{"id":148,"date":"2024-12-04T01:48:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T06:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/?p=148"},"modified":"2025-02-27T00:00:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T05:00:23","slug":"conquest-of-titan-planet-exploration-project-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/2024\/12\/04\/conquest-of-titan-planet-exploration-project-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Conquest of Titan – Planet Exploration Project Pt. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to the second part of the Planet Exploration Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

This is our team’s definition statement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Our mission is to design a human-operable transportation vehicle capable of a reliable 10-kilometer round-trip journey. This vehicle will navigate Titan\u2019s dense atmosphere – 50% more than Earth\u2019s – and surface gravity of 1.35 m\/s\u00b2 efficiently, allowing for stable travel to and from an assumed habitat. By using Titan\u2019s natural resources for fuel, the vehicle will operate sustainably, maximizing range in this extraterrestrial environment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

Our team had brainstormed a bunch of possible solutions to this issue. Some of them include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
    \n
  • Angry Birds slingshot<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Massive catapult<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Paraglider<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Hovercraft<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Excretion propulsion by Newton’s third law of thermodynamics<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Hot air balloon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    And so on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    From the get go you can see some of them weren’t really viable or realistic. Some of them weren’t sustainable, either. The only really good one was probably the hovercraft, but we couldn’t make something like that, so we settled for a quadcopter. As it turns out, the NASA Dragonfly <\/em>mission, to be launched in the mid-2030s, was also pursuing a similar design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    An artist’s impression of the <\/em>Dragonfly spacecraft to be used on Titan<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Looking back at our prototype solutions, thinking about those other solutions gave us a better idea of what could and could not work. We learnt to think outside-the-box in this stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Our quadcopter design can exploit Titan’s dense atmosphere and weak gravity, and also use the plentiful methane on its’ surface as fuel sources. These factors combine to make a pretty efficient vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    This is what the prototype is intended to test:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    The hover drone prototype is designed to test the feasibility of aerial mobility relevant to Titan-like conditions. Specifically, this prototype shall be used to evaluate a drone’s efficient lift-off, sustaining controlled flight, and making a 10 km round-trip, bound to constraints similar to the low gravity and dense atmosphere of Titan. It shall also assess stability in simulated wind conditions and energy efficiency for longer distance travel.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    And this is the test procedure:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    We intend to test the efficiency and effectiveness of the drone by performing smaller scale experiments on Earth and mathematically adjusting the results to account for Titan\u2019s conditions, such as lower gravity and a denser atmosphere.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    We have multiple tests in mind for different aspects of the vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    The Distance Test<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We will perform a controlled 500m round-trip flight course to measure efficiency. Added weight and obstacles will be included in later tests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Adjusting for Titan’s gravity and atmosphere<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The gravity of Titan is 1\/7th that of Earth’s, and the atmosphere is around 4 times denser. Together this combines to give around 28 times more lift than on Earth. We can adjust for this by dividing the energy consumption for lifting by 28 to simulate the added efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Extrapolation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Using the test results, we will extrapolate our data to the full 10km round-trip required on Titan. We can do this by multiplying the adjusted efficiency by the actual 10000-metre distance to estimate the total energy requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The mechanical drawing of the prototype and the BOM.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Aiden<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    SOURCES
    Barnes, J. W., Turtle, E. P., Trainer, M. G., Lorenz, R. D., MacKenzie, S. M., Brinckerhoff, W. B., Cable, M. L., Ernst, C. M., Freissinet, C., Hand, K. P., Hayes, A. G., H\u00f6rst, S. M., Johnson, J. R., Karkoschka, E., Lawrence, D. J., Le Gall, A., Lora, J. M., McKay, C. P., Miller, R. S., \u2026 St\u00e4hler, S. C. (2021). Science Goals and Objectives for the Dragonfly Titan Rotorcraft Relocatable Lander. In The Planetary Science Journal (Vol. 2, Issue 4, p. 130). American Astronomical Society. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3847\/psj\/abfdcf
    H\u00f6rst, S. M. (2017). Titan\u2019s atmosphere and climate. In Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (Vol. 122, Issue 3, pp. 432\u2013482). American Geophysical Union (AGU). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/2016je005240<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Welcome to the second part of the Planet Exploration Project. This is our team’s definition statement: Our mission is to design a human-operable transportation vehicle capable of a reliable 10-kilometer round-trip journey. This vehicle will navigate Titan\u2019s dense atmosphere – 50% more than Earth\u2019s – and surface gravity of 1.35 m\/s\u00b2 efficiently, allowing for stable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pep"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stgeorges.bc.ca\/aidenh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}