pilot:
Here’s what would happen if our aircraft were launched above the surface of the 32 largest solar system bodies:
In most cases, there’s no atmosphere, and the plane would fall straight to the ground. If it were dropped from 1 kilometer or less, in a few cases the crash would be slow enough that the pilot could survive — although the life-support equipment probably wouldn’t.
Th ere are nine solar system bodies with atmospheres thick enough to matter: Earth — obviously — Mars, Venus, the fourgas giants, Saturn’s moon Titan, and the Sun. Let’s take a closer look at what would happen to a plane on each one.
Th e Sun: Th is would work about as well as you’d imagine. If the plane were released close enough to the Sun to feel its atmosphere at all, it would be vaporized in less than a second.
Mars: To see what would happen to our aircraft on Mars, we turn to X-Plane.
X-Planeis the most advanced flight simulator in the world. Th e product of 20 years of obsessive labor by a hardcore aeronautics enthusiast 3 and community of supporters, it actually simulates the flow of air over every piece of an aircraft’s body as it flies. Th is makes it a valuable research tool, since it can accurately simulate entirely new aircraft designs — and new environments.
In particular,if you change the X-Plane config file to reduce gravity, thin the atmosphere, and shrink the radius of the planet, it can simulate flight on Mars.
X-Plane tells us that flight on Mars is difficult, but not impossible. NASA knows this, and has considered surveying Mars by airplane. Th e tricky thing is that with so little atmosphere, to get any lift, you have to go fast . You need to approachMach 1 just to get off the ground, and once you get moving, you have so much inertia that it’s hard to change course — if you turn, your plane rotates, but keeps moving in the original direction. Th e X-Plane author compared piloting Martian aircraft to flying a supersonic ocean liner.
Our Cessna 172 wouldn’t be up to the challenge. If launched from 1 km, it wouldn’t build up enough speed topull out of a dive, and would plow into the Martian terrain at over 60 m/s (135 mph). If dropped from 4 or 5 kilometers, it could gain enough speed to pull up into a glide — at over half the speed of sound. Th e landing would not be survivable.
Venus: Unfortunately, X-Plane is not capable of simulating the hellish environment near the surface of Venus. But physics calculations give us an ideaof what flight there would be like. Th e upshot is: Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane.
Th e atmosphere on Venus is over 60 times denser than Earth’s. It’s thick enough that a Cessna moving at jogging speed would rise into the air. Unfortunately, that air is hot enough to melt lead. Th e paintwould start melting off in seconds, the plane’s components would fail rapidly, and the plane would glide gently into the ground as it came apart under the heat stress.
A much better bet would be to fly above the clouds. While Venus’s surface is awful, its upper atmosphere is surprisingly Earthlike. At 55 kilometers, a human could survive with an oxygen mask and a protective wetsuit; the airis room temperature and the pressure is similar to that on Earth mountains. You would need the wetsuit, though, to protect you from the sulfuric acid. 4
Th e acid’s no fun, but it turns out the area right above the clouds is a great environment for an airplane, as long as it has no exposed metal to be corroded away by the sulfuric acid. And is capable of flight in constant category-5-hurricane-levelwinds, which are another thing I forgot to mention earlier.
Venus is a terrible place.
Jupiter: Our Cessna wouldn’t be able to fly on Jupiter; the gravity is just too strong. Th e power needed to maintain level flight under Jupiter’s gravity is three times greater than that on
Here’s what would happen if our aircraft were launched above the surface of the 32 largest solar system bodies:
In most cases, there’s no atmosphere, and the plane would fall straight to the ground. If it were dropped from 1 kilometer or less, in a few cases the crash would be slow enough that the pilot could survive — although the life-support equipment probably wouldn’t.
Th ere are nine solar system bodies with atmospheres thick enough to matter: Earth — obviously — Mars, Venus, the fourgas giants, Saturn’s moon Titan, and the Sun. Let’s take a closer look at what would happen to a plane on each one.
Th e Sun: Th is would work about as well as you’d imagine. If the plane were released close enough to the Sun to feel its atmosphere at all, it would be vaporized in less than a second.
Mars: To see what would happen to our aircraft on Mars, we turn to X-Plane.
X-Planeis the most advanced flight simulator in the world. Th e product of 20 years of obsessive labor by a hardcore aeronautics enthusiast 3 and community of supporters, it actually simulates the flow of air over every piece of an aircraft’s body as it flies. Th is makes it a valuable research tool, since it can accurately simulate entirely new aircraft designs — and new environments.
In particular,if you change the X-Plane config file to reduce gravity, thin the atmosphere, and shrink the radius of the planet, it can simulate flight on Mars.
X-Plane tells us that flight on Mars is difficult, but not impossible. NASA knows this, and has considered surveying Mars by airplane. Th e tricky thing is that with so little atmosphere, to get any lift, you have to go fast . You need to approachMach 1 just to get off the ground, and once you get moving, you have so much inertia that it’s hard to change course — if you turn, your plane rotates, but keeps moving in the original direction. Th e X-Plane author compared piloting Martian aircraft to flying a supersonic ocean liner.
Our Cessna 172 wouldn’t be up to the challenge. If launched from 1 km, it wouldn’t build up enough speed topull out of a dive, and would plow into the Martian terrain at over 60 m/s (135 mph). If dropped from 4 or 5 kilometers, it could gain enough speed to pull up into a glide — at over half the speed of sound. Th e landing would not be survivable.
Venus: Unfortunately, X-Plane is not capable of simulating the hellish environment near the surface of Venus. But physics calculations give us an ideaof what flight there would be like. Th e upshot is: Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane.
Th e atmosphere on Venus is over 60 times denser than Earth’s. It’s thick enough that a Cessna moving at jogging speed would rise into the air. Unfortunately, that air is hot enough to melt lead. Th e paintwould start melting off in seconds, the plane’s components would fail rapidly, and the plane would glide gently into the ground as it came apart under the heat stress.
A much better bet would be to fly above the clouds. While Venus’s surface is awful, its upper atmosphere is surprisingly Earthlike. At 55 kilometers, a human could survive with an oxygen mask and a protective wetsuit; the airis room temperature and the pressure is similar to that on Earth mountains. You would need the wetsuit, though, to protect you from the sulfuric acid. 4
Th e acid’s no fun, but it turns out the area right above the clouds is a great environment for an airplane, as long as it has no exposed metal to be corroded away by the sulfuric acid. And is capable of flight in constant category-5-hurricane-levelwinds, which are another thing I forgot to mention earlier.
Venus is a terrible place.
Jupiter: Our Cessna wouldn’t be able to fly on Jupiter; the gravity is just too strong. Th e power needed to maintain level flight under Jupiter’s gravity is three times greater than that on
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