Quadcopter on Mars! Vacuum Chamber Test 2
According to my previous test, even at full throttle, an unmodified quadcopter can't fly on Mars unless the rotor efficiency is improved. Not what I hoped, yet this is consistent with the numbers I crunched from my last test. The rotors are at best 15% efficient at 7 millibars (typical for Mars) -- and in my test chamber they were also working against Earth gravity instead of Mars gravity (3/8 as much as here in Earth). To work at Mars the rotors would need to be ~30% efficient at 7 millibars -- and maybe a bit more to gain any altitude in my test chamber. As we see in Test 1, this seems entirely possible.
According to my previous test, even at full throttle, an unmodified quadcopter can't fly on Mars unless the rotor efficiency is improved. Not what I hoped, yet this is consistent with the numbers I crunched from my last test. The rotors are at best 15% efficient at 7 millibars (typical for Mars) -- and in my test chamber they were also working against Earth gravity instead of Mars gravity (3/8 as much as here in Earth). To work at Mars the rotors would need to be ~30% efficient at 7 millibars -- and maybe a bit more to gain any altitude in my test chamber. As we see in Test 1, this seems entirely possible.