little math problem October 2018

[Zaphod]

(10-20-2018 08:05 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  The rover covers an area of 2 * D * V per unit of time. The area of the planet is 4 * pi * R^2, so it takes a time (4 * pi * R^2) / (2 * D * V) to search the entire planet, and the expected search time is half that.

But that (making actual physical contact) would be (slightly) longer than actually getting visual sight of each other.

The diameter of the planet and the height of the visual scanning hardware (and the tallest part of the other rover) comes into play surely.