Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: I want you to imagine, just for a second, that
Speaker 2: you are packing for a road trip. Okay, but like
Speaker 2: if you're listening to this on your commute right now,
Speaker 2: think about this not as a quick weekend getaway. Think
Speaker 2: about it as a three year, completely unbroken journey. Right
Speaker 2: A long haul, a really long haul. And here's the catch.
Speaker 2: You cannot stop for gas, no pit stops, none, You
Speaker 2: cannot pull over for a snack. There are no convenience stores,
Speaker 2: no rest stops, no hospitals anywhere, and absolutely no breathable
Speaker 2: air outside of your vehicle.
Speaker 3: Which is a pretty big detail to deal with.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you have to bring every single ounce of water
Speaker 2: you will ever drink, every crumb of food you will
Speaker 2: ever eat, and literally every breath of oxygen you will
Speaker 2: need for those entire three years and all of that
Speaker 2: has to be packed into a pressurized space roughly the
Speaker 2: size of well a standard RV.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, and outside that RV, the universe is constantly actively
Speaker 2: trying to kill you with high energy radiation.
Speaker 3: It is a terrifying, I mean almost paralyzing logistical nightmare
Speaker 3: when you frame it.
Speaker 2: Exactly like it really is.
Speaker 3: But that is the unvarnished reality of getting human beings
Speaker 3: to Mars. We're talking about operating in an environment that
Speaker 3: is actively and inherently hostile to biology.
Speaker 2: Hostile is almost an understatement, right.
Speaker 3: The sheer volume of mass required just to keep primate
Speaker 3: biology functioning, and I mean forget thriving and just been surviving,
Speaker 3: keeping a pulse exactly, just surviving for that duration is staggering.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this because that timeline, that multi year
Speaker 2: just ruling odyssey has always been the ultimate bottleneck for
Speaker 2: planetary exploration. Oh. Absolutely, everything comes down to time. But
Speaker 2: we are looking at a monumental breakthrough in orbital mechanics today,
Speaker 2: something that really emerged back in April twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: right from marcelod Oliver SUSA, Yes, spearheaded by his research
Speaker 2: at the State University of northern Rio du Janiro. We
Speaker 2: are talking about a newly discovered interplanetary shortcut, a fast lane,
Speaker 2: a literal fast lane through the Solar System that could
Speaker 2: slash the travel time to Mars from this you know,
Speaker 2: multi year endurance test into a manageable, highly efficient expedition.
Speaker 3: And what's fascinating here is that this isn't some theoretical
Speaker 3: Alcubier warp drive or you know, some speculative science fiction
Speaker 3: concept relying on exotic matter.
Speaker 2: Right, We're not talking about star trek.
Speaker 3: No. No, this is a profound reimagining of the Solar
Speaker 3: System's orbital dynamics, grounded entirely in the Newtonian physics we
Speaker 3: already know. The physics we already use is already there.
Speaker 3: It is. It's about utilizing the gravitational architecture that is
Speaker 3: already out there in a completely novel way, basically to
Speaker 3: solve a problem we've essentially been throwing brute engineering force
Speaker 3: at for the last half century.
Speaker 2: And by the end of this conversation you are going
Speaker 2: to understand exactly how a seemingly random, completely unassuming near
Speaker 2: Earth asteroid holds the mathematical key to humanity's future as
Speaker 2: a multiplanetary species.
Speaker 3: It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: It is a wild ride. But before we get to
Speaker 2: the shortcut, we really need to understand the traffic jam
Speaker 2: right the baseline. Yeah, we need to talk about what
Speaker 2: I like to call the tyranny of the commute, Because
Speaker 2: if you're someone who follows aerospace, you hear about a
Speaker 2: trip to Mars taking two to three years, and you
Speaker 2: might wonder, well, if we can send a probe to
Speaker 2: the Moon in three days, why is Mars taking years?
Speaker 3: That's the big question. To understand the delay, we really
Speaker 3: have to look at the foundational math of spaceflight.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: For decades, space agencies have relied entirely on something called
Speaker 3: Homan transfer orbits right, formulated way back in nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: five by Walter Holman, and it has remained the undisputed
Speaker 3: gold standard for interplanetary travel, primarily because it is the
Speaker 3: absolute most fuel efficient way to move mass from one
Speaker 3: orbit to another.
Speaker 2: But efficient does not mean fast, not at all. Those
Speaker 2: two things are usually like diametrically opposed in physics.
Speaker 3: Quite the opposite of fast. Actually, a Homan transfer is
Speaker 3: essentially a long, slow half Ellips trajectory.
Speaker 2: Okay, paint picture for us well.
Speaker 3: You have to remember planets are not sitting still in
Speaker 3: a vacuum. They are hurtling around the Sun at tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of miles an hour. Earth is moving it
Speaker 3: about thirty kilometers per second. Mars is moving it about
Speaker 3: twenty four kilometers per second on a wider track. You
Speaker 3: can't just point your rocket at Mars and fire the
Speaker 3: engines in a straight line.
Speaker 2: Right, because if you try to drive straight across a
Speaker 2: spinning merry go round the centrifugal force and like the
Speaker 2: angular momentum, completely throw you off your path exactly. You're
Speaker 2: fighting the fundamental rotation of the entire system.
Speaker 3: That is an excellent way to visualize. Instead of driving
Speaker 3: straight across the merry, ground a home and transfer as
Speaker 3: you apply a precise burst of thrust in the exact
Speaker 3: direction Earth is already moving.
Speaker 2: So you're writing the momentum you already have precisely.
Speaker 3: You add just enough energy to stretch your orbit out
Speaker 3: into an ellipse, and then your spacecraft just coasts unpowered
Speaker 3: for millions of miles, drifting, trading kinetic energy for potential
Speaker 3: energy as it sort of climbs out of the Sun's gravity. Well, okay,
Speaker 3: and if you calculate the orbital speeds and planetary positions perfectly.
Speaker 3: Your spacecraft reaches the outermost edge of that ellipse at
Speaker 3: the exact moment Mars happens to be rolling through that
Speaker 3: specific point in space.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you are coasting, and because you are relying
Speaker 2: almost entirely on that single initial push and then just
Speaker 2: letting the Sun's gravity dictate your speed the rest of
Speaker 2: the way, it is agonizingly slow, very slow. We are
Speaker 2: talking about a one way trip taking anywhere from six
Speaker 2: to nine months, depending on the specific planetary alignment. Right,
Speaker 2: but wait, hold on, If it's six to nine month there,
Speaker 2: that still doesn't add up to the three year road
Speaker 2: trip I mentioned at the beginning.
Speaker 3: No it doesn't.
Speaker 2: I mean even if you turn around and come right back,
Speaker 2: that's only a year and a half. Where does the
Speaker 2: rest of the time come from.
Speaker 3: This is the crucial detail regarding sonotic periods that often
Speaker 3: gets completely glossed over in pop science. Oh really Yeah,
Speaker 3: when you arrive at Mars after that nine month journey,
Speaker 3: you cannot just turn the ship around, fire the engines,
Speaker 3: and coast back down to.
Speaker 2: Earth because Earth isn't there anymore.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Earth is on a tighter, faster inner track. By
Speaker 3: the time you reach Mars, Earth has basically lapped you.
Speaker 3: It is continued along its orbit and is practically on
Speaker 3: the other side of the Sun. So the geometry for
Speaker 3: a return home and transfer simply does not exist at
Speaker 3: that moment.
Speaker 2: So you're just stuck.
Speaker 3: You're fundamentally stuck. You have to wait on the Martian's
Speaker 3: surface or in Mars orbit for the two planets to
Speaker 3: realign favorably so you can initiate return sequence.
Speaker 2: And how long is that wait?
Speaker 3: That waiting period the surface day time is typically about
Speaker 3: five hundred days five hundred days a year and a half.
Speaker 3: You spend a year and a half sitting on a freezing,
Speaker 3: irradiated desert just waiting for the planetary geometry to grant
Speaker 3: you permission to come home.
Speaker 2: That's insane.
Speaker 3: And then you have another six to nine months of
Speaker 3: travel back to Earth. Add it all up and you
Speaker 3: are locked into a twenty four to thirty six month
Speaker 3: minimum round trip.
Speaker 2: I am struggling to see how anyone thought this was
Speaker 2: a viable plan for a human crew.
Speaker 3: It's definitely challenging.
Speaker 2: It's like taking a cross country bus that only travels
Speaker 2: at fifteen miles an hour just to save gas. And
Speaker 2: then when you finally get to Los Angeles, the bus
Speaker 2: company tells you the return highway doesn't open for a
Speaker 2: year and a half.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty fair analogy.
Speaker 2: Actually, if the toll on the human body is this extreme,
Speaker 2: how is a crude mission even justifiable under this old paradigm.
Speaker 3: Well, that has been the central agonizing debate in bioastronautics
Speaker 3: for thirty years. The physical and mental toll of a
Speaker 3: three year mission is not just immense, it borders on prohibitive.
Speaker 2: Let's break down the biology.
Speaker 3: Okay, first, you have the radiation environment. Space beyond low
Speaker 3: Earth orbit is completely saturated with galactic cosmic rays or GCRs.
Speaker 2: GCRs.
Speaker 3: Right, these are heavy, high energy atomic nuclei. They've been
Speaker 3: stripped to their electrons, and they're blasting through space at
Speaker 3: near light speed from distant supernovae.
Speaker 2: And we aren't just talking about like a slightly higher
Speaker 2: risk of getting a sunburn or needing to wear lead
Speaker 2: vests at the dentist. No, No, we are talking about heavy
Speaker 2: ions physically tearing through the hull of the spacecraft and
Speaker 2: shattering the double helix of the astronauts' DNA.
Speaker 3: It is severe cellular damage. When a heavy ion strikes
Speaker 3: the human body, it causes complex DNA double s FRAN.
Speaker 2: Breaks which our bodies can't fix.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, our cellular machinery simply cannot repair them accurately,
Speaker 3: which leads to drastically increased cancer risks and central nervous
Speaker 3: system degradation.
Speaker 2: That is brutal.
Speaker 3: And that is just the ambient background radiation. Oh, yes,
Speaker 3: you also have solar particle events. These are sudden, violent
Speaker 3: flares from our own sun that can deliver lethal doses
Speaker 3: of proton radiation in a matter of hours, lethal in
Speaker 3: hours if the crew doesn't retreat to a heavily shielded
Speaker 3: storm shelter.
Speaker 2: Yes, and shielding against GCRs is notoriously difficult, right because
Speaker 2: I read that if you just slap thick metal plates
Speaker 2: on the ship, the heavy ions hit the metal and
Speaker 2: shatter into secondary radiation. Yes, which is sometimes worse than
Speaker 2: the primary ray. It's called spilation.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, spellation. Secondary radiation scattering is an absolute
Speaker 3: nightmare for shielding designers.
Speaker 2: I can imagine.
Speaker 3: So radiation is your first massive hurdle. Then there is
Speaker 3: the microgravity environment itself, because.
Speaker 2: Floating around isn't as fun as it looks on TV.
Speaker 3: Right. Even with aggressive, two hour a day resistive exercise regimens,
Speaker 3: astronauts experience severe physiological deconditioning. Yeah, your body is incredibly adaptive.
Speaker 3: Without the constant one g stress of earth gravity pulling
Speaker 3: you down, your body assumes it no longer needs a heavy,
Speaker 3: dense skeleton, which just gets rid of it exactly. Osteoclass
Speaker 3: cells start breaking down your bone tissue faster than osceoblasts
Speaker 3: can rebuild it.
Speaker 2: You literally pee out your own skeleton.
Speaker 3: That is the colloquial but highly accurate reality. Wow. Furthermore,
Speaker 3: your heart, which is a powerful muscle designed to pump
Speaker 3: blood vertically against gravity, suddenly doesn't have to work as hard,
Speaker 3: so it begins to weaken and lose mass.
Speaker 2: Okay, so weak bones, weak heart.
Speaker 3: And fluids shift upwards into the upper body and head.
Speaker 3: This leads to a condition called spaceflight associated neuro ocular
Speaker 3: syndrome or sands.
Speaker 2: Sands What does that do?
Speaker 3: The elevated pressure of cerebrospinal fluid in the skull actually
Speaker 3: flattens the back of the eyeball and swells the optic
Speaker 3: nerve a. It physically degrades the astroant's vision, which is terrifying.
Speaker 2: I mean, imagine arriving at Mars after nine months of
Speaker 2: visual degradation, severe muscle atrophy, and a weakened heart. You
Speaker 2: suddenly hit a gravity well, even if it's only thirty
Speaker 2: eight percent of Earth's gravity, and you have to perform
Speaker 2: highly complex, physically demanding operations right right away. If an
Speaker 2: emergency happens on landing, your body is in its absolute
Speaker 2: weakest possible state to respond.
Speaker 3: And we haven't even touched the psychological strain yet.
Speaker 2: Oh right. The isolation.
Speaker 3: You are asking a crew to spend three years confined
Speaker 3: in the metallic cylinder with the exact same three or
Speaker 3: four individuals. Earth shrinks to a pale blue dot in
Speaker 3: the window if it is visible at all, and.
Speaker 2: You can't just call home for a quick chat.
Speaker 3: No, due to the distance, the communication delay stretches up
Speaker 3: to twenty two minutes one way twenty two minutes one way,
Speaker 3: So if an alarm goes off and you ask mission
Speaker 3: control for help, you are waiting a minimum of forty
Speaker 3: four minutes just to hear them say we read you.
Speaker 2: That is horrifying.
Speaker 3: The extreme isolation and sensory deprivation presents psychiatric risks that
Speaker 3: humans simply have not evolved to endure.
Speaker 2: So we have severe radiation risk, physical degradation, and profound
Speaker 2: psychological stress exactly. And to counter all of that, you
Speaker 2: have to pack heavily, which brings us back to the
Speaker 2: rocket equation, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: The tyranny of the Siolkowsky rocket equation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Because of these risks, you need robust, complex life support systems.
Speaker 3: You need heavy radiation shielding, usually water or specialized polymers
Speaker 3: which are heavy, very heavy. You need three years of food,
Speaker 3: medical equipment, and spare parts. And every single kilogram of
Speaker 3: that payload requires many kilograms of a protellon to push
Speaker 3: it out of Earth's gravity.
Speaker 2: Well, right, because you have to lift the fuel.
Speaker 3: That lifts the fuel, which requires a larger fuel tank,
Speaker 3: which adds more mass, which requires even more fuel. It
Speaker 3: is an exponential curve of mass penalties.
Speaker 2: It's a vicious cycle.
Speaker 3: It is the logistical and financial burden makes these traditional
Speaker 3: homean missions perilously close to unfeasible. This is why the
Speaker 3: entire aerospace community has been desperate for a paradigm.
Speaker 2: Shift, and that leads us to the cosmic blueprint. We
Speaker 2: are finally moving away from the limitations of the grueling
Speaker 2: scenic route and looking at the discovery of a hidden
Speaker 2: fast lane.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Suser research.
Speaker 2: This is the research that genuinely blew my mind when
Speaker 2: I read it. It hit the scientific community in April
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and it centers entirely around a near
Speaker 2: Earth asteroid. It does specifically asteroid two thousand and one
Speaker 2: CAA twenty one.
Speaker 3: Yes, the orbital data of two thousand and one CAA
Speaker 3: twenty one is the foundational lynchpin of this entire mathematical discovery.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need to stop and admit some genuine confusion here,
Speaker 2: because I suspect you, the listener, might be wondering the
Speaker 2: exact same thing I was when I first heard about this.
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 2: My immediate logical assumption was, wait, so are we landing
Speaker 2: on this asteroid? Are we firing grappling hooks and hitching
Speaker 2: a ride on a space rock as it zooms past
Speaker 2: Earth toward Mars?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: A lot of people jump to that because that sounds
Speaker 2: like a Bruce Willis movie, not an actual NASA mission profile.
Speaker 3: It is a brilliantly cinematic image. I'll give you that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But No, we are definitely not hitching a ride on the.
Speaker 2: Asteroid O good to clarify.
Speaker 3: Not landing on it, and we are not necessarily using
Speaker 3: it for a physical gravity assist.
Speaker 2: Well, gravity assists like where you fly precariously close to
Speaker 2: a massive body to steal some of its orbital momentum.
Speaker 3: Exactly. While gravity assists are common for outer Solar System
Speaker 3: probes like Voyager or Cassini, that is not what Marcella
Speaker 3: del Versus's breakthrough entails.
Speaker 2: So if we aren't landing on it, and we aren't
Speaker 2: doing a slingshot maneuver around it, what on Earth is
Speaker 2: this rock actually doing for us?
Speaker 3: It is serving as a mathematical process rocks. Yes, SUSA
Speaker 3: utilized the asteroid's precise orbital parameters is a screening tool
Speaker 3: to map what are known as invariant manifolds.
Speaker 2: Invariant manifolds, Okay, break that down for us.
Speaker 3: Well, in the incredibly complex multidimensional mathematics of the Solar System,
Speaker 3: plotting a fast, highly efficient route between two moving planets
Speaker 3: while factoring in the gravitational pull of the Sun, Earth,
Speaker 3: Mars and.
Speaker 2: Everything else, that's a lot of math.
Speaker 3: It is computationally overwhelming. It is known in physics as
Speaker 3: the n body problem, and it is famously difficult to
Speaker 3: solve cleanly because.
Speaker 2: There's no fixed reference point right, everything is constantly pulling
Speaker 2: on everything else at the same time.
Speaker 3: Precisely, however, near Earth asteroids have been tumbling through our
Speaker 3: Solar system for millions, sometimes billions of years over immense
Speaker 3: pans of time. Gravity acts as a sort of evolutionary filter.
Speaker 3: Asteroids with unstable orbits crash into planets or get ejected
Speaker 3: into deep space.
Speaker 2: They get weeded out.
Speaker 3: Exactly. The ones that survive, like twenty one twenty one,
Speaker 3: have naturally settled into dynamically stable, geometrically fascinating orbits.
Speaker 2: Uh So, the universe has already done the supercomputer map
Speaker 2: for us over the last billion years.
Speaker 3: Exactly, they have naturally mapped out the low energy geometrical
Speaker 3: grooves of the Solar system that is so cool. By
Speaker 3: rigorously analyzing the eccentricity, meaning how elliptical the orbit is
Speaker 3: and the inclination how tilted it is relative to the
Speaker 3: Earth's orbital plane, Susa recognized something incredible.
Speaker 2: What did he see?
Speaker 3: He saw that two thousand one's trajectory isn't just a
Speaker 3: random path. It perfectly outlines a hidden face based corridor.
Speaker 2: A face based cord.
Speaker 3: Yes, it represents a naturally stable, highly aligned pathway that
Speaker 3: beautifully synchronizes with specific Earth Mars planetary oppositions.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's make this tangible. A lot of people try
Speaker 2: to explain this using a secret punnel in a video
Speaker 2: game analogy. I've heard that one, Like you're walking around
Speaker 2: taking the long way up a mountain and you see
Speaker 2: an NPC just clip right through the geometry, revealing a
Speaker 2: hidden tunnel. But that feels a bit too magical in
Speaker 2: actual physics, how does an asteroid's orbit map a path
Speaker 2: for a spacecraft?
Speaker 3: Let's use the concept of a river system instead. Okay,
Speaker 3: the standard Homan transfer equations are hyper focused on finding
Speaker 3: the absolute minimum energy required to traverse a completely flat, idealized.
Speaker 2: Ocean like perfectly still water.
Speaker 3: Right, But the Solar System isn't flat, and gravity creates
Speaker 3: invisible currents. Susa's work demonstrated that if you take this
Speaker 3: specif sacific orbital planes, velocities and intersection points of Earth
Speaker 3: Mars and this intermediary asteroid, you expose gravitational currents that
Speaker 3: standard calculation simply miss.
Speaker 2: Because of the old math solving what engineers call Lambert's problem.
Speaker 2: It forces the computer to assume a two body system,
Speaker 2: right yes, and asks for a simple solitary arc. It
Speaker 2: doesn't look for complex multilayered orbital resonance exactly.
Speaker 3: Standard mission planners weren't looking for a path that mimics
Speaker 3: and asteroids highly eccentric tilted orbit. Why not because conventional
Speaker 3: wisdom always said that changing your inclination, meaning tilting your
Speaker 3: orbit up or down relative to the solar plane, is
Speaker 3: incredibly expensive in terms of fuel.
Speaker 2: Oh, because you're fighting the momentum again, right.
Speaker 3: But sus approved that the specific geometry of two thousand
Speaker 3: and one C. Twenty one allows you to thread the needle.
Speaker 3: It offers a dynamically favorable route that actually bypasses the
Speaker 3: massive energy penalties you would normally face if you just
Speaker 3: pointed your ship at Mars and they hit the throttle.
Speaker 2: Okay, finding a new mathematical path is incredible in theory.
Speaker 2: But if the universe doesn't give us anything for free,
Speaker 2: how much time does this actually shave off?
Speaker 3: That's the million dollar question.
Speaker 2: Are we talking weeks or are we talking years? Because
Speaker 2: if we are looking at the upcoming twenty thirty one window.
Speaker 2: The numbers in this research are absolutely staggering.
Speaker 3: The twenty thirty one window is a critical year for
Speaker 3: orbital mechanics.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that well.
Speaker 3: An opposition occurs when Earth passes directly between the Sun
Speaker 3: and another outer planet, in this case Mars. Okay, Earth
Speaker 3: and Mars are essentially lined up on the same side
Speaker 3: of the Sun, bringing them to their closest physical approach.
Speaker 2: But not all oppositions are created equal, right, Because Mars
Speaker 2: has a pretty eccentric oval shaped orbit compared to Earth, that.
Speaker 3: Is a vital distinction. Mars's orbit is highly elliptical. Sometimes,
Speaker 3: when Earth catches up to Mars, Mars is at its
Speaker 3: farthest point from the fun called aphelion.
Speaker 2: So they're still pretty far apart.
Speaker 3: Right, Those are unfavorable oppositions, But roughly every fifteen to
Speaker 3: seventeen years, Earth catches up to Mars when Mars is
Speaker 3: at its closest point to the Sun, its perihelion.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: The twenty thirty one opposition is one of these parahelic
Speaker 3: highly favorable alignments. The gap between the two planets shrinks dramatically.
Speaker 2: And when Susan mapped his asteroid derived corridors onto the
Speaker 2: specific planetary positions of the twenty thirty one window. He
Speaker 2: identified two primary mission architectures, right, He did two different
Speaker 2: ways to exploit this gravitational current. And here is where
Speaker 2: the math just totally rewrites the textbook. Let's remember the
Speaker 2: old baseline two to three years for a full round
Speaker 2: trip with five hundred days stuck on the surface. Exrect
Speaker 2: what does configuration A give us.
Speaker 3: Configuration A outlines a complete closed loop round trip mission,
Speaker 3: meaning meaning departure from Earth, transit, a surface stay on Mars,
Speaker 3: and the full return flight back to Earth in exactly
Speaker 3: two hundred and twenty six days.
Speaker 2: Two hundred and twenty six days. We are talking about
Speaker 2: condensing a one thousand day mission into about seven and
Speaker 2: a half months. That alone is revolutionary.
Speaker 3: He cages everything.
Speaker 2: Configuration B is what genuinely made me stop reading and
Speaker 2: just stare at.
Speaker 3: The page ah Configuration B.
Speaker 2: Configuration B is the extreme rapid round trip setup, the
Speaker 2: absolute high speed express lane. Tell us the number.
Speaker 3: Configuration B clocks in at a total round trip duration
Speaker 3: of just one hundred and fifty three days.
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty three days, that is roughly five months.
Speaker 2: It is the old Holman standard was six to nine
Speaker 2: months just to travel one way. Now we're talking about
Speaker 2: leaving Earth, arriving at Mars, conducting a short stay orbital
Speaker 2: or surface mission, and returning to Earth, all in less
Speaker 2: time than it used to take just to arrive.
Speaker 3: It fundamentally obliterates the existing paradigm of interplanetary bioastronautics.
Speaker 2: It's hard to even wrap your head around.
Speaker 3: When we analyze this opposition window through the lens of
Speaker 3: Susan's corridors, we realize we aren't bound by the five
Speaker 3: hundred day surface weight.
Speaker 2: Right the waiting room is closed exactly.
Speaker 3: The specific geometrical alignment mapped by the asteroid allows for
Speaker 3: a rapid return trajectory before the Earth moves completely out
Speaker 3: of phase.
Speaker 2: But let me push back a little here. Sure, twenty
Speaker 2: thirty one is a highly specific rare alignment. If this
Speaker 2: only works once every fifteen years, is it really a
Speaker 2: paradigm shift or just a really cool trick for one
Speaker 2: specific launch window.
Speaker 3: That is exactly the question the scientific peer review process ask,
Speaker 3: and it's a valid point. While twenty thirty one is
Speaker 3: the prime immediate target that maximizes the efficiency of this
Speaker 3: specific one hundred and fifty three day transit. What is
Speaker 3: truly groundbreaking is the mathematical proof of.
Speaker 2: Concept, the underlying logic.
Speaker 3: Yes Sousa proved that rapid non home and return transit
Speaker 3: is mathematically viable without requiring Sci fi propulsion. The pathways
Speaker 3: exist in the physics.
Speaker 2: The door is unlocked. We just needed the asteroid to
Speaker 2: show us the keyhole precisely.
Speaker 3: If the map works for twenty thirty one, it validates
Speaker 3: the methodology. We can apply this exact same screening tool
Speaker 3: to other orbital periods, searching for different geometric corridors for
Speaker 3: future launch windows.
Speaker 2: So let's bring this down to Earth and talk about
Speaker 2: the ripple effects. What does cutting a one thousand day
Speaker 2: mission down two one hundred and fifty three days actually
Speaker 2: mean for the engineers and the astronauts. Because the domino
Speaker 2: effect here seems massive, it rewrites.
Speaker 3: The entire medical risk profile of deep space exploration. Let's
Speaker 3: revisit the radiation hazards. Okay, if your total exposure time
Speaker 3: to the deep space galactic cosmic ray environment is reduced
Speaker 3: from nearly two years down to just a couple of
Speaker 3: months each way, your cumulative radiation dose plummets.
Speaker 2: It brings it well below the career exposure limits set
Speaker 2: by NASA, meaning you don't need to develop magical new
Speaker 2: magnetic deflector shields to keep your astronauts alive.
Speaker 3: Exactly current shielding technologies like high density polyethylene and water
Speaker 3: jackets become perfectly adequate for one hundred and fifty three
Speaker 3: day mission.
Speaker 2: That's a huge relief.
Speaker 3: Furthermore, the physiological deconditioning, the bone demineralization and muscle atrophy
Speaker 3: is radically mitigated.
Speaker 2: Because it's just a shorter time without gravity.
Speaker 3: Yes, five months in microgravity is entirely comparable to a
Speaker 3: standard expedition rotation on the International Space Station, and.
Speaker 2: We know how to handle that. We have over two
Speaker 2: decades of continuous human data on how the body degrades
Speaker 2: over a six month period in LEO, and more importantly,
Speaker 2: we know exactly how to rehabilitate it.
Speaker 3: We have refined the exercise protocols and nutritional interventions perfectly
Speaker 3: for that timeframe. So your crew arrives at Mars stronger, healthier,
Speaker 3: with their cardiovascular systems intact and their vision unimpaired. They're
Speaker 3: actually capable of stepping into a pressurized rover and performing
Speaker 3: geologically demanding work.
Speaker 2: Instead of spending their first month on Mars essentially acting
Speaker 2: as medical patients doing physical therapy just to relearn how
Speaker 2: to stand up in thirty eight percent gravity exactly, And
Speaker 2: the psychological difference between a multi year endurance trial and
Speaker 2: a five month rapid sortie cannot be overstated.
Speaker 3: This night and day.
Speaker 2: It transforms the psychology of the crew from survival mode
Speaker 2: into an aggressive, focused, highly productive scientific expedition. You can
Speaker 2: see the light at the end of the tunnel the moment.
Speaker 3: You launch element is secured. But the engineering economics of
Speaker 3: this are arguably even more profound. Really, how so well,
Speaker 3: the entire mass architecture of the spacecraft changes. If your
Speaker 3: mission is one hundred and fifty days instead of one
Speaker 3: thousand days, you require a fraction of the consumables.
Speaker 2: Right If you're only packing the RV for five months,
Speaker 2: you need significantly less dehydrated food, less potable water, less
Speaker 2: nitrogen for the atmosphere, and fewer backup medical kits.
Speaker 3: Remember the Silkowsky gear ratio we talked about. Every kilogram
Speaker 3: of life support mass you eliminate removes the need from
Speaker 3: multiple kilograms of propellant to launch it.
Speaker 2: It cascades backwards.
Speaker 3: Yes, when you slash the requirement for consumables by eighty percent,
Speaker 3: you drastically script down the dry mass of your transit.
Speaker 2: Vehicle, which means your spacecraft is lighter and therefore much
Speaker 2: easier to push out of Earth's orbit.
Speaker 3: Or conversely, you use the exact same heavy lift rockets,
Speaker 3: but instead of filling the cargo bay with three years
Speaker 3: of food and heavy water shielding, you dedicate that massive
Speaker 3: payload capacity to actual scientific infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so you send heavy drilling rigs, advanced pressurized rovers,
Speaker 2: massive solar arrays, and robust habitats.
Speaker 3: You completely change the return on investment. Yeah, the science
Speaker 3: yield per kilogram launched goes to the roof.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. But this isn't just about crude missions, is it.
Speaker 2: How does this impact cargo logistics Because we don't just
Speaker 2: want to plant flags, we want a permanent base.
Speaker 3: If we connect this to the bigger picture of interplanetary infrastructure,
Speaker 3: the implications for cargo are revolutionary.
Speaker 2: Walk us through it.
Speaker 3: Establishing a permanent sustainable presence on Mars requires a constant
Speaker 3: logistical supply chain. You need to build up propellant depots,
Speaker 3: spare parts, caches and redundant habitats before you ever risk
Speaker 3: sending a human.
Speaker 2: Crew, basically setting up orbital gas stations and autonomous factories
Speaker 2: ahead of time.
Speaker 3: Precisely using these newly discovered rapid transfer corridors, space agencies
Speaker 3: can execute much faster automated cargo resupply un So.
Speaker 2: No more waiting two years for the pizza delivery.
Speaker 3: Exactly, instead of launching a slow convoy that takes nearly
Speaker 3: a year to arrive and waiting two years for the
Speaker 3: next planetary window, we can utilize these rapid transits to
Speaker 3: create a sustainable high frequency cadence emissions.
Speaker 2: It accelerates the timeline for Martian colonization from a distant
Speaker 2: multigenerational dream into a near term logistical reality. It really does,
Speaker 2: which brings us to an incredibly exciting synergy. This mathematical
Speaker 2: breakthrough fits perfectly into the physical hardware that the aerospace
Speaker 2: industry is already bending metal on right now. Yes, the
Speaker 2: timing is perfect because while Susan's math is brand new,
Speaker 2: the rockets are already standing on the launch pad. We
Speaker 2: are in the middle of a massive technological renaissance in propulsion.
Speaker 3: Indeed, we are witnessing an unprepredented mobilization of resources. NASA,
Speaker 3: the European Space Agency, and heavily funded private sector giants
Speaker 3: like SpaceX are pouring billions into next generation heavy lift
Speaker 3: vehicles like Starship, Yes powered by ans mytholics, chemical engines
Speaker 3: like the Raptor.
Speaker 2: But up until now they've basically been trying to solve
Speaker 2: the Mars transit problem through brute force they have.
Speaker 3: The prevailing engineering philosophy has been to simply build vastly
Speaker 3: larger fuel tanks and more efficient high thrust engines to
Speaker 3: try and muscle a spacecraft into a faster non homean trajectory.
Speaker 2: Just push harder, exactly.
Speaker 3: But chemical propulsion has physical limits in terms of specific impulse. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it's fuel efficiency. That is why there is also a
Speaker 3: major resurgence in funding for nuclear thermal proportion or NTP.
Speaker 2: Okay, nuclear thermal propulsion. I know NASA worked on this
Speaker 2: back in the sixties with the Nerva program, but it's
Speaker 2: making a massive comeback now with the Draco program. For
Speaker 2: the listener who isn't an aerospace engineer, how does an
Speaker 2: NTP engine differ from a traditional chemical rocket.
Speaker 3: A traditional chemical rocket works by mixing a fuel and
Speaker 3: an oxidizer like liquid methane and liquid oxygen, igniting them
Speaker 3: in a combustion chamber and blasting the expanding exhaust.
Speaker 2: Out the back fire noise exactly.
Speaker 3: It generates a lot of thrust, but it requires massive
Speaker 3: amounts of heavy oxidizer. A nuclear thermal propulsion system completely
Speaker 3: ditches the combustion process. No fire, no fire in the
Speaker 3: traditional sense. It uses a small nuclear fission reactor to
Speaker 3: rapidly heat a single incredibly light propellant, usually liquid hydrogen,
Speaker 3: to thousands of degrees, and then the hydrogen expands violently
Speaker 3: and shoots out the nozzle.
Speaker 2: So because you are throwing incredibly light hydrogen atoms out
Speaker 2: the back at extreme velocities instead of heavy combustion molecules,
Speaker 2: it is wildly more fuel efficient.
Speaker 3: It provides roughly double the specific impulse of the best
Speaker 3: chemical engines. An ANTP system could theoretically have transit times
Speaker 3: to Mars even if it was just flying a standard
Speaker 3: brute force trajectory. And concurrent with NTP you have the
Speaker 3: maturation of isru in city resource utilization.
Speaker 2: The Sabatier reaction right, the idea that we aren't going
Speaker 2: to bring fuel for the return trip from Earth at
Speaker 2: all exactly, we will send automated chemical plants ahead of
Speaker 2: the crew. They suck in the Martian carbon dioxide atmosphere,
Speaker 2: combine it with hydrogen, use solar arrays for power, and
Speaker 2: synthesize liquid methane and oxygen rocket fuel right there on
Speaker 2: the surface.
Speaker 3: It's brilliant. Isr used the ultimate mass saver because the
Speaker 3: fuel for the return trip often accounts for the majority
Speaker 3: the initial launch mass from Earth. Right, So you have
Speaker 3: heavy lift methlocks, rockets, nuclear thermal propulsion, and Martian isru
Speaker 3: and here is where the absolute magic happens. SUS's orbital
Speaker 3: shortcut doesn't compete with these technologies, it mathematically multiplies them.
Speaker 2: I love this. It's like, Okay, if upgrading from old
Speaker 2: solid rocket boosters to a nuclear thermal engine is like
Speaker 2: upgrading a car from a sputtering four cylinder engine to
Speaker 2: a massive supercharged V eight, then SUS's asteroid shortcut is
Speaker 2: like a massive software update to your GPS.
Speaker 3: That is exactly the dynamic you can possess the most
Speaker 3: powerful efficient engine humanity has ever built. But if your
Speaker 3: trajectory calculations keep routing you through the gravitation equivalent of
Speaker 3: slow winding country roads and stop and go city traffic,
Speaker 3: you are never going to achieve your true top speed.
Speaker 2: And SUSA just handed the engineers a GPS route that
Speaker 2: completely bypasses the traffic, merging us directly onto a clear,
Speaker 2: multi lane highway. Exactly if you combine that supercharged V
Speaker 2: eight Mekler engine with this new unobstructed highway, the hybrid
Speaker 2: architectures you could theoretically design are staggering.
Speaker 3: The synthesis of high specific impulse propulsion and optimized dynamically
Speaker 3: stable orbital corridors is the holy grail of bioastronautics.
Speaker 2: It really feels like it.
Speaker 3: You are no longer just pushing harder against the physics,
Speaker 3: you are moving smarter within them. You are leveraging the
Speaker 3: natural gravitational architecture of the Solar System to radically amplify
Speaker 3: the effectiveness of your propulsion hardware.
Speaker 2: Okay, this all sounds phenomenal, but I have enough respect
Speaker 2: for orbital mechanics to know that the universe rarely, if
Speaker 2: ever gives you something for nothing.
Speaker 3: That is very true.
Speaker 2: Energy has to be conserved. So what does this all
Speaker 2: mean for the engineers actually building the ships? Because it
Speaker 2: can't just be free speed. What's the catch?
Speaker 3: You are absolutely correct to be skeptical, because physics always
Speaker 3: extracts a toll. The primary unavoidable trade off for speed
Speaker 3: in orbital mechanics is energy. Spacecraft maneuvers are fundamentally budgeted
Speaker 3: in terms of delta V.
Speaker 2: Delta V meaning change in velocity. It's the total amount
Speaker 2: of acceleration a spacecraft can physically produce based on how
Speaker 2: much fuel it is carrying.
Speaker 3: Precisely, for context, to launch from the surface of the
Speaker 3: Earth and reach low Earth orbit requires about nine point
Speaker 3: three kilometers per second of delta v okay to break
Speaker 3: out of Earth orbit and enter a slow highly efficient
Speaker 3: home and transfer to Mars requires roughly an additional three
Speaker 3: point six to four point three kilometers per second. Now,
Speaker 3: moving faster inherently demands more energy.
Speaker 2: Makes sense.
Speaker 3: You have to burn harder to break out of the
Speaker 3: slow curves, and crucially, you have to burn incredibly hard
Speaker 3: to slow down when you arrive. Otherwise you'll just fly.
Speaker 2: Right past Mars right because you don't have friction in
Speaker 2: space to slow you down speed up, you have to
Speaker 2: pack fuel specifically to cancel out that speed at the destination.
Speaker 3: Exactly nowsa's phase space corridors balance this speed and efficiency
Speaker 3: significantly better than purely high thrust brute force trajectories often
Speaker 3: called brickistochrone paths.
Speaker 2: Brickistochrone, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: A brichistochrome trajectory involves pointing your ship directly at Mars,
Speaker 3: firing the engines continuously for the first half of the
Speaker 3: trip to accelerate, and then flipping the ship one hundred
Speaker 3: eighty degrees and firing continuously for the second half to decelerate,
Speaker 3: like the ship's.
Speaker 2: In the Expanse or any hard sci fi novel, Yes.
Speaker 3: The torchship concept. Those trajectories provide incredible artificial gravity and speed,
Speaker 3: but they require a delta V budget in the tens
Speaker 3: or hundreds of kilometers per second.
Speaker 2: Which is impossible right now.
Speaker 3: It demands an almost magical fuel density that we simply
Speaker 3: do not possess. Susa's pathways don't require science fiction physics,
Speaker 3: but they are emphatically not free, so.
Speaker 2: They still cost a lot.
Speaker 3: Delta V required to inject a spacecraft into these one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty three day rapid corridors is substantially higher
Speaker 3: than the four kilometers per second needed for a slow
Speaker 3: home and transfer.
Speaker 2: We're talking maybe seven, eight or ten kilometers per second
Speaker 2: of delta V just for the interplanetary injection. Yes, so
Speaker 2: the spacecraft still needs to pack a massive punch. It
Speaker 2: requires either highly advanced nuclear propulsion or dedicating a massive
Speaker 2: percentage of your launch mass to chemical propellants.
Speaker 3: It does, it requires a highly energetic departure burn and
Speaker 3: beyond the immense fuel requirements, there is the stark reality
Speaker 3: of deep space navigation and engineering.
Speaker 2: It's not just point and shoot, not at all.
Speaker 3: You cannot simply crunch a few elegant equations on a whiteboard,
Speaker 3: plug them into an autopilot, and light the engines. SUS's
Speaker 3: research is a preliminary proof of concept. Before any human
Speaker 3: beings strap into a vehicle, agencies must conduct incredibly high
Speaker 3: fidelity supercomputer simulations.
Speaker 2: Because the Solar System isn't an idealized vacuum with just Earth,
Speaker 2: Mars and one asteroid. It is a messy, chaotic web
Speaker 2: of gravity.
Speaker 3: It is incredibly chaotic. Mission planners have to painstakingly account
Speaker 3: for nbody gravitational perturbations.
Speaker 2: What does that look like in practice?
Speaker 3: When you are coasting for millions of miles The slight
Speaker 3: gravitational tug of Jupiter pulling from the outer Solar System,
Speaker 3: or the influence of Venus, or even the slight unevenness
Speaker 3: of Earth's ozone gravity well will act upon the.
Speaker 2: Spacecraft, and over a distance of one hundred million miles,
Speaker 2: a deviation of a fraction of a degree right after
Speaker 2: launch translates into missing Mars by hundreds of thousands of miles.
Speaker 3: Exactly, you drift way off course. Furthermore, we have to
Speaker 3: account for non gravitational forces. Solar radiation pressure is a
Speaker 3: major factor.
Speaker 2: Wait sunlight physically pushes the spacecraft.
Speaker 3: It does. Photons emitted by the Sun carry no mass,
Speaker 3: but they do carry momentum.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 3: When they strike the hull or the solar arrays of
Speaker 3: the spacecraft, they exert a tiny, continuous physical force. Over
Speaker 3: a five month journey, that constant pressure can alter your
Speaker 3: trajectory significantly.
Speaker 2: So you're constantly being blown off course by the Sun.
Speaker 3: Yes, all of these minute cumulative forces must be anticipated
Speaker 3: and corrected for with highly precise mid course correction burns.
Speaker 2: Which means you have to fire small thrusters along the
Speaker 2: way to stay perfectly in that mathematical groove and every
Speaker 2: time you fire a thruster, you are eating into your
Speaker 2: precious Delta V fuel budget.
Speaker 3: You are the.
Speaker 2: Navigation has to be absolutely perfectly flawless.
Speaker 3: Flawless is the operative word, and we must also soberly
Speaker 3: address the lingering physiological and operational bottlenecks that a faster
Speaker 3: transit simply cannot solvey. First communication latency. Even if you
Speaker 3: arrive in five months, when you're orbiting Mars, you are
Speaker 3: still bound by the speed of light. You are still
Speaker 3: up to twenty two light minutes away from Houston. A
Speaker 3: fast transit does not make light travel.
Speaker 2: Any faster, which means if something goes critically wrong a
Speaker 2: fire in the habitat, a life support failure, you are
Speaker 2: completely on your own. Houston cannot remotely pilot the ship
Speaker 2: to save you.
Speaker 3: You are entirely autonomous during critical moments, and arguably the
Speaker 3: most terrifying critical moment of any Mars mission is EDL entry, descent,
Speaker 3: and landing. Getting to Mars is only half the battle.
Speaker 3: Surviving the arrival is the real crucible.
Speaker 2: Right because Mars has just enough atmosphere to violently heat
Speaker 2: up and burn your spacecraft due to hypersonic friction exactly,
Speaker 2: But the atmosphere is so thin, about one percent of
Speaker 2: Earth's density, that parachutes are practically useless for heavy payloads.
Speaker 3: Exactly, the ballistic coefficient of a human class Mars lander
Speaker 3: is massive. Arriving at Mars significantly faster via Sus' corridors
Speaker 3: means you are slamming into the upper Martian atmosphere at
Speaker 3: a much higher relative velocity, So you come in hotter.
Speaker 3: You have to dissipate all of that immense kinetic energy.
Speaker 3: Because the atmosphere cannot slow a massive forty ton crew
Speaker 3: habitat down sufficiently, you have to rely on hypersonic retropropulsion.
Speaker 2: Firing heavy rocket engines into the supersonic slipstream of the
Speaker 2: atmosphere just before you hit the ground. Yes, the famous
Speaker 2: seven minutes of terror where the spacecraft has to execute
Speaker 2: thousands of autonomous calculations and maneuvers flawlessly just to survive,
Speaker 2: and coming in hotter just makes the thermal and aerodynamic
Speaker 2: stress on the heat shield even more punishing.
Speaker 3: It immensely complicates an already bleeding edge engineering challenge. And finally,
Speaker 3: no matter how brief the journey is, space remains unforgiving
Speaker 3: aye ways. If a critical component of your closed loop
Speaker 3: life support system fails catastrophically on day thirty of one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty day trip, and you cannot repair it.
Speaker 3: The crew is in just as much mortal peril as
Speaker 3: they would be on day three hundred of a three
Speaker 3: year trip. Right, there are no abort scenarios in deep space.
Speaker 2: The shortcut gets you there faster, minimizing your exposure time,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't make the environment itself any less lethal
Speaker 2: while you are in it. Precisely, but even acknowledging all
Speaker 2: of those massive, very real engineering caveats, the paradigm shift
Speaker 2: here is absolutely.
Speaker 3: Undeniable, oh without a doubt.
Speaker 2: Cleverly reinterpreting the existing orbital data of small bodies by
Speaker 2: looking at an asteroid we already had on file and
Speaker 2: deciding to ask a completely different mathematical question, we are
Speaker 2: turning an impossibly hazardous multi year survival trial into something
Speaker 2: resembling a routine, highly predictable interplanetary commute.
Speaker 3: It profoundly alters our fundamental understanding of our local cosmic environment.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 3: The Solar system is not just a static, fixed highway
Speaker 3: with only one agonizingly slow lane available to us. It
Speaker 3: is a highly dynamic, constantly shifting, multi layered environment full
Speaker 3: of hidden efficiencies, natural gravitational currents, and rapid transit.
Speaker 2: Corridors, provided you possess the mathematical creativity to go.
Speaker 3: Looking for them exactly.
Speaker 2: And the most exciting part for me is that the
Speaker 2: twenty thirty one window is just the beginning of this
Speaker 2: new discipline. Asteroid two thousand and one CAA twenty one
Speaker 2: is literally just one.
Speaker 3: Rock, just one of many.
Speaker 2: We have cataloged tens of thousands of near Earth asteroids
Speaker 2: with incredibly well documented, highly precise orbital elements. The next
Speaker 2: logical step for the orbital mechanics community is to start
Speaker 2: feeding all of that historical data into these new supercomputer models.
Speaker 3: That is the immediate frontier researchers are going to rigorously
Speaker 3: scan the diverse trajectories of thousands of other celestial bodies
Speaker 3: to catalog what will essentially become a massive family of
Speaker 3: rapid transfer corridors.
Speaker 2: Like a directory of fast lanes.
Speaker 3: Yes, we will likely map out an extensive, overlapping network
Speaker 3: of fast lanes for various opposition years, not just for Mars,
Speaker 3: but potentially for Venus, the asteroid belt and beyond.
Speaker 2: It is genuinely the first step in building a true
Speaker 2: multi layered subway map for the Solar.
Speaker 3: System, the cosmic subway map.
Speaker 2: I like that, which brings me to a final thought.
Speaker 2: I want you, the listener, to mull over long after
Speaker 2: this discussion ends. Okay, we have just explored how a
Speaker 2: single near Earth asteroid, a rock that was catalog decades
Speaker 2: ago and basically considered just a mundane, boring entry in
Speaker 2: a dusty astronomical database, turned out to hold the mathematical
Speaker 2: key to fundamentally altering human expansion into the cosmos.
Speaker 3: It's humbling, really, It.
Speaker 2: Really forces you to wonder what other massive paradigm shifting
Speaker 2: secrets are currently hiding in plain sight. How many other
Speaker 2: impossible engineering problems in medicine, in physics, or in energy
Speaker 2: could be solved right now, hiding silently within the mountains
Speaker 2: of mundane data we already possess, just waiting for someone
Speaker 2: to tilt their head, look at it differently, and ask
Speaker 2: the right question.