Mars Cyclers

A potential 10x cost improvement on the standard Starship, and a path to safer and more comfortable interplanetary travel.

In a recent talk with Warren Redlich, I made mention of Mars Cyclers. A cycler is an orbit that travels between Earth and Mars, and each time it encounters one of these planets uses a gravity assist to realign itself. Cyclers can have periods any whole number of synodic cycles, but the one that has a period of a single synodic cycle was first suggested by Buzz Aldrin and thus is referred to as an Aldrin Cycler. The word “cycler” can refer both to the orbit such a station is on, and to the station itself. The recent Netflix film Stowaway features a cycler being used to travel to Mars - but that fictional cycler is much smaller than one that would be used in real life. To get the benefit of a cycler, you have to make it big, as I will explain below.

Cyclers offer a way to vastly improve on the cost and safety of travelling to Mars with Starship, but are only likely to be available to do this once Starship has established a regular route to and from Mars.

Below is a rough diagram of the or…