3 ms·
The rocket backpack seems like it would allow you to land more weight than the lander an ramp method because you don't have a much superfluous structure on the
by rtkwe 5y ago
The rocket backpack seems like it would allow you to land more weight than the lander an ramp method because you don't have a much superfluous structure on the rocket lander section of the craft. Zhurong is only about as big as Spirit and Opportunity that the US landed back in 2003 using big airbags, larger rovers can't do that so you get into more complex things like the sky crane.
- cromwellian 5y agoThe main problem with Zhurong is they brought their orbiter along with them. Since they can only launch 6000kg to trans-martian orbit, packaging the rover and orbiter together limits your rover. NASA launched its orbiters on separate missions, which means both the Orbiter and Rovers can be bigger without needing a ginormous launcher.
- rtkwe 5y agoI was mostly thinking about the amount of weight that the Zhurong style lander would be able to land vs the Curiosity/Perseverance skycrane style of lander used by NASA. It's quite complex but it seems like it allows more of the mass to be in the rover vs the rover just because the Zhurong lander needs to carry the weight of the rover on top of it where the skycrane doesn't.