Michelin Guide to the Solar System

Sarah Lawday, Jérémy Lebreton, Axel Richard, Florence Gris

Illkirch, april 2008

Tutorial.

Let's pretend we have to plan an interplanetary travel. We want to leave Earth on 20th april 2008, and arrive on Jupiter on 31st december 2010. However, we may want to leave a bit sonner or later if it allows us to get a cheaper travel...

So we will have to get a scan of 60 points for departure times between now (which is represented by the time 0.0) and 3 years later (so time 3.0). Ibidem for the arrival, we accept to arrive between year 3 and year 6. We want to know for which dates your travel will cost the least. So we will use a view DeltaV from LPDO, and enter the limits 0 and 40 km/s in the min and max fields, and we shall see which departure time is the most interesting, e.g. needs the lowest velocity change, hence the least amount of fuel. The completed scan should look like this:

We notice some dark blue/purple areas which indicate that every year, there is a launch window with a relatively low initial velocity, and that the travel time will be about three years.

 

The simple trip plots.
The slingshot trip plots.
Simple Tutorial.
Slingshot Tutorial.