They were not aiming for a Mars orbit in particular, but thought a burn to depletion would get them there. The full burn propelled them into a deeper orbit than they predicted.
No, the one that Dustin Hoffman came up with when he was autistic. But yeah, I meant Hohmann. You win again spell check.
They also make money from commercial launches, it's not sustaining their business model yet, but helps offset some of the burn.
The return of sneaker net...well sort of...360TB of storage on a crystal disc of 3.75 in. in diameter...sent into space along side Starman. Arch
This leads to the question of quantum entanglement aka spooky action at a distance. In the experiments it seems they use a laser as a sync mechanism but that constrains the speed to that of light. The change is instantaneous and thus the information transfer is faster than light. Imagine if you will a mechanism to maintain the sync of the communication devices without the use of a laser. Imagine a googleplex of photons imparting information across the solar system or beyond in real time. Imagine an independent internet using some sort of block chain and a mesh net. Imagine a set top box linked directly to 10s or 100s of thousands more bringing you free internet. Cell towers, what are those? Comcast et al would be out of business and you would pay content providers directly.
Assuming we don't figure out how to fly at the speed of light anytime soon, what realistically is the fastest we could get to and from Mars?
About 6 months there, given optimal orbits. Big issues are that we have to be going slow enough when we get there to actually fall into an orbit.
Round trips can be done inside a year and a half. For optimal fuel, I think it would entail waiting for the best return window, so like 3.5 years.
If they can flip boosters around and drop back to Earth why is slowing down a problem. I get the gravity ( or anti gravity) issue but couldn't they do the same thing with the BFR before orbit. I'm new to this whole Elon Musk space exploration but after seeing the video I am fascinated with the guy. Watched 4 different you tubes interviews so far.
He's a pretty incredible guy which makes it easy to get pulled in. He has plenty of haters to be sure, but I'm an unabashed Elon sheep.
Because you need fuel and supplies for a return burn, which means more mass and more energy required to slow all that down. It's a tricky balance
From one of the videos I watched he'll already have fuel stations in Mars orbit and will be able to make fuel on Mars. I'll look for the video and post because I might be wrong on what I think I remember.
