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Returning to the hell of Venus

Joe P

Joe P

Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
No, not another climate change thread, but rather a nifty development in semiconductors that could make months-long exploration of the surface of Venus a possibility.


That said, better understanding how and why Venus became Hell on, ummmm, Earth, because of its runaway greenhouse effect would be useful knowledge to have since we seem determined to run a parallel experiment here.

Joe
 
Fascinating, looks like the Silicon Carbide devices can cope with a junction temperature up to 800deg C as opposed to 150deg C for normal silicon devices.
 
No point studying anything if you don't think about it.

Joe
 
Was interesting working on Silicon Carbide IC development in my last place. Ran them in rel test rigs at very high temps for months.....except the D-type memory wasn't as robust IIRC. Shame it's all closed down now, lot of good knowledge and experience lost because of a certain short sighted defence firm. Could have had the first real high temp IC for deep drilling, space etc. etc.

Lattice defects on the raw wafers were fantastic, not so good for creating working, reliable products though.
 
Joe P said:
No point studying anything if you don't think about it.

Joe
Click to expand...
Now you are being silly. Many things are worth investigating at great expense but not imo a planet that scientists claim to know well already. Scientist love to spend time and money on such things, though.
 
I think scientists have a basic understanding of other worlds, plenty of room for more research, it might even save the human race one day
 
Cav,

Only the Soviets -- back when we had Soviets -- have landed probes on the surface of Venus, but the temperature and pressure on our sister planet are so punishing that the probes lasted only a couple of hours before their electronics were fried. Imagine what we might learn if a probe lasted weeks or months — and was able to explore the planet's surface like rovers on Mars did.

Still, it's amazing that any of the Venera crafts were able to send pictures back to Earth.

Venera1.jpg


The C-shaped thing to the left of centre is the craft's lens cap.

Joe
 
Cav said:
Now you are being silly. Many things are worth investigating at great expense but not imo a planet that scientists claim to know well already. Scientist love to spend time and money on such things, though.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we thought we knew quite a lot about Saturn and it's moons...but Enceladus brought a few raised eyebrows. So your idea is that we just don't bother to research stuff just because we think we 'know enough' and it might cost some money? No wonder our country is falling up its own *rse.
 
JimmyB said:
Yeah, we thought we knew quite a lot about Saturn and it's moons...but Enceladus brought a few raised eyebrows. So your idea is that we just don't bother to research stuff just because we think we 'know enough' and it might cost some money? No wonder our country is falling up its own *rse.
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I am as excited and amazed as anyone by such things but what practical benefit is it to our situation? I suggest we spend research money here to address known issues.
 
Cav,

Applied research is hobbled without the discoveries wrought by pure research.

Different thread and different poster, but here is my response to Merlin when he asked me to expand on the scientific benefits of the Juno probe and how those affect our daily lives.

me said:
When Paul Dirac proposed that electrons can have both a positive and negative charge — or more correctly, when his equations allowed electrons to have either positive or negative energy as solutions — I doubt anyone was thinking that one day his scribblings might benefit us by being the theoretical basis for a new type of medical diagnostic imaging. But his scribblings did and they led to the development of positron-emission tomography or PET scans, which are used to observe metabolic processes in the body.

In Juno's case? I really don't know what it'll lead to or how it'll benefit us, but even research without practical application is worth doing in my view. NASA's budget for space exploration is a piss in the ocean compared with the total US budget.

Clicky the link below. The size of the circle is proportional to much how is spent publicly in various departments and agencies in the U.S.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0177/6150/t/2/assets/DeathAndTaxes2016-Watermark.jpg

The U.S. military spends more on subs than NASA does on probes to all of the planets.
Click to expand...

Joe
 
Martin (funny, I originally wrote Martian),

Not only is Venus hot as hell, but it's so hot that pizza ovens aren't needed.

Mz3tE18.jpg


Joe
 
JimmyB said:
Was wondering when someone was going to try these, how did it come out? SiC should be pretty good with low distortion etc etc.
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Tbh, it was fun to play with them but I am not sure they offer a lot of advantages in class A where it's difficult to get them to perform or sound bad. They did seem very stable with a constant Base emitter voltage, so it could be worth trying them in something like a naim type circuit which is very poor with conventional transistors on thermal stability. Can the wet tant fundamentalists tear themselves away from their two leaded friends?, only time will tell..
 
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