Mars copter vs Mars plane

[msuffidy]

Since helicopters or drone are essentially energy inefficient, perhaps it would have been easier to make a really wide winged RC plane for Mars? It could legitimately fly around for a while.

[igendel]

But takeoff and landing on a "runway" of sand and rocks might be harder. Perhaps a mars VTOL 

[cdev]

i think that was discussed in the Mars helicopter video from JPL. And indeed, you are right, despite the thinness of the atmosphere it is more efficient that way.

[MikeK]

Energy inefficient, where?  On Earth?  Maybe not on Mars?  I would guess that a helicopter on Mars is much more efficient than a plane given that it's relatively easy to get some small rotors spinning fast but not so easy to get a large plane going fast enough to generate lift.  I would even bet that we never get planes on Mars.

[msuffidy]

I guess I could have read this first but I just assumed the problem with copters is that they use constant energy to fight gravity and mostly just stay stationary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_aircraft

[Brumby]

Forget energy efficiency.  You are focusing on the wrong criteria ... completely.

[Brumby]

This is a FAR more important factor:

But takeoff and landing on a "runway" of sand and rocks might be harder. Perhaps a mars VTOL 

[cdev]

Thats really important because if the mars plane gets overturned or somehow in a non-upright state, righting it top side up, might be impossible, being as much as tens of millions of miles away.

It seems to me thinking about it that I have not seen a suitable completely flat area in all the Mars pics I have seen, (a lot) There must be some , like sand, but not a real lot, and mapping would have to be done to locate it.
 Here on Earth, with people to fix things, one way around the dearth of airports wherever you wantthem is a parasail-or paraplane like setup? On Youtube there is  video of some guy living in the midst of the US midwest (very flat for hundreds of miles) going to a McDonalds several towns away for a hamburger with his paraplane.

This is a FAR more important factor:

But takeoff and landing on a "runway" of sand and rocks might be harder. Perhaps a mars VTOL