Title text:
I’m excited for Dragonfly, because on the list of places in the solar system that I desperately want more pictures from, ‘Titan’s surface’ is right up there at the top with ‘Jupiter’s atmosphere.’
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3322/
We need a titan helicopter that launches a mini speedboat. I am really excited at the thought of getting more pictures from titan. The few that we’ve got were so eerily earthlike.
Sure. 25% --> 37% … as long as you (for some arbitrary reason) only consider 8 “places” in the solar system.
7 of those are planets, but Titan is a moon. If we’re going to include moons, then there’s going to be a whole lot more than 8 “places” in the solar system, so the percentage of places where helicopters can work is going to be greatly reduced. If we get really pedantic and consider any orbiting body in the solar system to be a “place”, then there will be hundreds, thousands of them where helicopters can’t possibly work, once you start tallying up asteroids and comets.
Also, why does the list include 7 planets, not 8? What? Are you not interested in trying to make a helicopter work on Mercury? That’s quitter talk!
No atmosphere no helicopter. Thats why mercury is not listed. There are other objects with an atmosphere in the silar system, but the atmosphere is way to thin on them to fly anything. So the 7 planets and titan are actually well chosen, those are the only objects in the solar system a helicopter could ever fly on.
Places where helicopters can work is places with sufficient atmosphere, which is why the list is what it is
Ah, but what if you brought a large balloon, inflated it, and flew a helicopter inside the balloon?
Jupiter is already on the list…
Blowing my mind that Gas Giants are just big ole balloons
It’s an inside out balloon! Gravity holds the atmosphere in, not a cloth sheet
i see, gravity is made out of cotton
So you are saying that with some cloth or plastic, you can break the record for biggest balloon?
What Dyson sphere builders don’t want you to know! It’s all in pursuits of claiming the hot air balloon hall of fame!
And I have a hard time believing that there isn’t some solid or liquid (or maybe some other exotic state of matter, due to the heat and pressure) inner core way down in there, even if it’s relatively tiny compared to the size of the planet.
Even if it was entirely made of gas when it formed, surely some materials would have fallen in over the eons that could stay solid/liquid at the pressure/temperature of a gas giant’s core?
Yes, other elements/compounds have fallen into Jupiter over the aeons but even if it was just hydrogen, it is big enough that the pressure alone causes a transition between gas and liquid and farther down solid. There just isn’t a set border where you can say that it is one phase on the one side and a different phase on the other. It does more of a slow transition where the gas gets thicker and thicker until at some point you can say it’s definitely a liquid instead of a gas, which then gets thicker and thicker until it’s not moving anymore.
Similar for Saturn.
There is a core, it’s just comparatively tiny and does not have a clear boundary
Filling the balloon woth helium should keep it from hitting the ground and popping
The list is only of “places where helicopter would work”. The checkmarks are the ones we’ve sent helicopters to.
Why is Uranus not checked then?
I think it’s saying those are the eight places a helicopter could work, and we are checking them off as we accomplish them.
Helicopters require atmosphere (obviously), so this is a list of the eight bodies in the solar system with atmosphere sufficient for heavier-than-air flight.
Mercury basically doesn’t have an atmosphere for instance, which is probably why it’s not on the list.
If you do a little homework, these are the worlds with atmospheres, as required for helicopter functions.
Maybe some design could also work on Neptune’s moon, Triton?
I’m not smart enough to do the numbers, but looking at how thin Triton’s atmosphere is you would need a ridiculously large rotor to move enough air and being able to power that in the cold air with limited sunlight would make it pretty impractical. The need for a helicopter would be less useful here too, given you can take satellite imagery with high clarity thanks to that thin atmosphere.
A blimp is probably preferred for Venus anyway.
But I would be very interested to see the absolutely monstrous helicopter that would work on Venus lol
A blimp with a platform for launching helicopters.
I think I had that as a TMNT play set in the 90s
With a atmosphere that dense most things can work as a blimp.
Depends on how deep you go. I’m surprised none of the proposed missions that I can find are considering staying higher up where it’s not hot and crushing and have an extended mission. They’re mostly orbiting and then DAVINCI which will fall to the surface transmitting data as long as it can. Why not use the middle area? Eh, they know far more than me.
I suspect it’s a science collection to cost ratio. A multi-year mission in the same high up level of atmosphere of Venus would be cool as hell, but realistically that’s a lot of cost for not as much science gain as just collecting a ton of data on a freefalling probe through many more layers of atmosphere and transmitting it back
Yes, if they had the funding they’d be sending everything to every body in the system with all types of instruments.
What about an extended blimp that does regular drops of small, hardened probes and radios back the data to an orbiting transmitter?
you had me at blimp
Diving Bell is the only successful vehicle to date
37 dot 5! we need to take the time.
5! is 120. That’s alot.
How is this not a Thanoscopter joke?
A Jupiter chopper would be insane.
A choppiter?
Or Jupicopter.
That’s 50% of those places that we also know how to land on, soon to be 75%.
