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[Sheb]

Why would we need all of that? Weather on Mars ain't that much of an issue, because the atmosphere's so thin than even a raging storm actually has very little force.

[Eagleon]

Well, there's still other purposes it could be pushed to if that's the case. Positioning is handy lacking a magnetosphere. It fits NASA's style of getting the most from each mission if we could do something with Phobos too - a tether is a nice option for exploration there because of dust. It's just an idea

(not to mention it might not be a big deal for landing, but for manned missions having detailed weather data over a broad area could save lives)

[Sheb]

Wouldn't it be easier to set up a GPS system on Mars?

[Eagleon]

Wouldn't it be easier to set up a GPS system on Mars?

Our GPS system cost around 12 billion dollars. Tack on another few hundred million a year to maintain. It requires careful orbital calculations and precise maneuvers to put into place, which is probably more expensive than tossing a bunch of compact relays powered by antennas into the atmosphere and dealing with where they land afterwards using triangulation from an orbiter. So no, I don't think so. I could be wrong.

[Sheb]

Well, lots of R&D went in there. We know how to do it now. Plus, we don't need the same level of precision and redundancy on Mars.

[Eagleon]

It would come down to cost-benefit as usual, but I think it takes advantage of the lack of interference (other than from the Sun) Mars has to do more with the same materials. It's more repurposeable (hell, colonists could walk up to them and move them around, and one of the huge things we can't yet mine/refine/manufacture remotely is electronics, especially sensors, especially computers, especially programmable ones), and you could ship far more of them than you could with a satellite system (I'm kind of imagining them the size of baseballs or smaller, and very low density other than the antenna, mind you) They could be a part of a more thorough satellite system constructed later, too.

[smirk]

I like it. Consider though: Mars has planet-wide dust storms, what, once every three years or so? You'll eventually need to worry about dust accumulation. Spirit and Oppy apparently had problems with that, although theirs was more due to covered solar arrays. There isn't much accumulation per storm so it won't be an immediate problem, but if you're talking about a planet-wide ground-based system, keeping them uncovered will eventually be necessary and problematic. Perhaps a new fast-moving rover that's just a pair of arms and a broom? =P

[RedKing]

I like it. Consider though: Mars has planet-wide dust storms, what, once every three years or so? You'll eventually need to worry about dust accumulation. Spirit and Oppy apparently had problems with that, although theirs was more due to covered solar arrays. There isn't much accumulation per storm so it won't be an immediate problem, but if you're talking about a planet-wide ground-based system, keeping them uncovered will eventually be necessary and problematic. Perhaps a new fast-moving rover that's just a pair of arms and a broom? =P

Spoiler: You called? (click to show/hide)

[Another]

Besides my opinion on manned colonies at this point of time - Raspberry Pi* and similar consumer level things** will not cut it for radiation hardness requirements. Almost no atmosphere and magnetosphere are not only bad for living things but cosmic rays kill electronics too.

*It may work for a year or 5 with only software problems due to memory corruption.
**Industrial certified devices are better but military level ones are required for any reliability.

[Eagleon]

Yeah, those are both problems that I don't know if they can be overcome. These are sort of like baby spiders, so there's also a problem of how much they'd all drift and move around, and what that would do mechanically to the antenna and the connection point on the sensor. It would all have to be very, very rugged, which means simpler components and a little bit less power overall, but it's not like you need super powerful computers to retransmit sensor data and reconfigure in a couple of different useful ways. Think closer to late 80s than Pi's functionality, although the beauty of this is that it wouldn't require a lot of complicated engineering to adapt to more powerful, more reliable components as we get closer to launch.

[Sheb]

Well, we have satellites that manage just fine away from the magnetosphere. We know how to do this.

[wierd]

The devices I always suggested for solar powered rovers, were a Squeegee and a mechanical ion gun.

Beam the panels to make the particles lift off the surface, squeegee, then release the handle on the gun to rebeam the surface, to make it neutral again. They could remove a good deal of dust from solar panels this way without a solvent, and the peizo crystal inside those things is good for hundreds of thousands of activations.

Just have the robot carry a toolbox, and give it a multi use grip arm to use them with.

[MonkeyHead]

... or statically charge any exposed metal parts once in a while a la Van der Graaff generator. Dust should sort itself out. Bonus points for sparking lots.

[Sheb]

The devices I always suggested for solar powered rovers, were a Squeegee and a mechanical ion gun.

Would work if that "ion gun" wasn't a piece of crap. Seriously, 1.5 C? That would mean 1000 000 tons of force if you were to spray a vynil 50 cm away.

[wierd]

You dont spray from that distance silly. Electrostatic force falls off in the inverse cube of distance! 50cm is like.. a bazillion kilometers for such a small device.  You dont get over-unity in this universe!  The idea is a device that uses very little power to create a static potential at short ranges, (less than 2cm!) that is lightweight, reliable, and easily transported.

This is especially important, because the intended use case is when the rover is suffering power shortages from clogged up solar cells. You need something that uses almost no juice to do the magic.

Besides, we are lifting dust particles with a total earth weight of just a few picograms here. Even less than that on Mars.