
Titan Aerial Daughtercraft - ca98am79
http://www.nasa.gov/content/titan-aerial-daughtercraft/#.U6BZDpRX-ub
======
Cogito
As I understand it, they want to perform a feasibility study to determine if a
mothership (balloon or lander) and daughtership (rotorcraft, maybe a
quadcopter) combination would be an effective way to study Titan.

The mothership would act as a base of operations; a recharging station at the
least, probably containing communication devices and its own sensors as well.

The daughtership, potentially multiple daughterships, would sortie out from
the mothership and investigate the surface up close.

They outline 4 outcomes from the initial study:

(1) develop mission concepts of operations for deployment from a lander or
balloon to acquire context imaging and mapping data, to sample from solid
surfaces and/or lakes, and to return to the mothership to deposit samples
and/or recharge;

(2) develop a parametric sizing model of the daughtercraft to characterize
propulsion, power, range, endurance, and payload capability for total
daughtercraft mass ranging from approximately 1 to 10 kg;

(3) develop a conceptual design and identify representative components for the
entire daughtercraft hardware and software system for autonomous mobility,
including estimates of approximate mass, power, and energy budgets and
producing a representative CAD model; and

(4) develop a conceptual design and preliminary CAD model for a science
payload on the daughtercraft, including specifying a nominal instrument suite
on the balloon or lander, designing a compatible sampling mechanism to acquire
solid and/or liquid samples on the daughtercraft, and studying mechanisms and
daughtercraft behaviors necessary to transfer the samples to the instruments.

The study will be carried out by JPL.

\----

I wonder how much the rotorcraft community (hobbyist or otherwise) could
contribute to a study like this. I can imagine this would be extremely
interesting, and not so different from the many applications already being
investigated.

~~~
ibisum
I'm part-way through building a plane at the moment, which will play host to a
small quadcopter with its own video feed, so this story feels a lot like whats
going on in my workshop. The intention is to build an automated system that
will send the plane to a location, drop the quad, do a video survey, pick the
quad back up, and fly back. This is purely for hobby purposes, as I am very
interested in automatic flight systems, and while its too late for me to
pursue a career in aerospace proper, its at least a means to fulfill my dreams
of having such devices under my control.

I think that the next 5 or 10 years of innovation in aerospace _is_ going to
come from the RC/UAV hobbyists who are pushing the boundaries of drone
technology. Already we are seeing in the RC world massive leaps in drone
automation, which have immediate uses in the real world, and it doesn't look
like its going to stop. There's not a day that goes by where someone hasn't
released an innovative new aspect of drone technology - whether its flight,
construction, recovery, or application.

~~~
jbattle
That sounds really amazing. Have you thought through the details of the
rendezvous & docking? Is that as hard as it sounds? I imagine the mothership
would need to be travelling what 25 mph? 20? Or is the absolute horizontal
speed not that big of an issue because it's the relative movement between the
two that matters?

~~~
fit2rule
Rendezvous and docking _are_ hard problems, and at the moment I don't have a
solution, but am actively thinking about it. ;) It may be that I'll use a
magnetic docking system to avoid mechanical complications during a very tricky
flight maneuver which will require the quad to hold a fixed position while the
plane lines up, but this is not as simple as it sounds. Actually, its the
hardest part, and I'm leaving it for last.

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zwilliamson
I would like to see more of my tax dollars going to an endeavor like this.

~~~
bsilvereagle
Inform your Congressman:
[http://www.contactingthecongress.org/](http://www.contactingthecongress.org/)

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mbenjaminsmith
> Titan is the richest laboratory in the solar system for studying prebiotic
> chemistry

Does that mean prebiotic environment + time != biotic environment?

Is this NASA being conservative and managing expectations?

I'm probably incorrect in assuming this but given our current theories about
abiogenesis you would think either the environment isn't viably pre-biotic or
it would be full on biotic by now.

If it is, say, quasi-prebiotic wouldn't that make it much less valuable for
study if the goal is to understand the origin of life?

I think this suggests they're either downplaying the mission as a search for
life or overstating the value of studying the moon as a "prebiotic"
environment.

~~~
fhars
That is one of the questions this mission is intended to contribute to. Yes,
the current theories would expect that, but they would also expect the
observable universe to be swarming with intelligent life, which it doesn't
(see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox)).
We are still looking for the Great Filter, and if Titan is still viably pre-
biotic but lifeless, it would point to the optimisitc outlook that life is
less common than thought and that the filter may actually be in our past. If,
on the other hand, there is independent complex life on titan, things look
less good for us, as that points to a Great Filter later in the development of
life.

~~~
kalms
"... swarming with intelligent life, which it doesn't ..."

And you know this, how? The universe is a pretty big place.

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pling
I love NASA's conceptual art, but I think they used MSpaint for this one:

[http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/matthies.jpg](http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/matthies.jpg)

~~~
bsilvereagle
I have a feeling that image was created in MS paint solely for a proof of
concept slide deck. Then the engineer/team behind it got swamped in the new
amounts of paperwork to do with their proposal and didn't get a chance to do a
better rendering. Or the image was associated with the project in their slides
and a PR rep just lifted the image for the webpage without consulting the
team.

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twic
> mission concepts to date have had either no mobility (landers), no surface
> access (balloons and airplanes), or low maturity, high risk, and/or high
> development costs for this environment (e,g. large, self-sufficient, long-
> duration helicopters).

How come helicopters have surface access but balloons don't? Why does NASA
think you can't land a balloon?

Landing balloons were proposed for Mars:

[http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/adv_tech/balloons/mars_overview.htm](http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/adv_tech/balloons/mars_overview.htm)

And we operate rather a number of them here on Earth. What's the problem? Has
the idea of autonomous landing balloons been written off altogether? Or is
there something about Titan which makes them impractical? If the latter, it
would apparently have to be something that leaves a 10kg battery-powered
helicopter plausible.

~~~
ibisum
>How come helicopters have surface access but balloons don't? Why does NASA
think you can't land a balloon?

Atmospheric pressure differential being what it is, there are only certain
regions that the balloon can operate. The point is, there are only certain
regions the copters can operate too, but by combining both the entire spectrum
can be covered.

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na85
I just plain love NASA.

