[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

If you were to put a webcam on the surface of Venus, like there are on Mars, what material would you protect it with to withstand the extremely hot and crushing elements?

[paul cotter]

It's not just temperature and pressure, lots of sulphuric acid vapour/liquid also. Platinum casing and quartz optics for a start. To be a "webcam" some sort of aerial(antenna) would be needed, maybe a platinum aerial with a ptfe feedthrough insulator.

[alancalverd]

I'd favor an asbestos box over the antenna, but from what we have seen so far I wouldn't bother with a webcam - I doubt that there's much happening on the surface that doesn't happen in and around terrestrial volcanoes.

[paul cotter]

No, Alan, you can't use asbestos. Health and safety have banned it, like most other useful materials.

[Petrochemicals]

No, Alan, you can't use asbestos. Health and safety have banned it, like most other useful materials.

But the expected atomic battery would be a pass, plus the lead shield.

[alancalverd]

Asbestos is an inhalation hazard with a latency period of several years. Sulfuric acid is an inhalation hazard with a latency of a few minutes. Venusians are not idiots.

 

[Bored chemist]

Sapphire might last longer than PTFE.

But what's the point?
Have you flown through clouds?
You don't get an interesting view.

Also, I think those clouds are dense enough and conductive enough to make radio transmission difficult.

No, Alan, you can't use asbestos. Health and safety have banned it, like most other useful materials.

Can you list the things that "Health and Safety" have banned?

[paul cotter]

Yes BC, you are correct, ptfe would likely gel(it does not melt) and possibly depolymerise at those temperatures. As regards useful substances now banned I would have to dig deep into my failing memory banks to give you a comprehensive list but I can give you a few that come to mind from the garden: simazine for control of weeds on uncultivated ground, Bordeaux mix for blight control in organic production, creosote for wood preservation, metaldehyde for slug control, glufosinate(phosphinothricin) for general weed control.

[alancalverd]

PCB transformer oil.

However https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-surface-ever  shows, despite the impossibility of landing a functional electro-optical device and transmitting any data through the atmosphere, what it looked like 40 years ago, and I doubt that it has become any more interesting since then. Says a lot about Soviet engineering.

[paul cotter]

No argument on pcb or pbb. Not all of these are equally bad, the determinant is whether there is an ortho halogen which prevents the biphenyl from being flat(can't remember if the flat or skewed version is the dangerous one). Unfortunately most of these were mixes of isomers so no way of there being a safe pcb(pbb). I came across a lot of these in old capacitors and transformers. 

[Bored chemist]

Yes BC, you are correct, ptfe would likely gel(it does not melt) and possibly depolymerise at those temperatures. As regards useful substances now banned I would have to dig deep into my failing memory banks to give you a comprehensive list but I can give you a few that come to mind from the garden: simazine for control of weeds on uncultivated ground, Bordeaux mix for blight control in organic production, creosote for wood preservation, metaldehyde for slug control, glufosinate(phosphinothricin) for general weed control.

I think that, at least most of, those were banned by the environmentalists.

Bordeaux mix is still on the market.

Some were effectively banned "by Europe" and remain so in the UK post-Brexit because "taking back our country" was always a lie.

The answer is...2-naphthylamine, benzidine, 4-aminodiphenyl and 4-nitrodiphenyl.

How much did this inconvenience you?

[Bored chemist]

No argument on pcb or pbb. Not all of these are equally bad, the determinant is whether there is an ortho halogen which prevents the biphenyl from being flat(can't remember if the flat or skewed version is the dangerous one). Unfortunately most of these were mixes of isomers so no way of there being a safe pcb(pbb). I came across a lot of these in old capacitors and transformers. 

The ones with an ortho halogen are non planar and thus unable to intercalate into DNA so they are less toxic. (But not "non toxic")
The word "intercalate" was used for such behaviour because, prior to being adopted by toxicologists, it didn't get out much. It was used for "putting February the 29th into the calendar". I think geologists might also use it.

[Petrochemicals]

Creosote is only banned if it is in an area likely to be touched by people, you can get it commercially. The new internet provider company came to my area and installed telegraph poles as we have none, cluttering the area. They have  wrapped the poles in hessian in areas where touching may occour. The hessian has now absorbed the creosote.

[paul cotter]

For the record the inability to source those aromatic amines has not inconvenienced me in the least as I would not want any contact with them. They are however quite simple to synthesise, if one was to be so foolish. I cannot purchase Bordeaux mix here in Ireland, I have to make it myself and no matter how careful I am I can never match the commercial product and the sprayer gets blocked repeatedly. I take your point that many of my difficulties derive from environmentalists rather than health and safety. I will find some more intrusions into my lifestyle and post them, if I can remember.  Very late addition: something we have discussed before, lead in solder. I fully get the banning of lead in petrol and paints but not solder as there is no evidence that it poses a risk and the tin whiskering phenomenon is a pain in the posterior and could lead to the failure of critical electronics.

[alancalverd]

Returning to the subject, the successful Venera probes seem to have had steel outer shells and although challenging, equipping such a system with fairly ordinary glass lenses (the successful Soviet lunar probes appear to have used standard "Zorki" camera lenses in Leica-style mounts) would be adequate for operation at 100 bar and 450?C.

It is a tribute to such simplicity and brute force engineering that Soyuz re-entry vehicles, designed 60 years ago, are still in use! 

[Bored chemist]

For the record the inability to source those aromatic amines has not inconvenienced me in the least as I would not want any contact with them. They are however quite simple to synthesise, if one was to be so foolish. I cannot purchase Bordeaux mix here in Ireland, I have to make it myself and no matter how careful I am I can never match the commercial product and the sprayer gets blocked repeatedly. I take your point that many of my difficulties derive from environmentalists rather than health and safety. I will find some more intrusions into my lifestyle and post them, if I can remember.  Very late addition: something we have discussed before, lead in solder. I fully get the banning of lead in petrol and paints but not solder as there is no evidence that it poses a risk and the tin whiskering phenomenon is a pain in the posterior and could lead to the failure of critical electronics.

We agree about the solder; the environmentalists probably never built electronics.
More relevantly they probably never repaired any (for which the lead-based stuff is even more of an asset).
You would think they would be in favour of making it easier to repair stuff as it reduces the rate at which it ends up in the dump.

[Bored chemist]

The thing about a webcam is it needs a web to connect to.
What are you planning to make the router from?
Or are you planning to use a really long RJ45 cable?

[alancalverd]

Venera probes used an orbiting repeater station. Doesn't really guarantee live streaming but the probes only managed to work for an hour or two at most, and the biggest problem was detaching the lens caps! However if our correspondent manages to get the camera to work for a significant period, perhaps a "geo"stationary repeater could be arranged.