On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 08:40:46 -0700, Dan Marotta wrote:

On 1/15/21 7:43 PM, 5Z wrote:
On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 5:48:31 PM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
On 1/15/21 6:39 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 16:13:49 -0800, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:

As any true aviator (helicopter pilot) knows the first flight on
another world will be by the premier of all aircraft, the
helicopter.

Mankind's magic carpet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/s...pter-nasa.html

Yep, heard about it, but thanks for posting that URL. It will be
interesting to see how well it does on RealMars (TM). In Martian
conditions a helicopter makes more sense than a powered plane or
glider because it should have a much lower landing speed.

BTW, the Aurora ARES design had an inverted V tail on twin booms to
keep the stabiliser clear of exhaust from a rocket unit mounted on
the centre line at the wing's TE) - a common design in the S-8P
rocket glider RC competition class which, oddly enough, Bob Parks
competes in with his own-
design models.


What helicopter can fly at 100,000' (the air density in the Martian
atmosphere)? If there is one, I'd like to know about the rotor design
as my gyro plane can't get much above 10,000'. Oh yeah, it'll have to
carry its own oxygen for combustion unless it's going to get really
exotic.

Well Dan, if you read the article, you'll see:

"About 20 years ago, it couldn’t have been possible, really, because of
the math,” said Ms. Aung who was a deputy manager of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory’s autonomous systems division before joining the Mars
project.

But a number of advances, such as miniaturization of electronics,
batteries that stored more energy and materials that could be shaped
into lightweight blades, had finally made the dream of Mars flying
machines into a technological possibility, Ms. Aung said.


Well Tom, I guess I've got a lot of reading to do.

Do you remember Joe Berger? I believe he submitted a proposal for a
fold up glider for the Mars project. Wonder what ever became of it/him.

IIRC one of those even made it to the stage of a half-scale test version
-that's the one Aurora made and dropped from a balloon at 100,000 ft. It
looked a little like a DH Vampi the real thing would have had rocket
propulsion, hence the twin booms and inverted V tail: the rocket was at
the rear of the wing centre section:

https://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsplane-02b.html





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Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org