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

No problem.

[dozer]

I've got an easier solution. Don't make the robot out of lead.

i've always said

[circletimessquare]

venus is a better terraforming candidate than mars. oh sure, if you want to get somewhere as quickly as possible that is vaguely hospitable to settlement, mars beats venus hands down

but if you want to talk about recreating earthlike conditions (water, temperature, gravity, atmospheric density), i think it would easier (easier, not easy) to precipitate out venus' atmosphere than to bulk up mars'. and if you stood on venus right now, you would weigh roughly the same. big bonus right there

where is all the water going to come from? how the heck do you thin out the venusian atmosphere to earth-like densities? i don't know. but however you do it, it's an easier starting scenario than mars

Re:i've always said

[larry bagina]

Prior to the global warming, Venus is generally believed to had surface water.

From the Stirling Engine article

[AnonymousCactus]

Yeah, an engine, sure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BetaStirlingTG4web.jpg