“It’s a mad house! A mad house!”

— Charlton Heston, Planet of the Apes”

Always a joy to see commerical HSF advocates seeking solace sourcing and quoting science fiction given their own efforts at an orbital flight remain in that realm. BTW the spaceflight in POTA was a government funded exploration- and even featured a scene with a national flag planted, not a banner w/a corporate logo. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

A JP Aerospace powered high altitude airship?

No, wait, that’s a launch pad, sorry.

I just did. Thanks for the link to the physically impossible video simulation. Interesting. You pack an aircraft into the nose of a Delta 2, origami style, and it miraculously unfolds itself at high mach and starts flying. Brilliant. Would it using ‘impulse power’? You know that World of Warcraft is fake too, right? Oops. Sorry. Glad to see where some of my NASA tax dollars are going.

high earth elevations equivalent to the altitude they are designing for Mars flight.

I am not familiar with any 100,000′ elevation airfields on Earth. Can you tell us where it is?

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/Pathfinder/HTML/EC97-44138-1.html

Considering Earth’s much greater gravity, flying at 70,000 feet would actually be tougher than flying on Mars, even with the air somewhat denser. I should have been more succinct and stated the plane went to an altitude where lift conditions would be the same or worse than that for Mars. But I was in a rush to get out the door to meet my wife.

It is NASA scientists working on the problem who are claiming this can be done. I gave the links to that in my last post. If you disagree, then take it up with them.

If you watch one of the many presentations you will find it never ‘takes off from the martian land’. Its powered flight begins immediately after descent from orbit.

Further, testing has already occurred at high earth elevations equivalent to the altitude they are designing for Mars flight.

(Even this non-techie can read).

Gary Anderson

Mars surface pressure is about equal to that at 100,000′ on earth. Ever hear of an electric aircraft that flies that high? I thought so. Furthermore such a craft would have to stowed for launch and have a small enough, light enough power source to do the job, and then somehow deploy and takeoff on Mars surface. You aren’t thinking clearly. Most of you don’t.

But we’re already in space, 7,000,000,000 passengers on spaceship Earth.

It is believed population will grow to 15 billion and stabilize at mid century. I foresee plenty of resources for all and plenty of opportunity for profit, especially if we keep drilling the heck out of Spaceship Earth!

Mars, Mars, Mars, Mars again this morning, as though that’s the only thing in space.

But we’re already in space, 7,000,000,000 passengers on spaceship Earth. Right now, life support systems are functioning at the edge of their capacities, and we have some space junk headed our way.

“Given the difficulty of putting anything begger than a golf cart on Mars…”

That’s because of the reliance on one-rocket transportation methods – everything going to Mars has to fit on one rocket.

If you launch just the payload on existing rockets, then rendezvous with an EDS in LEO, you can get a 10,000 kg mass to Mars using existing med-heavy commercial rockets. And this scales up by using more in-orbit rendezvous and clustering departure stages.

Although propellant depots would be useful for this type of thing, just doing in-orbit rendezvous of multiple stages would be enough to let you push much large payloads to Mars. If self-driving cars are becoming a reality here on Earth, bringing two masses together in space using robotic systems shouldn’t be that hard to master.