Gravity turn

When you watch a rocket launch, you see that it gently tips over as it climbs.  This is because to stay in orbit, a vehicle must travel sideways, very fast.  However, it must also climb above the atmosphere.  Obviously, going straight up until you reach space, then turning 90 degrees and going into orbit is inefficient, and going sideways immediately after launch is also inefficient.  So what do rockets do?

First, there are three terms we must familiarize ourselves with: gravity losses, drag losses, and steering losses.

These term refer to things which require delta-v aside from expending delta-v just to increase your total speed in a vacuum.  So your total speed after expending all propellant would be total potential delta-v (if your rocket was going in one direction in a vacuum with no gravitational losses) minus gravity losses, drag losses, and steering losses.

 

Gravity losses are the delta-v expended that is just fighting against gravity, instead of speeding up the vehicle.  To imagine this, think of a rocket with a thrust to weight ratio of exactly 1, that is hovering just above the launchpad.  This rocket, in free space, could accelerate to 1,000 m/s, but, because gravity losses take up all of the potential delta-v, it's end speed is zero.

 

Drag losses: if your rocket expends 1,000 m/s of delta-v in a gravity-less vacuum, you end up travelling at 1,000 m/s.  However, if you put an atmosphere in that vacuum which your rocket must travel through, then drag will slow the rocket down, even as it continues to accelerate.  The difference between the total potential delta-v and your end speed is the drag losses.

 

Steering losses: you have a total potential delta-v of 1,000 m/s, and you expend 500 m/s going in one direction in a gravity-less vacuum, then you turn around 180 degrees and expend the remaining 500 m/s.  Your end speed is zero, because your steering losses are 1,000 m/s.

 

Back to gravity turns.  A gravity turn is the optimized curve from vertical to horizontal of a rocket traveling to orbit.  Because a rocket "balances" on its engines, gravity slowly pulls the front of the rocket down, which works efficiently, because less delta-v is needed for steering the rocket, and because the angle of attack (angle of the rocket to the air it's passing through) in almost zero throughout the entire ascent.  An ideal one will have a minimum of drag, gravity, and steering losses.  Turning too sharply to early will result in high steering losses, and turning too late will result in high steering losses.

 

Ideally there should only need to be one steering event, at the very start of the gravity turn, pitching over 5-10 degrees while the rocket is still fairly low in the atmosphere.  Then gravity should take over. 

 

 

Mars and natural satellites

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, and the second smallest planet after Mercury.  It's believed that in its past it could have harbored life, and may still, which seems more likely since the discovery of flowing water on Mars.

The house would probably fall victim to wild temperature swings (20 Celsius to -153 Celsius) or just be covered by dust.

 

Normal airplanes can't fly on Mars, because that it's atmospheric density is 100 times less than Earth's, and because that there isn't enough oxygen in the air to support combustion.  However, specially designed planes could fly on Mars.

 

There isn't enough liquid on Mars for a boat to float in.

 

The human is more interesting.  The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, and extremely thin, and that, combined with the temperature changes, would make some kind of space suit necessary.  Food could possibly be farmed in a green house, or just carried along.  Water could be mined from the ground in places in the form of ice.  Rocket fuel could be refined in-situ.  A trip to Mars is much farther than a trip to the Moon, so it has to be much longer because of transfer windows, which only happens approximately every two years.  Plus, travel time:

 

This image shows why a faster trajectory is less efficient and requires more efficient engines:

Source: http://athena.cornell.edu/

You can read more about interplanetary trajectories here: http://www.braeunig.us/space/interpl.htm 

And here's a handy spreadsheet: http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/sched.html

Of course, all that time in zero-g causes muscle atrophy and osteoporosis, so many Mars mission proposals involve some kind of centrifuge, to create artificial gravity.

Finally, I want to add this: List of rocks on Mars.

 

Moons:

Phobos and Deimos are the two moons of Mars.  It is believed that they are captured asteroids.  In most respects, they are like the Moon, except for gravity.  Deimos' escape velocity is 5.6 m/s, and Phobos' is 11.4 m/s, so it probably wouldn't be quite possible to reach escape velocity by running on Phobos, but maybe on Deimos.  With a bicycle, though, it probably would be possible.

 

Earth and natural satellites

Today's planet is Earth.  Earth is the third planet from the sun, and at just the right distance to stay warm enough to have liquid water, but not so close to the sun to not have liquid water.  In other words, it has liquid water, which seems to be very important for life, which is why Mars is looking so interesting recently.  But I digress. 
The human, boat, plane and house would be fine on most of the Earth, since they were built for Earth.  But, let's say you wanted to make the Earth uninhabitable.  Or, better yet, non-existent.  Luckily for you, someone has made a list of plausible ways to destroy the Earth. 

On to the Moon!  The Moon is unusual among solar system moons in its relative size to it's primary.  The most widely accepted explanation for the Moon's unusual size is that, approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized planet called Theia collided with Earth in a clanking blow, creating a field of debris from both Theia and Earth in orbit of Earth, which later coalesced into the Moon. 
The color of the Moon is surprisingly deceptive, it looks like a light grey, but it's actually an asphalt color:


The gravity on the Moon is about one sixth of Earth's gravity.  The plane wouldn't be able to fly, because of the lack of atmosphere.  The boat wouldn't be very interesting, because the lunar "seas" or "mares" are made out of hardened basalt flows.
The human would need a spacesuit, because of the lack of oxygen, and the temperature, ranging from 242 degrees F (100 K) during the day to -280 degrees F (100 K) during the night.  We know this is possible, because of the Apollo Moon landing program.  The house shouldn't have too much trouble, but probably cycles of hot and cold and solar radiation would eventually wear it down.
The Moon is habitable enough that food and water could be a problem.  Food would have to be brought with you, or farmed in a pressurized greenhouse.  Water is a problem, because at the equator, water wouldn't last very long, not near the surface, anyway.  However, at the lunar south pole, there are craters where sunlight never reaches the bottom.  This is a likely location for water ice, because that strong evidence for water ice has been found there.  Also, because sunlight never hits the bottom of the craters, a lunar base would have to deal with less temperature extremes. 

That's it for the Earth and Moon, see you on Mars!

Mercury

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and also the smallest planet, about the size of the Moon.  It's gravity is about 38% of Earth's gravity, so if you were the world's high jump champion, you could jump 6.4 meters.  But you're probably not the world's high jump champion, so if you divide your jump height by 0.38, that's how high you could jump on Mercury.  You will probably get something like 1.2 meters, if you're between 20 and 30 years old.  Long story short: Averages are hard.

Anyway, all that means that you could dunk a basketball almost without raising the ball above your head. 

So, the human, and the structures would be fine in the gravity.  Mercury has no atmosphere to speak of, so the airplane would be useless, and since there are no oceans on Mercury, the boat wouldn't be very interesting.  The house could stand in the gravity, and the lack of atmosphere wouldn't affect it, but the heat would.

The temperature:
Because of it's proximity to the sun, the temperature varies wildly between day and night, with 100 K (−173 °C; −280 °F) temperatures at night to 700 K (427 °C; 800 °F) temperatures during the day at some equatorial regions.  That's definitely too hot for most of the house, but you could survive in something like a fire proximity suit.  The house could survive if it was made out of something with a higher melting point than tin.  At night, a spacesuit would be necessary.

Mercury has been suggested as a colonization site, as it has lots of solar power, not terribly unreasonable temperatures near the poles along with possible ice deposits, and possible deposits of Helium-3. 

In short, Mercury would be fairly survivable, with proper equipment.