3 ms·
That would allow survival for a few hours or days at most I imagine. I'm sure it's possible to build something that could operate at these kinds of temperature
by snek_case 5y ago
That would allow survival for a few hours or days at most I imagine.
I'm sure it's possible to build something that could operate at these kinds of temperatures permanently, but it would probably need an RTG (nuclear battery) and may be hard to test it on earth and also allow for thermal expansion and shrinkage (hard to keep the probe at this temperature for the entirety of travel to Venus). We'd also need to design lubricants for gears, cameras and sensors that can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, etc.
The upside of all this is that there are probably legit industrial use cases here on earth for electronics that are resilient in extreme temperature ranges, and in satellites as well.
- IshKebab 5y agoI don't see why it would be hard to test it on Earth. Pretty easy to construct a 500C room. But you're right - just because the silicon can go to 500C doesn't mean there aren't a gazillion other problems. You can't even use normal solder at that temperature.
- dogma1138 5y agoWe have high temp electronics that are used in deep wells, nuclear reactors and scientific instruments… Do they go to 400C+? I don’t know but even on digikey you can find IC’s with operating temperatures above 200C and even 250C fairly easily. The issue with Venus is really cost vs benefit any probe would have a very short life span as in hours to maybe maybe days. At the same cost you can send probably multiple missions to Mars that would last months if not years. We had probes on Venus using 1960’s technology we can do that again. Selling the political oversight and even the public on this however is far harder than designing and building them.