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Probably the best bet for Venus surface exploration is some kind of high-temperature integrated circuit. There's already some work on that sort of thing for the

• jacobush 7y ago
  Agreed! I was thinking what you would need for a manned mission. But definitely, electronics operating at that temperature is very interesting and maybe not impossible. I have heard random ideas about mechanical contraptions, too. I wonder about power though. An electronic design could maybe run on some sort of non-rechargeable battery which could deal with the temperature. But if you wanted serious power, a molten-salt reactor would be very interesting. It would I guess "only" be extremely expensive, but maybe not impossible. The interesting thing is that you basically don't need any safety because the reactor is inert and not radiating until you start it. All in all though, I think blimps at various depths are more practical.
• Robotbeat 7y ago
  Yup. I did some work on that for a Venus lander when I was an intern, which is published here: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20150002090 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20150002090