Sail above the surface of Mars in a vacuum airship
Pytheas Vacuum Airship
2019
Pytheas, named after an ancient Greek geographer is a recent proposal I made to NASA’s JPL. The mission would send robotic vacuum airships to Mars in order to cover vast distances, gather soil samples and return them to Earth. I based the concept on a theoretical proposal by John-Paul Clarke, Director of the Air Transportation Laboratory at Georgia Tech. I read about it and saw a basic napkin sketch and thought it would be fascinating to explore it further to see how a mission like this would work and what it would look like. The basic principal is to create a large volume and remove the atmosphere within causing a buoyant effect allowing your airship to float over the surface of Mars.
