Ray McCarthy
Sentient Marmite: The Truth may make you fret.
In the 1900s to 1950s the idea of visiting the Moon, Mars and Venus was in various stories. Venus was often thought to be more hospitable and perhaps tropical once clouds were spotted.
It turned out that visiting the Moon just really needed money, it was probably possible using late 1930s technology as liquid hydrogen / oxygen rocket motors, suitable electronics and inertial navigation existed by then.
Even when famous writers (Bradbury, W.E. Johns, Wyndham, Lewis) wrote about Mars they knew it didn't have canals or atmosphere. Not sure about Edgar Rice Burroughs. Today India has the ability to send a rover. They did an orbiter for only $75 million. Manned visit is a problem mainly due to radiation in transit and the health issues of low gravity in transit. The cost would be astronomic.
The Russians managed to land probes on Venus. It turns out that Jupiter's and Saturn's moons are more hospitable!
The toughest spaceship we’ve ever built
Perhaps the electronics needs to be ultra miniature valves (tubes), with many on a sapphire substrate (you'd need about 10,000 valves or maybe 500 such sapphire wafer devices) instead of the glass tubes. Sub-miniature valves for Japanese pocket radios, proximity fuses in shells, bombs and missiles and hearing aids did get to about 8mm x 30mm. The last commercial type were RCA nuvistors (used in USA VHF tuners, USA TVs, instruments and condenser microphones), only about 6mm x 8mm. There have been periodic lab fabrication of thermonic devices (valves or tubes) on sapphire wafers since the 1970s. The greenish VFD panels on some cookers, cars, set boxes, dvd and home theatre are actually multiple triode valves in a planar package.
Such a planar package using sapphire wafers as base and lid can operate at 500 C! That's been tested.
Regular semiconductors won't survive.
The Intel CPU uses maybe a billion transistors and early versions used a million. The ARM CPU in your phone is only a part of the chip, it's a System on a Chip (SoC) because the CPU doesn't need very many transistors. The 1980s ARM2 only used 30,000 transistors. A variation of the ARM design running only at a fraction of 1MHz is quite powerful enough to control the venus lander. The computer might be the size of about three shoe boxes, though take about 100 to 250W, though "cold cathode" devices using nano spikes would reduce power to under 15W.
This would remove the need for refrigeration, which at nearly 500 C for the radiator, would need an immense amount of power. Solar panels won't work due to heat. A radioactive power source wouldn't be powerful enough.
1950s Space Transmitters and Receivers
The Sputnik, early Russian spacecraft and MiG fighters all used sub-miniature "rod pentode" valves (tubes) about 8mm x 40mm or less. A modern version of such a transmitter / receiver could be used on a Venus lander. The Russians used refractory alumina substrates instead of regular electronics PCBs (which would melt!).
Another advantage of thermonic technology is that it's relatively immune to radiation and EMP compared to semiconductors.
It turned out that visiting the Moon just really needed money, it was probably possible using late 1930s technology as liquid hydrogen / oxygen rocket motors, suitable electronics and inertial navigation existed by then.
Even when famous writers (Bradbury, W.E. Johns, Wyndham, Lewis) wrote about Mars they knew it didn't have canals or atmosphere. Not sure about Edgar Rice Burroughs. Today India has the ability to send a rover. They did an orbiter for only $75 million. Manned visit is a problem mainly due to radiation in transit and the health issues of low gravity in transit. The cost would be astronomic.
The Russians managed to land probes on Venus. It turns out that Jupiter's and Saturn's moons are more hospitable!
Having even a rover looks nearly impossible.
The toughest spaceship we’ve ever built
Perhaps the electronics needs to be ultra miniature valves (tubes), with many on a sapphire substrate (you'd need about 10,000 valves or maybe 500 such sapphire wafer devices) instead of the glass tubes. Sub-miniature valves for Japanese pocket radios, proximity fuses in shells, bombs and missiles and hearing aids did get to about 8mm x 30mm. The last commercial type were RCA nuvistors (used in USA VHF tuners, USA TVs, instruments and condenser microphones), only about 6mm x 8mm. There have been periodic lab fabrication of thermonic devices (valves or tubes) on sapphire wafers since the 1970s. The greenish VFD panels on some cookers, cars, set boxes, dvd and home theatre are actually multiple triode valves in a planar package.
Such a planar package using sapphire wafers as base and lid can operate at 500 C! That's been tested.
Regular semiconductors won't survive.
The Intel CPU uses maybe a billion transistors and early versions used a million. The ARM CPU in your phone is only a part of the chip, it's a System on a Chip (SoC) because the CPU doesn't need very many transistors. The 1980s ARM2 only used 30,000 transistors. A variation of the ARM design running only at a fraction of 1MHz is quite powerful enough to control the venus lander. The computer might be the size of about three shoe boxes, though take about 100 to 250W, though "cold cathode" devices using nano spikes would reduce power to under 15W.
This would remove the need for refrigeration, which at nearly 500 C for the radiator, would need an immense amount of power. Solar panels won't work due to heat. A radioactive power source wouldn't be powerful enough.
1950s Space Transmitters and Receivers
The Sputnik, early Russian spacecraft and MiG fighters all used sub-miniature "rod pentode" valves (tubes) about 8mm x 40mm or less. A modern version of such a transmitter / receiver could be used on a Venus lander. The Russians used refractory alumina substrates instead of regular electronics PCBs (which would melt!).
Another advantage of thermonic technology is that it's relatively immune to radiation and EMP compared to semiconductors.
