Sigh... just waiting for Sarah Palin to weigh in and tell me that this isn't important, you know like all that bullshit research involving fruit flies.

It would be awesome if this happened, but in this current economic/political climate, I don't see it happening.

Let me know when we discover some Prothean ruins.

sending a plane is stupid... send baloons that control their altitude

That methane-life connection is bogus. It could be from comets, or even stored in clathrates from billions of years ago and slowly released.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

That does sound like a much better idea to me. The fact that the plane only stays up for an hour or two seems a lot of work for a very short mission. Can't help but think that the cool factor of a rocket powered mars plane is powering this project.

>> ^deathcow:

sending a plane is stupid... send baloons that control their altitude

ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars)

How much would this cost then? And how long is it going to be able to sustain flight?

Yeah, a properly designed balloon would have a much lower power requirement and would last several orders of magnitude longer. It could have solar panels on top and circle the globe for a few years taking pictures and recording the composition of the atmosphere. As a bonus, it wouldn't contaminate the atmosphere as much, because it wouldn't have any jet exhaust. The only drawback is that it's not as flashy or as maneuverable.

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>> ^ChosenOne:

Let me know when we discover some Prothean ruins.



<3 Mass Effect

This could go a long ways towards people being optimistic about the US Govt. again...