Manned Circumnavigation of the Inner Solar System Posted on April 27, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen In 1969, a Bellcomm engineer named A. A. VanderVeen published a paper describing a family of trajectories so elegant they seem almost accidental. Fifty-five years later, the most attractive instance of that trajectory family departs Earth in August 2034. This post is about what it would mean to fly it. Back in February 2009, I opened a thread on the NASASpaceFlight.com forum with what I thought was a simple thought experiment: what interplanetary mission might be within reach of an extremely wealthy private individual —...