Quote:
Originally Posted by AndrewJ
Again, that requires some form of electronics feedback loop on the lander to control the spin rates, and if the electronics involved can do that, i assume they could do std comms.
Again, all good fun to theorise, but if its too hot for std electronics, i cant see how purely mechanical can replace it ( as much as i luv the idea )
Andrew
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Hi Andrew,
As the investigators discuss in the paper, the preferred solution for
communication is a transceiver built of high temperature electronics.
However, though transistors have been fabricated using materials such
as gallium nitride that can withstand the temperatures of Venus, no one
has yet built an entire transceiver from them.
Maybe soon.
But imagine a hypothetical of where
active electronics was not available
at all.
There is an entire universe of passive electrical components, electromagnets,
relays, motors and purely mechanical devices from which a talented
engineering team could draw upon.
And don't forget that there was a world of sophisticated devices before the
invention of electronics and even before the practical application of electricity.
For example, consider the genius of the over 240 year-old
Pierre Jaquet-Droz automaton such as 'The Writer'.
See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY_wfKVjuJM
Built around 1770 and purely mechanical, he predates the invention
of the voltaic pile - the first battery - by Alessandro Volta in 1800.
Today, motors have already been fabricated using high temperature magnetic
wire, ceramics, stainless steel and so on, purposely designed to withstand
the Venus environment.
Ideally their control systems would be high temperature electronics.
But pushed, one could always call upon the fundamentals - resistance,
capacitance, inductance, reactance, reluctance - to build passive circuits
capable of systems and control, timing, measurement and so on. Throw
in electromagnetics and you have computational and memory storage
as well.
I recollect after a year of electrical engineering System's and Control
not seeing a single circuit element drawn. It was all math.
The fundamentals are such that the governing elements could have
been pneumatic or hydraulic or electrical but the mathematics and
analysis remained the same.
And of course you have people like Watt designing his first centrifugal
governor - a servomechanism - for use on a steam engine in 1788.
Though Laplace developed the Laplace transform around 1785 -
part of the mathematics that often powers modern systems and control
theory - I imagine Watt built his servosystems totally ignorant of it.
The bottom line is that there is more than one way to skin a cat.