- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
But it was so real 😥
Yeah, but they launched it just last year, right?
Cries in old
I’m still confused about when there was ever a helicopter vs. just a rover
To test the concept, now they know that it works they can come up with a dedicated mission that can cover a lot more ground - the rovers are slllloooowwwwwwww.
Even just for finding the best path for a rover, interesting places for a rover to go, you can make much better use of the extremely limited speed of a rover
Somewhere in Hollywood, a studio exec is already pitching a sequel to The Martian, with the plot that Matt Daemon finds himself stranded on Mars again and needs to fix the helicopter to fly him back to Earth.
I would pay money to see that in theaters
Flying on Mars is a lot harder than flying on Earth. If you don’t believe me, listen to this developer of the flight sim X-Plane. The fact that they were able to get it to work at all is astounding.
So, we should fly on Jupiter instead, right?
Is that even possible? I mean… with how volatile and exotic the atmosphere is, wouldn’t what a craft would be doing be more akin to how a submarine travels under water? Would “flying” even be the correct term? Wouldn’t it be more like navigating violent torrents of differently-dense gaseous layers? Some of which are (sometimes) liquid?
What would one even call that?
What would one even call that?
Fucking awesome.
Next flight is scheduled for Titan, which is a lot easier. The gravity is lower, but there’s a lot more atmosphere, which means our helicopter can be nuclear powered!
Or leg powered. The gravity is so low and the atmosphere so thick a pilot could pedal power a Cessna Skyhawk. Until he froze to death.
I mean flying on Titan would be so easily theoretically a guy with really big wings could reasonably flap himself around