re mothership for flybys and cutting costs in article may aurora alaska edu nsmca aurora alaska edu writes design a mother ship that has piggy backed probes for different missions namely different planets not useful unless you ve got some truly wonderful propulsion system for the mother ship that can t be applied to the probes otherwise it s better to simply launch the probes independently the outer planets are scattered widely across a two dimensional solar system and going to one is seldom helpful in going to the next one uranus is not on the way to neptune don t judge interplanetary trajectories in general by what the voyagers did they exploited a lineup that occurs only every couple of centuries and even so voyager took a rather indirect route to neptune also the mother ship would be powered if not the mars mission by a normal propulsion but also a solar sail solar sails are pretty useless in the outer solar system they re also very slow unless you assume quite advanced versions svr resembles a high speed collision henry spencer u of toronto zoology between svr and sunos dick dunn henry zoo toronto edu utzoo henry
