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Interesting craft in that it's essentially just a larger version of the R/C toys you can buy. I wonder how they tested the blade design. Did they fly it at 100,

by 10GBps 5y ago

Interesting craft in that it's essentially just a larger version of the R/C toys you can buy. I wonder how they tested the blade design. Did they fly it at 100,000ft on Earth?

dtgriscom 5y ago
Four words: really big vacuum chamber.
londons_explore 5y ago
I assume it was tested in a pressure chamber on earth to simulate the pressure and composition of Mars atmosphere. Obviously it wouldn't be able to fly in the pressure chamber due to increased gravity, but by suspending it on elastic you can still test that the blade functions as intended. The only bit you can't really fully test is the constants for the control loops in the flight control algorithm, but I assume they chose them with a lot of stability margin.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > I assume it was tested in a pressure chamber on earth... by suspending it on elastic you can still test that the blade functions as intended They did exactly that. NASA has a big (adjustable) vacuum chamber for this kind of purpose. This comment links to video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28432811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28432811
- _Microft 5y ago
  It did fly in the vacuum chamber. It was a tethered flight and the difference between Earth‘s and Mars‘s gravity was compensated by an appropriate pull being applied to the tether.
TotempaaltJ 5y ago
Just a vacuum chamber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMCJGfwj3rY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMCJGfwj3rY
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Didn't it also use Zigbee (for home domotics) as a control protocol?
mkl 5y ago
Veritasium has a good explainer about the development and testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
taneq 5y ago
I'm really interested to see how far consumer electronics will actually be proved useful in space. There's this perception that designing for space is ultra-difficult and requires n-tuple redundancy and specially fabricated radiation-hardened processors etc. but I wonder how much of that is just because when you're spending a billion dollars on a mission you REALLY don't want to lose it to some random bit flip and so you drop $100mil on goldplating the absolute heck out of everything.

by 10GBps 5y ago

Interesting craft in that it's essentially just a larger version of the R/C toys you can buy. I wonder how they tested the blade design. Did they fly it at 100,000ft on Earth?

dtgriscom 5y ago

Four words: really big vacuum chamber.

londons_explore 5y ago

I assume it was tested in a pressure chamber on earth to simulate the pressure and composition of Mars atmosphere. Obviously it wouldn't be able to fly in the pressure chamber due to increased gravity, but by suspending it on elastic you can still test that the blade functions as intended. The only bit you can't really fully test is the constants for the control loops in the flight control algorithm, but I assume they chose them with a lot of stability margin.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> I assume it was tested in a pressure chamber on earth... by suspending it on elastic you can still test that the blade functions as intended They did exactly that. NASA has a big (adjustable) vacuum chamber for this kind of purpose. This comment links to video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28432811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28432811
_Microft 5y ago
It did fly in the vacuum chamber. It was a tethered flight and the difference between Earth‘s and Mars‘s gravity was compensated by an appropriate pull being applied to the tether.

TotempaaltJ 5y ago

Just a vacuum chamber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMCJGfwj3rY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMCJGfwj3rY

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Didn't it also use Zigbee (for home domotics) as a control protocol?

mkl 5y ago

Veritasium has a good explainer about the development and testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM

taneq 5y ago

I'm really interested to see how far consumer electronics will actually be proved useful in space. There's this perception that designing for space is ultra-difficult and requires n-tuple redundancy and specially fabricated radiation-hardened processors etc. but I wonder how much of that is just because when you're spending a billion dollars on a mission you REALLY don't want to lose it to some random bit flip and so you drop $100mil on goldplating the absolute heck out of everything.