SpaceBanter.com - View Single Post

**Marvin the Martian** · August 22nd 09, 07:05 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:33:45 -0400, Jonathan wrote:

"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
news:49cafe7c-dba7-4f75-90d0-
...
On Aug 17, 10:17 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
And why it's so hard to get
thehttp://thespacereview.com/article/1448/1

Pat

Lemme see, Mars at 36 million miles at its closest and the moon at 250K
miles on average, that is 36 x 4 = 144 times as far. It takes 8 days
to do a lunar mission. So, if we equate the distance to mission time,
linearly, we have a Mars mission taking 1152 days, 3 years and almost 2
months. The Mars synodic period is 780 days, or 2 years and 50 days. So
clearly we have to speed something up if we want to get the astronauts
back ASAP. And we also want to have some appreciably amount to time on
mars as well given a more than 2 years commitment to the actual mission
from launch to landing.

Eric

I thought Bolden said "Mars in 39 hours"! Or days, or whatever. What
pipe-dream was he smoking?

That was the ion engine claim.