plan, the manned rocket uses fuel only during the Oberth and inverse Oberth maneuvers. This minimizes the travel time.


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