Antique Fridge Could Keep Venus Rover Cool 229
Hugh Pickens writes "In the 1970s and 80s, several probes landed on Venus and returned data from the surface but they all expired less than 2 hours after landing because of Venus' tremendous heat. It's hard to keep a rover functioning when temperatures of 450 C are hot enough to melt lead but NASA researchers have designed a refrigeration system that might be able to keep a robotic rover going for as long as 50 Earth days using a reverse Stirling engine. NASA has not committed to a Venus rover mission, but a 2003 National Academies of Science study recommended that high priority be given to a robot mission to investigate the Venusian surface helping to answer such questions as why Venus ended up so different from Earth and if the changes have taken place relatively recently."
Re:No problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you consider it more NPOV if they stated that aunt Hilda's radio also failed because of tin whiskers? I don't think it's necessary to add irrelevant cases just to make it "neutral".
Length of days is a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the rotation of Venus is ridiculously slow, that would create a problem, not only for human work cycles but, much worse, for managing temperature.
Suppose they create some kind of shield between Venus and the sun, for instance with a swarm of thin foil satellites. The surface temperature would fall down to bearable levels, perhaps to the point of solidifying the CO2, which would make the atmospheric pressure fall. But even assuming that kind of technology, I see no way to get Venus rotating close to the Earth and Mars rates of about 24 hours.
Re:No problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I don't think additional minor issues should be added. I think the examples included should be backed up by citation or removed. In this case, only the nuclear power plant has a citation, so the second sentence should be deleted entirely.
I would rather put a Stirling on Venus... (Score:2, Insightful)
Robotic exploration of our solar system is critically important and will achieve much more than a pair of glass-encased Lunar baby blues.
Re:you're a bore (Score:3, Insightful)
All the example of the Roman general proves is that it's not a good idea to make predictions, especially about the future. Sure, the Roman general would probably have laughed at you if you told him about a time, two thousand years in the future, where people would travel in horseless carriages, fly through the sky, send words, voices, and moving pictures across the world, and worship a crucified Jew.
On the other hand: where IS my flying car? 50 years ago I'm sure you could find people confidently predicting that in the far-off future of 2007, people would have androids do their chores, live under the sea, and fly to work in that flying car. And of course, it'd all be run on nuclear power. You can't tell me that "lack of imagination" is the reason I don't have my flying car. Flying cars, it turns out, are pretty damn hard to build.
About all we can do is extrapolate from current trends. Ten years from now, I'll be able to buy a faster PC with more memory and hard drive space, my cell phone will be smaller, more organisms will be genetically engineered, and Michael Jackson will be even more freaky. But will AIDS be cured? If I lose my daughter in a terrible accident, can I clone her? Will we solve global warming? Will Duke Nukem Forever be released? The revolutions are hard to predict. Our ignorance makes many possible things seem impossible, and many impossible things, seem possible. Where does terraforming Venus fit in? Hard to say. My gut feeling is that if it ever happens, it will come long after the day we all have flying cars. Of course, I may be forced to eat those words. But if that time ever comes, I will do so gladly- I'll be having too much fun with my flying car to care.
Pseudoscience (Score:4, Insightful)
Your comment is classical pseudoscience tactic: find some problem with actual theories and claim "so my completely ludicrous idiotic shambling on acid must be right!!!!oneone".
And for rest of universe, I would like to present Velikovsky in all ot his (in)famous glory...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky [wikipedia.org]
http://skepdic.com/velikov.html [skepdic.com]
"report the arrival of Venus into our solar system as a comet-like body within the past 10,000 years"
No. Venus was to be expelled from Jupiter. And remind me, what comets have anything in common with Venus? Mass? Temperature? Looks? Materials? Orbital parameters?
Re:The Fraud of Venus' Supposed Thermal Equilibriu (Score:3, Insightful)
Or (c): the apparent brightness of the Sun is measured from Earth, the apparent brightness of Venus is measured from Earth, and a simple inverse square law calculation is done.