> Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting perspective. It doesn't take 9 months to go to Mars. It's true that the idealized Hohmann traje

> Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting perspective. It doesn't take 9 months to go to Mars. It's true that the idealized Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes ~8.6 months, but reality is both a lot more messy and more amenable to optimization. Just to take this year's launch window as an example: The absolute lowest launch Δv trajectory is about 390 days, at 3.73km/s. This is obviously unworkable. However, if you limit yourself to the lower, faster half of the porkchop plot, you'll find that the lowest Δv trajectory is ~200 days, at 4.3km/s. If you are willing to spend 5km/s, you can bring the trip time down to ~150 days. And if you have a fully retanked starship in orbit (assumptions: 250t mass at burnout including payload and landing fuel, 1200t tanks, 365s average Isp. These are very conservative, and will probably all be improved upon before any trip to mars is realistic.), which nets you 5615m/s, you can push that down to 130 days.