Drones in Space Exploration?

[YNM]

7 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Lift is a function of both wing area and velocity. A Cessna needs to go supersonic. Something built like a U2 would not.

Well, more wing means more mass... carbon nanotube wings ?

[magnemoe]

52 minutes ago, YNM said:

Well, more wing means more mass... carbon nanotube wings ?

Overkill you probably want something who can be rolled up during transport however. 
On the other hand I guess the drone to support rover was to be landed on rover, it could easy fit on top, simply fold the legs up in transport, once landed you will unlatch it, it will take off and the legs will fall down and lock. 
 

[Exploro]

On 6/16/2017 at 7:18 AM, ARS said:

Using flying drone on mars is probably a no-go since mars atmosphere is thin, not to mention dust storms that frequently occur on mars' surface. Remember, you cannot control drone using real time control like you did with RC drone on earth, at the distance of earth-mars, you can't joystick that thing. It's possible to make a drone flying on mars if it's light enough, but then it's highly vulnerable towards martian dust storms, even if it's landed, since it's light weight would make it easily swept away. Rovers have no problem though, since they are usually too heavy to be swept away

A drone designed to operate within the Martian atmosphere would be using airfoils optimized for that environment. Of course to summarize a paper on martian airfoils by Akira Oyama; such aircraft would need an airfoil that was very thin and assumes the craft would need to operate at a speed of 2,000 kph. These are complications when designing such a craft but insurmountable.

Of course a Martian exploration aircraft need not rely on using airfoils. A dirigible could be a suitable choice for Martian surveying as it can operate under it's own power without having to design a complex Martian-optimized airfoil and can do so at much lower airspeeds. Even a balloon could be used and one concept allows for the balloon to possess means to control it's path despite having no propulsion system.

Additionally a martian drone can be; and likely would be, automated. A human is not required to actively control the craft beyond commanding it to fly to areas of interest. Thus the radio communication lag is irrelevant.

And finally while dust storms would pose a hazard that can be surmounted too. Either the craft can actively avoid storms or a large number of drone aircraft could be operated simultaneously; lossing one or two to storms wouldn't impact the overall aerial surveying mission of the fleet as a whole (assuming such craft are cheap to develope and deploy).

Edited June 29, 2017 by Exploro

[Starman4308]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Overkill you probably want something who can be rolled up during transport however. 
On the other hand I guess the drone to support rover was to be landed on rover, it could easy fit on top, simply fold the legs up in transport, once landed you will unlatch it, it will take off and the legs will fall down and lock. 
 

Remove from thy brain all thy knowledge about rovers in KSP.

Real-world Mars rovers go not 30 meters per second, but 30 meters per hour. That means, in a single sol, a distance of around 740 meters. It's more than possible for a drone to, in a 3-minute hop, catch up with the rover, snap some pictures and get a good map of terrain, and then set itself back down. No need for it to piggyback on the rover; it's not like it's going very far before the next drone flight.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Starman4308 said:

Remove from thy brain all thy knowledge about rovers in KSP.

Real-world Mars rovers go not 30 meters per second, but 30 meters per hour. That means, in a single sol, a distance of around 740 meters. It's more than possible for a drone to, in a 3-minute hop, catch up with the rover, snap some pictures and get a good map of terrain, and then set itself back down. No need for it to piggyback on the rover; it's not like it's going very far before the next drone flight.

I know real world rovers are very slow, i always get an kick out of the solar powered rally cars
I was talking about deployment and how you would have the drone on top of the rover to simplify landing 

[Starman4308]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

I know real world rovers are very slow, i always get an kick out of the solar powered rally cars
I was talking about deployment and how you would have the drone on top of the rover to simplify landing 

Ah. Yeah, that makes more sense: just have the drone piggyback on top on the way down.

[Guest]

On 6/15/2017 at 5:29 PM, Starman4308 said:

Jupiter's magnetic field and radiation would probably kill a drone before it returned much data.

Data from Juno seems to indicate the magnetic field is quite variable. I'd love to see a Jupiter cloud vehicle given further though once the Juno mission is complete, it might be as simple as protecting the vehicle until it's in the clouds proper. Communications might be an issue... E: My money on a dirigible of some sort, not powered lift.

Edited June 30, 2017 by regex

[kerbiloid]

If an atmospheric drone can get some info about Jupiter unavailable from a satellite.

[53miner53]

On 6/16/2017 at 10:18 AM, wumpus said:

I'm guessing Mars would be an exception.  Your drone wouldn't look at all like a Cessna, it would strongly resemble a glider or U2 (although probably a propeller-powered glider, not jet powered).  Packaging such a beast for the trip sounds like the fun part (especially since you have to unpack it at ~mach 1 during descent).  I think this came up in the "circular runways" thread: I suggested that Mars would be the obvious place for a circular runway (Randal Monroe says mach 1 takeoff speed) to handle the craziness of Mars launch/land.

Maybe Mars isn't any more possible (you try unfurling glider-sized/shaped wings during orbital descent).

If we add a detachable heat shield to the drone, then we don't need to unfurl the wings during reentry. Though it would be larger, we could try to send it to the ISS in pieces and assemble it there, though I don't know if that's feasible.