Given advances in electronics, engineering, and materials, would it be possible to design a probe that could land on the surface of Mars and last? Not a rover (although that would be cool) but a stable platform with scientific equipment that would not succumb to heat and pressure after an hour.
Mars or Venus?
Venera 9’s lander operated for at least 53 minutes on the surface of Venus.
It’s not clear that there’s much to learn about Venus. The extraordinary conditions seem to be fairly uniform over the surface, and are destructive to any kinds of formations, so it’s hard to say that a lander would tell us much more than fine details on top of what we already know.
I mean, yes, there’s certainly interesting things to be learned, but Venus is possibly the most hostile environment in the system, short of the surface of the sun or the deepest “surface” of Jupiter. There’s almost no point in studying it - so many useful and productive things ahead of it that need looking into, like the deep oceans of Europa and the methane cycle of Titan.
:smack: I clearly meant Venus. Dang it.
And while there might not be a LOT to learn, anything is good. I was just curious.
Modern electronics may work against you here, the older style electronics may last longer in such a hot place.
I’ve given up hope of any liquid water on Venus, but I’m still curious if there’s any liquid egg nog.
I think it would be pretty cool to send a zeppelin type probe to Venus that would float around in the atmosphere. It could be a precursor to our floating space station.
I asked a similar question a while back. It looks like we could build machines that work at red-hot temperatures, if certain problems with lubrication are solved.
That was fascinating. But what would be the point?
Because it would be awesome.
Man, would that ever be one balloon you wouldn’t want to lose lift :eek:
Ha, it looks like there was/is a plan (Venus In_Situ Explorer) for a balloon based robotic probe for Venus that looks like all kinds of awesome.
I was thinking that you might be able to use some sort of ground penetrating radar for better examination of geology or maybe some sort of super high resolution mapping equipment. Maybe a super long tether that would allow you to sample from 20km up. Nothing you couldn’t do with a robot though, and the view for human vision would really suck.
“What’s the view like today?”
“Well, really smoggy again. Can’t see a damn thing!”
Hey, let’s keep this G-rated, we’re in GQ!
Oh, the humanity!