3 ms·
This is a latency vs. throughput / pipeline problem in disguise. You could send a food truck's worth of food every hour towards Mars; the first few months will
by rzzzt 4y ago
This is a latency vs. throughput / pipeline problem in disguise. You could send a food truck's worth of food every hour towards Mars; the first few months will be peaceful and quiet, but things change when a food truck appears in orbit every hour or so.
- Retric 4y agoThat only helps if they need lunch not some specific part or medicine etc. Also, Earth Mars transfers get dramatically more expensive outside of specific timing and of course actually sending multiple packages gets ruinously expensive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit
- rzzzt 4y agoIncreasing the number of vehicles in the fleet lets one consider alternative transfers, like the bi-elliptic one mentioned in the article. ...though it might make matters a bit difficult that expected durations vary between 300-ish days and 4 years when I run the numbers in NASA's Trajectory Browser: https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/ https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/