Mars Hoppers

I wish them luck, Edgar. The Rover form of travel certainly seems primitive…and I would think we could do better.

If not a hopper…something that moves faster than the snail’s pace now in vogue…and something that won’t get hung up so easily.

I saw a hopper or something in a movie. It attacked the astronauts. I guess they gave it too much of the wrong kind of intelligence.

I dunno,Edgar. Seems to me that any machine not trying to eradicate humans...is not an especially intelligent machine.

Was it this one?

I don't think so, izzyman.

Was it this one?

It might be hard to get a whole lot of quality scientific instrumentation onto something that needs to "hop" around on an uneven surface. It might be nice to have a swarm of hoppers and just let them hop around up there checking things out as an exploratory wave. Then maybe they could call for a rover if a more detailed test were needed.

The best way to cover distance though is by air, so I always thought that in a low gravity environment like Mars they might be able to build some type of mini-blimp with fan drives and solar power and have it carry all the instrumentation. It would have to moor itself during wind storms, but they might be able to figure out a way to do that somehow.

Something like the probes depicted in this CGI documentary:

Half tracks, I say.

BINGO!