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Venus Airships / by Brad Guth
Being a little hot, buoyant and having 10% less gravity is actually a
darn good thing if you were a Venusian airship, even if limited as to an oven-wrap or KetaSpire PEEK polyetheretherketone and fiber reinforced balloon. Such fiber reinforced composites do exist, although an outer skin of something in basic titanium shouldn’t be excluded for this rigid airship configuration. For this topic I have an unusual airship to R&D, as intended for a rather toasty dry and calm environment. Think of this application as a floating city if you like, or consider this one as merely a small or as large as need be robotic probe that can remain efficiently aloft for nearly unlimited time without much energy demand while drifting or even when cruising along at perhaps an average air-speed of less than 10 m/s, as such wouldn’t demand but a few kw for managing a good sized airship. Taking into account the 1.75 kg/m3 by day and perhaps 2.5 kg/m3 of nighttime buoyancy at 50 km is roughly worth twice that of any terrestrial airship application, and for the most part it’s actually fairly calm, kind of inert nice enough and even relatively cool because it’s at such a good deal of altitude away from that geothermal radiating planet, and otherwise operating within the nighttime season, and still situated well enough below the bulk of those otherwise thick and nasty acidic clouds. Because the inert infrastructure of this rigid airship doesn’t change per given altitude means that its hauling capacity or payload is capable of becoming downright impressive, getting much better as one operates at lower altitudes, such as below 35 km by season of day and below 25 km by season of nighttime is where that robust S8/CO2 atmosphere is nearly crystal dry and clear for as far as you can see (depending on terrain, roughly 500 km in all directions). Initially, this is a very rigid composite and robust kind of mostly robotic airship, intended as an extended expedition probe. It’s somewhat of a conventional blimp like craft, except using a rigid composite hull with a 6:1 L/W ratio instead of the more common terrestrial 5:1. In my way of thinking, it has a rather thick outer composite hull that’s nicely insulative (critical science instrument/components area being insulated by R-100 or better) as obviously acidic proof, not to mention melt proof, not that its failsafe hydrogen gas displacement or that of its vacuum worth of artificial buoyancy need be all that acid proof or even having to be excessively cooled, because the bulk of this airship can be rated for 811 K (1000°F). There are four rather over-sized longitudinal stabilizer fins, used for obvious flight stability, but also utilized for their heat- exchanging functions, and otherwise a pair of midship underbelly landing skids (just in case). Its configuration might incorporate one fully ducted set of large diameter counter-rotating pusher fans, plus four other fully rotatable thrusters (two on either forward/aft side for a total boost of 10% main engine thrust), that collectively can also be utilized as forward/ reverse motion thrusters. The maximum velocity potential of 100 m/s need not be necessary, and certainly not one of those all or nothing considerations, because 10 m/s is more than good enough unless striving to migrate though those acidic clouds in order to cruise essentially above the 75 km nighttime worth of those fast moving clouds (80~85 km by day) . This craft is not going to be your average Hindenburg, much less flammable or otherwise combustible, although intended for efficiently cruising about Venus where size and mass are of little concern when having 64+ kg/m3 worth of buoyancy, and only 90.5% gravity to work with is certainly going to avoid all sorts of inert mass considerations that would have more than grounded the Hindenburg. In addition to certain liquid fuels that can be safely incorporated, there will be a pair of custom RTGs running at more than hot enough to melt aluminum, and a likely Stirling thermal dynamic process of utilizing that heat at roughly 25+% efficiency for all of the onboard systems and main propulsion. Getting rid of 75% worth of RTG heat shouldn’t be all that insurmountable, especially with such a thermally conductive flow of that toasty Venusian atmosphere flowing past, as worthy of roughly 10% the density of water, in that the closer we cruise to the geothermally active surface the more dense and thermally conductive becomes the surrounding S8 and CO2 atmosphere. Once again, on behalf of Usenet/Group diehard naysayers, this topic is not about our having to terraform Venus, or that of our having to prance ourselves about in the buff, at least not without our trusty OveGlove jumpsuit and portable CO2--co/o2 plus heat-exchanging unit. Instead, we’re talking mostly about a fully robotic craft that really doesn’t care how hot and nasty it is outside, and may never have to land for the next hundred years, with a future human flight configured version that’s clearly scaled in sufficient volume in order to suit the applications of sustaining human our frail life for extended periods of time while cruising extensively at or below 25 km. Even though Geoffrey Landis wisely publishes most everything of his expertise as science fiction, it’s based entirely upon the regular laws of physics, and for the most part using the best available science. This doesn’t mean that I’d worship each and every published word of Landis or from others of his kind, although it does fully demonstrate that I’m not the one and only wise enough individual that’s deductively thinking constructively and thus positively about accomplishing those Venus expeditions. Venus exploration papers / Geoffrey A. Landis http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis/papers.html Evaluation of Long Duration Flight on Venus / by Anthony J. Colozza and Geoffrey A. Landis http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/20...006-214452.pdf This paper was for the most part generated long after my having insisted that such a mission via aircraft/airship was technically doable, although this Geoffrey and Anthony version focused mostly on behalf of solar powered and RTG as necessary, whereas such there’s nothing much innovative or all that ground breaking to report, especially since much of their airship application is operated within a terrestrial like environment by way of keeping good altitude. This is not saying that my ideas are of the one and only do-or-die alternatives, as I’m not the least bit opposed to incorporating viable alternatives, or having to share most of the credits with those having contributed their honest expertise. In other words, I’m not the bad guy here, nor am I interested in hearing from those having ulterior motives or counter intentions of merely topic/author stalking and bashing for all they can muster. . – Brad Guth |
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