This reminds me of a 1950s training video from the US Navy that I once watched that explained the function of the mechanical computers used for fire control of the ship's guns. I found it to be a really handy primer on how mechanical computers function and may well be of interest if this concept appeals to you.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4</a>
Fascinating article, I wish they could publish some design examples. I would love to see some examples of clockwork mechanisms operating in a 500° C oven, a temperature where the blackbody radiation coming off the structure will almost* be visible to the human eye. Even just finding lubricants that can last in that environment without slowly degrading the metals they're there to protect is probably a struggle.<p>*the threshold is 524° C, it's close but not quite there
Note that this article is from 2017, and that since then, this approach, and the more obvious approach of just using electronics that can withstand such high temperatures, seem to have merged: <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/armed-tough-computer-chips-scientists-are-ready-return-hell-venus" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/armed-tough-computer...</a>
Great Sunday morning read for the Venus heads out there. I especially dug the radar reflector comms designs that can transmit wind speed data directly sans processing ;)<p>NASA exploration budgets are so constrained now, risk is the limiting factor. The best way to gather Venus data is probably going to be disposable autonomous swarm drones. If they can be fabricated cheaply enough, just let them burn up.<p>Lofted Environmental Venus Sensors (LEAVES)<p><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2021_Phase_I/Lofted_Environmental_Venus_Sensors/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2021_Phase_...</a>
This is another of the NIAC program's awardees. A fun fact about this work is that they crowdsourced a competition to design a fully-mechanical obstacle sensor + avoidance steerage. [1]<p>I strongly recommend anyone who likes reading about crazy ideas that just might work to check out the NIAC awardees [2]<p>1. <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-venus-rover-challenge-winners-announced" rel="nofollow">https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-venus-rover-challenge-wi...</a><p>2. <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/NIAC_funded_studies.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/NIAC_funded...</a><p>Disclaimer, my idea was funded this year so I'm on the list. :)
For the obstacle avoidance mechanism, which they say realistically can only have one "subroutine", I was thinking it would benefit from a random perturbation to the turning angle, to avoid getting stuck in a loop. But I wonder how you might implement a pseudorandom or chaotic movement in clockwork?<p>Maybe by summing via multiple weirdly-shaped cams? Or somehow extracting information from the motion of a double-pendulum system?<p>Impractical, perhaps, but I can't help wondering the best way to do such a thing.
I wonder if you could put a small RTG to produce electricity to use for thermoelectric cooling. The RTG would have to run pretty hot but it would be also rather simple to create.<p>You need to be able to use temperature differential to produce rotation -- that could be taken care of by simple Stirling engine. Fortunately, given how thick the atmosphere is, the engine would be very small.<p>Another problem is bearings which would be essential to get and keep it running constantly. But here the thick atmosphere also helps. The thick atmosphere would make it easy to create efficient aerodynamic bearing.<p>The last problem is magnets. To produce electricity you need a magnet. Now, looking at a chart I see that there is a bunch of materials with curie temperature higher than temperature on the surface of Venus.<p>Now... just because we can get electronics to run somewhere deep below multiple layers of insulation doesn't yet mean we can do anything useful. For that you need sensors and I don't know what kind of sensors you can build that can withstand that kind of temperature.
Since cosmic rays are an enemy of electronic equipment, I wonder how well would a fluidics [1] system work, and where are the limits of miniaturization.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics</a>
Nasa's JFET tech is being developed by Ozark IC to create a Silicon Carbide RISC-V chip for just this purpose.<p><a href="https://www.ozarkic.com/2020/05/26/ozark-ic-to-continue-ultra-high-temperature-processor-development-for-nasa/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ozarkic.com/2020/05/26/ozark-ic-to-continue-ultr...</a>
Looks to be inspired by Theo Jansen's Strandbeest <a href="https://www.strandbeest.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.strandbeest.com/</a>
I am not an engineer but I would be curious to know why the proposed Venus Rover I write about here would not be better. <a href="https://link.medium.com/6JDHu2Bajgb" rel="nofollow">https://link.medium.com/6JDHu2Bajgb</a><p>Fluidics based computations should give much better performance, miniaturization and reliability.