Saturday, April 15, 2023

Airships on Mars

 



An airship might fly on Mars with only its atmospheric components. Consider that Mars' atmosphere 95% carbon dioxide and 2.8% nitrogen. Nitrogen is the least dense of its major components, as the other minor components make up the balance of the atmosphere, and are therefore negligible factors. This means that nitrogen can be distilled out of the atmosphere, and since it is significantly less dense than carbon dioxide, the airship could have buoyancy.

Another factor to consider is that Mars is very cold. Heating up a nitrogen airship just a little will definitely allow it to fly.

What good would airships be on Mars? Once there's a colony there, it would be useful to have a transportation system that is simple and safe. A rocket or high speed plane would require a lot more infrastructure,

These things could be popular. You wouldn't have the Jetsons exactly, but it may be possible to construct one of these in a relatively compact form. It wouldn't work on Earth, because of the hyperabundance of nitrogen already present. That is, it wouldn't work unless it was heated up.

JP Aerospace is working on airships. They hope to take these to orbit. That is extremely ambitious, but the technology could definitely work on Mars, as it would be much easier to get to orbit in the shallower gravity well. Not to mention that JP is working on a high ISP rocket engine for his airships. This could be used on Mars as well with a personal transportation vehicle. JP has to use helium for his balloons on Earth. But nitrogen is much more abundant even on Mars, than helium. Could there be a market for these airships for Mars?

The Ingenuity helicopter is rather small. But they've had a lot of success flying around on Mars. So a transporation system for Mars seems feasible. A little tweaking here and there, and you might have something.

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