Adam Hibberd
Some of you may already know all about the eponymous ‘Aldrin Cycler’, otherwise known as the ‘Mars Conveyor Belt’.
This is the wonderful astrodynamical quirk of an interplanetary orbit whereby a travelling spacecraft leaves Earth for Mars, encounters the red planet, returns back to Earth, conducts an Earth gravity assist (which in the perfect scenario of coplanar concentric circular orbits for both Earth and Mars would require no propulsion ΔV at either planets), then returns to Mars, and so on indefinitely.
The problem of rendezvousing with Earth or Mars is a separate concern, though could probably be achieved through shuttle carriers. These shuttles would be capable of lifting off from Mars with a payload and then proceeding to rendezvous with the Mars Conveyor Belt craft to drop off its payload.
Having achieved this rendezvous with the mothercraft, the shuttle could stay with it until the next encounter -in this case Earth – where it could be deployed a second time, though in reverse, i.e. entering Earth’s atmosphere and dropping off the payload at our home planet.
Why is all this relevant? It’s because a while ago I set-up my interplanetary trajectory software (OITS) – OITS being a personal astronautical software engineering project of my own – to test how effective it would be at solving the problem of a Mars Conveyor Belt.
For the results go to my youtube channel below:
Similarly the two-way solution can be found below:
What sort of delta-vee do the Cyclers need?
I plan on finding out one day, using OITS.
I intend to research this with OITS, though have other priorities, so you’ll have to wait for an answer.