Even MIT students can make misteaks.

Finding Delta V between various places in the solar system has been one of my hobbies. I like to learn as well as share what I know about this topic. So I occasionally Google search strings that include the term "Delta V".

Googling: Delta V Mars. The first hit is a Wikipedia article, the second hit is How Much Delta V do you need to get to Mars - Yahoo! Answers.

A fellow who calls himself ronwizfr confidently asserts that the delta V from earth orbit to Mars transfer is 6.6 km/s. Ronwizfr cites an MIT student project for a class called Solving Complex Problems.

The MIT page cited is a well done presentation until the students get to constants:

Then the students made an arithmetic error. The distance from the earth to the sun is 1.49X10¹¹ meters, not 1.49X10¹⁰ meters. Their radius for Mars' orbit is also off by a factor of 10.

The MIT students correctly plug in these wrong quantities to get speeds that are off by sqrt(10):

The velocity of the earth is not 94,384 m/s but closer to 29,846 m/s. Likewise velocity of Mars isn't 74,467 m/s but closer to 23,548 m/s. Their quantities would have been correct if the earth and Mars were .1 A.U. and .152 A.U. from the sun.

Even the very accomplished can make errors. So we should examine every assertion, no matter the source. My dad used to tell me we all put our pants on one leg at a time. His way of saying we're all human and capable of making mistakes.