Where on Mars would you send them?

[SkyeLab]

Ok, so two new rovers are at your disposal, similar in design to the current ones (with perhaps some of Beagle's biosniff technology).

Where on Mars would you send them and why?

I will start the airbags rolling by suggesting a) Hellas Basin and B) Valles Marineris .

Reasons, Hellas has always fascinated me , it is deep, highest atmospheric pressure and likely to be one of the last places that standing water existed on the planet.

Valles Marineris, can you think of a more likely place that flash flooding would occur?

Looking forward to reading your proposals/thoughts

Cheers

Brian

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by SkyeLab@Sep 13 2004, 12:14 PM
a] Hellas Basin and b] Valles Marineris

Sure, I'd go with those two. Another place I'd look at would be the caldara plain on top of Olympis Mons, or perhaps the surface of Phobos.

In any case, I'd want the rover to be equiped with the tools needed to measure isotope abundances so that we can get an idea of the age of the rocks being observed. Ultimately what makes a place valuable to observe has a lot to do with the instruments on the rover.

[VanderL]

I agree with all your targets and added to that I would like to look around Nirgal Vallis, explore the strange channel and side-canyons, especially where the channel connects to a larger "streambed" (for want of a better desciption.

Cheers.

[GOURDHEAD]

One to each polar region as near to the pole as it is safe to land.

[SkyeLab]

Interesting suggestions!

The polar rovers in particular present an interesting engineering challenge, perhaps nuke power (to get over the lack of sunlight and extreme temperatures).

How stable under foot (wheel) would you think the Martian polar caps would be?

Wouldn't it be great to get some sort of deep ice core from the poles so as to examine Mars climate change (and perhaps deep frozen beasties?)

Nirgal Vallis also sounds intriguing, how easy would it be to fit a landing elipse over that area?

As for Phobos, what a cool observational platform as well as an interesting study in it's own right.

Also I like the symmetry of a lander on Olympus Mons and Hellas Basin. It's got a nice High Low feel to it.

Keep; them coming!!!

[bossman20081]

I was thinking instead of rovers, we use nuclear powered helicopters. You could cover like a thousand times as much ground. You could also go to a different altitude and study different layers (like earths ionosphere, mesosphere, etc. etc.) The cameras would also get much more detail from an aerial (sp?) perspective. the only problem I can forsee is if the air pressure is too low.

[Tom2Mars]

Yes, all good suggestions above. The highest point, the lowest point, the coldest and the warmest. And the resort, that goes without saying.

Bossman, re-

was thinking instead of rovers, we use nuclear powered helicopters...the only problem I can forsee is if the air pressure is too low.

Uh...Yeah on the low air pressure. The helicopter needs the most power to stay aloft of just about anything, plus a nuclear reactor is kinda heavy.

The world altitude record for propeller driven flight is by the Helios, I believe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1440598.stm

90,000+(about 28,000 meters) feet altitude here on Earth is equivalent to the atmospheric density at the surface of Mars, so solar powered flight will do quite nicely. Balloons have been suggested too.

[bossman20081]

I said nuclear power so that in the winter or if it doesnt get enough light for some reason it wont crash. According to that article you linked, the highest altitude weve reached is 24000 meters which is less than what you said the air pressure on Mars is equal to. Though, NASA believed that Helios could reach 30000 meters, the question is how do we get a 74 foot long aircraft to Mars? (also, didnt Helios crash or something?) Well anyway, Im still holding out for my nuclear powered helicopter idea.

[Tom2Mars]

bossman, re-

I said nuclear power so that in the winter or if it doesnt get enough light for some reason it wont crash.

I'm not sure the light changes that much in winter on Mars, it's not like Mars gets lots of "overcast days". Plus, most of the designs I've seen plan to use fuel cells which can get through a full night of darkness.

In addition, the nature of a plane is that it gains altitude when power is applied, this is thrust. When the thrust stops for some reason, such as a power failure, or engine failure, the plane enters a glide mode, and can glide to a landing. My father flew in jets in the Korean war, and mentioned that most of the guys he saw killed, died in helicopter crashes, when their engines were shot at, or their blades damaged.

At that point, a helicopter drops like a rock. On Mars, any failure of a nuclear powered helicopter engine might result in a spectacular event, and the possible spreading of the nuclear core all over that pristine Martian terrain you want to study in detail.

According to that article you linked, the highest altitude weve reached is 24000 meters which is less than what you said the air pressure on Mars is equal to.

Sorry, I couldn't remember the solar powered plane I was thinking of, so I just grabbed at the first thing I found on Google. Here is a link to another record breaking flight later in that year by Helios:
NASA Solar-Powered Plane Breaks Altitude Records
It reached 96,000 feet (29,413 meters).

Re-

the question is how do we get a 74 foot long aircraft to Mars?

I have some links here somewhere on some(planned) fuel-cell driven Mars aircraft that would be shipped with folded wings, and after aerobraking, would be slowed down in a container by parachutes, dropped out of their containers, unfold their wings and take flight. Solar powered craft wouldn't be too different.

I am quite certain that something similar would have to be done for a helicopter design, don't you think? Big blades whirling in a large diameter circle. Those would have to be packed and shipped and deployed.

(I've mentioned another variation for a solar powered aircraft in previous posts that I have designed. Unfortunately, it's been picked up for a project and I have "non-disclosured" myself into a position where I can't mention too much about it. So, you might sift through those posts.)

Re-

also, didnt Helios crash or something?

Yes, I read that!

SOLAR ELECTRIC PLANE CRASHES DURING TEST FLIGHT
I think the Wright brothers had some crashes too. I'm glad they didn't quit designing and improving the quest for flight. And, if we should ignore a technology based on a single crash, we should all stop driving cars. In 2002 alone, there were 6.3 million car crashes in the U.S. with nearly 45,000 fatalities:
U.S. Car Accidents in 2002

Plus, the crash was during a test in Hawaii. Have you ever been there? I have. The weather can go from nice to nasty in minutes. There are lots of severe and turbulent weather patterns that can form there with up to hundreds of inches of rain per year. That kind of rain comes from big, frequent cloud formations. And Helios is all wing.

Fortunately, on Mars, there aren't the same kind of weather patterns. Also, when there are big winds, the low density of the Martian atmosphere can make a 200 mph wind "feel like" a 20 mph breeze here on Earth. So, Mars might just be the perfect place for a lightweight, delicate, solar-powered aircraft. And, if there is a duststorm, there won't be much for the cameras to see, for any kind of aircraft, including helicopters, so the best thing to do in that situation would be for all the flying vehicles to land and sit it out, and let the orbiting satellites and the fixed ground stations do the brunt of the work.

Well anyway, Im still holding out for my nuclear powered helicopter idea.

Don't let me stop you. In fact, the best way to learn more about helicopters is to build one. There are some nice RC(remote controlled) kits out there using gas and electric engines. I haven't made one of them yet, but I hear they are a real challenge and everyone seems to get a big kick out of flying them. Some are so small, you can even fly them in your living room!

[bossman20081]

Im broke right now... but I do want to get a couple of gas powered RCs and race my brothers (they can go 60mph and up! who wouldnt want one...)

[lswinford]

I like the idea of one for the polar regions, somehow I think the north cap has somewhat more interesting things than south. The other, in a kind of 'put up or shut up', for Richard Hoagland's Cydonia. Not only was there that 'face' which seems to be thoroughly discredited, but supposedly pyramids and a city. As a legitimate science inquiry, I'm a sucker for straight lines appearing in nature, since they so rarely do, and there are some fairly straight-apparent features nearby.

[zobar]

What about sub-terrain rovers? They go underground and look for possible life that is intolerent to conditions above ground. Also, ther's a decent possibility of water under ground where it wouden't evaporate.(possible underground caverens?) They could be nuke powered or have a soler station above ground and have power bemmed to them.

Zobar

[GOURDHEAD]

How stable under foot (wheel) would you think the Martian polar caps would be?

Varied. We should anticipate rough marsscape with crevices of various widths and thinly covered faults of various sizes. Some of this could be ameleorated by carefully examining these surfaces via orbiting radar prior to actually landing.

[lswinford]

Way to go, Zobar! Yep, the best stuff is going to come when we do some drilling and digging. Maybe we could equip some of those rovers to drop off a pattern of sensors then plant a good pneumatic pressure plate to give us an echo relief of what's below. Bravo, Zobar!

[zobar]

Also, ther's a decent possibility of water under ground where it wouden't evaporate.

(Quoting my self here.)


if the "drovers" (Digging Rovers) do find water, but no life, I personaly believe that we should send basic plants to Mars and start teraforming it for Future manned missions. givin enough time, the plants will florish in the carbon dioxide atmosphere and thrugh photosynthisis oxygen can begain building up (kind of like the bacteria and proto-earth) also, we know there is some water vapor in the atmosphere, so even if nothing turnes up underground, we can still send geneticly modified deseret plants that can with stand extream cold.

Zobar

[lswinford]

I seem to recall, again something from close to twenty years ago, that some college project had cactus growing in a low-temperature, low-pressure, high-CO2, high-UV light environment. Since it was a news item, and such reporters rarely publish follow-up articles, I have no idea whether they got any to reproduce or whether they could sprout some directly from seed. Then too, I don't recall whether it was casual bugs or birds that did the pollenation, but seem to recall that birds did the seed dispersal, so if we had cactii out in the open it might take a fair degree of direct manipulation to help with their propagation.

I remember an old Boys Life story, back in the early 1960s that had some futuristic Johnny Appleseed planting pine trees. It had a nice ending when he was discouraged, thinking he failed, when suddenly all the trees burst up to gobble the CO2. It was fun fiction for its day, along with the one I remember best, a race to the moon using small capsules pulled along by solar sails.

But back to current-day, how would you get substantial volumes of acceptable gasses into the Martian atmosphere to build the kinds of air pressures we would need? Perhaps if we stuck with glass-block igloos for our farms, parks, and cities, we could have to satisfy ourselves with terraforming at least little oases of human-habitable Mars. It might be fun to be around in a couple hundred years to see how it all worked out, if it did.