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I can see why the manager would not want the telescope to be associated with that other Nancy Grace by way of a snappy backronym.
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I think another entry in the “hurt” column is that there’s less air for the engines to work with, which I assume is the reason there are so very many propellers.
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Mostly hurts. Gravity is only 1/4g but atmospheric density is really low, less than 1% of earth’s. That makes it hard to generate lift. Wings would need to be very large, and propellors would also need to be large and spin incredibly fast to get enough mass moving to generate thrust. Drag is barely a factor.
ETA: just looked at the concept picture. 14 eight-bladed motors in counter-rotating pairs. That’s a helluva lot of effort to get mass flow
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Hmmm. This question of drag vs lift gives me an idea… maybe instead of trying for sustained flight in such thin atmosphere, maybe a ball-like craft with legs that can spring itself up (low drag helps) in very large arcs (low gravity helps) would be the way to go. Probably a difficult task to design something with sensitive electronics to withstand repeated launches and landings (which I’m sure could be softened somewhat with extendable/retractable drag wings). If it could fling itself high enough in many-miles-long arches, maybe it could accomplish the same thing. We’ve already managed to bounce delicate machines onto Mars already as one-time deals, just one more (difficult I’m sure) step to make them so they can land over and over.
Now that I write it out it sounds impractical but I’m just trying to think of ways to use the disadvantages for powered fixed-wing flight into advantages.
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Now all you need is a snappy acronym for this bouncing contraption.
Perhaps “Flightless Launcher for Extraterrestrial Atmospheres” - FLEA
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In that case, how about MAGE, or do we not get as much funding without the word “Intelligent” in the title?
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One of the two rovers that Japan just deposited on the moon works by hopping in big arcs. I was curious to know how well it works and how high it can hop but most of the technical information that I can find on the LEV-1 is in Japanese:
https://www.jaxa.jp/projects/files/youtube/sas/20220315_slim_lev_document03.pdf
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Yes, let the robots explore all they want and see what we can learn about our universe…so much safer and cheaper than sending humans, but let’s stop pretending that Mars will ever been anything but a hellscape and utterly uninhabitable. Plenty of challenges right here on Earth!
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Yeah, something that hops around, rather than attempting to use the very thin atmosphere for lift.
Or even more weird… ok, you don’t have much atmosphere for lift or thrust. If you had a very high density power source (nuclear) you could scoop up dust and use that for both thrust and lift by expelling it out as a jet.
Bring back the nuclear ramjet? This would be part of the strategy to make sure Mars never supports human life I suppose?
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JPL controllers relaying commands to MAGGIE in data acquisition sleep-mode: “Wake up. Maggie. We really have something to say to you.”
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I gave you a thinking react because there’s no 
:groan:
Shh! We’ve gotta convince a few billionaires that they’re the special ones who can be the first to live there…before they figure out our plan.
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Maybe a school of flying sharks…
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Ha we gave one of those (and surprised him with it floating into the room) to our 5 year old nephew, it was a big hit. And pretty fun to play with too!
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Mars is already pounded with radiation from the sun. It doesn’t have enough atmosphere or magnetic field to protect it. This is a major problem for human habitation of Mars.
My friend is one of those people who somehow goes through life someone avoiding retaining any of that kind of cultural flotsam. The odds that he knows who Nancy Grace the TV person is almost nil. I’m very jealous of that talent. That stuff sticks to me like so many barnacles.
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