Hypothetical question (possibly also to am_Unition?): do you know of any benefits for placing similar 'refueller' at places like L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in Earth-Sun system? I know that what you wrote above is still a long way from any form of completion, but aside of sci-fi I'm rarely hearing about even as much as speculations about these locations.Launch the 100 man vessel. Then launch the "refuler" and dock it. Then launch a propulsion unit to dock with the other two units, go to mars and use the unmanned portions as a space depot of sorts in martian orbit. Land the people, do you thing and with enough of the "empties, you can either refuel them or salvage them for parts.
L4 and L5 have no benefits for an earth-Mars transfer orbit. We are talking about Hohmann transfer orbits as the most efficient fuel-wise trip to get to anywhere in the solar system.do you know of any benefits for placing similar 'refueller' at places like L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in Earth-Sun system?
Yeah, francopoli is right. You'd waste a fair bit of fuel decelerating to park at L4 or L5, and/or lengthen the total time of the trip unnecessarily. This on top of the fact that the station-keeping required to keep anything there would be fairly intensive. L1, L2, and L3 are "saddle" shaped (in gravitational potential) equilibriums, unstable in one dimension (radially), but L4 and L5 are unstable both radially and tangentially to the orbit. I can't think of anything that'd be gained by using Lagrange points to get to Mars, but it was a good exercise :).