It would look like a rocket. To get to that sort of altitude and and speed with anything like a terran aircraft would require enormous aerodynamic surfaces given the low atmospheric pressure. It'd look like a U2 spy-plane on steroids and is an enormous ammount of mass, volume and engineering you do not need.

This really isn't a problem that requires dramatically outside the box thinking. 'chute and balute research is needed - particularly a large steering parafoil would be good. Then you simply scale an MSL like decent stage appropriately for terminal decent.

Doug

Thank god I got my 15x70's off my boss who 'borrowed' them for about a month

Doug

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+...productId=28103 is the camera - although to be honest, I may go with something a bit better or the actual flights - and use one of those for the monitoring camera

Doug

We had that rather cool ice-duvet a few flights back not long after launch. There is so much cryogenic fun to be had, it's not suprising.

Doug

Well- during this flight they'll dock it to one port, then after Discovery leaves, they'll undock the PMA the shuttle used, move it onto the end of Harmony, undock Harmony, and put it back on where the PMA was - so that the next shuttle will dock to Harmony, not Destiny....so if there's a moment, it'll happen twice

Doug

And MECO - lovely flight. Harmony + Columbus + Kibo = busy few months

Doug

Just saw a bit of ice or foam come off - but it's way beyond that point when the dynamic pressure means it doesn't matter.

Doug

And away she goes

Looks like one of those face-in-profile-in-a-cliff type things

Doug

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/Master...og?sc=1971-049F

I find it almost impossible to believe that that could be identified unambiguously as being different from any medium sized rock. Given the near invisibility of one of the two Viking parachutes - the chances of finding a 'region' to look at are not great, and the chance of finding the lander within that region are very low. I wouldn't get your hopes up.


Doug

I'd have thought the Whrs & Mbits would be dedicated to navigation to get to the local science before planning the move to VB. We got pancam imagery of VB a few sols ago - techncially we're slightly further away now so there would be no new value in Pancam obs of it again (save for Long Baseline Stereo). Clearly VB IS interesting or they wouldn't be planning to use it for the winter layover.

Doug

If I can log temp, pres and GPS with a second Picaxe unit....I will. I want to do those temp/pres profiles A small cheap pressure transducer is not something I've found yet though.

Doug

Sorry - I've got to pick you up on that. 'a few more MSL's' is the same as saying 'a few more billion dollars'. Given that space science has about..ohh..12 cents to spare - 'a few more MSL's' on one LV is sci-fi.

Doug

Given that we're talking chemically bound water within minerals - I see no reason why it would wouldn't have looked the same when it was churned up as it does now.

Doug

Pay attention Dan

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=101948

Doug

Part the Third
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=U0IJM5EWu9Q

Gizmo may well be involved in the final part of the trilogy If she'll sit still.

Doug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2tymr4Rs0

Their plan is, hopefully, to do exactly that - have the payload fly home again. Not a simple problem however. As you can see, getting it to fly straight is non trivial.

Doug

You need a shave

Video Update 1 - Envelope, Parachute, Gondola
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rkug-Z9Xm5Q

Video Update 2 - Cameras
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gu3P3O3Z3eU

Update 3 - Tracking - on it's way later.

I can't imagine how you would land on Mars at all for a Discovery budge - let alone with any form of sample return ability. The only thing in that scale you could do is the SCIM proposal that is forever turned down in Mars Scout AO's

Doug

Was there ever one planned...I don't remember there ever being one as part of BC - certainly not at any point after it got approved.

Doug

"Congratulations, here's a pretend scroll to have a photo taken with"
"BITE MY SHINY METAL A..."

And also a way to make the MAV far more complex that it ever need be. Balloon's are not great on Mars. The atmosphere is so thin that you would have to have an ENORMOUS balloon to get something like this aloft - and you still have the far from trivial issue of launching from a balloon, particularly w.r.t. orientation for launching. A comparatively simple solid fueled two stage MAV with a cube-to-nano sat sized payload with a radio beacon of some sort - keep it as simple as possible. If you send a mid-scale rover in advance to get samples - then an MSL-scale lander could house both the MAV, and a contingency sample gathering micro-rover. The hard part is the on-orbit rendezvous - and how to convince people that you've got the samples very very tightly locked up.

Doug

I can safely confirm that. Also - the RF noise might get in the way of testing the APRS FM GP tracker for the balloon