Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Titanscape on 16/07/2008 14:11:36
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I was thinking that a great way to transport fuel to Mars or make it there would be to make a gas cylinder, with high pressured Helium inside, which runs a piston engine. The cyliner could be re-used if it has a pump and solar power panel with it, as an alternative to batteries. And it could also find energy there, by opening, and taking ice in, which would vapourize, and again run a piston engine for a time. This would be useful in the canyon and in poor light.
A manned mission could take some core samples of ice, from the pole, whether water or CO2, and use it as fuel.
Deep in the canyon, where core samples of ice bypass hundreds of metres of the barren surface, where life might still exist, some samples could be used as fuel.
What do you science guys think?
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I am not sure I understand. Are you using the solar panel to heat the ice and then to use the piston arrangement as a sort of steam engine? The energy in from a solar panel could probably be more efficiently used in other ways - generation of electricity (for example) via solar cells may be a more versatile form of energy. I also did not understand why you would use pressurised helium as a source of energy - it is not a very compact form in which to store energy.
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Highly compressed Helium can store quite a useful amount of energy and is used by the military for some specialised applications where cost is no object i.e killing people!.
Of course the exhausted Helium is normally just dumped but if you wished to reuse it you would need a large low pressure vessel to store it which would make the whole installation heavy and bulky.
The latest idea for the generation of power on deep space vehicles is to use a Stirling engine powered by the heat from a highly radioactive isotope of Plutonium which produces much more power than the Peltier type devices that have been used for the last 50 years.
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Heat engines are not good value, really, unless you have an actual fuel supply. Electric motors are more efficient if your source of energy involves electricity at some stage.
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My idea is that a large in volume tank of helium, would be light, and could be refilled with ice on Mars or CO2 and in the near vacuum, it would turn to gas, and a piston engine, with the near vacuum outside, would produce motion and energy. I as a 12 yr old boy has a toy called "air jammer".
It would be pumped up and store energy in a gas tank, and would release and run pistons.
Also if it were clear plastic and with a black base, it could heat the H2O or CO2, in a little greenhouse.
A novelty in science.