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NASA, Google Award $1.35M For Ultra-Efficient Electric Aircraft
coondoggie writes "NASA today awarded what it called the largest prize in aviation history to a company that flew their aircraft 200 miles in less than two hours on less than one gallon of fuel or electric equivalent. Their aircraft is the Taurus G4 by Pipistrel-USA.com. The twin fuselage motor glider features a 145 kW electric motor, lithium-ion batteries, and retractable landing gear."
it is .006x as dense as ours, and gravity is 0.38x from - http://www.amnh.org/rose/mars/pl2.html
Could such an aircraft be configured for mapping the surface of Mars?
Try it and see. X-Plane lets you fly on Mars. Yes, there's a Linux version too, and you can find a bunch of electric (and/or rocket) aircraft for Mars on X-Plane.org.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
on less than one gallon of fuel or electric equivalent
This is obviously neglecting the energy required for the initial charge of the batteries. A jet would fare much better if you didn't count the fuel in it's tank when it took off.
Without checking, I'll just assume that the contest was designed with an enormous and obvious loophole, that way I can criticize it more easily.
The test is to deliver 200 passenger miles per gallon. The winner had four seats so it was allowed to use up to four gallons (equivalent) of fuel to cover the 200 mile distance.