Low road to mars: Venus-Mars-Earth Cycler

This paper introduces a Venus-Mars-Earth Cycler to facilitate Earth-Mars travel. Advantages of this novel concept over proposed Earth-Mars Cyclers is discussed, including the frequency of travel opportunities and considerations of travel duration. The capability of Venus to modify interplanetary trajectories significantly has already been flight-proven by a number of U.S. and Russian spacecraft, while Mars is of insufficient mass to generate a useful gravity assist. This paper extends this concept for cost-effective human travel to and from Mars, the long-term goal of the space programs of the U.S. and other countries.