This is a notebook for the orbits of a long-term ship to fly continuously between Earth and Mars or the asteroid belt.
There is also a design notebook for the ship.
All orbits considered here visit the Earth "often". There are two basic kind of orbits. The first kind is fixed, cyclic, periodic, or repeating. It always follows the same trajectory(?). These would necessarily have periods which are integral (or maybe integer-and-a-half) multiples of one year, to visit Earth frequently.
The second kind of orbit is destination-oriented, for example between the Earth and Mars. Each pass by a planet would be carefully planned to send the ship to the next checkpoint. This kind of orbit would be like a repeated Grand Tour, with complex orbit planning needed for each encounter.
Actual orbits are likely to be a combination. Even a periodic orbit into the asteroid belt would take some planning, since every pass through the Earth/Moon neighborhood could significantly perturb the orbit.
A site discussing cycler orbits to the asteroids. It uses the term "railroad town" which comes from the idea that orbital settlements that "receive regular and frequent visits from supply ships would become trading centers and grow much faster than other parts of the belt. Like the railroad towns of the Old West."
James Oberg's excellent Orbital Rendezvous page. The excerpt 'Orbitology' is a great introduction to give you an intuition for orbital mechanics. Although all examples are near-Earth, the principles apply to any orbits.
Alberto Monteiro's Hohmann Transfer in the Solar System page. JavaScript to compute Hohmann transfers. Links to sources and more accurate calculations.
Mars Academy, with orbit finder, trajectory calculations, etc.
Comparisons of orbits between Earth and Mars.
Eric Wiesstein's World of Physics entry for a Hohmann Transfer Orbit.
NASA page to explain Hohmann Transfer & Plane Changes, with examples in near-Earth orbit.
Up to my Interplanetary Cycler home page.
This page was created 27 January 2004 by Paul E. Black.
This page was last updated 6 July 2006.
This page's URL is http://www.geocities.com/p.black/Cycler/orbitNotebook.html.