Defying Expectations: NASA's Pioneering Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Awarded Prestigious Collier Trophy:
The National Aeronautic Association has bestowed the prestigious Robert J. Collier Trophy on the team behind NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, cementing the pioneering rotorcraft's place in aerospace history just as it is about to embark on its second year of flying in the frigid, extremely thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.
Established more than a century ago, the award has marked major achievements in the timeline of flight, including Orville Wright in 1913 for developing the automatic stabilizer, Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager for his sound-barrier-breaking 1947 flight of the X-1 rocket plane, and the crews of NASA's Apollo 8, 11, and 15 for their missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early '70s.
The National Aeronautic Association awards the trophy annually for "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles." For the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, it's especially meaningful to be included among past winners after the enormous challenges they faced by seeing the project launch and take flight amid a global pandemic.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kell on Monday April 11 2022, @08:46AM (9 children)
I'm an aerial roboticist and I work in this domain. I thought a coaxial helicopter was a bad idea and likely to have problems; I thought it was low-efficiency and too complex. I was wrong and I am not ashamed to eat crow or humble pie, or perhaps some sort of humble crow pie. Well done to them - I am impressed!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2022, @09:19AM (7 children)
What sort of problems did you think it would have?
As for low efficiency it seems like a conventional single main rotor + tail rotor heli would be less efficient in terms of lift per engine power and rotor space.
And stuff like quadcopters are simple but the efficiency is even lower (which is likely to be a bigger issue in thin Martian air).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Kell on Monday April 11 2022, @11:40AM (6 children)
Ah! Firstly, helicopter cyclic control linkages are very complex; coaxial cyclic linkages are even more complex because you have to articulate both rotors independently. Now make that light-weight and rugged enough to get shaken on a rocket during launch, and then properly lubricated to withstand the rigors of the cold of space and the dynamics of reentry. It's a tall order indeed. I'd have thought a hexrotor would be simpler and offer a degree of redundancy that a coaxial rotor would not.
In terms of efficiency, the top rotor's wake gets sucked into the bottom rotor's inflow. That means the bottom rotor has to work harder to accelerate the already-moving air and provide additional thrust. Compared to two rotors situated side-by-side, a coax produces one-on-root-two as much thrust for a given amount of power. Quad- and hexrotors don't suffer that penalty, but instead they tradeoff for less usable rotor surface area. Power efficiency scales inversely proportionally to the square-root of the rotor area. Relative to the total footprint area of a hexrotor it's probably just as efficient to use a coaxial heli, but then you're just back to the reliability trade-off. Credit to them that they decided "fuck it, we'll just make sure it never fails" and rolled with it!
Fun fact: the crew of Apollo 11 also won the Collier Trophy, and the immortal Kelly Johnson (my hero and personal saviour) won it twice!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 11 2022, @02:03PM (3 children)
Why would the lubrication be necessary during the space flight? It needs to be there, because you need it present when you use it at the end of the flight, but why would it need to be present during the flight? Perhaps I'm quibbling about a bit of grammar, but I'm not sure. (You clearly have a much better model of a helicopter than I do.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday April 11 2022, @02:09PM (2 children)
Given there is nobody on Mars to apply it when it gets there, it stands to reason it must exist in place before launch. Lubricants sometimes don't do well when exposed to cold, or vacuum, or cold vacuums such as commonly encountered in space. While I suppose you could build some sort of applicator thingy to apply lubrication after landing, that seems needlessly complex. Of course, it's entirely possible (likely, even?) that they eschew conventional lubricant in favour of oil impregnated sintered parts, self-lubricating plastics or something even more exotic - they are NASA, after all.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2022, @05:37PM
At the risk of making something up from a faulty memory, I recall that the failure review board suggested that the Galileo high gain antenna failed to fully open up because lubricant was worn off due to more cross country trips than initially planned to/from Kennedy because of the Challenger accident.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 11 2022, @05:42PM
Thanks. That's what I thought you had to mean, but I wasn't sure.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @05:35PM (1 child)
They don't have to be that independent though. You'd want both rotors to tilt in the same directions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 12 2022, @11:51PM
I think Kell meant that the collective needs to be independent. Yaw control is normally handled by unbalancing the load between the two rotors, which is either handled by varying power (dual motor) or collective (single motor). Ingenuity is probably a single motor design to save weight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2022, @03:41PM
Friend, there is still hope the little toy will land on its head and pathetically rotate while broadcasting its last sorry video of Mars dirt spinning around and around upside down.
(Score: 4, Funny) by MostCynical on Monday April 11 2022, @09:21AM (2 children)
who is going to deliver the certificate?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 12 2022, @01:45PM (1 child)
In the event that you don't want the Certificate to be 2 years late and cost as much as the crown jewels of england. I would recommend having SpaceX deliver it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2022, @12:02AM
Two to four years is about right for Elon Time. SLS won't have a launch slot available for at least a decade.
TIL that the Crown Jewels of England are worth almost as much as a single SLS launch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2022, @11:21AM
Now they should program him to kill Putin and he can win the Nobel Peace Prize to go on the helf with his Collier Trophy.