Author Topic: Curiosity fake...?  (Read 18635 times)

Offline Peter B

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #15 on: August 06, 2013, 09:55:03 AM »
A candidate for the new queen of woo.  Sharing "valuable 'inside' information of which the public and even most researchers are
not familiar with."
I see from her website that she's associated with a group called BUFO. It occurs to me, probably completely unfairly, that bufo is Latin for "toad".

Offline ka9q

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #16 on: August 06, 2013, 10:21:35 AM »
With lower surface density but larger scale height, there is an altitude where the density would be the same. For Earth and Mars it's 101 km.
Good point! So the Karman line is more general than we realized...

I help mentor a high school group that flies balloons. We typically make it to 30 km or so (about 100,000') before the balloon bursts. I like to tell them that at that altitude earth's atmospheric pressure and temperature (if not composition) are roughly the same as on the surface of Mars. So in that sense they're building a payload to go to Mars.

Offline Chew

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #17 on: August 06, 2013, 11:53:31 AM »
Mary didn't write the OP quote. "Shadow" did.

Offline Chew

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #18 on: August 06, 2013, 12:41:55 PM »
Good point! So the Karman line is more general than we realized...

Actually, the Karman line on Mars is at 71 km. Remember you have to account for gravity vs lift and compare lift to orbital speed.

Offline ka9q

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #19 on: August 06, 2013, 02:17:00 PM »
Oh, right...it's not just atmospheric density, but the altitude at which the lift of an aircraft wing at orbital velocity would be insufficient.


Offline ka9q

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #20 on: August 06, 2013, 07:43:41 PM »
It would be interesting to work out the Karman line for all the planets with atmospheres (and Titan).

Offline Chew

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #21 on: August 06, 2013, 08:59:50 PM »
It would be interesting to work out the Karman line for all the planets with atmospheres (and Titan).

Venus   266 km
Mars       71 km
Jupiter   415 km
Saturn   810 km
                         Titan 152 km
Uranus   366 km
Neptune 270 km

 ;)

Couldn't find the atmo info I needed for Titan.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2013, 10:24:42 PM by Chew »

Offline ka9q

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #22 on: August 06, 2013, 09:24:03 PM »
Titan's atmosphere is nearly all N2, with a surface pressure of 1.5 bar (146.7 kPa), surface gravity of 1.352 N/kg (less than our moon), and surface temperature of 93.7 K.

Offline Chew

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #23 on: August 06, 2013, 10:23:19 PM »
Titan 152 km

Offline ka9q

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #24 on: August 07, 2013, 08:00:43 AM »
What are the reference altitudes for the gas planets? I think the usual convention for their "surfaces" is the 1-bar (100 kPa) pressure level.

Offline ka9q

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #25 on: August 07, 2013, 08:06:09 AM »
Interesting that they're all higher (in some cases much higher) than Earth with the sole exception of Mars. OTOH, the planets and moons with surface-bounded exospheres have Karman lines at 0 km.

Speaking of planetary comparisons, I've always found it interesting that their surface gravities tend to fall into just a few bins. Mars and Mercury are about 1/3 g. Venus, Earth, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all around 1 g. Jupiter, at about 2.5 g, is in a class by itself.

Offline Chew

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #26 on: August 07, 2013, 11:47:52 AM »
What are the reference altitudes for the gas planets? I think the usual convention for their "surfaces" is the 1-bar (100 kPa) pressure level.

Yeah, 1 bar.

Offline Captain Swoop

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #27 on: August 19, 2013, 06:49:17 AM »
Why are these web sites always so terrible to look at?

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #28 on: September 01, 2013, 08:09:46 PM »
Titan 152 km

You sure about that? Orbital velocity at that altitude would be ~1800 m/s, and Titan's atmosphere at that altitude ought to be about equivalent to Earth's at 10 km...about 4x as dense at the surface and in 1/7.25 as strong a gravity field.

Offline Chew

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Re: Curiosity fake...?
« Reply #29 on: September 02, 2013, 12:19:55 PM »
What scale height did you use? I calculated a scale height of 20.58 km.