Rockets that land vertically and mechanical automatons that explore planets... who would have expected that science fiction from the 1920s was the way forward?
Disruptive_Innovator The designers of the mechanical computers used to direct naval guns or torpedoes in the 30s and 40s, firing on moving targets over 32 km away, would have excelled at this challenge.
@I'm beachedwhale1945 - Those were basically mechanical calculators, not computers. They got all the data fed to them by a human (not sensors), didn't have to run any complex decision-making code, and didn't even have memory. A better comparison (though still much simpler than a rover on a different planet) would be with something like the Norden bombsight, which used data directly from sensors and was very impressive on paper... but pretty disastrous in actual use, which led to the revival of the pigeon-guided bomb program (not kidding).
@@JUK3MASTER Hydrochloric acid (okay, mostly anhydrous hydrogen chloride) being a meaningful atmospheric constituent in the cloud layers ;) Seriously, though, Scott overplays the case against conventional electronics. For example, he says that if you crunch the numbers, wind and solar don't work. Except that there are peer-reviewed research papers that show that yes, they actually do. Solar is the really surprising one - and yes, you have to be very careful in your choice of what type of solar cells you use, and your power-to-mass ratio is pretty terrible, but it surprisingly does work. And with sufficient insulation, you can operate heat pumps (also well researched) to keep electronics cool. And you can use higher-temperature silicon carbide electronics. The odds of mechanical computers actually being used is exceedingly low.
Karen Pease Actually I think you are underestimating it. Illumination on Venus's surface is not much more than 100 watt/m². The best solar panels we have can achieve around 20% efficiency, but those are unsuitable for these temperatures, so likely you're probably looking at around 10%, so best case scenario, you have 10-30 watts being produced per square metre. BUT then you have line losses due to temperature, copper has 2.7 times the resistance at 450 than room temps, and you can't use better conductors like gold because they will melt. Then you have the processors themselves, who need to have signal to noise ratio high enough that they can work - but at 400°C, they need to be pumping godawful amounts of power through their circuits to distinguish signals through the noisy circuitry. And as Scott pointed out - the silicon carbide electronics are not there yet for these kinds of applications. Maybe, eventually, but not yet. and then you add your heat pumps into the equation - what will you use as a working fluid? how will you protect your radiators from corrosion? Ultimately you end up with a very heavy, very bulky system that somehow needs to safely land on Venus and function for a long enough duration to make this worthwhile. I don't doubt that eventually we will find a way to make this work, but I also reckon that if there was an easier way to do this, NASA wouldn't be offering a cash prize for someone to develop an analogue alternative.
@@ValleysOfRain You don't have to speculate on this; there are papers on this. I've read them. Solar, for example, Landis has at least one. Yes, the power to weight ratio is awful. But - and this is part that matters - even the worst electronic computers have orders of magnitude better compute-power-to -weight ratios vs. mechanical ones. Plus, lets not kid ourselves, tribocorrosion would be god-awful for a mechanical computer on Venus's surface.
@@cplpetergriffin1583 You can always use a inflatable balloon to fly, it wil be useable for several times. (But I think you'll need a bit of compressed light gas from earth.)
@@timmcdaniel6193 Hehehe... I understood you buddy! It is indeed sad when some cannot get a simple pun. When you need to explain it then the mission is doomed! Abort. Fly safe; from Oz.
About 12 years ago, I was a regular on a steampunk forum where another regular was planning a clockwork motorbike. Clockpunk hadn't entirely become its own thing at that point. Unfortunately, the guy planning the bike had massive emotional problems, got into furious rages over nothing at all, and had to be banned, so I don't really know how it went. I did websearch years later, but I don't remember finding a success story.
That was one thing I immediately thought of, along with corrosion damage and temperature extremes warping components. "Sand in the gears" is a saying for a reason.
@@EternalEmpr3ss That is a poor assumption. I'm fairly certain the designers will be sealing up the mechanisms away from environmental dust or sand as much as they can, because the local surface environment is not well known. It's part of the reason we want to send a rover, because we want to find out more about Venus' surface.
20 transistors and a spring? Give those to Steve Wozniak. He’ll build you an arcade game and a VGA adaptor, then ask what you want done with the 5 spare transistors.
I don't know Scott, the amount of time and thought put into some of those designs are perceivably lack luster compared to some of the geniuses in your comment section.
I posted my idea in the comments not because I think it would work better than NASA, but because I want to know what probably makes it impossible, its always nice to learn stuff.
If l had enough funding to develop such a functioning prototype I'm fairly certain that I'd manage eventually to spend it down the pub and then have to avoid NASA all the time.
the thing i love about this, is it really shows how narrow the scope of human technology is. we may very impressed with what we can do at 50c and 10bar, and as soon as the environment changes its either completely useless or we try to insulate it from the environment so it isnt. I wonder how the technological path of discovery in the past 500 years would have progressed differently in an environment this foreign. What would we know that we now dont, what do we know now that we wouldnt on the surface of venus.
I've always wondered why people don't consider it to be more obvious that many of the solutions lie in discovering techniques that work fine in that environment, rather than finding ways to shield Earth stuff from it. We have this stereotype that it's a Hostile environment, yet our environment is hostile to most equipment that works fine on Venus.
so we just happen to be so lucky as to live in just the right environment for electronics to work or maybe if we existed in that other environment we would make stuff that worked there
@@TheReaverOfDarkness The rationale for it isnt bad though. we get more from applying moore's law for the last 70 years to silicon technology, than we would have focusing on technology that would work on venus, but if it wernt true, for sure life would be different. I dunno, its kinda woo-woo stuff, but i love the idea that alien tech doesnt have to be better for it to look like magic, it only has to be developed from a different environment. This video kinda put the point on that for me.
We design for the environment that the equipment will face. On earth, there is no need to design for 455 C or 90 atmospheres. If there was, we would design it as such.
I'm thinking airship with dipping probe, if we're going for steam punk appeal: Float to high altitude convert atmosphere to liquid that you use as coolant at lower altitudes, descend and the last few kilometers you have a cable down to the ground. Don't pay any attention to mission complexity or weight requirements or even basic feasibility for such a scheme.
My version would be a porpoising airship. Rise up for greater solar panel and lower temperature, then dip down briefly to poke at the ground. Short dips into high temperature are much easier to handle than doing so for a month.
To reach an earthlike temperature the cable would need to be 50km long, and would be descending through an atmosphere 93 times denser than Earth's. (Guesstimating from this that an airship would need to be at least 10-20 km in altitude) That said, this seems a touch more useful for data collection than anything clockwork would likely be. I'd still be concerned about maintaining a stable flight with the ridiculous wind speeds though
I think the airship is a better path for data collection as well. I think a mission profile something like an anti submarine airplane is an easier place to start, using short lifespan sensors like the sonar buoys airplanes drop looking for submarines. Those can work for a few hours and use radio to transmit data to the airship, that then sends it on to a satellite for broadcasting to earth. this way we get the data without reinventing the wheel. Material science is going to solve the heat issue. Exothermic bacteria as producers of power and logic functions or something. At that point the mechanical system is again antiquated. Its a project to avoid the project that needs to be worked on, due to the amount of data and varied sensors we actually want a mechanical computer is not going to work. Just making it not seize up and stop working with all the intricate moving parts is worse than putting the effort into heat resistant digital systems.
The idea of using radar reflective “semaphore” actuators reminds me of the hidden Soviet listening device in the US Embassy. The bug sweeps turned up nothing because the bug, hidden inside the Great Seal of the United States on the wall, a “house warming gift” from the Soviets, was nothing but a piece of sheet metal that vibrated with the sounds in the Ambassador’s office. When the Soviets wanted to listen, they aimed a radar beam at this diaphragm and picked up the Doppler shifts on the echoes. It was designed by Leo Theremin, inventor of the eponymous touch-free musical instrument, after he redefected back to Russia and was forced to become Stalin’s inventor in chief.
A layer of tin foil in the insulation of the walls, and metal blinds on the windows, ought to stop that. As I recall, they actually DID install such shielding.
BlackEpyon Yes, both sides have gone on to much more sophisticated ways to eavesdrop on each other. Putin even installed a listening device in the White House: the President!
Thinking back to my childhood (I'm 62), I remember the "bump 'n' go" mechanical toys I had in the 1960s. For the younger generations who might not be familiar with them, these were essentially rover-type vehicles run by a battery-powered DC motor. They had an automatic steering system which was completely mechanical. The vehicle would drive until it encountered an obstacle and then change course and continue in a different direction. Some were even designed to be operated on a tabletop and they would avoid driving off the edges. Granted, there was no intelligence involved in their behavior -- their choice of direction upon encountering obstacles was essentially random -- but even randomness will still cover ground, and such a rover could be tracked from orbit to correlate data with its location. Perhaps the mechanisms that these toys used could be a reasonable starting point for a Venus rover.
“essentially rover-type vehicles run by a battery-powered DC motor.” Okay cool. “They were completely mechanical, with no electronics at all.“ *confused screaming*
I get that it would be complicated as hell, but some kind of craft capable of floating on the clouds and dropping a probe down on a cable to scan the surface and take atmospheric samples would probably have a significantly greater scientific capability for the size and cost to get it there.
I was thinking this, or maybe a probe that behaves more like a submarine. It'll spend most of it's time in the clouds where the temperature & pressure is Earth like, and occasionally descend to the surface to grab a sample. Would it be possible to take on some extra atmosphere as 'ballast' to descend and vent it again to ascend? Or maybe some kind of helicopter that spends most of it's time in the cooler upper atmosphere?
Descent stage and liftoff time versus the thermal mass required to maintain temp for critical hardware would be competing and probably make it unachievable. Unless some very fine thermodynamics calculations are shown I doubt this would be viable.
Hmm interesting thought. The issue with Venus is that its not just high temp (450-500 Celsius) but also high pressure (90A) and very low pH since the atmosphere is mostly sulphuric acid. How long would a thermionic valve survive in that?
@@epincion Standard material for vacuum tubes is glass which just so happens to be the material of choice to handle sulfuric acid. They normally only have to handle 1 atmosphere of pressure differential though, so you'd have to make the glass pretty thick. The problem with those is that their power draw exceeds power budget of the rover.
@@michaelbuckers Glass is a whole class of materials. Yes, some kinds of glass could do the job, and handle the pressure. Quartz would be a candidate. Glasses tend to have a short life where physical shocks are involved though.
I'm a little disappointed that a video about Venus probes never mentioned the Soviet Venera missions. We've been to the surface of Venus before, but anything outside of NASA gets forgotten.
The thought of a venus rover with a thermally hardened 6502 in it makes me laugh for some reason. XD Quick! Call some demoscene coders! We need them to program our rover!
radar reflective pales in a certain order to send information, so with all the high tech communication devices we have, we have gone back to using semaphore.
Unmanned landers have already done so, many years ago since, but if you're talking about manned landings, forget it. In addition to the extreme (and I mean EXTREME) difficulty in keeping a human alive in that hellish environment, you also have the problem that ordinary rocket engines will not work in that extreme ambient pressure. Venus is a great setting for a sci fi story about a prison planet from which no man can ever escape.
You absolutely can build a mechanical radio transmitter. :) You need a moving shaft with a magnet, a stationary coil around this, and an antenna connected to the stationary coil. Rotating or oscillating the shaft at various speeds changes the frequency, yielding an FM or FSK encoding.
Some ideas: Have a “pin” in the wheel that falls out partially when the wheel is halfway over a cliff, this is a simple mechanical way to detect cliffs. Have the rover naturally turn left or right when travelling over an incline. After a certain threshold the rover should do a 180. Use your rovers suspension to detect rocks/rough terrain. Perhaps make the suspension in such a way that it turns upon encountering terrain above a threshold. These ideas may not be practical but I hope it helps someone however unlikely it may be.
First one relies on no dust getting into the sliding mechanism. It also would trigger at slight irregularities (bumps, divots) in the ground, while not triggering on a smooth slope rapidly going downward (the wheel would never lift from the surface). I like the other two ideas, and the second one is actually something we somewhat implemented in my college robotics club! Even if I'm shitting on the idea, keep coming up with them, please - without people willing to push boundaries, we can't innovate.
Well nothing you said specifies how you want it to be implemented - which is the hard part. Detection in the sense that SOMETHING moves when you find a trigger is not a problem (although the wheel would have to be very large to house pins long enough, e.g. 20cm, to effectively find a cliff. Also cliff could be a small slope going steeper and steeper). But how do you mechanically transmit that signal to the driving mechanics (through the weel, axle, etc) and amplify that small teeny tiny movement to affect driving mechanics. Also you'd need so many pins in the wheel that it's just too complex. To solve at least some problems: Have a single heavy wheel extend on an arm outwards. Needs to be heavy to have enough force to trigger mechanics. Inclination too high, presses inwards into the rover, continuous force that can be used to drive turning mechanics perhaps. On a cliff or steep decline it will pull the cart unfortunately, but if it get's too steep the arm extending within the rover can trigger a one-way brake with quite a lot of force (lever action) above the rotation axis, maybe with the braking force immediately being translated into a rebounding force. Still a ton of problems with that but whatever
@@agentk3984 Yes, but building a camera at all that csn survive on venus is extremely difficult. Plus if you have a camera you need image processing logic or it's a moot point for navigation purposes.
@@csehszlovakze ? wth dude i got 7yrs of ksp experience perish jk i didnt even mean that i cant just that it will be challenge for people not used to mechanics and the competition will be interensting to watch peace👍
What about a bunch of heat resistant probes that are disposable that are dropped like a carpet bombing. Even if they only last a few minutes maybe they can be purpose-built for only one function and doing it quickly.
Couple of problems with that... Considering that it takes the GDP of a small country to send equipment on such a mission, we want to get back some valuable data. Having a minute worth of seismic activity, temperature (right after entry into the atmosphere), brightness etc. isn't exactly worthwhile. Also: Why carpet-bomb venus with self-contained sensors all requiring their own power supply and housing, when you could just place 1 probe where multiple sensors can share the housing and power, and thus reduce the weight that needs to be shipped over there?
@@spacenomad5484 you're not putting all your eggs into one basket by having multiple micro-probes which are then sent down in maybe batches of 5 each. If one fails instantly some will outlast.
@@nemoskull2262 Nuvistors are smaller and more robust. I think the materials would have to be changed anyway. I assume the Soviets launched tube-based radios into orbit, but can't find a reference.
But isn't it only the cathode filament that has to be hot? If the grid(s) and anode are hot enough to emit electrons, won't that eliminate the effectiveness of the vacuum tube*? (*"valve" in British English)
Many moons ago, there was "fluidic logic" This employed ducted fluids as simple computers, such as FLODAC, a proof of concept from 1964. Molten sodium is a fluid... EDIT: At the time, the 60's, fluidics was a solution in search of a problem. The transistor and the PCB could do more, faster, and kept getting smaller and cheaper. Environment wasn't an insurmountable issue, so fluidics went on the shelf.
@@Blox117 Those still use semiconductors that don't deal with high temperatures well. You could make a SiC-based one, but you'll also have trouble getting any significant power transfer to power that passive transponder between a satellite and something on the surface. Then it has to use some (probably most) of that extremely small amount of energy it received to transmit a reply, which it will probably be transmitting omnidirectionally. The satellite would probably need a far bigger dish antenna than has ever been launched into space. (The biggest I've heard of is ~350 ft/~100 m in diameter, but presumably nobody outside the US military knows that such a satellite was actually launched: 1.bp.blogspot.com/-KDJOHqIy_A0/UtitGPxRkuI/AAAAAAAAPSo/zEbsWyUm2EI/s1600/sigintadvancedoriontrumpet.jpg)
My idea was to use vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) to make a radio control system. They tend to be large, so you couldn't fit very much computing power. But the are perfectly fine working at high temperatures. So that is one way to send standard radio signals. Figuring out what to send would be a tad trickier. Edit: Vacuum tubes have a bad reputation for breaking because of thermal cycling. If you keep them hot (in the venus atmosphere), they are much less likely to break. A good vacuum tube will last years.
@GORGEOUSGEORGE You can design a system to work well in one environment but not very well across a very wide range of environments. In UK waters the Logic systems worked well. But a warship doesn't stay in one area. The changes in temperature and humidity added to the shock, vibration and salt laden air tended to trash the systems pretty fast. :(
what about micromechanisms? surely the miniaturization of certain mechanisms to the microscopic scale would lead to significantly lighter and more compact mechanical logic.
I'm glad someone other than me thought of that one, so I didn't have to bring it up. Probably not lead though, although there are some pretty high temperature liquids available. Oddly, Sodium metal might be a better choice. Or NaK. Then again, remember gasses are fluids too. A pneumatic logic is technically a fluidic system. The architecture is the same, with the design of the valves and pumps being the difference.
Now that is interesting. Fluidics with gases works. Compressed air computers . You can make oscillators, logic gates and memory. Many of those functions rely on the behavior of a compressible gas. Lead boils at ~1200C . I imagine lead gas to have some interesting properties. Not sure if liquid lead could work as fluidic medium. There certainly are other potential mediums. Mercury maybe. Zinc , selenium, sodium, potassium. Imagine a potassium gas fluidic computer running at 800C! I want to build one......
People have been working on this for decades. Diamond would be the best material for this job. Boron works for p-type doping in daimond, but n-type is problematic. Nitrogen makes a deep level, so does not work, while phosporous has low solubility and tends to form compensating phosphorous-vacancy defects. Lack of a solid native oxide is another problem, but not completely insurmountable. The difficulty with silicon-carbide is it easily forms extended defects such as stacking faults and dislocations which mess up the electronic properties. So, it is still very much a work in progress.
Boron Nitride junctions have already been demonstrated to work at these temperatures. We don't have the technology to build processors yet, but I have no doubt it could be done. A more interesting issue is finding the right combination of materials to keep the rover from dissolving in the Sulfuric acid environment while keeping the mass down to a sane level.
What about vacuum tubes? High temp and tough! You could go old school use analog electronics and telemetry all things done in the past no storage all real-time to venssync sat.
Exactly! With ambient temps that high you might not even need heater coils. It might be possible to compete with older silicon tech if the tubes are small enough. I wonder how small one can make them these days.
Jtretta the hard part is generating electricity thats where I keep tuning into to mental block. I think I could build a radio that would simply through brute force transmit analog telemetry from physical sensors that move and change resonate cavities but where to get electricity is very hard!
Yeah I think the power requirement is why this doesn't look so promising. I wouldn't think for even a second that they haven't already considered this; I mean they built vacuum tube computers for space and aircraft for decades, so they are probably extremely familiar with how that worked out. But, even though vacuum tubes can be "low-ish" power, it's still huge amounts compared to silicon circuitry, that can sip nanoamps and still get meaningful work done... But maybe all you need is just enough smarts to transmit sensors data and primitive steering behaviors (let the orbiter do the real navigation), and maybe just focus almost the entirety of the rest of the rover on enlarging the power budget.
@@Mythricia1988 I feel it is more about energy storage and transmission than generation. Electrical insulation would be difficult but I think it is possible with more exotic materials. As for energy storage you might be able to pull off a high temp fuel cell arrangement. Use excess power to generate methane from the atmosphere and store it.
the standard strandbeest is not designed to handle anything but flat ground, even a small rock can stop one in its track. there are some variations that can do better but they all have limitations that wheel/tracks don't in the end strandbeests are there to look cool (and i have the homemade strandbeest walking desk to prove it.) not work well.
As soon as I saw this, I thought of one of the first pinball machines I had as a kid. No CPU, no memory, no transistors or other semiconductors, just mechanical movements that played the game. Sometimes, a very complex game.
Nevermind that. We need to send a cat to the ISS. I think having a cat up there would provide a much needed boost for morale. But somebody needs to design a space diaper for cats first. Cuz I don't think a litter box would work so good in zero G.
Nothing\ ok so naked cats that don’t litter. But what about sloths? I want to see a weightless sloth! Without the Hinderence of gravity they have limitless potential to evolve.
@@chriskerwin3904 i think that would considerably decrease the moral boosting efficency, maube ypu could have a drone that follows them around with a vaccum cleaner.
Molten salt batteries seem like a perfect fit for this. It could melt on the surface and wake up the rover. Heat resistant electronic circuits seem like the obvious solution for this. If they’re comfortable running at 450C then cooling is going to be easy with the thick atmosphere.
@@Swifteroos These aren't regular salts like table salt and are only a few hundred degrees celsius. If we go to the extreme end and use large molecules for the ions we can make salt that is liquid at room temperature. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
They could use an oxy/acetyline powered 'pogo-stick' for EJECTION whenever the rover gets stuck, or falls off a cliff. I built one of those in the early 80's... it was a blast! NASA, please don't forget to include some windershield wiper blades to clean off the solar arrays this time!!! Doh!
I guess the only problem with that is maintaining the vacuum, even almost all space ships leak air into space. Building a rover that won't leak under such an incredible pressure differencials would be difficult, not to mention extremely heavy. Imagine having a box with a vacuum in it being dropped to the bottom of the ocean, thats the sort of pressure we're talking. The shell, or bit between the vacuum and the outside would have to be incredibly strong to not just be crushed like a soda can. And the stronger you make something the heavier it gets. The heavier it gets the more limited you are in equiptment or size, and the harder it is to launch. Sure you could just launch it on SLS, or Starship potentially but the cost would be astronomical compared to the science capability of the rover, at least when you stack it up against any of the mars rovers.
Low performance computers using nuvistor tubes can be made and also the analog video camera which would withstand heat ,consisting of old picture tubes(similar to surveillance cameras used in the '40s) and the transmitter unit. A purely mechanical unit can't collect,process or send any kind of information.
This whole competition sounds amazing. From the sound of things I bet a nuclear reactor is probably the way to go assuming no crazy leaps in capacitor tech happens within the decade. Russia's Alfa class submarine uses a liquid metal lead-bismuth reactor that can operate at incredibly high temperatures so it would have to be a minaturized version with a similar cooling system.
Oooooooh goodie! I'm thinking of those small shapes that snap into different mechanically semi-stable sterical configurations, kind of like proteins. They could be used as fast-acting triggers when the inclination of the rover shifts to alter its movement
Microfluidic logic would be great for decision making given the only thing that moves in it is the liquid. It works on the principle on what determines the Reynolds number for a specific path, obviously the path of least resistance is what is taken and that is what is exploited to make it work. There has been prototying of microfluidic logic using shrinkydink and a exacto knife so it's not exactly impossible for the average person to prototype and test. Half adders and full adders have been made. Meaning, 'and' 'xor' 'or' as well as 'not' gates are possible. With no moving parts and it in a tiny lightweight all closed system dust shouldn't be a concern, but thermal expansion would be. As long as you made sure the heat was distributed equally it should still work I believe. The suspension could provide the tiny amounts of pressure required to power those chips so mechanical loss to a parasitic draw would be extremely low. You could have a path with a low Reynolds number when the fluid is at a low velocity or not moving and as the suspension moved further it would increase the velocity of the fluid so a different path would become easier for it to take which would allow that decision making to happen. Also a tiny ball or wheel in the front of each main steering/driven wheel that was pressed down via a spring would also be able to tell if this was about to go off a ledge or not. This could once again be routed to a microfluidic chip if it suddenly was pushed down fast the fluid would increase in velocity making it take a different route which would signify that it was over a cliff it could be bound together with the suspension using a 'and' logic gate. If both are true then it can move forward if one is false it reverses and slightly turns then tries again. Just a little all mechanical roomba with microfluidic logic controlling it. Keep in mind I haven't been to college I'm a high school dropout and I just woke up. So I'm not thinking this out a ton just spit balling in a RU-vid comment here. But someone with more knowledge than me might get an idea off of this comment and come up with something that would function off similar principles. But it would be a good way to make basic logic without moving parts something that would be beneficial especially with it being so small and lightweight. I see he had a pneumatic processor mentioned but it looks like that would require moving parts where as this would not.
It's the better candidate for colonization if you ask me. At first floating cities then slow and steady sequestration of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Maybe even launch it at Mars to help build an atmosphere and heat it up.
@@jeffvader811 I was thinking more along the lines of energy in the form of solar power, and wind power. Travel times are also half as much as a trip to Mars. Surface resources wouldn't be reachable until we managed to lower atmospheric pressure down enough for a diving hard suit to withstand. Obviously not the current models which weigh hundreds of pounds but something along those lines.
David Thompson True. Personally I feel that Mars will be the first planet (other than Earth) to be colonised, because self sustainability will be easier to reach in the short term. But I don’t doubt that Venus will probably receive similar treatment at some point.
I was wondering about a tethered probe? Most of the sensitive electronics housed in an "aerostat" balloon or dirigible that floats say 20 or 30 km up in the "cooler" / but still dense atmosphere. A long tether with thin cable / electrical connections to the probe with sensors or even cameras. The probe can be "deployed" close to the surface at the end of a tether and winched back up to the floating main "platform" (balloon) allowing it to cool off and take "breaks" before being damaged. Maybe the platform aloft can cool off the surface tethered module and ready it for another "dive" down at the end of the tether. The platform will float high enough where active cooling can be used, such as a heat pump (Stirling engine?) that can also cool the probe before another descent (maybe the probe can carry a large "heat sink" than can be cooled before another descent) or such. The balloon also can use regular air as a lifting gas, even oxygen (can be made in situ as well). A helium or hydrogen gas bag will be nearly twice as buoyant in a carbon dioxide atmosphere than on earth. Another idea would be many "expendable" probes released by the floating platform that can descent as drones. These each would have a short life on the surface, but can pack more electronics - Each providing a detailed picture of the surface before failing. Great post by the way!
Vaccum tubes and relays could work. About mechanical radio, well, there were a few using Alexanderson generator, there is still one in Grimetorn, south of Göteborg.
Starts coding an evolutionary algorithm to find solutions to the problem. Expect ugly and functional, rather than an appearance of design... Kent, there's a lesson in here for you (if you are prepared for that...)
Best idea I have is to have a tethered balloon that would rise high into the atmosphere with a radiator on it, in order to get the needed temperature gradient for a heat engine, to provide power and also provide cooling. If you could get it high enough, you could have a pretty severe temperature difference, and easily be able to run cooling. Then you just put your computer and motors into a heavily insulated body, with shafts going out to the wheels.
I'll be honest, ever since I heard about the AREE project/problem, I was hooked. If I were at the end of my engineering degree, rather than the beginning, I'd 100% enter to work on this amazing conundrum.
It seems like consulting some of these high-end watch makers would be the way to go. They are already doing an insane amount of procedures on wind up watches.
@András Ács I knew about the little drone, being developed, I was referring to radically different missions. It's going to be redundant to invest the money on another generic rover mission when we can accomplish more on foot in a weekend on mars,, than decades of Martian rover programs. NASA should be trying out new ideas like this clockwork rover for Venus, Europa clipper, missions for Uranus & Neptune.
Rather than a standard flat rover, how about taking design cues from deep-sea submersibles? Like a spherical body with a tubular frame for wheels and instruments? Or a cylindrical tube, like a submarine?
Hello sir, first thing I thought of when I listened to this was this old documentary I remembered watching when I got lost in RU-vid while finding more about Apollo's weaved memory - "MAGNETIC CORES - PART I - PROPERTIES" (watch?v=HPT7Wtp3yoo) it is about doing logic gates using magnetic cores. Could you please share your thoughts on a viability of resurrecting this technology for purposes of Venus exploration, maybe this could be made more resistant to heat
I'm pretty sure that magnets don't fare too well under heat. Above a certain temperature, most magnets just lose their magnetism. I highly doubt that it would work on the surface of Venus. It's an interesting concept, but if you can find a way to protect a few magnets from extreme heat, you can definitely protect a modern computer chip from heat.
It's probably doable to build electronics that work at that temperature. Unfortunately, there just hasn't been the economic incentive to do it for the more usual purposes.
Haaa, finally I hear the one and only real Scottmanleytune that sets my brain in that so long-beloved interesting-spacerelatedphysicsknowledge-coming state! (Thus nót that other tune, i mean that one that means it is another ksp-vid starting which maybe okay for many but wich mostly lacks anything new. Oh, about that: the vids i still cannot enough of are those under the title "things ksp does nót teach!"! Oh what a good time to learn such most difficult sciences so easy but totally troughole/clear explained on youtubes ScottManleys superspacerelated sciences)
When my eye glimpsed at the thumbnail, I read "how to E X P L O D E the deadliest planet". Btw. In Venus it rains mercury. Isn't that the most METAL thing in the solar system?
That poses a serious problem for almost any rover built of metal. Mercury likes to form alloys with other metals and degrades/corrodes them. You can kiss anything aluminum goodbye.
@@theq4602 I've never heard of mercury on Venus. It rains sulfuric acid, which also would suck for any rover if it weren't for the fact that even sulfuric acid evaporates before it reaches the surface. Edit: Currently reading about lead sulfide and bismuth sulfide snows, which don't sound that concerning to me. I'm sure they react with some potential materials for rovers, but not too many of them, certainly.
Scott, great to see our work at NASA Glenn get a mention in your videos. GEER definitely is an incredible system. And yes, the team working on some of these high temperature systems most definitely could make some great videos (not just because of the tech, but they're a blast to be around and talk to). On that note, I sit virtually next to the GEER lead, and know most of the engineers working on high temp solutions. So Scott, if you find someone on here with great ideas, let me know and I will personally deliver a message to the folks working on this tech. If you're ever in Cleveland for any particular reason, I'd be glad to hang out and talk space geek stuff. It's your fault I got interested in space to begin with, mister KSP.
@Nothing\ Same concept yes @Opper Darwin @rodrigo m I'm thinking about a support rod with power and data cable, which would still have heat transfer but at a lower rate easier to manage by the heat pump
That's what I was thinking as well. Surely the heat radiation from the outer shell would be lower than what the active cooled hanging rod will provide to the inner shell, right? And if need be, this process can be repeated (like 3 "thermoses" within each other providing lower "heat radiation/rod cooling" ratio with each layer)? Now, since this very simple concept it makes me think that I have missed something obvious that mission architects did not... :)
There's no scrolling past a Scott Manley video 😁 I wonder if using film (and developing and scanning it on the rover) like early interplanetary probes would be more feasible than building a digital sensor from scratch to work on Venus.
9:32 "This concept is one of the cooler ones -- unfortunately it's only figuratively cool." Lol. Thank you for all your content Scott. Been watching your channel for almost a decade now. Congrats on the million subscribers. You deserve it!
I remember an episode form the "Six Million Dollar Man" in which a Soviet tank-style Venus rover inadvertently landed back on Earth - after passing through the atmosphere of Venus - and was raising all sorts of hell - I think it was somewhere in Arizona. No one could stop this rover because it was designed to operate on the extreme conditions of Venus - until it met Steve Austin, of course! Ah, the 1970's.... times were sure different back then. 'm looking forward when a successful Venus lander/rover is attempted.... some exciting times ahead for us!
beacuse everything that isn't crushed, melted and corroded in minutes is too heavy to fly. Even if you had any kind of hardware (motors, electric...) that would work.
@@5Andysalive near the Venus surface "to fly" should be more like "to float", so a "venus aircraft" can be a really heavy construction still capable to fly.
