Is there a possibility of the airbags hitting a sharp rock and popping?
There is a possibility that the airbags will hit a sharp rock. Although our Mars geologist claimed that that is a low probability, we nevertheless want to make sure that our bags could handle a large sharp nasty rock even under the worst (fastest/shallowest) impact condition. We knew that very large rocks (even sharp ones) were not a problem because they tended to act like small hills. There is sort of a “magic” size of sharp rock which could do the maximum damage. We also knew that “needle” rocks (like the tufa towers near Mono lake in California) are highly unlikely even on foreign planets like Mars – there are only just so many ways that rocks can be formed. From experiments and geometry (the lobes of the bags are 1 meter in diameter) we decided that the worst sharp rock was a 0.5 to 0.7 meter sharp rock point that is firmly attached to the Mars ground. So how do you make sure it can handle such a rock? Test it! We built a large sloped platform inside the Plum Brook 120 ft vaccum ch
