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THE VIDEO SHELF · mars helicopter

Mars Helicopter (before it went to Mars)

Veritasium's Derek Muller visits NASA JPL to see the Mars helicopter Ingenuity before it was mounted on the rover. He explains how it can fly in Mars's thin atmosphere with large, fast-spinning contra-rotating rotors and low mass, and covers power and cold.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN repeatedly recommends it as an excellent explanation of why flying on Mars is hard and how the helicopter was built.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Veritasium
Topic
mars helicopter
Format
explainer
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
10
HN mentions in dataset
14
Recommendation years in dataset
2020–2021

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Here's a really excellent video that answers all your questions: [VIDEO] TL;DW: Martian atmosphere is so sparse that it's equivalent to flying at 100,000 feet on Earth. (The altitude record on Earth is 85,000 feet, set by the SR-71.) In order to fly at all …

    kibwen on Hacker News · 2021-02
    In Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]

  • Totally agree. It's obviously a high risk portion of the mission but I'm glad someone had the guts to propose it. Derek from Veritasium did a nice little story on it last summer - [VIDEO]

    jcims on Hacker News · 2020-06
    In NASA rushing to complete Mars launch before planet moves out of range

  • Veritasium did an episode 'Mars Helicopter' containing some interesting discussions with the team that built it. [VIDEO] nm it was already linked elsewhere

    manicdee on Hacker News · 2021-02
    In How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.