Antique Fridge Could Keep Venus Rover Cool

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."

Comments

Pseudoscience

[MaDeR]

Funny that many people mistake mythology with factual history... you also think that x-files are documentary, aren't you?

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

http://skepdic.com/velikov.html

"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?