Hi guys,
I’m working on hard sci-fi video game concept. The game takes place in XXII century aboard the "Daedalus" Venus Space Station. I try to achieve the hard sci-fi realism in various details about the setting to make space studies more popular among the audience.
Could you help me to find out: How long should it take to get to Venus?
As far as I understand, modern (and close future) spaceships fly along ballistic orbits, thus that question is not about the speed of the spaceship but about Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
I see that as I need to calculate the period of rotation of the spacecraft in an elliptical orbit with aphelion is equal to the radius of Earth's orbit, and the perihelion – Venus’ orbit. Hence, for the spaceship: semi-major axis is equal to 1 A.U.; and semi-minor one is equal to 0,7 A.U.
Hence, according to the Kepler's third law: T²/T² = a³/a³; For Earth T = 1 year, a = 1 A.U.; for Venus a = 0.7 A.U. Thus, T for Venus = 0.6 years = 214 days. However, it is the full orbit period while our spaceship is flying only a quarter way (thither). Hence, flight time is equal T / 4 = 53 days (Earth days).
Am I correct?
Submitted April 06, 2016 at 06:44AM by MrNixonOnReddit http://ift.tt/1SPjNNw
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