Any Missions to Venus planned (Landers)?

and you'd probably only have a working probe for a few hours at most...

*That* is the really sticky part. Venus surface missions are necessarily
very short, and that severely limits their appeal.

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed for
a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned facility?
I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power to suck heat
from a 20 C environment and dump it into the 460 C surroundings.

Any refrigeration engineers in the house?

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 23:38:54 +1000, "Hansel"
wrote:

Yeah I guess it's hard to sell an expensive and essentially risky probe to
the public, especially when the lifespan is potentially 20 minutes There
won't be too many daily mission briefings with a Venus Rover

Surely they must be able to do something about that now? As if you can
build a lander to last the pressure, temperature and acid atmosphere,
then you can keep that sucker lasting hours, weeks, months or even
years.

Ok, so it is far from easy, but I am sure that there must be more than
a few ideas to keep a lander lasting longer than 20 minutes. Decades
of technical development must have produced something at least to help
out here.

Still it's a shame, it's been a long time since Venera. I'm not sure but I
think I read that the Venera's were fitted with panoramic horizon cameras,
and even television, but that they never worked on any of the landers, I'm
not sure if that's true, but either way, incredible one of them survived
over an hour as it was.

Have your new lander working on a send only mode in order to avoid
wasting time with chit-chat, then even an hour would be able to
produce a great deal of data.

It would indeed be nice to see more of the surface of Venus, when we
have seen very little so far.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

In article 40199738$0$898$61c65585@uq-127creek-reader-
02.brisbane.pipenetworks.com.au, says...
Am I the only one who would love to see a 360 degree panorama of the surface
of Earth's hellish twin Venus? It's such a fascinating environment.

Any probes planned at any time in the future?

Well, it would be nice for NASA to finally catch up to the soviet
achievements. A high tech version of the russian Vega-1 and Vega-2
unguided balloon probes has been proposed for venus. It's called DARE.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...re_021113.html

Unfortunately, it will probably never get approved, in large part because
of Bush's wasteful boondoggle proposals for things like moonbases.

--
__________________________________________________ ___
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

In article ,
says...
and you'd probably only have a working probe for a few hours at most...

*That* is the really sticky part. Venus surface missions are necessarily
very short, and that severely limits their appeal.

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed for
a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned facility?
I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power

Except that the nuclear plant itself would pose cooling issues of its
own.

to suck heat
from a 20 C environment and dump it into the 460 C surroundings.

I'd imagine that good insulation would help a lot. I also suspect that
robot probes would be designed to endure as high temperatures as possible
with little or no cooling.

--
__________________________________________________ ___
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

"quibbler" wrote in message ...
In article ,
says...

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed for
a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned facility?
I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power

Except that the nuclear plant itself would pose cooling issues of its
own.

A power plant in orbit beaming down energy for cooling as microwaves
might be a solution. Would the waves penetrate to the surface? We've
done radar images, after all.

Only problem is, with Venus rotating so slow it couldn't be done in a
synchronous orbit, could it? More than one power station would have
to be built even for the first project, flying around in low Venus or-
bit, and constantly tracking and refocusing on their target area...


Let's terraform the sucker! I don't give a fig about terraforming
Mars, but in the case of Venus it's the only long-term solution. At
least making it cooler, so you can set up a normal base...



--
__ "A good leader knows when it's best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture." '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

"Ool" wrote in
:

"quibbler" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed
for a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned
facility? I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power

Except that the nuclear plant itself would pose cooling issues of its
own.

Just what can we manage nowadays, in high-temperature heat exchange
systems? If you have enough power, and your refridgeration system can
accept a high-end temperature over 500 celcius, surely we can manufacture a
very long-endurance probe?

Assuming we can keep a cool enough core, can we build a rover for Venus?
I know its easy to make structural parts handle the temperature.
I know its possible to make 'power' electric gear to work at 500C, but its
an incredible pain to do so. Possibly better idea to power all movement
parts from inside a cool box, via mechanical power linkages etc.
I *think* its even theoretically impossible to have any electronics at that
temperature, so *all* sensors and computing will have to be in the cool
box.

So, using current tech but assuming a generous budget, could we build a
rover for Venus that has potentially long lifespan? Could we put useful
external sensors on it, or would we be limited to optical-only sensing of
the environment? Your thought on this, please.

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 11:58:05 +0100, "Ool"
wrote:

Let's terraform the sucker! I don't give a fig about terraforming
Mars, but in the case of Venus it's the only long-term solution. At
least making it cooler, so you can set up a normal base...

I have been wondering for a while about terraforming Venus, where to
begin with it seems helpful to lower the heat. This can be done by
stopping sunlight from hitting the planet, which can be done by making
your own permanent eclipse.

I can foresee several problems with this idea, but no more energy
input would result in a lowering of the heat.

The other idea that is ideally done at the same time is to dip a mega
sized straw into the Venusian atmosphere, where it can slowly suck out
the greenhouse gases in order to lessen global warming.

Ideally, these same gasses should be dropped into the Martian
atmosphere in order to terraform two planets at once, but the tube
connecting the two planets would be a touch long.

I suppose one other possibility is to creature huge floating platforms
high in the atmosphere of Venus, where the temperature and pressure
would be survivable. As if you can get plants to grow on your floating
platforms, then you could begin atmosphere conversion.

There is certainly no easy or fast method for terraforming Venus, but
I am sure that one day it could be done.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

On 31 Jan 2004 13:59:47 +0200, Marvin wrote:

Just what can we manage nowadays, in high-temperature heat exchange
systems? If you have enough power, and your refridgeration system can
accept a high-end temperature over 500 celcius, surely we can manufacture a
very long-endurance probe?

I am just wondering if it is physically possible to try and expel
internal heat into an even hotter environment? After all the external
environment could well introduce extra heat into your refrigeration
loop, which would have the opposite effect of that intended.

Maybe a better idea would be to build your probe in two different
shells, where a very efficient thermal protection layer can minimise
heat transfer between the two levels.

Getting data between the two levels I can foresee would be a problem.

If you then emerged your computer brain in liquid helium, then it
should take quite some time before it overheats, but of course the
lifetime of this system is finite.

Assuming we can keep a cool enough core, can we build a rover for Venus?

Keeping the core cool enough is the key to the survival of the system,
but don't forget the sulphuric acid rain eating through your rover.

I know its easy to make structural parts handle the temperature.

Yes, but the whole electronics section is a problem from cameras and
sensors, through movable parts, to your computer brain.

I know its possible to make 'power' electric gear to work at 500C, but its
an incredible pain to do so. Possibly better idea to power all movement
parts from inside a cool box, via mechanical power linkages etc.

And all those connections would help to transfer heat between the
outside and the core.

The best solution of all is to have all aspects work within this heat
and pressure like it was home to it, but that is not possible.

I *think* its even theoretically impossible to have any electronics at that
temperature,

Not without an entire new branch of electronics research, when all
your elements have to work at a very high temperature.

so *all* sensors and computing will have to be in the cool
box.

Thus having even more connections to transfer heat to your core.

So, using current tech but assuming a generous budget, could we build a
rover for Venus that has potentially long lifespan?

You could if it was a big dumb box with the single eye looking out,
when it is all about minimising your core heat.

Could we put useful
external sensors on it, or would we be limited to optical-only sensing of
the environment? Your thought on this, please.

No idea, but what sensors there are should ideally work at this very
high temperature and pressure. Not of course to forget being resistant
to acid.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

"quibbler" wrote in message
...
In article 40199738$0$898$61c65585@uq-127creek-reader-
02.brisbane.pipenetworks.com.au, says...
Am I the only one who would love to see a 360 degree panorama of the
surface
of Earth's hellish twin Venus? It's such a fascinating environment.

Any probes planned at any time in the future?

Well, it would be nice for NASA to finally catch up to the soviet
achievements. A high tech version of the russian Vega-1 and Vega-2
unguided balloon probes has been proposed for venus. It's called DARE.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...re_021113.html

Unfortunately, it will probably never get approved, in large part because
of Bush's wasteful boondoggle proposals for things like moonbases.

Suppose you had two probes:
1. Nuclear powered blimp that manufactured rocket fuel.
2. Airplane that dived down to near the surface and then zoomed back up to
the blimp.

The blimp would live at high altitude where it's not so hot. The air is
thinner at high altitude which would cause some problems with heat
dissipation. You could dissipate heat, but on Earth, they use water.

If the airplane could survive a 1000 flights, it could photograph a fair
amount of Venus. Airplanes could be replaced periodically. It's possible
that the camera lens would have to be repaired after every flight.

Only problem is, with Venus rotating so slow it couldn't be done in a
synchronous orbit, could it? More than one power station would have
to be built even for the first project, flying around in low Venus or-
bit, and constantly tracking and refocusing on their target area...


An Areostat power station might be the solution, it is basically a hot air
balloon in the upper atmosphere of Venus. The greenhouse effect heats up the
interior of the balloon so that the air inside is hot and less dense than the
surrounding air. A generator make use of the temperature differential between
the interior air and the exterior air to generate electricity and beam it to
the surface. The only problem here is that the air moves, if however the
areostate is over one of Venus's poles, it can stay stationary relative to the
landers.

I think the best solution is to have diamond semiconductor electronics on the
Venus rovers, these can operate at much higher temperatures than silicon
semiconductors and would require less cooling if any. There has been work on
diamond semiconductors and the manufacture of synthetic diamonds, because these
would be useful in commercial products since the circuits can be packed more
closely together. A personal computer with diamond semiconductors would not
need fans for instance.

Tom