That's the Ares craft I had mentioned in a (now) different thread. I figured that it could be unpackable and deployed from the landing site for surface exploration.
That thread is now titled OFMM General Discussions. Otherwise, it's the same thread as before.That's the Ares craft I had mentioned in a (now) different thread. I figured that it could be unpackable and deployed from the landing site for surface exploration.
Perhaps a rover and a plane are in order?
Azure, and I agree. It's great.What was that one called that attaches to Arrow?
I believe PhantomCruiser is working on just that.James.Denholm said:Personally, I would imagine a balloon-type craft to be more appropriate for such expeditionary explorations, potentially smaller (packing wise) and less complicated to operate. But I'm not sure if the thin atmosphere would be a help or a hindrance to such a method of travel.
...skycrane, currently I even prefer having the payload enclosed inside an approximately toroidal vehicle structure, so the expendable amount of the heat shield can be reduced and the CoG is closer to the center of the vehicle.
I think the ideal crew size for the first iterations is 8, this is like a shuttle crew + 1 additional MS.
One astronaut should be trained as in-flight surgeon, the OSHV needs to have a small medical station on-board, that is separate of the rest of the functions, out of psychological reasons. Just one bed with all the needed gear for emergency surgery, if 25% of the crew are requiring intensive medical care (2 astronauts), the situation is bad enough to switch to emergency medical situations.
I don't know if we are going to make this have any effect in the program, but it makes sense to me
I would think that something fairly small would do as long as about half of the modules coming down were maned and the others unmanned.8 crew per hab module sounds good. Thinking about it now, how large would that need to be? The ISS has 835m^3 for 3-6 long-term people, would a module that big or bigger be able to feasibility fit on a crane? Or should the hab module be split up like the ISS? Maybe before now it was just a given and I just thought of it now..
Personally, I would imagine a balloon-type craft to be more appropriate for such expeditionary explorations, potentially smaller (packing wise) and less complicated to operate. But I'm not sure if the thin atmosphere would be a help or a hindrance to such a method of travel.
I suppose it might be possible to get a density lower in a balloon than on Mars.
0.1786 * (1- ( 0.0075 / 0.1786) ) = 0.1711The lifting power in air of hydrogen and helium can be calculated using the theory of buoyancy as follows:
The density at sea-level and 0°C for air and each of the gases is:
Thus helium is almost twice as dense as hydrogen. However, buoyancy depends upon the difference of the densities (ρgas) - (ρair) rather than upon their ratios. Thus the difference in buoyancies is about 8%, as seen from the buoyancy equation:
- Buoyant mass (or effective mass) = mass × (1 - (ρ(air)/ρ(gas)) )
Wait, I am getting confused... wasn't the sky crane going to be a reusable reentry vehicle almost exactly like the space shuttle. Wouldn't disposable heat shields be hard to come by?
It should be able to hover with a full load of cargo and the cargo bay doors are on the bottom. I was envisioning it to look like;
with the only difference that the wheel supports would be widened (so the cargo bay is more square) and have cargo doors (that also act as a heat shield) will open to drop the cargo inside, and replace the props with a square structure with rockets at each corner like;
Is that what you also have for a design? Or is there more to it?
Sounds good to me. Are we going to actually make our hab module actually simulate getting sick and what have you.
Wouldn't exhaust particles from the Skycrane damage the hab module in the final minutes of landing? That would be easily avoided on an airless body by angling the engines away from it, but in Mars' atmosphere the exhaust would scatter less predictably.
Here a small view on the prototype Skycrane, It is still getting some mesh changes and lacks propulsion, but I can already use it for animation and aerodynamic tests.
Between the beams that connect the aerobrake panels to the main vessel will later be textile chutes, that further increase the drag area, and the engines, which will be on tilt-capable pods for thrust vector control.
The inside is still minimal, this will get extended by the fuel tanks, electronics boxes and the payload crane systems. Also there should be some visible actuators and more visible mechanics to extend the panels.
The animation could still get changed a bit...currently the transition from low drag to high drag would result in a drop in drag for a short moment.
Its looking good. I can finally picture it, so that helps a lot. Do you have an estimate of it's final mass?
Urwumpe, what software do you use for modeling. The model looks awesome.
A little off topic, here's an idea about the rover:
What if we landed near one of the MER rovers and used it's parts to help us build a small vehicle. It couldn't carry more than one or two people so we would need somethng like a UAV as well but it would save a little mass if we didn't have to bring all of the rover's parts with us.