Ultralights in Space?

Much ado has been made of the Mars Rovers and the use of a vehicle to
explore the moon in the 1970s.

I was curious if there was enough atmosphere on a planet like Mars
that Astronauts could utilize Ultralights in their exploration and if
so, what would the make-up of the ultralight aircraft be, considering
the lightweight materials utilized to construct the lunar rover in the
late 1960s? Would there be enough atmosphere to support a parachute
recovery system as well?

Also, the Army experimented with inflatable aircraft in the 1950s/
1960s...would the "inflate-a-plane" idea find use in space exploration
if adequate atmosphere existed to support an ultralight operation?

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. Mars doesn't
appear to have many landmarks that would be good for pilotage. I
suppose they could have an NDB set up at their base camp so they could
get "home."

Scott


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.

In a previous article, "DABEAR" said:
I was curious if there was enough atmosphere on a planet like Mars
that Astronauts could utilize Ultralights in their exploration and if

There have been proposals for unmanned aircraft on mars before.


--
Paul Tomblin http://blog.xcski.com/
"Mary had a little key,/She kept it in escrow/And everything that Mary
sent/The Feds were sure to know." - Sam Simpson on sci.crypt

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

"DABEAR" wrote in message
oups.com...
Much ado has been made of the Mars Rovers and the use of a vehicle to
explore the moon in the 1970s.

I was curious if there was enough atmosphere on a planet like Mars
that Astronauts could utilize Ultralights in their exploration and if
so, what would the make-up of the ultralight aircraft be, considering
the lightweight materials utilized to construct the lunar rover in the
late 1960s? Would there be enough atmosphere to support a parachute
recovery system as well?

Also, the Army experimented with inflatable aircraft in the 1950s/
1960s...would the "inflate-a-plane" idea find use in space exploration
if adequate atmosphere existed to support an ultralight operation?

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.


IIRC, Mars has a very windy enviroment with winds often reaching as much a
300 MPH. You might want something with a little more wing loading. But it
would support your STOL desires.

DABEAR wrote:
Much ado has been made of the Mars Rovers and the use of a vehicle to
explore the moon in the 1970s.

I was curious if there was enough atmosphere on a planet like Mars
that Astronauts could utilize Ultralights in their exploration and if
so, what would the make-up of the ultralight aircraft be, considering
the lightweight materials utilized to construct the lunar rover in the
late 1960s? Would there be enough atmosphere to support a parachute
recovery system as well?

Also, the Army experimented with inflatable aircraft in the 1950s/
1960s...would the "inflate-a-plane" idea find use in space exploration
if adequate atmosphere existed to support an ultralight operation?

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.


Get a copy of X-Plane. Austin Meyers has modeled the Martian Atmosphere
and has included one possible design that 'flies'. It has the wings of
a glider and the engine of a C-5. The jet intake has to be HUGE in
order to capture enough air to be worth anything. The runway is several
miles long, and rotation speed is somewhere around 400kts.

Watch our for that crosswind component

Scott


Maxwell wrote:



IIRC, Mars has a very windy enviroment with winds often reaching as much a
300 MPH. You might want something with a little more wing loading. But it
would support your STOL desires.

Just idle speculation on a winter afternoon here but there have been several
scientific papers lately that suggest some interesting possibilities for
flight on Mars.

If, as many suspect, there was once large amounts of standing water on Mars,
the atmospheric pressure to maintain that water must have been in the 600 -
1000mb range. Recent data from the Mars Reconosance Orbiter suggests that
the current rate of atmosphere loss doesn't support the near total loss of
that atmosphere since so it may still be there somewhere - possibly frozen
and covered by dust.

Other papers suggesting ways to "teraform" mars hold that a small amount of
CFC gasses (posibly carried by as few as 10 rockets) could trigger enough
greenhouse effect to release that frozen atmosphere should it prove to be
there. CFC's are thousands of times more powerful as greehouse gases than
CO2. There is a lot of oxygen on Mars but it's mostly bound up with iron as
rust (That's why Mars is red) However enough of it may be loosely bound to
minerals that 200mb or so of it would be released if warmed.

So, still speculating, at 38% Earth gravity and with an Earth-like1000mb
atmosphere, what would flight be like on Mars? Well, it might be possible
for humans to routinely fly under their own power. It would take only a
third as much wing area for the same wing loading.

Interesting stuff...

Bill Daniels


"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...
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

On Feb 11, 8:21 am, Scott wrote:
Good idea, but they don't have any VORs there yet. Mars doesn't
appear to have many landmarks that would be good for pilotage. I
suppose they could have an NDB set up at their base camp so they could
get "home."

We were able to use tactical NDB's in the field with two different
length's of antenna for signal broadcast. However, having maintenance
personnel handy was an imperative, particularly in regards to the
antenna guide wires. A break in the cable affected the ability of the
NDB to transmit.

Just the same, very lightweight. If mostly flatlands, no need for
the larger antennas or supporting wire structures. 300 mph winds
problematic to say the least. The NDBs would probably have to sit on
poles that were (the poles) injected into the ground. Might be wiser
to send unmanned landers with NDBs and navigation equipment fitted
into the structure in advance of the mission to establish operational
ATC for the flyers after they've set up base camp.

As for ultralights, looks like the atmosphere won't support
ultralights. Might be better to support a single mission with
multiple landers. Land them in a line across the area you want to
explore, then utilize rovers.

Now I'm curious how Unmanned RC might work from a base camp and what
the specifications of those aircraft would be.

Minature RC landers with rockets and VTOL capability, plus the ability
to return with samples from a site, might be preferable, especially if
the means exist to transmit RC signals over long distance. Unmanned
base camps with staged supplies appear to be the way to go with
landings and supply missions conducted before the actual manned
landing for manned and unmanned exploration of the planet. You could
deliver food, supplies, repair parts, fuel, oxygen, spare rovers,
navaids, water, etc., to await the crews and place your landings of
such supplies along the path of exploration.

The flight simulator XPlane (xplane.com) has a feature that you can set
the environment to simulate flight on Mars. It even comes with planes
tailored to the air density, and complete scenery, based on the orbiter
images.

The plane you have to use looks a lot like a U2, but performs very
marginally. Cool to fly around Olympus Mons, and down that big canyon
though.