Venus Rover Concepts That Beat The Killer Atmosphere
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- How do you build a rover that can happily work at 500C, 90 Atmospheres of pressure and the problems of dust and corrosion? NASA has 2 approaches - one seeks to harden electronics against the heat, the other replaces electronic logic with mechanical hardware.
NASA and HeroX are crowdsourcing solutions for a mechanism to detect obstacles and allow the rover to head in a different direction with a $15,000 prize to the best entry:
www.herox.com/VenusRover
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Rockets that land vertically and mechanical automatons that explore planets... who would have expected that science fiction from the 1920s was the way forward?
Disruptive_Innovator The designers of the mechanical computers used to direct naval guns or torpedoes in the 30s and 40s, firing on moving targets over 32 km away, would have excelled at this challenge.
@Disruptive_Innovator - Good observation.
That's just the Y2K bug. Off by a century.
@I'm beachedwhale1945 - Those were basically mechanical calculators, not computers. They got all the data fed to them by a human (not sensors), didn't have to run any complex decision-making code, and didn't even have memory.
A better comparison (though still much simpler than a rover on a different planet) would be with something like the Norden bombsight, which used data directly from sensors and was very impressive on paper... but pretty disastrous in actual use, which led to the revival of the pigeon-guided bomb program (not kidding).
everyone with sharp mind and at least basic knowledge of history?
Missed a great chance to say, "I'm Scott Manley. Fry safe."
technically you would be broiled.
"fly safe" is a greeting formula coming from eve-online in his case.
@@zoolkhan I didn't know the source, but I know it's his standard ending. I'm just saying that he missed a good chance at a pun.
U chinese?
@@timmcdaniel6193 Hehehe... I understood you buddy! It is indeed sad when some cannot get a simple pun. When you need to explain it then the mission is doomed! Abort. Fly safe; from Oz.
20 transistors and a spring? Give those to Steve Wozniak. He’ll build you an arcade game and a VGA adaptor, then ask what you want done with the 5 spare transistors.
"A mechanical computer works in any environment"
*Dust would like to know your location*
That was one thing I immediately thought of, along with corrosion damage and temperature extremes warping components. "Sand in the gears" is a saying for a reason.
I dont think venus is as sandy as mars
@@TIRFemcel That is a poor assumption. I'm fairly certain the designers will be sealing up the mechanisms away from environmental dust or sand as much as they can, because the local surface environment is not well known.
It's part of the reason we want to send a rover, because we want to find out more about Venus' surface.
😂🤣😅
Dust can't enter a closed box.
Winning Competition: 15.000$
Sending Rover: > 100.000.000$
Mad Props: priceless
Seriously. It's an insult.. [edit] I mean, even a fucking scholarship would be nice. But fuck. That doesn't even get you a semester anywhere good.
@@nathantron Adding to the sum of human knowledge?
Use commas not periods otherwise you will crash a spaceship like the metric versus Freedom Units catastrophe.
@@TimLF Or use hard spaces.
@@TimLF commas are for decimals
Let it tumble around in a inflatable shell like Tumbleweed.
It might give almost random movement, but it is very low tech and effective.
I tought the same but a ball with some inercial wheel inside for making it roll.
Great idea, keep.it simple. Distribute by dropping several as lander descends and let the wind carry them about.
Until it falls into some crevice
@@cplpetergriffin1583 You can always use a inflatable balloon to fly, it wil be useable for several times.
(But I think you'll need a bit of compressed light gas from earth.)
How do you do science with something like that?
The steampunk community collectively rolls up their sleeves and puts their goggles on.
No steam on Venus, too hot. Tell them to put their sleeves back down and take their goggles off.
The clockpunk varient community however...
A whole world where only steampunk clockwork machines work outside. And everyone's hot. Change "Venus" to Arcadia and call the floating city Laputa!
A very cultured comment section
About 12 years ago, I was a regular on a steampunk forum where another regular was planning a clockwork motorbike. Clockpunk hadn't entirely become its own thing at that point. Unfortunately, the guy planning the bike had massive emotional problems, got into furious rages over nothing at all, and had to be banned, so I don't really know how it went. I did websearch years later, but I don't remember finding a success story.
Surely the valve (vacuum tube) people will win this one? The technogy exists and is well proven.
This mechanical rover idea is so delightfully archaic, I love it.
Mechanical things have their charm
Thank you for your input hydrochloric acid
@@JUK3MASTER Hydrochloric acid (okay, mostly anhydrous hydrogen chloride) being a meaningful atmospheric constituent in the cloud layers ;)
Seriously, though, Scott overplays the case against conventional electronics. For example, he says that if you crunch the numbers, wind and solar don't work. Except that there are peer-reviewed research papers that show that yes, they actually do. Solar is the really surprising one - and yes, you have to be very careful in your choice of what type of solar cells you use, and your power-to-mass ratio is pretty terrible, but it surprisingly does work. And with sufficient insulation, you can operate heat pumps (also well researched) to keep electronics cool. And you can use higher-temperature silicon carbide electronics.
The odds of mechanical computers actually being used is exceedingly low.
Karen Pease Actually I think you are underestimating it.
Illumination on Venus's surface is not much more than 100 watt/m². The best solar panels we have can achieve around 20% efficiency, but those are unsuitable for these temperatures, so likely you're probably looking at around 10%, so best case scenario, you have 10-30 watts being produced per square metre.
BUT then you have line losses due to temperature, copper has 2.7 times the resistance at 450 than room temps, and you can't use better conductors like gold because they will melt.
Then you have the processors themselves, who need to have signal to noise ratio high enough that they can work - but at 400°C, they need to be pumping godawful amounts of power through their circuits to distinguish signals through the noisy circuitry. And as Scott pointed out - the silicon carbide electronics are not there yet for these kinds of applications. Maybe, eventually, but not yet.
and then you add your heat pumps into the equation - what will you use as a working fluid? how will you protect your radiators from corrosion?
Ultimately you end up with a very heavy, very bulky system that somehow needs to safely land on Venus and function for a long enough duration to make this worthwhile.
I don't doubt that eventually we will find a way to make this work, but I also reckon that if there was an easier way to do this, NASA wouldn't be offering a cash prize for someone to develop an analogue alternative.
@@ValleysOfRain You don't have to speculate on this; there are papers on this. I've read them. Solar, for example, Landis has at least one. Yes, the power to weight ratio is awful. But - and this is part that matters - even the worst electronic computers have orders of magnitude better compute-power-to -weight ratios vs. mechanical ones.
Plus, lets not kid ourselves, tribocorrosion would be god-awful for a mechanical computer on Venus's surface.
Venus Tourist Board:
"Venus: It's a Helluva Place"
Venus is simply the end result of climate change. It is much, much closer to earth than Mars.
Venus is so hot right now
Venus is so hot, that if you go in there, you will see demons laughing at an girl talking about redemption
@@davisdf3064 I'll tell you this much my man, if you go to Venus, it's going to have a HUGE crush on you ;)
@@shawnpitman876
I'm so flattened by hearing this... Unlike Earth tho...
I don't know Scott, the amount of time and thought put into some of those designs are perceivably lack luster compared to some of the geniuses in your comment section.
Throwing the idea out is one thing, building a proof-of-concept is another.
@@jackvernian7779 but being a genious in the comment section is nothing compared to even building it
You've probably heard the phrase "easier said than done", well the competition designs have to be done.
I posted my idea in the comments not because I think it would work better than NASA, but because I want to know what probably makes it impossible, its always nice to learn stuff.
If l had enough funding to develop such a functioning prototype I'm fairly certain that I'd manage eventually to spend it down the pub and then have to avoid NASA all the time.
I'm thinking airship with dipping probe, if we're going for steam punk appeal: Float to high altitude convert atmosphere to liquid that you use as coolant at lower altitudes, descend and the last few kilometers you have a cable down to the ground. Don't pay any attention to mission complexity or weight requirements or even basic feasibility for such a scheme.
It also needs to be steam powered.
My version would be a porpoising airship. Rise up for greater solar panel and lower temperature, then dip down briefly to poke at the ground. Short dips into high temperature are much easier to handle than doing so for a month.
To reach an earthlike temperature the cable would need to be 50km long, and would be descending through an atmosphere 93 times denser than Earth's. (Guesstimating from this that an airship would need to be at least 10-20 km in altitude) That said, this seems a touch more useful for data collection than anything clockwork would likely be. I'd still be concerned about maintaining a stable flight with the ridiculous wind speeds though
I think the airship is a better path for data collection as well. I think a mission profile something like an anti submarine airplane is an easier place to start, using short lifespan sensors like the sonar buoys airplanes drop looking for submarines. Those can work for a few hours and use radio to transmit data to the airship, that then sends it on to a satellite for broadcasting to earth. this way we get the data without reinventing the wheel. Material science is going to solve the heat issue. Exothermic bacteria as producers of power and logic functions or something. At that point the mechanical system is again antiquated. Its a project to avoid the project that needs to be worked on, due to the amount of data and varied sensors we actually want a mechanical computer is not going to work. Just making it not seize up and stop working with all the intricate moving parts is worse than putting the effort into heat resistant digital systems.
Great idea ! You could make a zeplin but how do you manage to fin a cable long enough that wistant his own weight and/or the pressure changes while the probe/ the whole ship dives . We're not speaking of earth atmosphere here. Even if that idea alows to "erase" the Temperature problem but make others more prominent. And im completely unable to predict wich is easyer. But it's a good lead !
The idea of using radar reflective “semaphore” actuators reminds me of the hidden Soviet listening device in the US Embassy. The bug sweeps turned up nothing because the bug, hidden inside the Great Seal of the United States on the wall, a “house warming gift” from the Soviets, was nothing but a piece of sheet metal that vibrated with the sounds in the Ambassador’s office. When the Soviets wanted to listen, they aimed a radar beam at this diaphragm and picked up the Doppler shifts on the echoes.
It was designed by Leo Theremin, inventor of the eponymous touch-free musical instrument, after he redefected back to Russia and was forced to become Stalin’s inventor in chief.
A layer of tin foil in the insulation of the walls, and metal blinds on the windows, ought to stop that. As I recall, they actually DID install such shielding.
BlackEpyon Yes, both sides have gone on to much more sophisticated ways to eavesdrop on each other. Putin even installed a listening device in the White House: the President!
@@allanrichardson1468 In a free country, the one thing you can't protect people against is their own stupidity.
"Look at how smart I am by injecting politics into this xD"
Why isn't this story a movie?
Where is a protomolecule when you need it.
on Phoebe, duh
Bad idea.
Imagine being hijacked and used for intra-solsystem transfer.
This post was made by the Eros gang.
I got you bro
proceeds to pull out of pocket
People read that book. I though I was the only person in this world who have experienced what I have. This comment made me feel less alone, thank you.
the thing i love about this, is it really shows how narrow the scope of human technology is.
we may very impressed with what we can do at 50c and 10bar, and as soon as the environment changes its either completely useless or we try to insulate it from the environment so it isnt.
I wonder how the technological path of discovery in the past 500 years would have progressed differently in an environment this foreign.
What would we know that we now dont, what do we know now that we wouldnt on the surface of venus.
The same question arises of evolution how different might we be
I've always wondered why people don't consider it to be more obvious that many of the solutions lie in discovering techniques that work fine in that environment, rather than finding ways to shield Earth stuff from it. We have this stereotype that it's a Hostile environment, yet our environment is hostile to most equipment that works fine on Venus.
so we just happen to be so lucky as to live in just the right environment for electronics to work or maybe if we existed in that other environment we would make stuff that worked there
@@TheReaverOfDarkness The rationale for it isnt bad though. we get more from applying moore's law for the last 70 years to silicon technology, than we would have focusing on technology that would work on venus, but if it wernt true, for sure life would be different.
I dunno, its kinda woo-woo stuff, but i love the idea that alien tech doesnt have to be better for it to look like magic, it only has to be developed from a different environment. This video kinda put the point on that for me.
We design for the environment that the equipment will face. On earth, there is no need to design for 455 C or 90 atmospheres. If there was, we would design it as such.
Those old images from Venera amaze me every time I see them. It's fricken Venus.
I love the part where you said "This is a perfect time for you guys to stand up and show NASA how it's done" lol so great
I get that it would be complicated as hell, but some kind of craft capable of floating on the clouds and dropping a probe down on a cable to scan the surface and take atmospheric samples would probably have a significantly greater scientific capability for the size and cost to get it there.
I was thinking this, or maybe a probe that behaves more like a submarine. It'll spend most of it's time in the clouds where the temperature & pressure is Earth like, and occasionally descend to the surface to grab a sample. Would it be possible to take on some extra atmosphere as 'ballast' to descend and vent it again to ascend? Or maybe some kind of helicopter that spends most of it's time in the cooler upper atmosphere?
Descent stage and liftoff time versus the thermal mass required to maintain temp for critical hardware would be competing and probably make it unachievable. Unless some very fine thermodynamics calculations are shown I doubt this would be viable.
So a steampunk mechanical airship?
@@beavodeev4412 It's gonna be hard to save on size/weight with a 30km cable on board
@@beavodeev4412 I thought NASA had a plan to do just that a while back. Or at least maybe a concept for it when I heard about it.
Thinking back to my childhood (I'm 62), I remember the "bump 'n' go" mechanical toys I had in the 1960s. For the younger generations who might not be familiar with them, these were essentially rover-type vehicles run by a battery-powered DC motor. They had an automatic steering system which was completely mechanical. The vehicle would drive until it encountered an obstacle and then change course and continue in a different direction. Some were even designed to be operated on a tabletop and they would avoid driving off the edges. Granted, there was no intelligence involved in their behavior -- their choice of direction upon encountering obstacles was essentially random -- but even randomness will still cover ground, and such a rover could be tracked from orbit to correlate data with its location. Perhaps the mechanisms that these toys used could be a reasonable starting point for a Venus rover.
Cheap robotic vacuum cleaners work that way :D
“essentially rover-type vehicles run by a battery-powered DC motor.”
Okay cool.
“They were completely mechanical, with no electronics at all.“
*confused screaming*
@@mycroft3322 Batteries and motors are electrical, not electronic.
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT if you take a second and a dictionary, you’ll realize electronic is electrical.
Mycroft 33 I mean I’d double check that because our lecturer would disagree
So this is what Clickspring has been working on for the last 6 months....
Awesome to see a clickspring reference here!
Whome ia this steampunk sounding person?
Commenter: I know better than NASA!
Scott: Really? Step up!
Commenter hides.
I'm a little disappointed that a video about Venus probes never mentioned the Soviet Venera missions. We've been to the surface of Venus before, but anything outside of NASA gets forgotten.
Weren't the surface pictures from the Venera missions?
@@Lttlemoi Yep. Used but not credited.
yes, except those all failed in hours, rather than months or years.
@@ryanspence5831 that's the best we had though. hours.
@@ryanspence5831 And that freakin lens cap ... (^_^')
oh boi its Charles Babbage time!. DEPLOY THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE
@johnmburt1960 What kinds of boilers do you use that operate at 500 C and 90 bar?
Or maybe the pneumatic processor! Now *there's* a project for some hobbyists with lots of time on their hands and a 3D printer.
Everyone should go and read 2D goggles now!
The thought of a venus rover with a thermally hardened 6502 in it makes me laugh for some reason.
XD
Quick! Call some demoscene coders! We need them to program our rover!
In space no one can hear the SID
The demoscene coders could probably make it jump up and dance a ballet.
Here I am. Amiga 1000 Demo programmer on Standby.
😁
mars got sent a 8086 hardened rover.... 8 bit power baby!
@@nemoskull2262 That's 16. You meant to say that some of them used the 80C85.
Scott, great to see our work at NASA Glenn get a mention in your videos. GEER definitely is an incredible system. And yes, the team working on some of these high temperature systems most definitely could make some great videos (not just because of the tech, but they're a blast to be around and talk to).
On that note, I sit virtually next to the GEER lead, and know most of the engineers working on high temp solutions. So Scott, if you find someone on here with great ideas, let me know and I will personally deliver a message to the folks working on this tech.
If you're ever in Cleveland for any particular reason, I'd be glad to hang out and talk space geek stuff. It's your fault I got interested in space to begin with, mister KSP.
Wow.
I went to build this real quick, since it's simple... Ended up with a mechanical music box that plays Deja Vu very slowly.
See your body into the moonlight...
"If ... I ... had ... ever ... been ... here ... before ... I ... would ... proba...bly ... know ... just ... what ... to ... do ..."
it also only moves around sideways
I really like that track-propelled rhombus shaped rover. Reminds me very much of WW1 British tanks
Actually that's an Idea! Base it off the WW1 Tanks, easily deal with rocks and ditches
@@grenaders3895 The return of the Mark 1!
Reading your comment, my mind flashed on WWII's Panjandrum.😲
@@icollectstories5702 Or the Tsar Tank
Love how underneath the driving rover the word „rove“ is written in the 2d graphic. „Ey yo whad does your rover do?“-„It rove, bro, it rove“ XD
9:32 "This concept is one of the cooler ones -- unfortunately it's only figuratively cool."
Lol.
Thank you for all your content Scott. Been watching your channel for almost a decade now. Congrats on the million subscribers. You deserve it!
Thermionic valves operate fine at high temperature. Make a 1960s style camera and two way radio using valves, and just drive the thing from orbit
Yep. Don't even need a lot of power, just a way to control the wind-driven mechanisms.
Hmm interesting thought. The issue with Venus is that its not just high temp (450-500 Celsius) but also high pressure (90A) and very low pH since the atmosphere is mostly sulphuric acid. How long would a thermionic valve survive in that?
@@epincion Standard material for vacuum tubes is glass which just so happens to be the material of choice to handle sulfuric acid. They normally only have to handle 1 atmosphere of pressure differential though, so you'd have to make the glass pretty thick. The problem with those is that their power draw exceeds power budget of the rover.
@@michaelbuckers Glass is a whole class of materials. Yes, some kinds of glass could do the job, and handle the pressure. Quartz would be a candidate. Glasses tend to have a short life where physical shocks are involved though.
@@AndrewBlucher Glass doesn't gets work hardened so as long as the shocks aren't strong enough it's fine.
I really hope that we explore the surface of venus in my lifetime.
Landers have been sent to Venus already, look up the Soviet Venera missions
@@thefrub I think he meant "we" meaning humans landing on venus. Probably not going to happen soon.
@Jeffery Amherst lol
Unmanned landers have already done so, many years ago since, but if you're talking about manned landings, forget it. In addition to the extreme (and I mean EXTREME) difficulty in keeping a human alive in that hellish environment, you also have the problem that ordinary rocket engines will not work in that extreme ambient pressure. Venus is a great setting for a sci fi story about a prison planet from which no man can ever escape.
@Jeffery Amherst You had to be THAT guy, didn't you.
I'll be honest, ever since I heard about the AREE project/problem, I was hooked. If I were at the end of my engineering degree, rather than the beginning, I'd 100% enter to work on this amazing conundrum.
its more conceptual than numbers engineering. enter anyway
As soon as I saw this, I thought of one of the first pinball machines I had as a kid. No CPU, no memory, no transistors or other semiconductors, just mechanical movements that played the game. Sometimes, a very complex game.
radar reflective pales in a certain order to send information, so with all the high tech communication devices we have, we have gone back to using semaphore.
High temperature semi conductors / electronics seems like the most useful goal.
Indeed
People have been working on this for decades. Diamond would be the best material for this job. Boron works for p-type doping in daimond, but n-type is problematic. Nitrogen makes a deep level, so does not work, while phosporous has low solubility and tends to form compensating phosphorous-vacancy defects. Lack of a solid native oxide is another problem, but not completely insurmountable. The difficulty with silicon-carbide is it easily forms extended defects such as stacking faults and dislocations which mess up the electronic properties. So, it is still very much a work in progress.
@@cdl0 those damned n-type semiconds... always a pain in the ass.
@@cdl0 If you don't mind me asking, what about the difussion of the dopant under 600C temp? How much would it affect the lifespan?
@@jackvernian7779 It is possible to make a p-i junction in diamond . . . . It works.
Send a construction worker from Arizona ..whit the heat from there ...man those guys dont feel. Anything ..
It's a dry heat.
No there heats like, 30 to 50 degrees Celsius, in Venus you would have to resist 400 to 600 degrees celsius. They would die anyway there.
My idea was to use vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) to make a radio control system. They tend to be large, so you couldn't fit very much computing power. But the are perfectly fine working at high temperatures. So that is one way to send standard radio signals. Figuring out what to send would be a tad trickier.
Edit: Vacuum tubes have a bad reputation for breaking because of thermal cycling. If you keep them hot (in the venus atmosphere), they are much less likely to break. A good vacuum tube will last years.
Sounds like a good use case for 3D printing for rapid prototyping of small and complex mechanical systems.
Jason Balius ☆ Sintered 3D Alloys.
Many moons ago, there was "fluidic logic" This employed ducted fluids as simple computers, such as FLODAC, a proof of concept from 1964. Molten sodium is a fluid...
EDIT: At the time, the 60's, fluidics was a solution in search of a problem. The transistor and the PCB could do more, faster, and kept getting smaller and cheaper. Environment wasn't an insurmountable issue, so fluidics went on the shelf.
CO2 is a fluid (at those temperatures)
Wouldn’t fluid logic be the same as pneumatic logic, which he mentioned was being looked into for this project?
@@TheWallsocket Gases are compressible, a fluid is not, that changes a lot of things
@@TheWallsocket Pneumatic would be a gas, as a rule. Liquids are not compressible. The different properties offer different programmable abilities.
Gasses _are_ fluids. Although the surface of Venus is so hot and at such high pressure CO2 is a supercritical fluid.
vacuum tubes have to be heated to much higher temperatures to work, passively being hot might actually be a benefit.
there just so fragile, then again, there hasnt been much done to make a better vaccum tube with todays knowledge.
@@nemoskull2262 and it would exceed the power budget.
@@nemoskull2262 Nuvistors are smaller and more robust. I think the materials would have to be changed anyway.
I assume the Soviets launched tube-based radios into orbit, but can't find a reference.
@@nemoskull2262 I'm pretty sure the leading militaries have at least some modern vacuum tube tech. I'm not sure but it might be impervious to EMP's.
But isn't it only the cathode filament that has to be hot? If the grid(s) and anode are hot enough to emit electrons, won't that eliminate the effectiveness of the vacuum tube*?
(*"valve" in British English)
Please keep us up to date on any entry info, I love this stuff
Damn it, I wanted Strandbeests on Venus!
And also airships!
the standard strandbeest is not designed to handle anything but flat ground, even a small rock can stop one in its track. there are some variations that can do better but they all have limitations that wheel/tracks don't
in the end strandbeests are there to look cool (and i have the homemade strandbeest walking desk to prove it.) not work well.
8:25 I think there is an off-the-shelf solution. I've been meaning to purchase the Turning Tumble.
Scott, great overview of the technical challenges. Thanks for the video.
thanks for increasing the competition Scott.
just kidding, gr8 video and its nice to have more people interested in stuff like this
Molten salt batteries seem like a perfect fit for this. It could melt on the surface and wake up the rover.
Heat resistant electronic circuits seem like the obvious solution for this. If they’re comfortable running at 450C then cooling is going to be easy with the thick atmosphere.
Salts melting point is around 1470°F the surface of venus is only 870°F
@@Swifteroos who's talking about NaCl?
Molten salt batteries would not provide enough power. the energy density is way less than lead acid never mind comparing to Lithium.
I was thinking something similar, maybe an endothermic reaction. Some chemical reaction might just be the way to go here.
@@Swifteroos These aren't regular salts like table salt and are only a few hundred degrees celsius. If we go to the extreme end and use large molecules for the ions we can make salt that is liquid at room temperature.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
Some ideas:
Have a “pin” in the wheel that falls out partially when the wheel is halfway over a cliff, this is a simple mechanical way to detect cliffs.
Have the rover naturally turn left or right when travelling over an incline. After a certain threshold the rover should do a 180.
Use your rovers suspension to detect rocks/rough terrain. Perhaps make the suspension in such a way that it turns upon encountering terrain above a threshold.
These ideas may not be practical but I hope it helps someone however unlikely it may be.
first ones really clever tbf
First one relies on no dust getting into the sliding mechanism. It also would trigger at slight irregularities (bumps, divots) in the ground, while not triggering on a smooth slope rapidly going downward (the wheel would never lift from the surface). I like the other two ideas, and the second one is actually something we somewhat implemented in my college robotics club!
Even if I'm shitting on the idea, keep coming up with them, please - without people willing to push boundaries, we can't innovate.
Well nothing you said specifies how you want it to be implemented - which is the hard part. Detection in the sense that SOMETHING moves when you find a trigger is not a problem (although the wheel would have to be very large to house pins long enough, e.g. 20cm, to effectively find a cliff. Also cliff could be a small slope going steeper and steeper). But how do you mechanically transmit that signal to the driving mechanics (through the weel, axle, etc) and amplify that small teeny tiny movement to affect driving mechanics. Also you'd need so many pins in the wheel that it's just too complex.
To solve at least some problems: Have a single heavy wheel extend on an arm outwards. Needs to be heavy to have enough force to trigger mechanics. Inclination too high, presses inwards into the rover, continuous force that can be used to drive turning mechanics perhaps. On a cliff or steep decline it will pull the cart unfortunately, but if it get's too steep the arm extending within the rover can trigger a one-way brake with quite a lot of force (lever action) above the rotation axis, maybe with the braking force immediately being translated into a rebounding force. Still a ton of problems with that but whatever
I think a good camera would alleviate all those concerns.
@@agentk3984 Yes, but building a camera at all that csn survive on venus is extremely difficult.
Plus if you have a camera you need image processing logic or it's a moot point for navigation purposes.
Thank you, Mr. Manley. My brain is getting stretchmarks. This takes me back to Jerry Pournelle's story "King David's Spaceship," that included the launch of an orbiter lifted by a series of downward-directed cannon shells and a navigation/orientation/steering computer with mechanical linkages.
It functioned - barely. Enough to achieve the larger objectives of its culture. (not gonna spill the beans with a spoiler...) Mr. Pournelle knew how to put together a great story, and his collaborations with Larry Niven anticipated a number of developments that have come to pass... Underscoring the value of some Science Fiction as a platform for predictive speculation. Art and life intertwine, feedback, anticipate and inspire.
Your videos are welcome reminders of the positive contributions of the Space Program, that people so easily forget. We have so many technologies for solving persistent problems here on the ground that were developed in response to the hurdles and challenges of getting above the atmosphere and surviving and returning. It's a very long list. Most people take them for granted, and many dismiss human space exploration as a waste. Meanwhile they enjoy and depend upon hundreds of spin-off technologies and tens of thousands of innovative products in utter ignorance that they came to exist directly from the research and development in the Space program.
Thanks Scott! Red Hot!
Wasn't aware of silicon carbide. Will be losing a night's sleep there. Thanks for the IEEE link!
Still believe a zeppelin in the "Green Zone" could equilibrate and make deep dives into the hot, denser part of the atmosphere take a few pictures and then rise to shed heat between sessions.
Your treatment of topics was great. Love the brief review of heat exchange barriers that limit nuclear power sources, and the "steampunk" mechanical hybrid rover systems. Comprehensive and balanced review.
You've been working hard recently. Don't stop! Never go a more than a few days without checking your site.
Ahh, pneumatic logic I remember working with that on Type 42 destroyers.
That's a military ship. Who let logic aboard? ;)
@@donjones4719 I didn't say it worked did I? :)
Better than vacuum logic... imagine being limited to 10 psi absolute.
Loose lips :x
@GORGEOUSGEORGE You can design a system to work well in one environment but not very well across a very wide range of environments. In UK waters the Logic systems worked well. But a warship doesn't stay in one area. The changes in temperature and humidity added to the shock, vibration and salt laden air tended to trash the systems pretty fast. :(
Venus, it’s a hell of a place!
That's what I'm always talking about - to live in cooler climate is better than it warmer one. To keep things warm in cold environment up is waaaay easier and energy efficient than to cool down something in hot environment :)
Yet another fascinating video, well done!
What about a bunch of heat resistant probes that are disposable that are dropped like a carpet bombing. Even if they only last a few minutes maybe they can be purpose-built for only one function and doing it quickly.
Kinda Russian way but with more veneras
interplanetary bombardment right there.... could work
I think they're looking for just rover ideas but this is not a bad idea! See if you can do something with it!
Couple of problems with that... Considering that it takes the GDP of a small country to send equipment on such a mission, we want to get back some valuable data. Having a minute worth of seismic activity, temperature (right after entry into the atmosphere), brightness etc. isn't exactly worthwhile. Also: Why carpet-bomb venus with self-contained sensors all requiring their own power supply and housing, when you could just place 1 probe where multiple sensors can share the housing and power, and thus reduce the weight that needs to be shipped over there?
@@spacenomad5484 you're not putting all your eggs into one basket by having multiple micro-probes which are then sent down in maybe batches of 5 each. If one fails instantly some will outlast.
Awesome! I'm so fascinated with Venus. Ever since I saw the SFIA video about colonizing it, it's that much more interesting to me.
It's the better candidate for colonization if you ask me. At first floating cities then slow and steady sequestration of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Maybe even launch it at Mars to help build an atmosphere and heat it up.
David Thompson
The major disadvantage is that access to surface resources is very difficult compared to Mars.
@@jeffvader811 I was thinking more along the lines of energy in the form of solar power, and wind power. Travel times are also half as much as a trip to Mars. Surface resources wouldn't be reachable until we managed to lower atmospheric pressure down enough for a diving hard suit to withstand. Obviously not the current models which weigh hundreds of pounds but something along those lines.
David Thompson
True. Personally I feel that Mars will be the first planet (other than Earth) to be colonised, because self sustainability will be easier to reach in the short term. But I don’t doubt that Venus will probably receive similar treatment at some point.
@@Twitch760 Would be a better idea to take the CO2 from Earth's atmosphere then, seeing as it's soooooo 'problematic'. XD
GE Appliances did something like this when they came up with their self cleaning ovens in the 1960s. Their P7 system was all mechanical controls like mechanical timers and linkages for the door lock (you cannot open the door during the super hot self clean cycle). Today's self clean ovens use an electronic package for the oven controls and sometimes, if it overheats, you don't have an oven at all until you call a repairman.
One interesting part of the story: GE could not patent the concept of using high heat to burn food soil off of an oven, but they could patent the controls needed to get there. So every manufacturer had to come up with their own controls to get the oven up to such a high temperature, 900 degrees F (or pay GE for their patent). When Frigidaire was part of GM, they had a very complicated mechanical setup but a Frigidaire oven cleaned up spotless, Kenmore, for example did not do as well. Frigidaire, now Electrolux, uses the electronic controls that are too heat sensitive. Whirlpool has the worst situation with their wall ovens. Run the SC cycle too long and you fry everything to the point you cannot use the oven at all.
One suggestion for moving: When I was a kid, there were toys in shape of cars that were driven via two wheels attached to a rotatable disk. Regularly the motor powered the wheels, but when the "car" hit an on obstacle like a wall, the resulting drag not only stopped the wheels, but this also started the disk to rotate. When the wheels could rotate again, the rotation of the disk stopped and the "car" moved again.
Incredible that these mechanical computers can do so much!
Congratulation again for your 1m subscribers
This is such a one of a kind issue and I can’t wait to see the innovative ideas people come up with!
Good one Scott, thanks.
And thought provoking!!!
Screw the surface, I want to see a probe floating in Venus's atmosphere.
"Maybe you can show us how its done"
- Shots Fired
Amazing video Scott. I love your content.
Awesome insight into the creativity of the minds exploring the universe! 🙌
"you can't build a mechanical radio"
morse code flashing light: "am I a joke to you?"
you could go pizo electric to spark gap, thats about as close to mechanical radio as i can think of.
it could be a passive radio circuit like the RFID scanners used in stores
Thing is what flashlight will penetrate the atmosphere of Venus?
@@Blox117 Those still use semiconductors that don't deal with high temperatures well. You could make a SiC-based one, but you'll also have trouble getting any significant power transfer to power that passive transponder between a satellite and something on the surface. Then it has to use some (probably most) of that extremely small amount of energy it received to transmit a reply, which it will probably be transmitting omnidirectionally. The satellite would probably need a far bigger dish antenna than has ever been launched into space. (The biggest I've heard of is ~350 ft/~100 m in diameter, but presumably nobody outside the US military knows that such a satellite was actually launched: 1.bp.blogspot.com/-KDJOHqIy_A0/UtitGPxRkuI/AAAAAAAAPSo/zEbsWyUm2EI/s1600/sigintadvancedoriontrumpet.jpg)
What powers the light?
“Hello it’s Scott Manley”...where? Are you here? There? Change has me frightened.
I was equally shocked
@@beeschamelsoose476 Shocked and/or appalled.
So I was watching this video… and I noticed a familiar name on the paper at 6:15 :) I’m late to the party but you have no idea how happy I am. A year later and the chips are now much more advanced and he has approval to send them on TWO discovery-class missions to our sister planet, based on this year’s decadal survey. Additionally, he has developed the tech needed for cameras on the rover. His plan is to broadcast the data to a geostationary satellite in orbit, assuming that nothing moves too quickly👽😅. Love the videos man!
I really hope you see this. It would make my day.
Wow Dude! What an incredibly FUN Experiment!
Let's see how many designs account for thermal expansion.
We'll need to explore venus to test how to handle our future atmosphere.
That will be some beefy soldering points
Might have to be lead-free solder though!
Mig weld SMD components to the PCB.
Bzzzzt.
Wow! I wanted to ask about any communication possibilities for such all-mechanical rovers, but even this have a solutions! "Wow" is only word to characterise this project!
Congrats on 1 million subs!
Nevermind that. We need to send a cat to the ISS. I think having a cat up there would provide a much needed boost for morale. But somebody needs to design a space diaper for cats first. Cuz I don't think a litter box would work so good in zero G.
When the fur sheds it would be a real pain...
@@byronperry8931 just shave the cats...
Nothing\ ok so naked cats that don’t litter. But what about sloths? I want to see a weightless sloth! Without the Hinderence of gravity they have limitless potential to evolve.
@@chriskerwin3904 i think that would considerably decrease the moral boosting efficency, maube ypu could have a drone that follows them around with a vaccum cleaner.
Why would professional astronauts need a morale boost IN SPACE? Even the prospect of going to space was a morale boost for their entire careers.
Maybe vacuum tubes could work.
Heater element not needed, better efficiency :)
I guess the only problem with that is maintaining the vacuum, even almost all space ships leak air into space. Building a rover that won't leak under such an incredible pressure differencials would be difficult, not to mention extremely heavy. Imagine having a box with a vacuum in it being dropped to the bottom of the ocean, thats the sort of pressure we're talking. The shell, or bit between the vacuum and the outside would have to be incredibly strong to not just be crushed like a soda can. And the stronger you make something the heavier it gets. The heavier it gets the more limited you are in equiptment or size, and the harder it is to launch. Sure you could just launch it on SLS, or Starship potentially but the cost would be astronomical compared to the science capability of the rover, at least when you stack it up against any of the mars rovers.
Happy 1 million Scott!
9:42 Nicely put!!!
Haaa, finally I hear the one and only real Scottmanleytune that sets my brain in that so long-beloved interesting-spacerelatedphysicsknowledge-coming state!
(Thus nót that other tune, i mean that one that means it is another ksp-vid starting which maybe okay for many but wich mostly lacks anything new.
Oh, about that: the vids i still cannot enough of are those under the title "things ksp does nót teach!"! Oh what a good time to learn such most difficult sciences so easy but totally troughole/clear explained on youtubes ScottManleys superspacerelated sciences)
I want to be able to speak this language
Rover with Balloon at a 50km string :D
What a project! Nice to see
1:39 I want one! That is the coolest thing I've seen in a while.
I'm happy that we're moving past another generic Mars rover. Hoping we get Neptune and Uranus missions.
@András Ács I knew about the little drone, being developed, I was referring to radically different missions.
It's going to be redundant to invest the money on another generic rover mission when we can accomplish more on foot in a weekend on mars,, than decades of Martian rover programs.
NASA should be trying out new ideas like this clockwork rover for Venus, Europa clipper, missions for Uranus & Neptune.
@András Ács If you can't come up with something innovative for Mars, then focus on a Neptune or Uranus mission.
I'd love to throw my hat in the rink with some ideas, but I've been burned twice already sending in ideas to DARPA projects. Both times I was rejected under the pretense that I didn't have the support facilities already in place. Then, the winner of the contract/contest had my EXACT idea, even down to their versions of my drawings.
That sounds like a hell of a story, do tell
DARPA projects are more of a business oportunity. NASA is just looking for ideas, they will handle the implementation.
Barsterds
How much did you get in the settlement?
Neat! cant wait to see what people come up with.
Came back here to watch this video again after the Venus Phosphine announcement. We gotta get some samples back.
Get Clickspring on it stat!
oh I think its time to dig out the ironstrider engines
I'd have said Dune Crawlers
@@grenaders3895 nah I much prefere the circumnavigating clock work walkers of mars.
I still find this mindblowing when I look at how things evolved in such a few time. CPUs from 1980s and from now are amazing.
This is the coolest thing I have seen in a while! I only have amateur knowledge of physics and hardware but I'm going to try anyway. Ain't gonna win but I got some ideas and want to have fun ^^
"Step up and show that you are better than NASA" Just loved that! 👍🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
what about micromechanisms?
surely the miniaturization of certain mechanisms to the microscopic scale would lead to significantly lighter and more compact mechanical logic.
Yes, just remember to keep them machines in white chamber conditions or they will seize with dust at the first gust of wind
@@thenasadude6878 and that is why CPUs are capped with a silicon die. It is obvious that any microscopic components would be shielded.
I remember an episode form the "Six Million Dollar Man" in which a Soviet tank-style Venus rover inadvertently landed back on Earth - after passing through the atmosphere of Venus - and was raising all sorts of hell - I think it was somewhere in Arizona. No one could stop this rover because it was designed to operate on the extreme conditions of Venus - until it met Steve Austin, of course!
Ah, the 1970's.... times were sure different back then.
'm looking forward when a successful Venus lander/rover is attempted.... some exciting times ahead for us!
I believe this particular episode is referenced in "The Martian". Man, that book is good
Yayness science doing a science. I do like science. I liked this video.
NASA steampunk Venus mission sounds awesome. Keep up the good work.
Theo Jansen was literally the first thing I thought of
I've never seen a video uploaded 16 seconds ago.
Mine was 58
27
13
Potato
Chips
A clockwork rover sounds so awesome
Fascinating!
Easy, just put inside the rover a self-sustained cold fusion reactor to keep its guts at a nice hot earth summer temperature.
Finally, some REAL technology.
Every idiot can make a digital rover.
This is going to be fun!
except for you of course.
@@csehszlovakze ?
wth dude i got 7yrs of ksp experience
perish
jk i didnt even mean that i cant
just that it will be challenge for people not used to mechanics and the competition will be interensting to watch
peace👍
I mean..the mechanic rover might also be digital, I don't know
This. Is. Fascinating.
In around 1972, a company in Tucson (backed by Baldwin) was making integrated circuits that worked on the principles of the old vacuum tubes (cathode, grid, and plate). The devices were heated up in order to make them work. The original electronic computers were based on vacuum tubes. I recall that someone was thinking this might be workable kind of electronics that could be used on a venus lander.