Flying on Mars

jimharris submitted a bunch of links about flying on Mars: "X-Plane's author Austin Meyer is working out the details of flying on Mars. Meyer has taken his system and adapted it for the conditions on Mars and has discovered a lot about what it would take to fly on Mars, where the atmospheric pressure is 1 percent of Earth, and gravity one third, but laws of flight remain the same. Flying becomes difficult, and landing almost impossible. Other people are working with NASA to create Entomopters engineered to meet Mars conditions. More ideas about the concept can be found at PBS's Scientific American Frontiers. A quick search at Google will reveal many people are thinking about flying on Mars." It's a beautiful challenge - how to fly in a situation where everything you "know" about flight is wrong.

Comments

Landing

[Waffle Iron]

Flying becomes difficult, and landing almost impossible.

Actually, landing is always easy. For example, NASA has landed several spacecraft on Mars in the last few years.

The difficult part is managing to keep your vehicle in one piece as you land.

Zippy and Mars

[The Great Wakka]

What about that document, eh? Some fun RANDOM CAPITALIZATION. Looks like the entire document was written by Zippy the Pinhead, but without the random statements. An interesting document. Perhaps we're going to have to use slow "zepplins" on Mars. It could acutally be a better idea. The zepplin is floating about 60m above the surface, and it has four thrusters. The one the the back is the most powerful. They are arranged so that the thrusters are at right angles from each other (or maybe a "peace-sign" arrangement is better?).

Just a thought. Flames will be used to save on energy bills.

I think people are making this more difficult...

[Freija Crescent]

We have large lifting craft that require almost no runway for takeoff and landing.. they are they relatives to the blimp.

Same laws apply.. sure there is less of an atmosphere.. but you also have one third the gravity to contend with. The main problem with such craft on the martian surface would be the fact that 1) they are huge, and 2) they are light. With the storms that have been witnessed on mars recently, storing such a craft would be a nightmare if you didn't collapse it and store it. Lets not forget the possibility you COULD be in the air when such a storm kicks up.. nothing could save your arse if that happened..

I think this will be the way we go.. because a dirigible could be packed into a small payload area for transport to the martian surface. The added bonus is that Mars has VERY little oxygen in the atmosphere.. so it becomes safe to fill the dirigible with hydrogen as opposed to helium, giving you much more lifting power.. the problem comes with storing compress hydrogen when you deflate these behemoths.. wouldn't want to store the tanks near an oxygen rich environment like say.. in the living structures or greenhouses.. =)