On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:21:41 +0000, Scott wrote:

DABEAR wrote:
It would seem to me that if there were enough atmosphere on Mars to
support Ultralights, an astronaut could cover greater ground in
exploration, especially considering the STOL capability of such an
aircraft. VTOL is nice, but an engine failure could cause a mission
abort. A dual engine failure could maroon astronauts. In regards to
the rovers, if the vehicle breaks down, it's a long way to walk back
to base camp on very little oxygen.

Good idea, but they don't have any VORs there yet.

Yeah, but on the plus side, there's no FAA there, either. :-)

A couple of problems. First, Mars' gravity is about 38% of Earth's, but its
atmospheric density is less than 1% of ours. You'll end up needing a very large
wing to carry an astronaut, especially when you consider that our intrepid Mars
explorer has to wear a pressure suit and carry sufficient air for his sojourn.
Plus the fact that the air is so thin the vehicle's engine probably won't be
able to use it to oxidize the fuel, so the vehicle must carry both fuel and
oxidizer.

The whole problem isn't THAT much different from the "Lunar Buggy" discussion we
had about two years back. Here's one of my write-ups on that:

http://tinyurl.com/2kwjhe

Ron Wanttaja