Drilling, hypersonics, space, and Venus

4:56to make another Armageddon reference when we need to go to an asteroid and and and we need to draw I guess that's a bad example because it's not that hot. >> Well, I mean, but even the friction is going to create some hot >> some heat. You know, we're going to want to be able to do that. >> Yeah, we just >> planetary defense. >> Yes, as always, you [laughter] know, we are defense first here, not war, only defense. Now, you mentioned hypersonics. That's another big thing, right? Um, in aerospace engineering, the inside of a jet engine or the inside of a rocket engine or the nose of a hypersonic aircraft, these things are getting to really, really high temperatures. We've covered this in previous stories where the the temperature gets so high that

5:38chemistry starts mattering. >> It's a little weird. >> Yeah. And it starts getting a little weird. And we can't make any intelligent decisions on site because of the chip. The chip is just going to get fried. And finally, the thing that Elon has been worried about and all of these tech bros are worried about is putting data centers in space, right? >> This is the number one conversation in SF right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Elon wants to put data centers in space. He's not the only one. Um SpaceX had an IPO of $1.7 trillion. And I think a lot of that hinges on Elon's promise that he can put AI data centers in space. We're going to get into the details there, but there's been a lot of push back because of

6:21fundamental physics, right? They're saying, "Oh, like fundamental physics is telling you that you can't put data centers in space." Well, yes and no. Okay. Yes, in the sense that yes, the physics and the electronics that we have today are it's probably not a good idea to put data centers in space. But with this problem, you can have innovation like the one that we're going to talk about. And perhaps it's possible. The main problem really is that to keep a 1 megawatt artificial intelligence server cool in the vacuum of space, you need a radiator that's roughly the size of four tennis courts, right? That's because the space is a vacuum. There's no way to extract heat other than radiation. And

7:04and radiation is not a great way to let go of heat because you're relying on photons. It's not is it would you It's like because it's not efficient. >> Yes, exactly. It's just not efficient. We're going to get into some of the physics of that later. Um and the my favorite sort of conundrum that I think this is going to solve >> is planetary exploration. I think you're going to like this, too. >> Um there's a reason why we have so many photos of Mars and not that many photos of Venus. Okay. Mars is pretty chill to go to. It's like kind of cold. >> Yeah. Literally. It's like literally it's farther away from the sun and it's fine. Venus is closer to the Earth and it's got this massive greenhouse effect

7:45which means that it's really hard to get put stuff down there. Actually, the the first guys to do it were the Soviets. Venus has a surface temperature of about 465° C and an atmospheric pressure that's 92 times that of the Earth. The Soviets put down the Soviet Vanera landers and they're the only spacecraft that have ever survived on the Venus surface. >> Guess how long they survived. Over under an hour. >> Uh it's got to be under an hour. >> It's under an hour. Yeah, it's it's between like 23 minutes. I think the record was like 2 hours later on, but like >> 2 hours. Yeah. Yeah.

8:25>> Right. Like the the stuff that JPL puts on Mars has lasted like 20 years. >> Yeah. It's two, we're talking about two decades versus >> versus two hours, >> right? Right. Two hours is the best that they can do. And >> I will note this is for those who are TV fans. >> Uh we've talked about For All Mankind on the show before, but Apple has a second Apple TV has a second show called Star City that looks at the Russian space program in the same alternative history timeline where they got to the moon first and they do a whole all of season 1. Part of it relates to the Venus mission. >> Really, dude? I got to watch that. >> And it's it's it's alternative reality. So, >> no spoilers.

9:05>> I I love that kind of stuff. >> But it it is interesting to kind of understand the technical challenges which they brushed on at a high level in the show. But recently, I've been watching it and this brought it up as a concept and the engineering problem is non-trivial. >> Yeah. No, completely right. It's like going towards the center of the earth. It's the same drilling thing. High pressure, high temperature. your electronics are going to get completely wrecked. Right. The photo we have from the Veneera 9 in 1975, this is the best photo they got. It's the first image of a planet other than the Earth. Credit to the Soviets. Yeah, they did. >> The first image of a planet other than the Earth was not the United States and Mars. It was Venus and that's all they

9:47got. But still, that's kind of crazy. >> But who got to the moon, though? >> Yeah. That's that's I mean, they were like, "Okay, let's go let's go the other direction." >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, >> the race is actually this way, guys. >> Yeah. Um later missions, um they were actually able to get some color photos. This is the one that lasted 2 hours. >> Okay. >> And you could get some color photos. You can see the sort of yellow haze that we know that the Venus has if you point a telescope to it. But again, only 2 hours. And you can see there's like it it kind of looks like the surface of a volcanic debris field because there's a bunch of volcanoes on Venus. Um but