Dimensionless parameters lesson — Lesson 1

Our next step in space exploration is a human mission to Mars. This presents multiple challenges, and one of these is to understand how things would work in the Martian atmosphere. The pressure, density, temperature and composition of the atmosphere is different from what we have on Earth. So, how can we make such predictions?

Well, the governing equations we analyzed in the previous section come to our aid. They can be recast into their non-dimensional forms so we can apply the same solution to multiple similar conditions. In this way, we can understand how a vehicle would perform on Mars without being physically there! Let's find out how.

Alternate video link.

Here are the accompanying handout slides for this lesson.