Appendix 2: Mission Delta V and Flight Times

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  Tales of Outer Space ed. Donald A. Wollheim, Ace D-73, 1954. Artwork by Lawrence

This is a table of mission parameters calculated by Jon C. Rogers for the book Spaceship Handbook. It lists round-trip missions starting at Terra's surface, traveling to and landing on the destination planet (or at low orbit for Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; due to the fact that the atmospheric pressure of these planets will crush your spacecraft like a cheap beer can) then lifting off, traveling back to and landing on Terra.

Six trajectories are listed, three impulse types and three constant acceleration brachistochrone types. "Impulse" means the spacecraft makes an initial burn then coasts for months.

Impulse trajectory I-1 is pretty close to a Hohmann minimum delta V / maximum time orbit, but with a slightly higher delta V. Impulse trajectory I-3 is near the transition between delta V levels for high impulse trajectories and low brachistochrone trajectories (it is a hyperbolic solar escape orbit plus 30 km/s). Impulse trajectory I-2 is in-between I-1 and I-3 (it is equivalent to an elliptical orbit from Mercury to Pluto).

Brachistochrone trajectories are labeled by their level of constant acceleration: 0.01 g, 0.10 g, and 1.0 g.

These values were calculated with a complicated mathematical model, and take more factors into account than the few I've covered.

I've only listed some of the planets. For the full table refer to the book.

Mr. Rogers had this to say about his table:

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  Expedition to Earth by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 1953

Below are a series of tables for Hohmann transfer delta V requirments. Unlike the above table, they are for one-way trips to various destinations. For instance, the above table will give requirements for a Terra-Mars-Terra mission, but the tables below will give requirements for a Terra-Mars mission.

The tables assume that an orbit for each of the bodies is 100 km altitude (even for pointlessly tiny ones like Phobos and Deimos), and for surface launches it is presumed that all the bodies have no atmosphere (not true for, say, Titan).

The tables were created by Erik Max Francis' amazing Hohmann orbit calculator and the easy to use Python programming language (sample program here and here).