That is really cool.Was there some thought the laws of physics were different on another planet? Poor word choice.
Yeah. Of course it's "possible".
More like the "Challenge of controlled flight with an autonomous vehicle with umpteen minutes of light-lag, in an incredibly thin atmosphere."
Flying on Mars will probably always be second fiddle to rovers, aside from small side missions to look at inaccessible places like cliff sides or something. Due to the thin atmosphere and high RPM's needed it'll drain even the best battery tech fast, and create short flight with a long recharge time.
I suspect that NAA is really thinking about this with an eye towards Saturn's moon Titan, where the gravity is lower, but the atmosphere is thicker than Earth's. And the atmosphere is actually useable as fuel. You just need to carry oxygen, which could be gotten pretty easily from the water ice "rocks" laying around. Or possibly the low gravity and high lift from the environment makes nuclear powered flight possible. RTG's should work really well on Titan, because the "cold side" would be really cold and have the benefit of radiative, and conduction/convection cooling to create a nice thermoelectric gradient due to the atmosphere. Or maybe run a Sterling generator. (Need Birdman!)
IIRC, if your space-suit was light enough, and with some extra fabric and struts, I think it's even possible for a human to fly on Titan by flapping their arms due to the low gravity and thick atmosphere.
