Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight • Hacker News Board

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#31

Post by organicmultiloc » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

If this is the sort of experiment that is getting space on a rocket then I kind of wonder if NASA is out of ideas.

In other news, Hepatitis C is making a big comeback here in Denver. It's the sort of disease we used to laugh about being a "third world" problem back in the day. We don't use the term "third world" anymore, but we are becoming one nonetheless.

I can't stop thinking about what archaeologists will think about us in a thousand years, they will struggle so much to even come up with plausible theories, much less agree on them.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#32

Post by dooglius » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

certifiedloud wrote: post #25

dooglius wrote: post #24

Can't NASA test this in an artificial atmosphere low-pressure low-gravity room? Obviously there will be real-world concerns that are hard to simulate like slight damage from spacecraft landing and dust spun up when the copter takes off, but the article makes it sound like the low density is the big thing they're worried about.

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.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#33

Post by phyller » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #4

Shivetya wrote: post #2

So why not a blimp? I did not see any mention why they did not consider this though they did mention the Soviets using balloons on Venus. Is the air too thin to support any sort of lighter than air vehicle?

It sounds like it might be feasible: the atmosphere on the surface of Mars is described as the equivalent of Earth at "100,000 feet" (30 km) but the record for a weather balloon is 53km, and balloons carrying people have gone as high as 40km. The helicopter being proposed is "the size of a softball", though, and not the main focus of the mission. The high altitude weather balloons have been much bigger and would prob…

Forgive my ignorance, but I'd think the lower gravity would actually reduce buoyancy, so a lighter than air vehicle would have less upward force, while being at the mercy of high winds. At the same time, less gravity makes it easier for a helicopter because less lift would be required for a heavier than air vehicle.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#34

Post by lukas099 » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #20

So if it falls on its side, something that has a probably a 50% chance of happening, can it get back up? I always thought that for exploring another planet, you shouldn't really use something with wheels or wings. Something different like small "jumping robots" would make a lot more sense in a place where you have literally the ability to do 0-hardware maintenance. Instead of a single expensive flying robot, why not…

What about jumping robots makes them maintenance-free?

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#35

Post by ghaff » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

snug wrote: post #12

IanCal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where you would normally say the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec). http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art201307021...

To piggy back off this, different news outlets have their own set of rules. For example, CNET (I think) wouldn't use upper case past 4 characters Example: NASA, Nascar

Style guides also tend to ignore funky punctuation, etc. in company names. For example, it was pretty standard to drop the ! in Yahoo!. There is certainly an argument for respecting the wishes of a name's owner but it's also understandable to do otherwise for readability.

In this particular case, there are also a lot of acronyms that have entered such common usage (like radar) that capitalizing them would seem odd. And too many capped acronyms, Studly Caps, hyphenations etc. hurt readability after a while.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#36

Post by sgc » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #22

KineticLensman wrote: post #17

Link to the underlying press release [0] which has slightly more info than the BBC article. There is a bit more background about the project at [1], with some key points being: "The helicopter uses counter-rotating coaxial rotors about 1.1 m in diameter. Its payload will be a high resolution downward-looking camera for navigation, landing, and science surveying of the terrain, and a communication system to relay data…

"The helicopter uses counter-rotating coaxial rotors about 1.1 m in diameter..." Not to be little it but, in short, a drone. I presume the rocket scientists are jealous ;)

Of course. It's by definition until we get someone to Mars.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#37

Post by mseebach » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

maxmcd wrote: post #27

jon-wood wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says a lot to how routine using satellite navigation aids has become that my first question was why they’re not using GPS.

Wait, could they use earth GPS and it would just be very innacurate?

You mean pick up the signal from earths GPS? Off the top of my head, it would require earth to be in view, and it would be very inaccurate - GPS is already less accurate the further from equator you get, as all the visible satellites are increasingly on one side of you. You'd have this problem in the extreme, as all the satellites would be clustered in a single dot in the sky. Probably also infeasible to meaningfully correct for the fact that Mars and Earth move very quickly relative to each other.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#38

Post by azernik » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #20

So if it falls on its side, something that has a probably a 50% chance of happening, can it get back up? I always thought that for exploring another planet, you shouldn't really use something with wheels or wings. Something different like small "jumping robots" would make a lot more sense in a place where you have literally the ability to do 0-hardware maintenance. Instead of a single expensive flying robot, why not…

Where do you get 50% from? It's got landing legs, and will be placed right-side-up to start with by the Mars 2020 rover.

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#39

Post by maxmcd » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

YaxelPerez wrote: post #30

maxmcd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, could they use earth GPS and it would just be very innacurate?

GPS requires a bunch of satellites to be in orbit first, and we haven't sent them to Mars yet.

I meant using the known location of existing earth GPS satellites

Re: Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

#40

Post by giocampa » Sat, May 12, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

Well Elon has already sent a car, so a helicopter was the least they could send!