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hi-v-rocknroll 8 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Goodyear Inflatoplane

If you searched the web, inflatable bodies have been used. The problem is Mars atmosphere is 2% and gravity is 38% that of Earth's. Gravity-corrected wing loading to reach the equivalent of say a small plane on Earth would require 20x the wing area.

A proposal demonstrator of this was suggested in a paper:

https://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2014/data/papers/2014_...

tooltechgeek 8 months ago [–]

wouldn’t the lower density be equivalent to a higher altitude on earth? Propellers would be not effective but some type of jet or rocket would?

hi-v-rocknroll 8 months ago | [–]

Sure. It likely also means different wing geometry and it needs to move faster.

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