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I think the current plan is that helicopters will be very light with minimal instrumentation and will be used mostly to scout ahead for rovers. The rovers will
by jessriedel 3y ago
I think the current plan is that helicopters will be very light with minimal instrumentation and will be used mostly to scout ahead for rovers. The rovers will be much heavier and include many instruments.
(Of course, all of NASA's long-term plans for Mars would be completely disrupted if Starship lowers the cost-per-kg of delivering equipment by two orders of magnitude, which arguably is likely.)
- kibwen 3y agoMaking it more economical to escape Earth's gravity well isn't going to alter the physics of the Martian atmosphere or the relative utility of copters vs rovers for Martian exploration. Which is to say, even if you stationed humans on Mars, they'd still be exploring remotely via copter/rover pairs, just no longer with a human-to-robot latency measured in tens of minutes.
- wongarsu 3y agoHowever we might be willing to drive a lot more agressively if we know we can get a mechanic out to a stuck rover. Similarly, cheaper delivery might make a large number of smaller more disposable vehicles more appealing for many missions, just like what happened to satellites in the last decade.
- jessriedel 3y agoIf you increase the mass and/or number of vehicles by 100x, a bajillion things will change.