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Automatically Inflating Martian Balloon

Posted by Hemos on from the mars-needs-omwen dept.

Phrogman writes "SpaceRef has exclusive coverage of a new method of automatically inflating a balloon in the Martian atmosphere to permit probes to help explore the planet. These balloons using a newly discovered technique to automatically inflate based on a combination of a volatile liquid stored in the balloon itself and the atmospheric pressure on Mars. This appaarently was previously impossible. There is a much better description of the technique in the article, plus a 60 second video (in Real format) of a test inflation in Earth's Atmosphere conducted at 100,000 feet (a similiar atmospheric pressure to that of Mars). Very interesting stuff that might offer Nasa some better options for really exploring Mars."

3 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Former NASA engineer... by Dr+Caleb · · Score: 4
    A man walks into a Silicon Valley pet shop to buy a monkey. The store owner shows him three monkeys and explains, "The one on the left costs five hundred dollars." "Why so much?" the customer wants to know.

    "Because," the shopkeeper explains, "he can do computer programming in C."

    "What about that monkey?" the man asks indicating the next animal. "He costs fifteen hundred dollars because he knows how to program in Visual C++ and Object-Relational technology."

    The startled patron then inquires about the third monkey. "He's worth three thousand dollars," the store owner replies. "Three thousand dollars!" The man exclaims. "What can he do?"

    "To be honest," the merchant confesses, "I've never seen him do a thing, but he says he used to work for NASA."

    --
    "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
  2. Ballons have already been to other planets. by deglr6328 · · Score: 3

    In 1985 the Soviet Union's "Vega 1" probe, while on it's way to Halley's comet flew past Venus and dropped off a Venera style lander and a balloon to investigate the Venusian middle cloud layer. The balloon floated in the atmosphere for about 48 hours at an altitude of 54 km. they repeated the trick with Vega 2 only 4 days later. of course they weren't passively inflated with the evaporation of a volatile liquid like the one in the article, if I remember correctly I think they had to take along their own pressurized tanks.

    --
    - "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
  3. mars too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    This self-inflating balloon test experiment was actually the product of a company called Pioneer Astronautics, which was merely funded by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NOT NASA.

    In fact, the head of the experiment was a Dr. Robert Zubrin, whom has spearheaded a humans-to-Mars program for the past 10 years, which has gotten a lot of folks down at NASA excited.

    Anyone who is interested should check out these sites:

    http://www.marssociety.org
    http://www.marshabitat.com/