There's enough time to do a transit or return every 11 months according to this chart. In other words, you could take an empty tank from Mars to Venus and back again in 22 months. Or you could drop off an full one and pick up an empty one. Take the empty one to Venus and refill it. Go back to Mars and repeat as before as many times as you wish.
This would enable you to avoid having to take any fuel at all from Earth's deep gravity well for the return trip. The cost would be to launch and deploy two tanks or at least one. You'd also have to deploy the rocket engine to take it from Mars to Venus and back. It would have to be able to last a long time in order to gain an advantage.
The notion of this excited me because a permanent shuttle service between Earth and Mars could lead to settlement. It would all depend upon a number of things:
- Use of a nuclear rocket for scooping up Venusian atmosphere and processing it into fuel
- Would probably want to use a nuclear rocket for Earth Mars transits as well.
- An actual demand for such a service.
- A reasonable price to get to orbit from Earth, and a way to get back.
- A way to service the rockets in order to keep them running.
A downside is that there may not be any convenient way to access the asteroid belt. The delta-v's may not be the problem. It's the launch windows that are so long. For example, a launch window between Vesta and Ceres could be over a decade long. Another
look at the table says 17 years for heavens sake. It may make more sense to travel from an asteroid to Mars and back in order to exploit it. Say from Mars to Ceres, and Ceres to Mars. From Mars to Vesta and back. It does no good to go from Mars to the asteroid belt and stay in the asteroid belt for some reason.
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