That is such a good idea, I emailed NASA at https://mars.nasa.gov/feedback/

With this message:

“Can the date of Ingenuity First Flight be moved to 12 April? It has been noted that the date has some significance in space exploration.

Regards,

Blair Ivey”

Not holding my breath, but it would be cool. I’m surprised JPL missed the opportunity.

Lower Martian gravity, very high rpm’s (2800), special blade design for low density air, very low mass (Ingenuity only weighs 4lbs!), and contra-rotating coaxial rotors.

It worked in the vacuum chambers under Mars -like conditions, but we’ll see if it can do it for real on April 11.

Whether or not you embrace some kind of NASA conspiracy about what kind of atmospheric conditions obtain on Mars, Ms. Erikson’s links do highlight a problem that you have often cited, to wit, how can there be so much evidence of what appear to be surface water phenomena with such a low atmospheric pressure?

Quoting from the last of her links:

“This thicker atmosphere would account for ‘wash features’ on the surface plus many of the images we find with blue-grey sky colours. The orange clear sky colours would be the image ‘enhanced’ pictures released by NASA, not the true colour pictures. At present many scientists are having trouble explaining the liquid water related phenomena (http://rt.com/news/water-flowing-mars-nasa-evidence-470/) because water would evaporate rapidly in the officially endorsed low pressure environment.”

Likewise, there is the case of why — again per the logic of this post — the Martian sky is not black.

But here is something else to consider. If NASA / JPL did not have a pretty good understanding of the physics of the Martian atmosphere, they would not have been able to accomplish so many successful soft landings on Mars, Perseverance nicely serving as people’s exhibit A in this case. Similarly, we would expect (per bkivey’s links) that Ingenuity will also perform as intended. But could one work backward, knowing the engineering parameters of Ingenuity, to derive an independent figure for the density of Mars’ atmosphere?

Conspiracies aside, it seems to me that both of these things are legitimate “puzzles,” and as Robert likes to point out, Mars is a VERY
strange place.

Raymond Hietapakka: I don’t know all the engineering details, not being an engineer, but I can tell you that Mars’s gravity, about one third that of Earth’s, helps quite a lot.

I don’t doubt that there’s a big overlap. But then again, there’s been an anti-human spaceflight milieu in the science community going right back to James van Allen…

I think we do get pretty good bang for our buck, most of the time, for what we spend on robotic space exploration — thanks to the concentrated and experienced ingenuity at centers like JPL, Ames, Goddard, et al. I also think that’s a darned good thing given how deeply dysfunctional most of NASA’s human spaceflight program has been since the 1970’s. A skilled astronaut on site *could* do in a day everything a Curiosity-class rover can do over months, but it’s a moot point when NASA’s parochial procurement and bureaucratic inefficiencies mean it will never have the kind of funding it would actually take to put that astronaut on the surface of Mars in the first place.

All that said, Bob, I do grok and lament what you’re trying to say about the increasingly pathological aversion to risk that is overtaking American society at almost all levels. It sure doesn’t make what people like Elon Musk and Peter Beck are trying to do any easier.

http://www.redbackaviation.com/aviation-calculation-helicopter-calculations/

A more thorough treatment. Mostly theory, but useful equations start on page 25:

https://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/57483.pdf

My BOTE calculations indicate the aircraft should fly with some power reserve. But, we’ll find out soon enough.

This is a very cool image, the full image fish eye as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010131115100/http://www.advweb.com/kw/

https://allnewspipeline.com/NASA_Never_A_Straight_Answer.php

http://arkcode.com/custom3_484.html

another person who figures there is a problem with NASA statements about Mars.
https://spookyweather.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-martian-atmosphere-must-be-thicker.html

David Eastman: I would not be surprised in the least if every single one of the people who tell you this are also wearing masks.