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Originally Posted by AndrewJ
Gday Gary
Mech eng hat on :-)
Even a jet engine can export its lubricating oil to an external cooler.
If there is no external cool area, it becomes a lot more problematic.
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Hi Andrew,
Indeed!
However, the real point I was trying to make, as the investigators
discuss, is that there are a range of materials such as platinum that have
low coefficients of expansion that can be used in high temperature
environments such as on the surface of Venus.
In many simple machines, the tribological interaction of their moving parts
does not necessitate the use of any lubricant at all. When was the last time
you saw someone bothering to oil or cool a mouse trap?
Hard drives (somewhat more sophisticated than mouse traps) of course
exploit technologies such as contactless fluid bearings.
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And in the first para i saw
I suspect he is being a bit over enthusiastic with that bit :-) ?????
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Consider the use of ship-to-ship communications using semaphores.
The signalmen communicate mechanically by simply waving flags.
One of the phase I proposals (see section 4.5.3 of the Phase I report)
brainstorms the use of an orbiter bouncing RADAR off reflective
targets on the lander. The targets consist of spinning disks which have
an RF transparent window. The RADAR could ascertain the spin rates
and the authors suggest one approach where up to 32 variables a day
of telemetry could be communicated from an alphabet of tens of
millions of symbols.
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Its still going to be a very interesting exercise tho.
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It will interesting to see what else they come up with!