Word: hohmann
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...orbit. There, skilled workers have been assembling the ship that will take the first humans to Mars. After more than a year of construction, the million- pound, ungainly looking spacecraft is ready. With a crew of eight, it separates from the space station and heads for Mars, following the Hohmann ellipse, a space trajectory that may one day be as familiar as a great-circle route over the North Atlantic...
FOOTNOTE: *The Hohmann ellipse is an ideal trajectory requiring a minimum of energy for a journey between any two planets, named after the German engineer who calculated...
...long the voyagers stay on Mars will depend in part on the homeward-bound route. To await the proper alignment of Mars and the earth for an economical Hohmann-ellipse return, the crew would have to remain on Mars for more than a year -- increasing the mission length to what now seems an unbearably long 1,100 days. But with the expenditure of more fuel, the explorers could blast off earlier, head toward Venus and loop around it, using the planet's gravity to whip their craft toward earth at a higher speed. That would cut the mission time...
...Nick Hohmann...