Revolutionary way to explore other worlds - A wind riding rover

neutrino · 2002-12-20 01:03:27

Press release on 12-18-02

The Windsurfer

First initial test has been completed on a new wind-riding rover that will revolutionize the way we explore other atmospheric rich worlds

The Windsurfer is one of those new innovations that will enable humans to perform robotic missions on other worlds that have an atmosphere. The Windsurfer can land on the surface of these worlds after descent through the atmosphere with only the payload and instruments that it brings along. After landing it can be used to guide a rover to a location previously chosen with only the help of the wind. It can move over most terrain it may encounter which includes climbing up rocky mountains or down to the bottom of canyons or craters with the help of its balloon and drag chute. Once at the preferred location the rover can be commanded to detach from the Windsurfer and conduct its experiments.

There may be a need for the rover to stay attached to the Windsurfer. The wind surfing sail can be programmed to tack into the wind, this will keep the drag chute from opening and the rover would remain stationary. Then it would continue on its journey mapping the planet at birds eye view with cameras attached to the balloon and to the rover on the surface. When the rover gets to a canyon ridge and falls down into the canyon below, the drag chute will be activated to help bring it to a soft landing. When the rover is at the bottom of a canyon the drag chute will be activated by the wind in the unsheltered area far above it to help pull the rover out of the canyon. The rover tethered to the Windsurfer below will act like a ruder on a ship and help steer it into the direction chosen to explore.

It will generate its own power by the movements of the wheels over the terrain like a bicycle generator does. Its lights will be turned on at night and will run off the wheel-generator from the rover. At an average speed of 10 mph the Windsurfer can cover 240 miles per day. It has the potential to cover thousands of miles while operational. The Windsurfer will carry a solar cell backup generator. The balloon material may be made out of new supperpressure balloon technology that NASA is developing that can stay airborne for up to 300 days. If the supperpressure balloon material isn't available then there are several different types of other balloon material that can be used.

The balloon will be designed to naturally rotate in high winds. This will improve lift while reducing the stress on the balloon and the tethered rover. The drag chute will activate when the angle of the tether changes from vertical. If the rover is stopped by an obstruction then the balloon will be pushed by the wind and the angle of the tether will change enough to activate the drag chute. This would give it more force to get the rover over obstacles. In some cases with changing wind speeds the rover would jump from one place to another.

There will be several different missions that can use this new technology. The mission may be one of commercial importance to some movies and theme parks such as Universal Studios, Dream Works and Walt Disney. Part of the mission could be planned to extract movies of the planet by a rover or balloon moving over its surface. These movies can later be shown at theme parks around the world or be an actual part of footage of the planet in a motion picture. Another goal is to bring some of the shots of the rover in real time to a worldwide audience over the Internet. The advertisers will broadcast it at their web locations for public viewing. All the information gathered will be available to the world's scientific community.

The team to insure the success of this adventure will be from some of the top aerospace engineers around the world. NASA, ESA and other nations Space programs will be contracted for the use of some of their facilities.

Quicktime movies of some of our first tests are at our website at arrow-space-innovations.com

If you go to the web page click on the Windsurfer Home page and it will direct you to where you may want to go.

Here is a photo gallery of some of the first test we did. The first picture is a rover climbing a rocky cliff with the help of the wind blowing on the drag chute. It did it many times that day.

Arrow Space Innovations
Web Page arrow-space-innovations.com
http://arrow-space-innovations.com]Arrow Space Innovations

photo%20gallery%202.jpg

Echus_Chasma · 2002-12-22 19:19:35

Hey Neutrino, welcome to the New Mars forums.

Just one small thing, dunno how relevant it is too your post, but because the amount atmosphere on Mars is quite small does'nt that mean there is less power behiend the Martian winds, even though they are quite fast.

Sort-of like getting hit by a train at 50km compared to being in the rain with winds of 50km.

neutrino · 2002-12-22 21:11:46

Echus_Chasma

Thanks for responding.

Just one small thing, dunno how relevant it is too your post, but because the amount atmosphere on Mars is quite small does'nt that mean there is less power behiend the Martian winds, even though they are quite fast.

neutrino

The thin atmosphere on Mars is a concern however everything is relative and will be to scale. The balloon on Mars will have to be big because of the thin atmosphere. This depends on where you drop it. The bigger the balloon the more surface area it has that will be pushed by the wind. The drag chute can easily be scaled up or down depending on what is in-store for it.

We are in the process of modeling the Martian atmosphere and how it will effect the pressure on the balloon and the drag chute. The drag chute will be made out of lightweight heavy-duty material. Carbon fiber mesh is being considered for the drag chute. The drag chute in the picture at the arrow-space-innovations.com web site was made out of 50 in diameter umbrella stock that weighed 1.6 oz.. The balloon had 5 oz of lifting force left. The helium used was not pure so the 14 cu ft of gas for the 36 in balloon should lift about 14 oz. The rover weighed more than four times the force of balloons 5 oz lifting gas on it yet with the right sail configuration was pushed by a 5-mph wind.

We even plowed one of these into a bridge. The drag chute and balloon were above the bridge, the wind was strong enough on the drag chute to pull the rover up and over it and land it gently down on the other side.

How far are these new rovers they are sending to Mars going to go once they land? The landing zone will be most likely flat like the Viking and the Pathfinders were. They could miss their planned trajectory landing location by as much as over 50 miles when they land. If they can go only 200 yards what are they going to do?

The atmosphere is about 110 to 170 times less dense than Earth's is at sea level, at the Viking and pathfinders locations. Depends on when you take the atmospheric pressure readings.

Hellas crater basin that is 1500 miles in diameter has strong winds and overcast most of the time. This is the hardest place on Mars to get good pictures. At the bottom of Hellas if you use NASA s numbers, which was, extrapolated out to be about 13 millibars. This is the pressure you would encounter on Earth at approximately 85,000 /95,000 ft. We have sent balloons up to 140,000 ft that could lift over 3 tons. On Mars the same balloon could lift 7.5 tons. These were huge balloons but we wouldn?t have to lift a 7.5-ton rover. Therefore we wouldn't need as big a balloon. The balloon would have to lift only a fraction of the weight of the rover. The drag chute and the windsurfing sail and tether and small instruments would add some of the weight back that isn't used to lift the rover by the balloons lifting gas.

At Hellas you could use a balloon that has about 1/2 the volume of lifting gas than one that is at the Viking sites. 1/2 the volume of gas doesn?t mean that the balloon would be 1/2 the diameter. It will reduce the size of the balloon enough to lower the cost and help insure a successful insertion into the Martian atmosphere. Hellas, the northern plains area or deep down in Valles Marinais, is the best place on Mars to use a probe with a balloon like the Windsurfer. All three are good candidates for finding life on Mars, if life existed there.

Echus_Chasma

Sort-of like getting hit by a train at 50km compared to being in the rain with winds of 50km.

Neutrino

We tested these in wind speed above 60km per hour. How fast is the solar wind hitting a solar sail? Or how fast is light traveling when it hits a light sail?

Dont underestimate the power of the Martian wind. Mars has global dust storms that are carried by the wind. In a wind at the same speed and density CO2 gas has 1 1/2 times more kenetic energy then O2 or N2 gas does.

soph · 2002-12-22 22:03:29

peronally, i can think of better methods of getting things around mars. not that the idea doesnt sound good, but rocket hoppers, like zubrin described, could use methane fuel to hop around the planet quickly, carrying cargo, and making fuel upon landing. these could be used anywhere on the planet, not just where there are heavy winds. nuclear based rocket planes would be even better.

the idea of a windsurfer could be used if you wanted to drop things at different locations across the planet. but i really dont see it as being a replacement for conventional proposals. sorry if i seem to be harsh, im just offering my opinion ???

Echus_Chasma · 2002-12-23 15:39:44

The helium used was not pure so the 14 cu ft of gas for the 36 in balloon should lift about 14 oz. The rover weighed more than four times the force of balloons 5 oz lifting gas on it yet with the right sail configuration was pushed by a 5-mph wind.

Could'nt you use hydrogen for the balloons on Mars?, because there is only like 0.13% oxygen, I think, in Martian atmosphere, would'nt hydrogen react on Mars much less than as it does on Earth?

neutrino · 2002-12-24 11:31:48

soph

but i really dont see it as being a replacement for conventional proposals. sorry if i seem to be harsh, im just offering my opinion

neutrino

No problem. That?s what a message board is all about. I've had much, much worse rejections. We are confident in what we are doing and have done many tests and were amazed at what we found out. This thing really works. The Windsurfer is a new devise that makes land sailing possible over all sorts of terrain. The pioneers that first set foot in the New World used the power of the wind to get them here and back. The wind is free and doesn?t need any elaborate set up or expensive equipment to make the Windsurfer operational. Like our founding fathers in the New World using the wind will help get us there. We can start exploring Mars more aggressively now. We made QuickTime movies that are available at our web site to show people how it works. We showed how easily climbed up a rocky cliff.

Echus_Chasma

Could'nt you use hydrogen for the balloons on Mars?, because there is only like 0.13% oxygen, I think, in Martian atmosphere, would'nt hydrogen react on Mars much less than as it does on Earth?

neutrino

There are several different ways to inflate a balloon with gas on Mars. There are some drawbacks to each method. Hydrogen is the lighter of the gases and the one that will give the most lift per volume. Helium is the second lightest and is the preferred lifting gas of today on earth because of the Hindenberg disaster. Although it has been proven that explosive hydrogen gas it used didn?t cause the raging fire. On Mars you wouldn?t have to worry about an explosive fire because there isn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere to cause it to combust. Dr Zubrin and Pioneer Astronautics demonstrated another method to inflate a Martian balloon. It uses solid Methanol when exposed to the sun caused it to vaporize and inflate the balloon. Methanol is easy to store because it is kept in a solid state before vaporizing. Helium and Hydrogen requires a pressurized tank. Pressurized tanks means more mass on the payload traveling to Mars, therefore more cost to get it there.

Another big advantage of having the Windsurfer is it could use a Zero pressure balloon and doesn?t need a superpressure balloon to be operational. It doesn?t need ballast because it is tethered to a rover therefore the balloon doesn?t need to be open to the atmosphere. It doesn?t ascend and descend during the daytime or nighttime. It will be pulling on the rover more during the daytime because of the solar heating of the gas inside reducing the weight on the rover by over 25 percent. At night there will be still enough lifting force in it to keep it and its drag chute, Windsurfing sail and some light instruments aloft. So there will be no need to vent the gas to the atmosphere to maintain altitude. In other words the rover will be its ballast. As a result the balloon could stay aloft for over a month. When the balloon finally falls to the surface the rover will have enough power to continue its research on the ground.

soph · 2002-12-24 14:33:40

couldnt a rocketplane using a nuclear engine, or methane fuel (which could be made whenever it lands) provide more flexibility and speed?

Auqakah · 2002-12-26 16:30:12

I have to point out that the 'dust' on Mars is in all likelihood far different to the dust on Earth. Firstly, its smaller. More like fines than dust. ("Its /fines/, not dust, how can you call it dust? Thats like calling a pebble a boulder!") Bet you all know where that quote is from.

Now that means that less energy is, obviously, required to lift the fines into the 'air'. So, a dust storm on Mars has significantly less energy than a dust storm on Earth. Thats not only to do with the thinner atmosphere, though; Mars is further from the Sun, and thus recieves less energy. And the energy for the winds have to come from somewhere.

If I recall correctly, the average surface air pressure on Mars is something like five to seven millibars. On Earth, the average air pressure is between 800 and 1100 millibars.

However, gravity is only 39% as 'strong' on Mars, and so things even up a little. But still, Martian winds have less energy behind them, and that poses a large problem for any device dependant on the winds. Thats exactly why you couldn't fly an Earth aeroplane on Mars; aerodynamics work a little differently there because of a number of variables. Which is why dirigibles are probably the best and easiest method of air transport that Mars will see... aside from electronic specially-designed planes, naturally.

neutrino · 2002-12-26 19:32:26

soph
couldnt a rocketplane using a nuclear engine, or methane fuel (which could be made whenever it lands) provide more flexibility and speed?

Neutrino
How many nuclear rocket planes have they sent up into space? I do agree with building nuclear spaceplanes. It?s a very hard sell to even get one off the ground. They have been on the drawing board for over 40 years. Using Methane as combustable fuel for a chemical rocket will take a lot of resources to make it happen, the wind is free.

Auqakah

I have to point out that the 'dust' on Mars is in all likelihood far different to the dust on Earth. Firstly, its smaller. More like fines than dust. ("Its /fines/, not dust, how can you call it dust? Thats like calling a pebble a boulder!") Bet you all know where that quote is from

neutrino

Webster dictionary: Dust - Matter in the form of fine, dry particles.

neutrino

I am aware the dust particles are considered smaller on mars. Our humid atmosphere has a way of keeping the smaller dust particles out of our atmosphere. Does 2 or more atoms make a molecule, or 2 or more molecules make a fine, or two or more fines make dust-matter. If this is true then as little as 8 atoms could make dust-matter. That would make it weigh less than most fines. They haven't broken down the dust-matter on Mars to be sure what it is yet. So aren't we rushing things a bit by calling it a fine? When they start calling it a Martian fine storm then I will change my vocabulary.

Viking site was approximately 6.5 to 9.2 millabars. At the bottom of Hellas is extrapolated out to be 13 millabars. Earth's at sea level is 1013 millabars.

Where are those robotic planes going to get their lift? One of the proposed 4 scout missions that are still being considered by NASA uses a flying probe with wings. Mars winds varies from 10mph to 60 mph. Remember CO2 has 1 1/2 times the kinetic energy then O2 or N2 when traveling the same speed when it strikes an object. Why do they have to consider the wind velocity for landing a probe? What do you think they used to slow down the pathfinder with before it landed? A parachute. If as you have said that the atmosphere is to thin to have much pressure, then why did they ever consider using a parachute to slow down the pathfinder? Flying around in the upper atmosphere of Mars is great but where are you going to get most of your good data? That?s from roaming the surface of the planet. The Windsurfer will be able to do both.

Thanks soph / Auqakah for contributing to this discussion

soph · 2002-12-26 20:08:40

according to zubrin, the methane would be easy to make...i think he said it was the same principle as the sabatier reactor.

neutrino · 2002-12-26 20:22:25

I'm not knocking Zubrins idea. It?s a good one. To make methane using the CO2 in the atmosphere they would need hydrogen. To get the hydrogen they would have to extract it from the water ice on the surface of Mars. They can also ship it from Earth to Mars. To extract it from the water ice from the Martian surface will take energy. To rocket it there from Earth will take more energy. Everything has to be in place to make this all happen. When humans start exploring Mars this will probably be there first choice. But according to NASA humans aren't going to get there before 2022. What are we going to do in the meantime? The wind is constantly blowing on Mars. So why not sail across the Martian landscape as our ancestors did across the seas when they found the New World. They didn?t have nuclear or chemical rockets. The wind is there and it's free.

Echus_Chasma · 2002-12-27 21:08:09

The wind is there and it's free.

I suppose thats true,
It would be more effiecent in terms of not having to transport the extra fuel/fuel making equipment to Mars,
and then have to set it up on the surface and use the Sabatier reaction to create fuel.

The Windrover works on earth, right, but can you be certain that it would work on Mars with the reduced energy behiend the winds?

By the way, I reckon that windsurfing idea is quite cool.

neutrino · 2002-12-29 21:48:31

The Windrover works on earth, right, but can you be certain that it would work on Mars with the reduced energy behiend the winds?
By the way, I reckon that windsurfing idea is quite cool. <!--emo&:D

neutrino

We have done some preliminary calculations on what it will take to make it work on Mars. We are confidence in our calculations however we are supplying them for peer review to verify our numbers. We are more than confidant this would work on Titan and Venus. Again thanks for your input.

I would like to post some pictures on here but what Im doing isnt working. Any ideas?

Echus_Chasma · 2002-12-30 14:25:15

We have done some preliminary calculations on what it will take to make it work on Mars. We are confidence in our calculations however we are supplying them for peer review to verify our numbers. We are more than confidant this would work on Titan and Venus. Again thanks for your input.

Sweet, yeah, you could use it to explore a number of planets.

I would like to post some pictures on here but what Im doing isnt working. Any ideas?

I haven't posted pictures before but I think I could help you.
When you go into the "post reply" screen there is a button called Image, click on it and it comes up with a screen saying "Enter the complete URL for the picture".
Open a seperate web-browser and find the picture you want. Right-click on it and click on Properties. Copy the URL that is there and paste it into the box thing that came up when you press Image.
Thats how it works in theory, but I haven't done it before so I don't know if it works or not.

For the hell of it, I'll post an image.

neutrino · 2002-12-31 07:35:40

Below are some pictures I installed into a photo gallery.

The first picture shows the rover scaling a rocky hill full of rocks being pulled up from the force of the wind on the drag chute . The second and third on top was from using a (Jibe) windsail to move a rover in a 5-mph and a 7-mph wind. The bottom pictures are CAD 3-D rendered pictures of what it might look like on Mars, or Titan.

I tried posting it before in the first post and it didnt work. I'll try it again the same way you suggested. Thanks.

photo%20gallery.jpg

dickbill · 2002-12-31 09:41:31

Hi all,

interesting that windsurfer. Of course the wind can produce electricity, windmills and so on.

Other question: is the martian dust completely oxydized or could it burn in presence of strong oxydizers. The soil contains ice at 3 or 4 feet deep right ?. If that ice is extracted and melted, how would it react with the dust ? Can we expect some strong exothermic reaction ?

Then, the dust and the ice could be the base for a basic thermic martian engine...just speculations here.

dickbill · 2002-12-31 09:48:22

Other threads, very different:

Is the martian soil electrostatically charged ? If this is the case, what about using a pure electrostatic "levitation" over the charged soil.
Also, what about a magnetohydrodynamic device. First, ionise the ambiant "air" (but can it be ionized easily = subtopic) and use a strong magnetic field to "levitate" the engine.
speculations again...

Phobos · 2002-12-31 21:30:52

I bet that idea of using a sail might work great at a place like Titan. If Titan actually has oceans of liquid and strong winds it might be the first place we send an extraterrestrial sailboat. I like the idea of a sailboat probe that would scale the depths beneath. Anyone wanna go sailing on Titan?

neutrino · 2003-01-01 02:24:08

If that ice is extracted and melted, how would it react with the dust ? Can we expect some strong exothermic reaction ?
Then, the dust and the ice could be the base for a basic thermic martian engine...just speculations here.

I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe the Beagle and these new rovers will tell us more about the chemical makeup of Mars. It is an alien world so expect the unexpected.

neutrino · 2003-01-01 02:27:32

Is the martian soil electrostatically charged ? If this is the case, what about using a pure electrostatic "levitation" over the charged soil.

I have also wondered about that. There were electrostatic levitation observations of the lunar dust by the Apollo astronauts on the moon.

neutrino · 2003-01-01 02:30:56

I bet that idea of using a sail might work great at a place like Titan. If Titan actually has oceans of liquid and strong winds it might be the first place we send an extraterrestrial sailboat

Thanks. Actually Titan and Venus was our first choice to use a probe like this. It could be modified to move in a liquid or on a solid surface. There isn't much sunlight on Titan so solar cells are out of the question. It could generate its own energy from the wind with the rover wheels moving on the surface. This is much like a bicycle wheel does with a generator.

We later thought about using this on Mars when we found out about a study at Ames to build wind turbines their. Wind sails use less wind speeds then wind turbines do. The balloon would have to be scaled up anyway because of the thin atmosphere. A balloon envelope of at least 30 to 40 M diameter would be required to explore Mars. A balloon of that size has a lot of surface area that can be pushed by the wind. The drag chute could easily be scaled up to accommodate the need for extra power to get it over the obstacles. The balloon and the drag chute would be tethered above the wind-sheltered areas on the surface. On Titan you could use a balloon with a diameter under 10 meters.

orionblade · 2003-01-16 16:42:34

Good Idea. Our MOLTOV mission outline calls for one of the landers to carry six ballons which would be released to free-fly over the surface, with a seventh communications ballon carrying a low-gain antenna to improve LOS communications, and potentially enable the landers to talk to one another or act as relay stations, sending important data from lander to lander until one of them had a LOS to the orbiter.

The other use for balloons will be on Landers 2 and 3, each with a communications balloon, but also with a small sojourner type rover. The main difference, however, will be that the rover will carry a balloon nearly identical to the communications balloon, so after it scouts the immediate area of the lander, it would unfurl and inflate the balloon, then descend to a predetermined location. Of course, we would be praying that the wind would carry us to within a mile or two of our intended destination, but that's the interesting thing about the whole enterprise: you never know what new data you might wind up with.

Projected landing sites are Cydonia (wonder if we'll take a look at the face from above?) where it's relatively flat, but with considerable large geological formations worth investigating. Also on the board are Olympus mons, Utopia Planitae, and several sites near the poles. We need to get some input on desired sensors and will more than likely take a poll as far as where the most interest lies, so we can pick our landing site to give the most useful and in-demand data which will not be provided by other upcoming missions. In any case, the rover would be able to cover several tens of miles in a very short time period, but navigation would be a problem, since the balloon would be simply carried by the wind. We had thought about using a semirigid balloon system and going blimp with the whole thing, but that presents some space constraints (weight isn't really a problem, since we're still 50 pounds under budget) as far as folding a rigid structure into a small box that the rover could carry. Also reusability is an issue. We would like to be able to land and take off up to three or four times, so that if we miss our target, and winds improve, we can investigate a new site, OR if another balloon finds something really neat, we could hop over to the new site. Any input would be appreciated, but good idea with the wind surfer.

One question about the surfer idea: what happens when you hit a rock? Really big inflatable wheels?

take care,
Rion

orionblade · 2003-01-16 16:54:27

AH! i forgot the other point I wanted to bring up!!!! I read some of the other replies about inflating the balloon... we're using ICE!. it's solid, dense, and we have plenty of hydrogen in there. The problem comes with what to do with all the oxygen we'll produce... Dumping it seems a bit of a waste, but i'm sure we'll come up with a use for it eventually. Perhaps another experiment will need it, or maybe we'll need to generate heat for the rover, so we could use it to burn some form of hydrocarbon fuel in a puff combustor... who knows, but the idea is you embed a tiny little heater wire in the ice, then run two electrolysis wires through the ice somewhere near the heater wire. You could even use the heater wire as one of the electrodes, reducing the number of wires needed. These wires would be coiled around a small ceramic form to keep them from hitting one another as the ice melted and potentially pushed them together, but the ceramic form would also provide an escape route for the electrolysed gas. Hydrogen would be produced at one electrode, and oxygen at the other, and as long as they were connected by a tiny strip of liquid water, we'd be set. Also the ice would aid in maintaining pressure, so as we heated and liquefied a bit of water at a time to generate gas, the pressure would be contained by the structural integrity of the ice itself, reducing tank weight. Anyhow, we think ice is cool. No pun intended.
Rion

neutrino · 2003-01-25 15:37:18

Hi.

Something you may want to think about in your rover adventure. Electrolysis for separating H2O is a energy demanding and slow process. It will however be one of the primary ways to leach hydrogen and oxygen out of the water ice on Mars for future Martians. For a balloon to support a scout mission for rover I would think it would be more economical to bring your own ready made fuel. You also must inflate it in a timely manner. Water ice if you dont know where it is on Mars you would have to transported to there anyway.

The gas that I would use is one of the following: Zubrins Methanol, Hydrogen, Helium or ammonia. A small amount of helium or hydrogen would be used to start the process I like the combination of two of them. Hydrogen to inflate a small amount of the balloon then the tank separates and falls to the surface and ammonia to finish it up. We have designed the shape of the balloon envelope to do this. The balloon envelope will have to be very thin to work on Mars. Pioneer Aeronautics R. Zubrin and JPL have done a good job testing methanol out at high altitudes. The balloon was made out of very thin black polyethylene. So we know it will work. The next trick is trying it with a much larger Balloon.

As I said before we have no doubt that the Windsurfer would work on Venus and Titan. We can make it out of more heavy-duty material for Venus and Titan. We will have to try harder to make it work on Mars. But we think that we can do it. Here is a sneak preview of another method we are looking into.
balloon%20+%20airfoil.jpg

orionblade · 2003-01-26 03:57:24

well, as far as the ice thing is concerned, we're more worried about weight savings and cryogenic/pressure concerns than we are with how long the balloon takes to pressurize, however I think we will incorporate a small pressure tank, so that the water gets electrolyzed, and the hydrogen collects in a small pressure vessel before being released into the balloon. It really would suck if the balloon got ripped to shreds on a rock while it was half inflated. I think methanol is a bit risky though, because it will be ice cold on the voyage out, and unless you maintain enough pressure it won't have enough of a change from storage to inflation pressure to keep it from being a solid chunk. Sure it'll sublimate, but so will ice in a near vacuum condition. I think for our purposes, with our level of experience with the medium, a chunk of ice with some electrodes is the best bet, though I hadn't thought of inflation time.

And that, my friends, is why folks like me post on this type of board, so that potential problems can get addressed before launch, and before final build even gets thought up, so we don't wind up throwing three hundred pounds of useless junk at Mars.

Thanks, and keep the ideas rolling,
Rion

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