Thermals on Mars!

[Joe Minton]

Thermals on Mars!

Take a look @: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,422645,00.html

Now, if we could find a way to get there (and breathe) ---
Think of it, no worries about hitting light poles, landing in trees or 'zeroing' a flight by landing 'out'.

If Only ---

Joe ;o)

[KickAce]

Ahhh… Now what better thing to bring along for the first manned missions to Mars as not only a hobby but as a way to reduce stress during there long stay… Maybe they should bring a few foamy sailplanes along with them for the ground looks like it’ll shred up a perfectly good Monokote job…!

[Monster Mash]

Just the fact that the gravitational pull is about 1/3 of earths should help quite a bit also....

A 60oz plane on earth would only weigh about 20oz on Mars.

[blizz191]

then rc planes could break speed of light on mars if they weighed that much less

[jpherit]

I hate to rain on this tongue-in-cheek picnic, but the atmospheric density on Mars is about 1% of earth. This means small Reynolds numbers and very inefficient flight as very high speeds are required to generate enough lift to support even the lower weight.

[lincoln]

You'd just have to build a lot lighter. My best EZB would probably fly at about 9mph on Mars. I'm sure the flight would be a lot shorter, though, since the prop would be unwinding about 6 times as fast.

It's probably within technical capabilities to make a glider that's light enough to do this. I don't know what the Reynold's number would be though. You'd probably need to build big, too. Just put a receiver and servos in the Daedelus airplane and maybe you'd be all set, although even without a pilot I guess it would end up flying about as fast as a full sized, normal sailplane on earth.

If you could make a 3M down to 3 oz....and I bet someone could, though I'm guessing it would be an RES. I think a normally proportioned one would have a wing spar that weighed an ounce or so, so maybe a thick section would be required. And a low aspect ratio would help with the Reynold's number as well.

Don't think it's impossible. Unless someone has bested it, an indoor free flight guy set a record of over an hour with a 42 inch contraption that weighed only 1.2 grams. Not the right airframe, but it gives you an idea. And those dust devils must have wicked strong lift to pick up dust with air that thin.

Kind of an interesting little problem, but I wonder how much feel a transmitter has through vacuum suit gloves.

Interesting that the reporter doesn't know dust devils are everywhere. I've seen them in snow, I've seen them picking up leaves in a crowded neighborhood, I've seen them pick up trash for 30 second flights, etc. All in the northeast.

[atmosteve]

Well, I bet it could happen one day long into the future if we survive, imagine interplanetary thermal competitions! At least getting your glider airborne would use less raw energy. :D
A little on Mars, courtesy of the cosmic perspective;

What is Mars like today?

The present-day surface of Mars looks much like some deserts or volcanic plains on Earth. However, its thin atmosphere makes it unlike any place on Earth. The low atmospheric pressure—less than 1% of that on Earth’s surface—explains why liquid water is unstable on the Martian surface. Any liquid water would rapidly disappear, with some evaporating and some freezing into ice.
The atmosphere is made mostly of carbon dioxide, but the total amount of gas is so small that it creates only a weak greenhouse effect. The temperature is usually well below freezing, with a global average of about −50°C(−58°F). The lack of oxygen means that Mars lacks an ozone layer, so much of the Sun’s damaging ultraviolet radiation passes unhindered to the surface.

Martian Seasons and Winds Mars has seasons much like those on Earth because of its similar axis tilt, but they last about twice as long (because a Martian year is almost twice as long as an Earth year). On Mars, however, the shape of its orbit introduces a second important effect. Mars’s more elliptical orbit puts it significantly closer to the Sun during the southern hemisphere summer and farther from the Sun during the southern hemisphere winter. Mars therefore has more extreme seasons in its southern hemisphere—that is, shorter, hotter summers and longer, colder winters—than in its northern hemisphere.
The ellipticity of Mars’s orbit makes seasons more extreme (hotter summers and colder winters) in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere.

The seasonal changes create the major feature of Mars’s weather: winds blowing from the summer pole to the winter pole. Polar temperatures at the winter pole drop so low (about −130°C) that carbon dioxide condenses into “dry ice” at the polar cap. At the same time, frozen carbon dioxide at the summer pole sublimates into carbon dioxide gas. During the peak of summer, nearly all the carbon dioxide may sublime from the summer pole, leaving only a residual polar cap of water ice. The atmospheric pressure therefore increases at the summer pole and decreases at the winter pole, driving strong pole-to-pole winds. Overall, as much as one-third of the total carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere moves seasonally between the north and south polar caps.

These images from the Hubble Space Telescope show the region around Mars’s north pole, which is at the center of each image. Notice how the polar cap shrinks as summer approaches, due to sublimation of carbon dioxide ice. This sublimation at the summer pole occurs at the same time that carbon dioxide condenses at the winter pole. These changes drive winds from the summer pole to the winter pole.

The direction of the pole-to-pole winds on Mars changes with the alternating seasons. Sometimes these winds initiate huge dust storms, particularly when the more extreme summer approaches in the southern hemisphere. At times, airborne dust shrouds the surface so much that no surface markings can be distinguished and large dunes form and shift with the strong winds. As the dust settles out onto the surface, it can change the color or reflectivity over vast areas, creating seasonal changes in appearance that fooled some astronomers in the late 1800s and early 1900s into thinking they saw changes in vegetation.

The Martian winds often spawn dust devils, swirling winds that you may have seen over desert sands or dry dirt on Earth. Dust devils look much like miniature tornadoes, but they rise up from the ground rather than coming down from the sky. The air in dust devils is heated from below by the sunlight-warmed ground, and swirls because of the way it interacts with prevailing winds. Dust devils on Mars are especially common during summer in either hemisphere and can be far larger than their counterparts on Earth. The Mars rovers have even photographed dust devils, and some have apparently passed directly over the rovers without causing damage. In one case, a dust devil apparently “cleaned” dust off the solar panels of the rover Spirit, restoring power that had been lost as dust accumulated.

Color of the Martian Sky Martian winds and dust storms leave Mars with perpetually dusty air, which helps explain the colors of the Martian sky. The air on Mars scatters visible sunlight much like the air on Earth; that is, it scatters blue light more than red light. However, because there is much less air on Mars than Earth, it scatters less light. By itself this scattering would make the Martian sky a deep blue (almost black).
The dust in the Martian atmosphere has an opposite effect. Dust tends to absorb blue light, so by itself it would leave the sky with a brownish-pink color. The actual color of the Martian sky comes from the combination of the effects of air and dust. The result depends on the time of day, the season, and how much dust is in the air. Most of the time, the daytime Martian sky ends up yellow-brown. However, it sometimes ends up with other colors, such as blue or even green, particularly in the mornings and evenings.

Mars Climate and Axis Tilt- The weather on Mars does not change much from one year to the next. However, changes in its axis tilt probably cause Mars to undergo longer-term cycles of climate change. Theoretical calculations suggest that Mars’s axis tilt varies far more than that of Earth—from as little as 0° to 60° or more on time scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. This extreme variation arises for two reasons. First, Jupiter’s gravity has a greater effect on the axis of Mars than on Earth, because Mars’s orbit is closer to Jupiter’s orbit. Second, Earth’s axis is stabilized by the gravity of our relatively large Moon. Mars’s two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, are far too small to offer any stabilizing influence on its axis.
As we discussed earlier, changes in axis tilt affect both the severity of the seasons and the global average temperature. When Mars’s axis tilt is small, the poles may stay in a perpetual deep freeze for tens of thousands of years. With more carbon dioxide frozen at the poles, the atmosphere becomes thinner, lowering the pressure and weakening the greenhouse effect. When the axis is highly tilted, the summer pole becomes quite warm, allowing substantial amounts of water ice to sublime, along with carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. The pressure therefore increases, and Mars becomes warmer as the greenhouse effect strengthens—although probably not by enough to allow liquid water to become stable at the surface. The Martian polar regions show layering of dust and ice that probably reflects changes in climate due to the changing axis tilt.








So I wouldn't count on your film covering lasting out the soaring season.. :p :)

[Soar_dude]

I would think something that that inflates with huge wings and tail surfaces would work. Imagine the killer launches with a winch less resistance from the atmosphere and less gravity.

[solo6796]

I would think something that that inflates with huge wings and tail surfaces would work. Imagine the killer launches with a winch less resistance from the atmosphere and less gravity.


Zoom to the Moon.... Literally!

AJ

[jasbury1]

Why not try out your theories in X-Plane? http://x-plane.com/

You have the option to fly on Mars...

[Guz]

Pssst.....

There was a plan to put a plane on Mars.
ARES (http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/)
Aerial
Regional-scale
Environmental
Survey of Mars

http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/graphics/group_planes_480.jpg
The ARES full-scale and half-scale flight test vehicles.

But from what I can find, NASA scrapped it. In favor of "Mars telecommunications satellites" :(

[KickAce]

Zoom to the Moon.... Literally!

AJ

Hmmm...
Looks like that it has all ready been done...! :eek:

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