101–110 of 128 posts
Didn't see any mention on how it will be powered, are batteries even feasable? I thought just keeping rovers warm enough to operate was quite energy consuming.
Does this make any sense? Isn't Mars' atmosphere much thinner than Earth's? Wouldn't that count against using rotary wing crafts?
It’s about 1% the density of earths atmosphere. The craft would have to be light and have large blades, but that doesn’t seem impossible. The light atmosphere means huge blades could still spin fast without issue. It’s not easy but this is NASA we’re talking about. They made a sky crane to drop a Mini Cooper sized rover on Mars before.
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Simulating dust kick-up would be easier than constructing a "low gravity" room.
It isn't too hard to simulate low gravity, all you need to do is move a large aircraft in the appropriate parabolic pattern. My understanding is that this is already how NASA trains astronauts for zero-g environments, and how weightlessness is done in space movies. Adjusting the path to match Mars gravity should not be difficult.
Does this make any sense? Isn't Mars' atmosphere much thinner than Earth's? Wouldn't that count against using rotary wing crafts?
I expect the real problems would come in scaling it up; I doubt a typical helicopter rotor/head assembly would hold together under the high head speeds needed on Mars (or you could maybe use very long blades, which comes with its own problems).
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That's what I thought too. But they've been designing this for years; so it might have started before drones got as popular as they are. I mean, drones are just a new name for hobby aircraft. People typically associate drones with quad-copters, but people were flying tiny helicopters next to their small replica remote aircraft for decades. I realize the FAA has official designations for what is a drone (and a lot of…
> drones are just a new name for hobby aircraft With the minor notation that hobby aircraft are permitted in some national parks, while drones are prohibited in all. The Parks Service operates a number of model aircraft airports in some national parks. (I'm not moaning about the perceived inequity with the "drones;" just pointing out a curiosity. I've hated drones ever since they started ruining my ability to peacefu…
It's a UAV if you want to get back into the subject matter we're discussing though. I do wonder how well it'll do in the Martian atmosphere, especially if it gets caught charging in a sandstorm.
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Mars is 140 million miles away from earth on average. Even if you could detect signals from GPS satellites on earth they would all be at a single point in the sky. However, that does bring up an interesting idea. Maybe rovers could navigate using the position of the stars? It doesn't require you to launch 4+ GPS satellites into martian orbit.
I don't see why not - automatic celestial nagivation systems are already a thing on earth, you basically have a system that uses a camera to look at the sky and it gives you an accurate position - most military planes use it as backup in case GPS ever goes down.
TL;DR you need to see the stars and you need to know what time it is
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A little more recent: https://youtu.be/oJGJEepIOt0?t=38 It's from Red Planet (2000): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199753/
Even more recent: https://youtu.be/vacjOrVqesM?list=RD7Oq-ClZ8Gbs&t=299 From the series Mars (2006) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4939064/ .
I hope that they have a software to take measures if the air pressure or the light levels change suddenly.
Couldn't the differences in temperature between shadowed and sunny areas create turbulences?
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That's what I thought too. But they've been designing this for years; so it might have started before drones got as popular as they are. I mean, drones are just a new name for hobby aircraft. People typically associate drones with quad-copters, but people were flying tiny helicopters next to their small replica remote aircraft for decades. I realize the FAA has official designations for what is a drone (and a lot of…
> drones are just a new name for hobby aircraft With the minor notation that hobby aircraft are permitted in some national parks, while drones are prohibited in all. The Parks Service operates a number of model aircraft airports in some national parks. (I'm not moaning about the perceived inequity with the "drones;" just pointing out a curiosity. I've hated drones ever since they started ruining my ability to peacefu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A little more recent: https://youtu.be/oJGJEepIOt0?t=38 It's from Red Planet (2000): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199753/
Even more recent: https://youtu.be/vacjOrVqesM?list=RD7Oq-ClZ8Gbs&t=299 From the series Mars (2006) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4939064/ .