A Desert Dream of Water

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Concept suborbital rocket powered VTO/L created for my future history setting, see my journal entry Orion’s Arm Future History, A Synopsis.

Flight,” in the Martian atmosphere, does not mean the same thing as flight achieved by generating aerodynamic lift in Earth's atmosphere – the vehicle makes rocket powered ballistic hops.

The Martian atmosphere can be considered to be a near-vacuum, atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages 600 pascals (0.087 psi), about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure of 101.3 kilopascals (14.69 psi). It ranges from a low of 30 pascals (0.0044 psi) on Olympus Mons's peak to 1.16 kilopascals (0.168 psi) in the depths of Hellas Planitia. This means wings cannot provide lift and there is insufficient pressure for rudders and flaps to be an effective means of vehicle control. Flight would be a matter of powered ballistic hops using vectored thrust for fine control.

The vehicle launches on a ballistic suborbital trajectory and falls in a ballistic arc. You can fire the engines as needed to extend the range of that arc. This is not flying by generating lift, it is managing the momentum lent by gravity, extending the range of that ballistic arc, adding and subtracting velocity as needed by firing rockets.

If you are interested in doing the math, a good explanation with examples of the equations for minimum energy suborbital ballistic hops is to be found here. These equations would need to be modified to account for drag on a body with an atmosphere such as Mars.

About the composition.

Desert mirage produced in Bryce 7 Pro.

A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. Note: current knowledge of Martian climate encompassing  atmospheric humidity and temperatures do not address the question of the occurrence of this phenomena being visible to the human eye on Mars as it would be on Earth—environmental conditions on Mars are distinctly different. What is certain, is one can drive Bryce in such a way that the program will produce the effect. My use of the effect here should be considered artistic license.  

In this instance, composing an image of my Martian VTO/L model in ballistic flight, my settings in the Atmosphere Lab (which determine haze and ground fog opacity, density, and area (used in Bryce to realistically reproduce the optical effect of atmospheric distortion or distance blurring)) created a non-reflective desert mirage. Viewing the render on my 32” monitor I was inspired to enhance the effect. Going back into Bryce I opened the file and manipulated material settings of my desert sand ground plane texture, increasing reflectivity and rendered the scene again along with several selective masks for use in post. Post work involved blending the two images to this final effect, an image which iconically defines what my Martians are about: men who have turned their creative endeavors to building a new world, utilizing their engineering skills, their knowledge of science, their acumen to industry, in order to build a new domain for life.

Image is part of my future historical setting, a Timeline Graph is to be found here: Timeline.

For contextual placement within the framework of my Orion's Arm Future History see my journal entry Martian Frontier.