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There are no clouds on Mars, so why do you need an inefficient, labor intensive system to complement an efficient, reliable, and predictable one? NASA rovers a
by nickff 11y ago
There are no clouds on Mars, so why do you need an inefficient, labor intensive system to complement an efficient, reliable, and predictable one? NASA rovers and probes have been getting very good results with solar panels, do you think they would have gotten better results if they also had wind turbines?
I think you can make a strong case for bringing along hydrazine (or at least hyrdogen to make methane in situ) and/or substantial battery banks (if you can't manufacture batteries in situ), but the case for wind power is even weaker on Mars than on Earth (and it is quite weak on Earth).
- jacquesm 11y agoMars has a day-night cycle.
- nickff 11y agoBatteries + Solar Panels > Solar Panels + Wind Turbines Batteries + Solar Panels = Higher efficiency, higher performance, lower maintenance, lower weight.
- jacquesm 11y agoYes, but the most reliable set-up is batteries + solar panels + wind turbines.
- nickff 11y agoHow do you arrive at that conclusion? I assume that you are stating that for a given mass of power generation equipment, you'd prefer all three, but I am not convinced that this will be more reliable, and I am sure that it will have a lower output.
- jacquesm 11y agoWell, let's reverse the question. What do you use to base your opinion on? I've run a setup like the one described above for years and my whole house was powered from that, it was a lot more reliable than solar + batteries only.
- nickff 11y agoNobody has ever run your setup on Mars, but many have run the solar panels + batteries setup on Mars to good effect.
- jacquesm 11y agoNobody has grown cucumbers on Mars either. That doesn't mean it can't be done or that it won't be useful. Anyway, I see this is going nowhere so thank you for the exchange.
- asavadatti 11y agoYou know whats even more reliable? Coal fired or nuclear power plant. However these solutions are not mass efficient or practical. Similarly Wind turbines, while practical, are not mass efficient. Carrying extra batteries instead of turbines makes for a much more efficient system.
- jacquesm 11y ago> Similarly Wind turbines, while practical, are not mass efficient. Those are big words to use without having seen a specific design. Terrestrial wind turbines likely have as much in common with turbines destined for Mars as the Mars rovers have to do with our cars. Sure they both have wheels but that's roughly where the similarities end.
- wiredfool 11y agoThere are dust storms, which resemble clouds from a distance.
- nickff 11y agoThey are not as commonplace as clouds on Earth (from what I've read), and like clouds, they don't block all light. The Mars rovers seem to get good results from solar panels and batteries despite the dust storms (though perhaps they have just been lucky).