Quadcopter + Titan = awesome

[firegeek83]

Has anyone read this yet?

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/nasa-wants-to-send-a-quadcopter-drone-to-titan-along-wi-1593024773

Challenge accepted..

[AngelLestat]

Sounds great, mothership ballon with quadcopter.. something to test in ksp.

damm I forget that in ksp we dont have electric propeller

This green guys are very silly with their technology.

[KOCOUR]

There are mods with electric propelers.

[AngelLestat]

There are mods with electric propelers.

It looks like the world war 2. I am looking something more similar to our time.

[Ralathon]

It looks like the world war 2. I am looking something more similar to our time.

Try this one:

Kerbal Aircraft Expansion

Some of those run on electricity.

[theend3r]

That idea is very interesting. Recharging from mothership seems strange though. Why not just drop an RTG to the surface for the drone to recharge from?

[theend3r]

That idea is very interesting. Recharging from mothership seems strange though. Why not just drop an RTG to the surface for the drone to recharge from?

I didn't read the article carefully and misunderstood *facepalm*

I'd rather put the RTG on the drone, space and weight requirements permitting.

RTGs aren't really small. Or light. They weight usually about 50kg and the proposed weight for the drone is <10kg.

[shynung]

RTGs aren't really small. Or light. They weight usually about 50kg and the proposed weight for the drone is <10kg.

Which is why I wrote 'space and weight requirements permitting'. The idea of a mothership lander charging station, though, is quite appealing.

[xenomorph555]

That idea is very interesting. Recharging from mothership seems strange though. Why not just drop an RTG to the surface for the drone to recharge from?

The rtg might fall in the sea.

Also glad nasa are taking titan more seriously, needs more support then mars in my opinion.

[AngelLestat]

Try this one:

Kerbal Aircraft Expansion

Some of those run on electricity.

Thanks, I would test them.

That idea is very interesting. Recharging from mothership seems strange though. Why not just drop an RTG to the surface for the drone to recharge from?

A quadcopter has not issues with respect to maneuverability, meanwhile is 100% vertical is safe for dock. But if you want to dock with something in land (that you can hit and crash) with weird angles, is a lot more difficult.

[firegeek83]

Try this one:

Kerbal Aircraft Expansion

Some of those run on electricity.

Yes, this is what I'm using to test the quadcopter idea. I'm considering a mission to both Laythe and Eve to test between atmospheric differences. It sounds like Eve may be the more interesting of the two, with the atmo pressure and the proximity to the sun due to the electric props by KAX. My test flight has a two prop drive that can run continuously on Kerbin, but only when the sun is at its "brightest" (midday).

So far, my criteria includes:

1. Must be able to land and take off vertically (VTOL). If not, this would turn into a STOL aircraft mission.

2. Must be able to disengage from a "mothership" craft. I don't forsee being able to link back up with said mothership, but we'll see.

3. Must be able to use electric driven propulsion (KAX props/Ion). This will require generous solar panels/RTG while balancing the overall weight and actual flying time (this also has to factor in luminosity of sun/time of day).

[Nuke]

i wouldn't even have a mothership. id just build one large quad copter with the rtg and everything else you need. the mix of low gravity and and high pressure means that you really dont need much power to stay airborn. not to mention the atmosphere is cold enough to use superconductors in the motor coils for even more power savings. also you are going to have a lot of cooling on your rtg so its power output would be higher than usual. i would also do a winged varient to allow for soaring to save power while operating transmitters and other instruments, sort of like this:

or here is a better design:

this one gives you some serious speed. so you could get coverage that would be impossible with a rover or even a dedicated quad copter.

Edited June 19, 2014 by Nuke

[theend3r]

i wouldn't even have a mothership. id just build one large quad copter with the rtg and everything else you need. the mix of low gravity and and high pressure means that you really dont need much power to stay airborn. not to mention the atmosphere is cold enough to use superconductors in the motor coils for even more power savings. also you are going to have a lot of cooling on your rtg so its power output would be higher than usual. i would also do a winged varient to allow for soaring to save power while operating transmitters and other instruments, sort of like this:

So you would just slap a plane on a rocket and send it Europa? It's written in the article that such a thing isn't very realistic due to its high cost.

[Nuke]

the aricle wants to send a big mothership and a small quad copter. i say instead just send a large drone and omit the mothership enirely.

[theend3r]

"And a large, long-range helicopter can work, but it is way too expensive and risky."

I think they did their research and know quite a bit more than us.

Having said that, I also find the idea of a larger, independent drone more to my liking.

[Nuke]

any aircraft sent to titan or anywhere else with an atmosphere would be a milestone in robotic missions. you need to learn to fly before you can learn to fly awesome.

[AngelLestat]

i wouldn't even have a mothership. id just build one large quad copter with the rtg and everything else you need. the mix of low gravity and and high pressure means that you really dont need much power to stay airborn. not to mention the atmosphere is cold enough to use superconductors in the motor coils for even more power savings. also you are going to have a lot of cooling on your rtg so its power output would be higher than usual. i would also do a winged varient to allow for soaring to save power while operating transmitters and other instruments, sort of like this:

this one gives you some serious speed. so you could get coverage that would be impossible with a rover or even a dedicated quad copter.

The gravity of titan is not so low, the power/weight ratio of the RTG is not enoght to provide lift at the same time to power comunications and instruments.

[jfull]

Quadcopters are capable of some pretty amazing things, but the issue with sending one to another planet is that if the drone's systems fail or have an error for more than a few seconds, its going to fall and smash itself on the surface. And that would be the end of the mission, just like that.

IMO, its not an issue of if the drone would crash, its when. And if that happened early on in the mission, it would make the whole thing a waste.

I think any mission like this should carry 2 drones for redundancy. One could remain safely docked to the mothership.

[Skyler4856]

That idea is very interesting. Recharging from mothership seems strange though. Why not just drop an RTG to the surface for the drone to recharge from?

More or less to allow for a lab outside of the drone with which the samples may be tested...

[Creature]

Titan should be taken seriously. It's the home of The Kraken after all.

[ScallopPotato]

Am I the only one who looked at the story and immediately though, "I want to create this in RSS!" Let's calculate this! I want to create a mission profile.

[Kryten]

Yahoo's take: NASA is considering sending a quadcopter to Titan, the largest moon of Mars. That's not just a typo-watch the video.

[YourEverydayWaffle]

The serious flaw with this idea is gusts of wind. I built and now fly a quadcopter (shown in my avatar), and I can tell you, wind is their worst enemy. They're pretty durable (a 40 dollar arduino-based flight controller can usually run in the -15C to 40C range), but they are easily gusted by wind. Another issue is that if the flight controller encounters an error, there is a fair chance of the quadcopter doing a "flop". This has never happened to me (luckily), but when it does, your quadcopter will flip upside down and stop working. One of those bugs that will always be there. Finally, there's the whole radio frequency thing. My quadcopter runs on 2.4GhZ and 900MhZ frequencies, and both of those only go for a relatively short distance. What would you do if the quadcopter was on the wrong side of the planet? You can always set it to do a position/altitude hold, but position hold requires GPS. You could land it, but who knows what will be down there? You could send satellites up to control it, but that would cost a HUGE amount of money. I love the idea, but it's flawed.

[Nuke]

the range of the radio has more to do with transmit power and receiver sensitivity than frequency. consumer grade parts are not going to have the range of some of the space/military grade equivalent hardware. those consumer grade parts are also limited by fcc regs and aren't very powerful.