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NIA Seminar by Robert Zubrin |
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Date: May 4, 2006
Time: 10:30am
Location: NIA, Rm 137
The Mars Gashopper Airplane
Robert Zubrin, Pioneer Astronautics
The Mars Gas Hopper Airplane, or “gashopper” is a novel concept for propulsion of a robust Mars flight and surface exploration vehicle that utilizes indigenous CO2 propellant to enable greatly enhanced mobility. The gashopper will first retrieve CO2 gas from the Martian environment to store it in liquid form at a pressure of about 10 bar. When enough CO2 is stored to make a substantial flight to another Mars site, a hot pellet bed is heated to ~1000 K and the CO2 propellant is warmed to ~300 K to pressurize the tank to ~65 bar. A valve is then opened, allowing the liquid CO2 to pass through the hot pellet bed that heats and gasifies the CO2 for propulsion. The hot gas is piped to a set of thrusters beneath the aircraft, allowing vertical takeoff, after which the gas is shunted off to a primary rearward pointing thruster to generate forward flight speed. The hot gas system is also used for attitude control and main propulsion during landing. The advantage of the Gashopper aircraft is that it provides Mars exploration with a fully controllable aerial reconnaissance vehicle that can engage in repeated flights and landings to explore numerous widely separated surface sites with a single mission. Such capability could revolutionize Mars exploration.
An SBIR Phase 1 program supported by NASA LaRC was conducted at Pioneer Astronautics to investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of the gashopper system. Robert Zubrin was the Principal Investigator at Pioneer Astronautics and Chris Kuhl was the COTR at LaRC. Work performed during Phase I included technical analysis on the overall gashopper propulsion system performance, trade studies on thermal bed materials, and design of a gashopper aircraft on a scale suitable for conducting a Scout-class Mars exploration mission. Phase I demonstration included successful engine tests to achieve required thrust levels, successful demonstration of a hovering vertical takeoff gashopper, flight of a subscale gashopper aircraft, and a successful demonstration of a full scale gashopper airplane in horizontal flight. This talk will present the results of the gashopper study and show video of the vertical takeoff system and gashopper airplane test flights.
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