Flying on Mars is a lot harder than flying on Earth. If you don't believe me, listen to this developer of the flight sim X-Plane. The fact that they were able to get it to work at all is astounding.
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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So, we should fly on Jupiter instead, right?
Next flight is scheduled for Titan, which is a lot easier. The gravity is lower, but there's a lot more atmosphere, which means our helicopter can be nuclear powered!
I mean flying on Titan would be so easily theoretically a guy with really big wings could reasonably flap himself around
Run out and find me a guy with really big wings, I've got a job for him.
Is that even possible? I mean… with how volatile and exotic the atmosphere is, wouldn’t what a craft would be doing be more akin to how a submarine travels under water? Would “flying” even be the correct term? Wouldn’t it be more like navigating violent torrents of differently-dense gaseous layers? Some of which are (sometimes) liquid?
What would one even call that?
What would one even call that?
Fucking awesome.
Atmospheric pressure changes based on altitude, so there's probably some point where Jupiter's atmosphere that's a similar pressure and temperature to earth.
I looked it up, and the region of Jupiter's atmosphere at 1 bar is -100C. So you theoretically you could fly a modified Earth plane, it would just be a bit chilly.
Interestingly, though, Venus does have a zone with Earth-like temperature and pressure.
Thanks! I did a quick search and couldn’t find it but I know that with this crowd I’ll get an answer!
What makes cold temperatures a problem on earth is ice forming frombwater wapour in the atmosphere. No idea what you're likely to get on titan, but probably not that.
Supermarine?
That was really interest.
You could hear the excitement in their post!
Interesting. I was wondering how it would work at all with such a thin atmosphere. The author could chill out a bit though.
I think Veritasium has a video about this as well
Yeah, but they launched it just last year, right?
Cries in old
2020 was only last year right? … right?!?
I'm still confused about when there was ever a helicopter vs. just a rover
To test the concept, now they know that it works they can come up with a dedicated mission that can cover a lot more ground - the rovers are slllloooowwwwwwww.
Even just for finding the best path for a rover, interesting places for a rover to go, you can make much better use of the extremely limited speed of a rover
It was really just a drone.
Somewhere in Hollywood, a studio exec is already pitching a sequel to The Martian, with the plot that Matt Daemon finds himself stranded on Mars again and needs to fix the helicopter to fly him back to Earth.
I would pay money to see that in theaters
Sad. Hopefully a little helicopter like this becomes standard equipment on missions.
I can’t read this sentence without hearing Trump. Sad.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO :(
Sadge
But it was so real 😥