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I wonder if this is the wrong way to go about it. You could design a spacecraft so it's heat resistant, and then once it's fully assembled, stick it in an oven
by curtis 8y ago
I wonder if this is the wrong way to go about it. You could design a spacecraft so it's heat resistant, and then once it's fully assembled, stick it in an oven and heat it to say 200C and just let it sit for a couple of days, or however long it takes to heat all the way through.
I'm sure this would present some design challenges, but it doesn't seem to me like it would be insurmountable.
- jrockway 8y agoHeating something doesn't necessarily kill all life: https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/life-in-extreme-heat.htm https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/life-in-extreme-heat.h...
- curtis 8y agoI think you can pretty much kill anything if you heat your spacecraft enough. Of course, you might kill the spacecraft too. It might be very difficult indeed to destroy certain types of spores, and the "cook the spacecraft until they're all dead" approach might be possible but completely impractical for any real budget. Obviously any temperature that's hot enough to melt standard space-hardened circuit boards is going to be difficult. On the other hand, it sounds like the clean room approach is no panacea either. As an interesting tangent, the engineering used to design a heat-resistant spacecraft might be re-used to design a long-lived Venus surface probe.