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Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by pengaru on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @06:45PM (#26160403)
I'm super eager to hear if the small helicopter manages stable, repeatable flight.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by jojobas on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @07:14PM (#26160755)
They know exactly what the air density and gravity is and tested for the exact conditions. It it makes to the surface in one piece it will fly.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by wongarsu on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:58PM (#26161678)
Simulating Martian air density is trivial, just build a vacuum chamber, remove the air, add some CO2 up to the right pressure. But simulating less gravity is incredibly hard:

Tethers are cheap but don't really allow free flight. Parabolic flights only give you a few seconds in fairly cramped space, and getting the low air density inside a plane sounds tough. A large spinning laboratory in space that can be spun up to simulate the desired gravity would be a solution, but we don't have that.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by op03 on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @10:01PM (#26162138)
Why would it be complicated though? Is gravity changing a lot? I thought it was just a constant you plug into equations. Air density on the other hand I would think can change for hundred different reasons from one second to the next.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by simonh on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @04:52AM (#26164634)
In context the comment is about simulating the conditions physically, hence discussion of vacuum chambers and aircraft.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by jojobas on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @12:19AM (#26163004)
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by usefulcat on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @12:13AM (#26162977)
Remove most of the batteries to reduce the weight? Trading flight time obviously. Of course since Martian gravity is only ~.4G, you'd have to remove a lot of weight, so a lot of batteries. On a device that's already been designed to be as light as possible.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by dvdkhlng on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @08:04AM (#26165842)
Unfortunately, changing weight of the helicopter changes also changes inertia and the moment of inertia [1]. On mars, only the gravitational force changes, while inertia stays the same.

That will be somewhat more tricky (or impossible) to emulate on earth.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_inertia

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by onethought on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @10:23PM (#26162260)
For the moon practice lander they used a rocket that always pointed down to cancel out enough of Earths gravity to match the Moons gravity. Neil Armstrong seemed to like it :D

They could do something like that.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by KMag on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @04:44AM (#26164567)
> used a rocket that always pointed down

Nit: the Lunar Lander Research Vehicle actually used a CF700 turbofan[0], not a rocket, to partially counter-act gravity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_CF700

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by ggm on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @10:50PM (#26162435)
Neil Armstrong seemed to like it :D

It nearly killed him. I don't think anyone actually liked it, and I bet a lot of people in risk assessment went hard on the "nixon needs to prepare the death letter" story.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by macksd on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @07:41PM (#26161041)
I realize they're very smart and very thorough, but this sounds an awful lot like "I ran the test suite - if you can apply the patch in production it'll work".
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by mhh__ on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @02:53AM (#26163810)
Luckily physics works pretty well.

Unfortunately, everything is trivial in theory.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by pengaru on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @07:53PM (#26161150)
Isn't Mars known for extreme winds and dust storms, which seem like quite the challenge for an ultralight drone resting on the surface, let alone flying autonomously?
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by MrFlynn on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:14PM (#26161335)
Since the atmosphere of Mars is 1% the pressure of Earth's, even very high velocity wind would have little energy behind it.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by jojobas on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:23PM (#26161411)
Wind forces are defined by dynamic pressure q, which is proportional to speed squared divided by density. At 1% the Earth's air density, a 100m/s wind on Mars (half the speed of sound!) exerts the same force as 10m/s breeze on Earth.

So far the fastest winds observed on Mars are about 30m/s.

So, the thin air that makes it hard to fly on Mars makes it safe to stay on the ground.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by pengaru on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:40PM (#26161556)
Doesn't the suspended dust carried in these wind storms need to be taken into consideration? I presume they contribute significantly to the density.
Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by jojobas on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @10:37PM (#26162344)
It's said that during dust storms Martian air carries some 100-1000 dust particles of 1-10um per cm^3.

Running the worst case numbers, 1000 10um particles per cm^3 adds up to about 1/3 the air density. Realistically it's maybe 10% of density increase.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by tobmlt on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @05:12AM (#26164760)
I remember from my flying days that:

“The addition of water vapor to air (making the air humid) reduces the density of the air, which may at first appear counter-intuitive. This occurs because the molar mass of water (18 g/mol) is less than the molar mass of dry air.”

(Not sure I like the language above but that’s how Wikipedia says it)

Is this potential effect accounted for in your numbers? I.e. What happens to the molar mass of Martian atmosphere when Martian dust is suspended in it?

At any rate, dust is bad for the moving parts of flying machines.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by jojobas on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @05:35AM (#26164906)
This is about gaseous water, not water droplets. Water droplets (fog) increase density (again, not by much).

Dust doesn't have a meaningful vapour pressure and can't influence air density this way.

Re:NASA's Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars th... by codeduck on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @03:46AM (#26164161)
10m/s is a pretty fresh breeze.