2006-09-14 18:33:26 · 6 answers · asked by nyinyi y 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
satellites earth has been shooting off have been taking 6-7 months to get to the martian system.
a manned trip has been estimated at a 16 month journey (round-trip) but those calculations probably have changed since the last I noticed.
2006-09-14 18:41:20 · answer #1 · answered by sparkloom 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The only benefit of going to Mars would be the adventure itself. Mars is as dead as the moon and a few trips there to bring back some rocks would have no real payback. The moon is just as interesting and you can actually go outside and look at it. The Moon is only 3 days away and could actually have resources that could be of value. Who has seen Mars without a telescope? Mars is so far away that it means a round trip of years instead of days. NASA has been putting out some big talk about going to Mars and are underplaying the difficulty in doing so. It would certainly cost Trillions for a few trips for a couple of hundred pounds of rocks. Because of the difficulty the result would be another Apollo. A few trip and it's OK been there done that. The current state of the art in space travel makes journeys beyond the Moon not feasible in the long term
2006-09-15 00:17:13 · answer #2 · answered by ericbryce2 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It can take anywhere from 6 to 8 months or even more, depending on the trajectory used. As for cost, the Mars Society estimates that a manned mission to Mars would cost about 35 billion USD. Unmanned missions cost in the range of 300 million USD.
2006-09-14 20:41:14 · answer #3 · answered by Joseph Q 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The synod period between Earth and Mars is 780 days. The most economical orbit to reach Mars from Earth is the Hohman orbit, an orbit which is tangent to both orbits. Intuition would say that the period of this orbit would also be 780 days, half that being 390 days.
"A Hohmann transfer orbit will take a spacecraft from low Earth orbit (LEO) to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) in just over five hours (geostationary transfer orbit), from LEO to the Moon in about 5 days and from the Earth to Mars in about 260 days. However, Hohmann transfers are very slow for trips to more distant points, so when visiting the outer planets it is common to use a gravitational slingshot to increase speed in-flight."
2006-09-14 21:04:29 · answer #4 · answered by Helmut 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It would take around 6 months and 13 days keeping in mind the capability of current propulsion technology The total trip could take around 18 months since the astronauts would atleast stay there for 6 months to make the most of the trip since it would be hugely expensive.
Current estimates from Nasa indicates the the Cost may well be in the range of 150 billion dollars (US)
2006-09-14 19:40:29 · answer #5 · answered by Mustafa rOcKs 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
most efficient (minimum energy) orbit is a tangent at both earth and mars orbits, traverses half of the ellipse this defines, and therefore would take about half of the average of year of mars and earth
prox (365 +687) /2 so about 263 days
cost depends on what you are send - costs a lot
2006-09-14 18:48:48 · answer #6 · answered by larry n 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋