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Comment by antpls | Hacker News Reader

Is there a particular challenge about flying a drone on Mars? Why not an already existing consumer drone?

I see people have already told you that the atmosphere is thinner. But they've not really said just how much thinner.

The atmosphere on Mars is about one hundred times thinner than on Earth. That means that between "Earth atmosphere" and "vacuum", it's 99% of the way to being a vacuum.

This means that the blades need to spin really REALLY fast. Like "oh no, we'll start having transonic effects on the blades" fast. It's really tricky to build a craft where the propellers move faster than the atmosphere can "move aside". It was a really big deal to go supersonic back in 1947 or whatever, and that was with planes and did not use propellers. Transonic effects is why modern airplanes have swept wings.

But yes, gravity is like a third, so it's got that going for it.

So this is really cool, and I even found it unrealistic in the Mars TV series that they had drones, because how could that possibly be effective? Shows what I know.

I saw some videos on this drone on youtube. It can't really fly on Earth. So no, a drone off the shelf really can't fly on Mars.

It also needs to be built in an environment designed to minimize the risk of transporting any microbes from Earth.

Titan is much easier, just a little cold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(spacecraft)

The X-Plane flight simulator features a realistically simulated Mars to fly on, and includes one or two fixed-wing aircraft designed for its atmosphere. No rotary-wing as far as I remember, but I suppose one could be built with the bundled Plane Maker. https://www.x-plane.com/adventures/mars.html

It has to survive the trip there, be mostly autonomous, and most importantly operate in the low atmosphere and harsh environment of Mars. All things no off the shelf design will get you.

Here are some highlights: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/472/10-things-mars-helicop...

Veritasium did a great vid as well -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM

The thinner atmosphere also gives a cooling concern. Drone motors and electronics give off lots of heat, and the motors normally cool themselves with air blown through them with the fan blades.

Because it has to work 100% reliably. (And the thinner atmosphere.)

The atmosphere is much, much thinner on Mars. And the difference in gravity is not as significant.

Besides the thin atmosphere I would assume the radiation would fry a consumer drone

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