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Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

nasa.gov

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Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fun anecdote this is one of the very few things that was completely faked in "The Martian" - book and movie alike, which is otherwise a hard sci-fi book. I think it's quite telling when your instigator for a disaster scenario on Mars has to be faked! Well at least intentionally faked. It turns out Martian regolith/soil is also much more moist than expected so getting water will be relatively easy, but at the tim…

To be fair, it wasn't even the only disaster scenario in the movie - but it's very difficult to come up with a realistic scenario where someone would get left behind with a livable hab.

How about a fight between members of the crew causing the mission to be cancelled, and one of the member left for dead after a violent interaction with another member who then lie about it.

Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#164
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars' famous dust storms aren't so good at causing damage, because the air's really, really thin, so they can't pick up heavy particles even with high wind speeds. A serious problem if you need to keep grit out of fine machinery or electronics, not so much if you're worried about erosion (I mean, yeah, eventually it'd be a problem, but it's slow-motion compared to the erosion of something exposed to sand storms on Ea…

As a fun anecdote this is one of the very few things that was completely faked in "The Martian" - book and movie alike, which is otherwise a hard sci-fi book. I think it's quite telling when your instigator for a disaster scenario on Mars has to be faked! Well at least intentionally faked. It turns out Martian regolith/soil is also much more moist than expected so getting water will be relatively easy, but at the tim…

> The Martian

The thin atmosphere bit is acknowledged by the author, you can watch his talk here around 32:35:

    I just want to be as accurate as I possibly could.  There are a few places that are inaccurate.  The biggest place that's inaccurate is right at the beginning.  Don't tell anybody, but if you're in a dust storm on Mars, you're not even going to feel it.  Mars' atmosphere is less than 1% of Earth's.  So a 150 kilometer an hour wind would feel like about 1 kilometer an hour wind does on Earth.  It wouldn't do any damage to anything.
https://youtu.be/gMfuLtjgzA8?si=8aZUEizDWuBhnaJg&t=1958

There is another clarification later at 35:34 saying the dust storm is basically like talcum powder.

Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#165
post #141
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm interpreting the picture correctly, it does look like there is a gouge on the ground in the pic showing the shadow

Also, there are some very interesting shiny blue rocks in that photo. I assume scrapped by the rotor. I would be very interested in a xenogeology article on this.

Maybe those are pieces of rotor? I know the rotors look white in the other picture, but maybe the broken surface is different and/or they look bluish reflecting light in that picture.

Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#166
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars' famous dust storms aren't so good at causing damage, because the air's really, really thin, so they can't pick up heavy particles even with high wind speeds. A serious problem if you need to keep grit out of fine machinery or electronics, not so much if you're worried about erosion (I mean, yeah, eventually it'd be a problem, but it's slow-motion compared to the erosion of something exposed to sand storms on Ea…

As a fun anecdote this is one of the very few things that was completely faked in "The Martian" - book and movie alike, which is otherwise a hard sci-fi book. I think it's quite telling when your instigator for a disaster scenario on Mars has to be faked! Well at least intentionally faked. It turns out Martian regolith/soil is also much more moist than expected so getting water will be relatively easy, but at the tim…

> which is otherwise a hard sci-fi book

Hard sci-fi is still a story and doesn't need to nail everything. And it had other pretty "unrealistic" moments that put me more off than the storm. Foremost, how they fixed the missed orbital rendezvous, no never going to happen that way. Or that they could just revert their home flight and go once more back and back again, how much delta-v would that be, never could have had that much extra fuel at least in that world... and other minor things, but still superb story.

Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They chucked a lot of stuff--anything intended for surface use went out the airlock. The cost per pound to bring something back from the moon was higher than the cost per pound of basically anything they brought.

Depends. If the primary point was to put a man on the moon, the cost of bringing things back is basically free. If on the other hand the primary mission was bringing back as many rocks as possible, then yes, the return would be very expensive.

It's interesting to think about:

The stated mission for the Space Race has often been "put a man in orbit", "put a man on the Moon", "put staff in the space station for X period".

But implicit in all of those mission designs has been the goal of returning the crew alive and in one piece. The record is rather favorable in that regard, and it's always a tragedy when we lose someone.

So that's one of the reasons a crewed Mars missions is a daunting prospect: because even with improved technology, it may be a one-way trip.

Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#168
Maybe sometime in the future NASA will deploy a service or repair pit stop station for all their crafts on Mars. Imagine that, if a craft is damaged another automaton is deployed to retrieve the damaged craft where it is transported to the pit stop to be fixed or for routine maintenance. This will improve service life and only the service station would need manual intervention ie. Restocking for parts.

So you would have a service station and a manufacturing station, that's nuclear powered and retrofitted with a 3D printer that can produce custom crafts on Mars.

I often ponder about what will the result be of having a human colony on Mars or the Moon? Think about the ethical implications, what about if someone commits a murder? Or breaks a law ( will there even be laws? Who creates the law? Who will deliver judgement? Will there be a jury? ) it just breaks my mind.

Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

#170
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars' famous dust storms aren't so good at causing damage, because the air's really, really thin, so they can't pick up heavy particles even with high wind speeds. A serious problem if you need to keep grit out of fine machinery or electronics, not so much if you're worried about erosion (I mean, yeah, eventually it'd be a problem, but it's slow-motion compared to the erosion of something exposed to sand storms on Ea…

As a fun anecdote this is one of the very few things that was completely faked in "The Martian" - book and movie alike, which is otherwise a hard sci-fi book. I think it's quite telling when your instigator for a disaster scenario on Mars has to be faked! Well at least intentionally faked. It turns out Martian regolith/soil is also much more moist than expected so getting water will be relatively easy, but at the tim…

I remember some nasa administrator laughing about that at a conference. "So at the end of the movie the atmosphere is so thin that he can fly through it at thousands of miles per hour without harm, but at the beginning a sandstorm at hundreds of miles per hour destroys the ship? Also the spacesuits ... no."
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