"C.Fleming" wrote:

Said another way, the air is so thin on Mars, you might as well be trying to
soar on the moon. It doesn't matter that the gravity is less; without air,
you're going to have a 0:1 glide ratio!


I would rather think the opposite. As long as you have air, even with low
density, you keep the same glide ratio, but at a higher speed. A higher
speed is closer to satellisation speed, i.e the contribution of the centrifugal
force due to the curvature of the ground is higher, so the glide ratio
should be a little higher. But this is only true provided the increased best glide
speed remains under the speed of sound, which is unlikely, near or above this
speed aerodynamics changes completely and glide ratio becomes very low.