Ingenuity: NASA's Mars helicopter makes it three from three
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNx9hcrUpww
Taking a step back - it is just mind blowing that I am looking at color footage of activity on a different planet.
Perseverance moves pretty slowly - it would seem straightforward to have Ingenuity do a daily catch-up flight to stay within comm range of the rover.
Having demo'ed flight successfully, it would seem useful to keep using the helicopter to gather more engineering data.
The more flights it takes the more likely it would eventually fail and it will not crash gracefully.
Considering that other than would it actually fly and the coolness factor there isn’t much scientific value stemming from repeat flights as it carries little to no scientific instruments the risk even if it’s relatively low isn’t really worth it.
Rover can be far away from the area of operation of the Helicopter. Even if it crashes, it weighs next to nothing and despite of its blades spinning at 2900 RPM, it has very little kinetic energy if impacted compared to the amount of abuse the rover had to endure when landing.
There is a very big difference between the landing shock when the rover was locked down and sensitive equipment protected and a flying lawnmower blades impacting sensitive equipment it wouldn’t surprise me it much of the rover skin is paper thin so you are potentially even at a higher risk here.
Nevermind the fact you think it won't damage the rover, which is beyond strange. The forces when landing have been modelled and taken into account, the helicopter crashing into the rover is not.
If any one of the instruments is hit at the wrong angle, it's not hard to see it will be permanently knocked out.
But the question is would it be worth the risk and would multiple flights produce that much more coverage given just how little distance ingenuity can actually leapfrog in a given flight.
It’s main goal was a test bed for potential rotary aircraft on Mars as well as a test bed of the rapid development program that enabled NASA and JPL to build it relatively for so little money and so fast.
It did its job I don’t really know if there’s that much more value from keeping Percy in range to do more flights since ingenuity can only be controlled through Percy.
I say if, since the protocol may be to simply stop before it is predicted to drain. The last flight may only be known in arrears.
1. https://nationalpost.com/news/world/with-ingenuity-test-wrig...
2. https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/world/mars-perseverance-parac...
Achieving buoyancy would require a gigantic lifting body, far larger than any folding body we can send up there.
An evacuated space airship might also be possible but it would require a large ridged body (tho smaller than any gas filled balloon) which would also be impractical if not impossible to currently land on Mars.
That's why the first manned mission should include a politician, so they could fill the thing with election promises...
Seriously though, it got me thinking about Mytbuster's lead balloon experiment. Though I guess part of the problem is having to survive the dust storms, and possibly small meteorites?
It looks like someone modeled an 80m in diameter evacuated airship for Mars https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2017_Phase_...
But I don’t know if even starship would be large enough to send something like that to Mars.
But when we have people there that would seem to be the most plausible means of transport. Fixed wing would be likely out of the question, rotary wing aircraft would be very weight limited so carrying cargo and people would probably not work.
So this leaves rockets and airships.
I think one of the interesting things about Mars is that if we colonize it moving on the surface of the planet would be quite a challenge.
No oceans, lands is hard to traverse over long distances due to extreme terrain features and winged flight would be impractical for anything of any substantial mass.
"Mars habitats must contend with surface conditions that include almost no oxygen in the air, extreme cold, low pressure, and high radiation. Alternatively, the habitat may be placed underground"
"Large amounts of underground ice have been found on Mars; the volume of water detected is equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior"
In the “short term” once we do have continuous presence on Mars we might want to spread to a few points of interest.
Martian hyperloop is for when you have millions of people on the planet and we might never get to that point. We need something for dozens or a few 100’s too.