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As I understand it, they want to perform a feasibility study to determine if a mothership (balloon or lander) and daughtership (rotorcraft, maybe a quadcopter)

by Cogito 12y ago

As I understand it, they want to perform a feasibility study to determine if a mothership (balloon or lander) and daughtership (rotorcraft, maybe a quadcopter) combination would be an effective way to study Titan. The mothership would act as a base of operations; a recharging station at the least, probably containing communication devices and its own sensors as well. The daughtership, potentially multiple daughterships, would sortie out from the mothership and investigate the surface up close. They outline 4 outcomes from the initial study: (1) develop mission concepts of operations for deployment from a lander or balloon to acquire context imaging and mapping data, to sample from solid surfaces and/or lakes, and to return to the mothership to deposit samples and/or recharge; (2) develop a parametric sizing model of the daughtercraft to characterize propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload capability for total daughtercraft mass ranging from approximately 1 to 10 kg; (3) develop a conceptual design and identify representative components for the entire daughtercraft hardware and software system for autonomous mobility, including estimates of approximate mass, power, and energy budgets and producing a representative CAD model; and (4) develop a conceptual design and preliminary CAD model for a science payload on the daughtercraft, including specifying a nominal instrument suite on the balloon or lander, designing a compatible sampling mechanism to acquire solid and/or liquid samples on the daughtercraft, and studying mechanisms and daughtercraft behaviors necessary to transfer the samples to the instruments. The study will be carried out by JPL. ---- I wonder how much the rotorcraft community (hobbyist or otherwise) could contribute to a study like this. I can imagine this would be extremely interesting, and not so different from the many applications already being investigated.

austinz 12y ago
This is the sort of stuff I would love to work on, as an engineer. Amazing new applications of technology coupled with a truly meaningful purpose.
- zaroth 12y ago
  Any ideas in particular?
ibisum 12y ago
I'm part-way through building a plane at the moment, which will play host to a small quadcopter with its own video feed, so this story feels a lot like whats going on in my workshop. The intention is to build an automated system that will send the plane to a location, drop the quad, do a video survey, pick the quad back up, and fly back. This is purely for hobby purposes, as I am very interested in automatic flight systems, and while its too late for me to pursue a career in aerospace proper, its at least a means to fulfill my dreams of having such devices under my control. I think that the next 5 or 10 years of innovation in aerospace is going to come from the RC/UAV hobbyists who are pushing the boundaries of drone technology. Already we are seeing in the RC world massive leaps in drone automation, which have immediate uses in the real world, and it doesn't look like its going to stop. There's not a day that goes by where someone hasn't released an innovative new aspect of drone technology - whether its flight, construction, recovery, or application.
- bsilvereagle 12y ago
  What's the wingspan on your plane? I built one (~36") that had two quads nested inside the wings, the wing bottoms opened up, causing the plane to go nose up, the quads slid out, the wings shut, and normal flight was resumed.
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    My current wing design is 1.5meters wide, and will have the quad mounted under the fuse at slightly-forward of CG. Trim will reconfigure for the added weight, but I'm using a small quad so the pitch trim shouldn't be too detrimental, but there are other solutions to this problem too (moving ballast). Its still early days yet, but I hope to have maiden in the next few weeks.
- jbattle 12y ago
  That sounds really amazing. Have you thought through the details of the rendezvous & docking? Is that as hard as it sounds? I imagine the mothership would need to be travelling what 25 mph? 20? Or is the absolute horizontal speed not that big of an issue because it's the relative movement between the two that matters?

by Cogito 12y ago

austinz 12y ago

This is the sort of stuff I would love to work on, as an engineer. Amazing new applications of technology coupled with a truly meaningful purpose.

zaroth 12y ago
Any ideas in particular?

ibisum 12y ago

I'm part-way through building a plane at the moment, which will play host to a small quadcopter with its own video feed, so this story feels a lot like whats going on in my workshop. The intention is to build an automated system that will send the plane to a location, drop the quad, do a video survey, pick the quad back up, and fly back. This is purely for hobby purposes, as I am very interested in automatic flight systems, and while its too late for me to pursue a career in aerospace proper, its at least a means to fulfill my dreams of having such devices under my control. I think that the next 5 or 10 years of innovation in aerospace is going to come from the RC/UAV hobbyists who are pushing the boundaries of drone technology. Already we are seeing in the RC world massive leaps in drone automation, which have immediate uses in the real world, and it doesn't look like its going to stop. There's not a day that goes by where someone hasn't released an innovative new aspect of drone technology - whether its flight, construction, recovery, or application.

bsilvereagle 12y ago
What's the wingspan on your plane? I built one (~36") that had two quads nested inside the wings, the wing bottoms opened up, causing the plane to go nose up, the quads slid out, the wings shut, and normal flight was resumed.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  My current wing design is 1.5meters wide, and will have the quad mounted under the fuse at slightly-forward of CG. Trim will reconfigure for the added weight, but I'm using a small quad so the pitch trim shouldn't be too detrimental, but there are other solutions to this problem too (moving ballast). Its still early days yet, but I hope to have maiden in the next few weeks.
jbattle 12y ago
That sounds really amazing. Have you thought through the details of the rendezvous & docking? Is that as hard as it sounds? I imagine the mothership would need to be travelling what 25 mph? 20? Or is the absolute horizontal speed not that big of an issue because it's the relative movement between the two that matters?