Mars exploration vechicle tested

MARS, BITCHES, MARS!!!

August 8

Mars “Gashopper” Takes Flight

A novel approach to airborne travel on Mars has been demonstrated.

The vehicle is dubbed the Gashopper and taps into the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere. Using a pump, it stores the gas in liquid form, sending it through a preheated pellet bed. That action transforms the liquid into hot rocket exhaust to produce thrust for a flight vehicle.

Pioneer Astronautics of Lakewood, Colorado has spearheaded the vehicle’s development.

“The flight vehicle could either be a ballistic vehicle…or a winged airplane that would take off and land like a Harrier, then transition to horizontal flight,” said Robert Zubrin, head of the firm. On Mars, a ballistic gashopper would be capable of flights for several miles per hop. A winged aircraft would be capable of chalking up even more distance each flight, he said.

Zubrin is also head of the Mars Society, a public advocacy space group.

After each landing, a small rover could be deployed for local exploration. While it is doing this, the gashopper would refuel from the atmosphere. This would take about a month. The rover would then be recalled, the pellet bed reheated, and the gashopper would fly to a distant landing site to explore again.

“The net result is a system that can fly repeatedly on Mars, conducting numerous aerial surveys and surface exploration at many diverse sites with a single spacecraft,” Zubrin added. Furthermore, unlike surface rovers, he said that the gashopper would not be blocked by terrain obstacles, nor contaminate landing sites with organics from a conventional rocket exhaust.

-- Leonard David