3 ms·
Yea, this is the part I’m having trouble wrapping my head around. Good isolation can give can give hours or days of useful operation. Which would enable a lot
by treeman79 6y ago
Yea, this is the part I’m having trouble wrapping my head around.
Good isolation can give can give hours or days of useful operation. Which would enable a lot of cool science.
Colder then ambient temperature? Feels perpetual motion to me.
Maybe a really big tank of liquid nitrogen that slowly evaporates excess heat. Doubt that would give a lot of extra time.
- XorNot 6y agoWe use colder then ambient heat pumps all the time - that's just air conditioning. Provided you heat your hot side to hotter then ambient, you can move heat around. The problem with Venus is that "hotter then ambient" is already melting lead and significantly derating most other materials. We're talking an incredible amount of energy and mechanical parts (it's a heat pump) to do it. I would be curious if there's any possible Peltier design which might be able to keep up.
- Retric 6y agoNot just that, you also need a power source. An RTG where the cold parts are 470C isn’t going to be efficient so now you need to dissipate a lot of heat to provide any power. Overall, powering the electronics in a sealed box with a battery and a short supply of cryogenic coolant seems like the only viable option. However, even a few hours would be difficult.
- yellowapple 6y agoIf we're already willing to use wind, per above, then wind power for a refrigerator doesn't seem like it'd be out of the question.
- Retric 6y agoThe issue isn’t willingness it’s a concern about power output. But, sure if you scale the wind turbine large enough and had some form of energy storage that should be possible even if it’s not actually viable.