The two Martian robot explorers have been extremely successful in the years they have spent on Mars but their conception and operation permits only very limited slow movement across the surface of a very limited area. If there were some way to move quickly and easily over a much larger area much more data could be acquired more quickly.
Since Mars has an atmosphere some sort of aircraft could do the job but it should be maneuverable and able to carry exploratory tools to various sites and land and take off. A helicopter would be ideal but a helicopter has many fast moving parts that wear quickly and require servicing not available in the current Martian situation.
A balloon has been proposed but it is not particularly maneuverable and difficult to take off and land repeatedly.
Some time ago Goodyear invented and built an airplane that was constructed of fabric and was inflatable. It was driven by a piston engine and functioned successfully. This type of aircraft could easily be transported to Mars in compact condition and inflated on site. Recently a new flexible film has been invented that acts as a solar electric source and could serve as an electrical generator by covering all the upper surfaces of the inflatable aircraft. A propeller driven by an electric motor could propel and maneuver the craft and the moving parts are far more sturdy and reliable than more complicated mechanisms. I don’t know the possibilities of inflating the aircraft with helium or hydrogen to make it lighter but that might cause difficulties as the two gases are difficult to contain for an extended time. This type of craft would possibly be much more flexible than the current explorers.
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Given the 5 to 20 minute signal lag between Earth and Mars the aircraft would be next to impossible to control during take off and landings. I think the helicopter model would be a better choice if you could simplify the motor design.
Robot aircraft are already a reality on Earth. It would be simple to direct a semi-autonomous aircrft from one point to the next without direct hands on control. Maintaining a helicopter is much more of a problem. The constant reoccurrance of helicopter crashes here on Earth with a human at the controls would not bode well for an interplanetary craft.
I got to thinking about it some more. What I figure is that you could use all the available surface data to build a road map of the planet, not unlike a GPS system. Then find the places where you could safely land, do your studies and take off to the next location. We would need to develop the ability to generate enough engine power for the antenea apparatus weight which we would need to transmit data back to earth. Perhaps you could build a home base for the plane. Here it would return after each study plug its nose into base and transmit the data. That would subtract the weight of the antenea. I am unsure of the gravity weight ratio compared to earth but I am sure it is less.
The antenna is a minor matter. If the expedition consisted of a lander with the aircraft and an orbiter the orbiter could map out landing areas and arbitrate data and control between Earth and Mars.
The atmosphere of Mars is about 0.2 psi as compared to 14.7 psi here on Earth. That would mean requiring about 70 times more lift than would be required here on Earth.
I think this might be better suited to exploring Venus.
As junkstopshere pointed out, the air on Mars is so thin it is almost impossible to fly a plane or helicopter. Solar-electric planes don't even work well on Earth, where the air is much thicker. Mars is also farther from the sun which makes using a solar powered plane even harder. A plane would also need smooth level surfaces for take-off and landing, which would severely limit the places it could visit. I think the currently prefered plan, which is to send numerous separate landers to different landing sites simultaneously, is a better way to go. It would enable more data to be collected more quickly and has the security of redundancy. If a few of the landers fail, it isn't a big problem. If your plane fails, your whole mission is a wash.
This is a decent, workable idea. The beauty of it is the fact that it would be so compact until it reaches it's destination. You can put a very large craft in a very small space. VERY EFFICIENT! !! When I saw the title of this idea I thought it was for a interplanetary spacecraft that would be inflatable like that new private inflatable space station that they have placed in orbit recently instead of rigid like the shuttle . I thought the inflatable space station was a brilliant idea. It's a great place to start until we can build better spacecraft from materials mined from the moon or asteroids. I guess we'll take this one out of the weak catagory.
Tommy Solo-MN