Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab
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whats the atmosphere on Mars like? i wonder how different the chopper had to be to fly, or is more similar in density than i think? just the breakability that's an issue?
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@kiwiwomble said in NASA:
whats the atmosphere on Mars like? i wonder how different the chopper had to be to fly, or is more similar in density than i think? just the breakability that's an issue?
just waiting for us to melt a big hunk of ice. all good
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@kiwiwomble gravity about 40 percent of earth, atmosphere about 1% of sea level. Remarkable
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@kiwiwomble gravity about 40 percent of earth, atmosphere about 1% of sea level. Remarkable
oh yea, John Carter showed that
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@mariner4life said in NASA:
@kiwiwomble gravity about 40 percent of earth, atmosphere about 1% of sea level. Remarkable
oh yea, John Carter showed that
Great documentary
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@kiwiwomble said in NASA:
whats the atmosphere on Mars like? i wonder how different the chopper had to be to fly, or is more similar in density than i think? just the breakability that's an issue?
Thin. I'm staggered that they can do that.
The highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to the density found 35 km above the Earth's surface.
A Lama helicopter made it to about 41,000ft, 12, 500m (and that was quite an exceptional achievement) so using the earth's atmosphere as a comparison this wee beast probably won't get too high. Olympus Mons is the highest peak on Mars - it's 72,000 feet (21KM) high. Hillary would have fun with that one, Everest is under 9km. I would guess basically zero atmosphere up there, and effectively in space.
Still, wizzing around the surface is still very cool.
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I have now wondered, how do they measure altitude on Mars? No mean sea level, so this is the answer:
"Martian elevation values were obtained by subtracting the radius of the Mars areoid from the radius of Mars at each observation point. The resulting elevations were used to produce the topographic map."
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If anybody didn't understand "areoid", and I didn't, this is it:
Noun
areoid (plural areoids)
(astronomy, geology, planetology) The analogue of the geoid for the planet Mars; the Martian geoid. The gravitational and rotational equipotential surface for Mars. The surface that provides the datum line (the equivalent for sea level) for Mars.I am delighted that should I ever get to fly on Mars I will at least understand the altitude that I won't run into Olympus Mons.
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@nzzp yeah, there isn't one "sea level" when we give and elevation we have to reference it to specific vertical datum, a common one in chch was the Christchurch drainage datum which gave zero or sealavel as a distance below the floor of the cathedral. When compared with the more recent Lyttelton tide gauge, several meters apart...both commonly used "sea levels"
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@snowy elevation is hard on earth as well. General numbers are good, precision gets really really hard depending on the assumptions around the shape of the earth
Yeah. With flying around it isn't much of a deal because we have at least 1000ft leeway under IFR but I doubt these precise geometrics are an issue for exploring Mars at this point. Good fun though.
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If anybody didn't understand "areoid", and I didn't, this is it:
Noun
areoid (plural areoids)
(astronomy, geology, planetology) The analogue of the geoid for the planet Mars; the Martian geoid. The gravitational and rotational equipotential surface for Mars. The surface that provides the datum line (the equivalent for sea level) for Mars.I am delighted that should I ever get to fly on Mars I will at least understand the altitude that I won't run into Olympus Mons.
Sheesh, as if we didn't know that already 🙄
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Sheesh, as if we didn't know that already
Sorry about that, didn't mean to treat you all as morans because I wasn't sure what the Martian geoid was. Apologies again, I will attempt not to repeat the error, have given myself several upper cuts and will feel guilty for several...
well actually I'm O.K. now. -
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