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Old May 16th 18, 07:15 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Chris.B[_3_]
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Default It took NASA...four years to design a drone.

On Tuesday, 15 May 2018 08:57:15 UTC+2, Quadibloc wrote:
On Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 1:48:16 AM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44090509


It is possible the guys working on it also had other duties.

Note that there were likely not as many people working on the project as would
be working at a drone manufacturer designing their next product.

And this drone had to be super reliable, and it had to work in the atmosphere of
Mars, which, as the article noted, is a *lot* less dense than that of Earth.
(The article said 100x; I thought it was more than that.)

John Savard


Finding a mains socket to recharge the Li batteries every ten minutes is likely to be a deal breaker.

I'd have gone for a kite with a soft skeleton. They could run one up in a quarter of an hour if they "borrowed" the Webb's billion dollar sewing machine.