Conceptual Design for a Martian Jetpack
Have you ever wanted a rocket pack to soar amongst the sky? Now you can … on Mars… Gravity is less, atmospheric density is less, and the vistas are breathtaking. So come to Mars...
Buck Rogers aside, Mars is an interesting environment for out-of-this-world mobility options for an explorer. This challenge asks for the definition of a conceptual mobility solution to allow an astronaut to easily and rapidly explore Mars including overcoming obstacles such as cliffs, ravines and other difficult terrain. The solution should be person-portable and any means or source of propulsion be locally produced.
This challenge can be answered by:
- producing an app to simulate your adventures in building your jet pack and flying around Mars;
- produce an app that provides the local gravity, atmospheric conditions (density, weather, anything-else-of-interest) to help decide what is needed for your jet pack design;
- perform a feasibility/conceptual study of an actual jet pack design that could use potential Mars fuel sources; or Design and Demonstrate a model scale jet pack using hardware.
We chose to work on a conceptual design of a Jetpack that operates on Mars. Due to the very thin atmosphere of Mars we decided to use a non-airbreathing engine design. A simple liquid rocket motor with propellants pressure fed system design was used and the calculations was simply done using some reasonable assumptions. The propellant however should be produced locally on Mars, so we made a feasibility study for propellant production process. Moreover, Investigations on designing a recovery system that deploys on system failure to protect the operator and the vehicle is made. Finally, we tried to model the system dynamics and develop a method to control its trajectory.
For more detailed description see the documentation on Mega Drive:
D.I Kaplan (2001). The Mars In-situ Propellant production Precursor MIP. NASA Johnson Space Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory & NASA Glenn Research Center.
Zubrin & Baker (1999). Mars Direct: A Simple, Robust, and Cost Effective Architecture for the Space Exploration Initiative. AIAA, 11-12
George P. Sutton and Oscar Biblarz (2010), “Rocket Propulsion Elements, 8th Ed."
EVALUATION
OF THE MARS PATHFINDER PARACHUTE DRAG COEFFICIENT Amanda M. Verges, Robert D.
Braun.
Mars Exploration Entry, Descent and Landing Challenges. Robert D. Braun,
Robert M. Manning.
Rocket & Space Technology (helps with propellant parameters determination)
