Use orbital mechanics for resupply and transport mission

[mokun]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• Currently, we arbitrarily set 60 days as the time it takes to ferry each resupply mission from Earth to Mars
• We could use

Describe the rationale

• Understanding the orbit mechanics is essential for interplanetary commerce

Describe the goal(s) you have in mind

• Calculate the total mass of a resupply mission (the mass of the payload and the rocket and the fuel).
• Implement basic rocket equations to account for launching and landing a rocket and its payload.

Describe the solution you desire to see

• Use delta-v as one way to describe how much energy it takes to go from one planetary surface to another.
• Consider the type of transfer orbits available to go between Earth, Moon and Mars.

Screenshots

Specifications

• pre 3.7.0 build 8882

Additional context

• May draw idea from Design Idea: Multiplanetary, Value Points (VP), Economic/Governmental Policies, price vs. cost vs. value #179 and Contribution from colonies on Earth's Moon and Mars' two Moons #906.

[mokun]

@Urwumpe

How would you begin implementing our use of Delta-V for the interplanetary transits between destinations in mars-sim ?

[Urwumpe]

I would first of all search for a mature library for such calculations of course. For example: https://www.orekit.org/

Next, I would look for a good use case. For example, we could give Earth and Mars proper elliptic orbits and use this for calculating varying DV and travel times for the minimum energy launch windows.

Or we could use accelerated transfers (outside the minimum energy launch window) for transporting a reduced amount of cargo faster to Mars (or out of transfer window). Finally, we could use it for alternative transfer trajectories, like returning faster from Mars to Earth by using a Venus swing by.

[mokun]

Orekit as a real world tool is quite complex.

The flight between earth and moon will not be time critical, unlike between earth and Mars.

May be we can come up with some basic rocket equations and using orbital mechanics to describe the movement between earth and Moon first.