[X] My Assistant

[rlorenz]

Since I see Doug
picked up
on my Titan Bumblebee talk at EPSC, I've put up some information on it at my
website

The concept was originated during the 2007 NASA Titan Flagship study
when the expectation was for a large long-lived RTG-powered lander in the
equatorial dunefields. The UAV would fly off from the lander which could
store the image stream from the UAV and then slowly telemeter those GB
of data back to Earth over subsequent weeks.

(one motivation was that if that architecture - lander plus montgolfiere plus
orbiter were descoped, deleting the montgolfiere, the Titan Bumblebee concept
still allowed NASA to include a 'flying at Titan' element with low cost and risk.
Added coolness would be for the UAV to image the lonely lander sitting in
the Titan landscape.

Such a UAV is arguably less of a good fit with the present architecture being
developed with ESA as a partner providing two in-situ elements
(small short-lived battery-powered lake lander plus RTG montgolfiere) although
technically it remains quite feasible and there is no reason you couldnt fly it
from the montgolfiere - now pictures of that against the Titan landscape would be
way cool....!

Anyway, I had fun with the idea.