Since you guys have lots of time on yer hands and we are talking transport, sink your teeth into this one.
The main colony on mars will transport things to our colony and others. Right now I have a little jump jet kinda thing but will that be the method for distance transport for a colony 10 to 50 miles away or more?
Do some research and find this out:
1 is the atmosphere capable of having a blimp? Light gas small jet propulsion
2 is a jump jet practical given the atmosphere? I.E. a hellicopter but instead of blades have it jet powered. I say jet but it wont be a jet it will have to be a propulsion system that carries it's own oxidizer
3 is transport over distance on Mars destined to be a giant truck or rail system?
Inquiring minds need to code it.....
Due to the ludicrously thin atmosphere, even with the reduced gravity, air travel is highly improbable.
Building an airframe light enough and large enough to support a modest cargo capacity is barely within our technical limitations currently, (Think a plane like the one that the person using pedal powered across the English channel, just with 15 times more wingspan bare minimum) and would be a seriously inefficient form of transportation. Something like this will fly, but it would need to be traveling VERY fast to generate lift.... *this one in concept is rocket powered*
It also is ultra-lightweight with fuel weighs less than 300KG... And probably does not have a payload capacity of more than 10kg. Might be useful for long distance ultra low weight courier missions. like sending a circuit board to a far off hab... could never land safely though.. would be a one use plane. Unless somehow someone could produce a runway 10 miles long smooth as glass.
Blimps, balloons, and the like with currently known materials just will not work, their material weighs more than the buoyancy of mars's pathetic atmosphere could provide.... maybe an extremely *and I mean less than 1 micron extremely* thin form of plastic could work and at least get a thing like a child's helium balloon off the ground, but I do not see it as a form of cargo transport with current or near future technology. (displacing a cubic KM of atmosphere on mars wouldn't even provide much lift compared to the weight of the envelope even with something as light as helium in a .5 micron Mylar sheath. I am not sure it would even lift off.) However... for a parachute like effect, it could in theory work well.. Possibly a solar Montgolfiere style balloon could carry a little weight, maybe a couple KG for a ways... during the day... Once again hinging on a yet undiscovered ultra lightweight and strong material. Joe Kittinger almost made it to martian atmosphere levels on earth... I do recommend you watch this video. Its so amazing. *mars would have been 35KM* maybe with reduced gravity, the extra upward inertia might have carried him there.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-369888258105653405&ei=0HBiS5TBBoykrALrpezRCA&q=parachute+from+edge+of+space&client=firefox-a#Or a more spiritual and detailed view of his jump here ->
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-369888258105653405&ei=0HBiS5TBBoykrALrpezRCA&q=parachute+from+edge+of+space&client=firefox-a#docid=-3147115862843769268Easily a video that could change your views on life if you let it.
"jump" jets (VTOL aircraft) Are nearly impossible. Since it is forced to carry it's own oxidizer, expect an endurance of 3 mins or less, even with reduced gravity.... massive fuel hog as well. Landing is a serious concern as carrying enough fuel to slow it down from a decent is problematic after a launch *The atmosphere isn't thick enough to slow it down like with current VTOL craft* Unless the fuel to cargo ratio was moved to 500 to 1 or so with droppable external tanks, either every "landing" would result in a crater and an end to the ships life or a chute would have to be deployed.
Sadly I see little air travel possible other than rocket based.. Thankfully the super thin atmosphere and low gravity does help this a little, but it will still be a fuel hog and deplete the seriously finite amount of theoretically available hydrogen on mars. It would have to rocket up.. and deploy a seriously large chute and coast back down to the ground for maximum efficiency..
Linear induction mass accelerators could kinda toss packets of cargo between colonies... and I think a parachute could be made thin enough to work in the martian atmosphere with current technology... Probably Mylar(tm) would work if it was made really thin. This system would never work on earth of course with our dense atmosphere but shouldn't be a real massive technical challenge on mars.
Umm.. Rail.. Too much labor required to lay down initially... But most efficient.. could be driven off of a colony's electrical system... many advantages, it will be used but not at the stage where the game plays out.
I am thinking probably automated heavy duty trucks with multiply redundant drive systems and very large wheels is the most likely short term solution... It would need a very wide stance for stability as well... a rollover would be catastrophic...(Sadly useless designs permeate pop culture... For example: This concept here involves so much wishful thinking it borders on santa clause.. Anyone trying to use this on mars will probably die or not get where they want to go... For one thing I can see it would roll over and continue rolling on an incline of 10-25 degrees depending on if those suspension joints compensated or not... A medium bump about 2.5 feet tall could flip it if they were rigid... I have seen no practical designs rendered anywhere. )
Something like this traveling at a sane speed, with a wider base,and a lower center of gravity, would be a lot better... Yes, I know it is a monster truck.. but many of the obstacles they face are similar to ones that will be on mars.
*Yes I know the rovers wheels were small, but they only traveled a couple feet a day and had time to plot every rock obstacle out weeks in advance. Also please note that even though they have traveled less than 18 miles total, one is currently stuck...
There will not be enough labor available for manual driving in many instances... There certainly will not be enough labor or equipment available to produce a decent road... Every route will have to be mapped ahead of time and obstacles will have to be bypassed or traversed instead of removed... The wheels will have to be very large... Probably diameter = 2.5-6 meters... ground clearance would need to be at least 1-3 meters, or route choices would be VERY limited... thankfully the gravity is less.. Could be done with current earth based technology... Rubber tires probably would not survive long in the cold with the high ultraviolet content.. would have to be a special material.. possibly Kevlar strengthened air tight material... possibly rubber covered with another material to protect it.. weight issues with rubber... More likely Kevlar fiber if earth made. Wire mesh possible, however unlikely due to long term fatigue issues... If rubber could be synthesized on mars, that would be the most likely solution, with internal bands of Kevlar or something similar (steel may become brittle) and an external coating to protect it.
I did a horrible MSpaint rendering on what could work in theory.. imagine a wheel base 2-3x the height of the vehicle, since I did not do a isometric rendering. It is necessary due to the height of the obstacles on mars to prevent a roll over.
In any event it needs to be able to traverse something like this ->
Or this *Note the tiny rover for scale of the rocks*
And this ->
Roads could in theory be made mid term by fabricating a bulldozer type machine out of martian materials, however it would be cost prohibitive to ship one in from earth... To work effectively on mars it would have to weigh more than 2x what it does on earth. Could not be automated or telepresenced , humans can feel things sitting in a bulldozer that are required for their operation(just trust me on this, if you have driven a bulldozer, or a loader there are things you just feel and cannot be transmitted in another form)... due to the stresses the operator would probably have to be in a pressure suit all the time because a shirt sleeve cabin would be prone to critical failure. Dozers flex an incredible amount during operation, and maintaining seals would be problematic. Might be possible though.
Mag lev rail probably mid-long term solution. With no atmosphere speeds of 600kph (400mph ish for fellow Americans) should be possible with fair safety.
Sub orbital rocket, or LIM accelerator for long range, mid term solutions, until rail spreads to their area.
I see no short-term, long-range solutions for transport between colonies. All technologies I can imagine working in a martian environment would not be viable immediately on a virgin planet without sufficient access to labor, resources, or materials. Ugly conundrum, the only solution I see is no long distance transport until the infrastructure is in place to produce some significant amounts of martian based goods. IE: All initial colonies would necessary be confined to a very small area compared to total martian surface. ( Less than 300km *2-7 days safe transport speed* apart tops)
*PS you are right about time on my hands as I realize I have spent close to 6 hours looking up and verifying things on this single post... Gah.. I wish my fiancee' was here...
*Side note, I have no actual experience in any of these things so my ideas can and possibly are wrong in some instances... I am a farmer and a janitor (would like to be a Network admin but no one will hire me =/ )using google to tell me how things work and what kind of conditions and environments there are... there are just common sense things that I see(like when something is susceptible to rolling over, how to drive a bulldozer,front end loader, ect)... Still farmers arn't dumb, and you better be thankful for that every time you eat a meal =p