Cycler orbits are cool, but slightly over-constrained. You can pass close to Earth and Mars on a more interesting cadence if you're willing to burn a little fuel to adjust the cycler once in a while. The "perfect" cycle orbit ala Aldrin Cycler is just one special, theoretically-stable case.
So, Starship on a cycler-like orbit is _really much more powerful than discussed here_.
I once wrote a few articles about using custom-made cycler trajectories to ferry data back and forth.
* You don't have to accelerate data up to speed, just beam it to the "ferry" when it's close to Mars, and beam it to earth when you're close to Earth
* You can get _enormous_ amounts of data back this way, b/c you can use very high data rates when transmitter and receiver are close
* For example, you can map the entire surface of Mars in high resolution quite frequently, if you are willing to wait a bit to get that data back
* And you can still downlink data normally 364 days a year - with one day scheduled for a Petabit scale transfer to the data "ferry"
This PDF is open access: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.A35091
And if you scroll through, there's some examples of "ugly" cyclers, which have a more interesting cadence and require a little bit of fuel to maintain.
By batching ugly cyclers, you can get multiple flybies, and not just constrained to the synodic cycles of the two planets. For example there's a 1-2 /year flyby schedule.
So, Starship on a cycler-like orbit is _really much more powerful than discussed here_.
I once wrote a few articles about using custom-made cycler trajectories to ferry data back and forth.
* You don't have to accelerate data up to speed, just beam it to the "ferry" when it's close to Mars, and beam it to earth when you're close to Earth
* You can get _enormous_ amounts of data back this way, b/c you can use very high data rates when transmitter and receiver are close
* For example, you can map the entire surface of Mars in high resolution quite frequently, if you are willing to wait a bit to get that data back
* And you can still downlink data normally 364 days a year - with one day scheduled for a Petabit scale transfer to the data "ferry"
This PDF is open access: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.A35091
And if you scroll through, there's some examples of "ugly" cyclers, which have a more interesting cadence and require a little bit of fuel to maintain.
By batching ugly cyclers, you can get multiple flybies, and not just constrained to the synodic cycles of the two planets. For example there's a 1-2 /year flyby schedule.