For orbital flights, an additional adjustment must be made to match the orbital speed of the destination body. Travel techniques must take into consideration the velocity changes necessary to travel from one body to another in the Solar System. Advances in computing and theoretical science have already improved some techniques, while new proposals may lead to improvements in speed, fuel economy, and safety. Science fiction writers propose a number of benefits, including the mining of asteroids, access to solar power, and room for colonization in the event of an Earth catastrophe.Ī number of techniques have been developed to make interplanetary flights more economical. While many scientists appreciate the knowledge value that uncrewed flights provide, the value of crewed missions is more controversial. Crewed flights have landed on the Moon and have been planned, from time to time, for Mars and Venus.
Orbiters and landers return more information than fly-by missions. Uncrewed space probes have flown to all the observed planets in the Solar System as well as to dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres, and several asteroids.
In practice, spaceflights of this type are confined to travel between the planets of the Solar System. Interplanetary spaceflight or interplanetary travel is the crewed or uncrewed travel between stars and planets, usually within a single planetary system.