Awards & Nominations
Burger Team: The Burgering has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
Nuclear Jet Engine for Venus
High-Level Project Summary
We developed an idea to use a nuclear jet engine to both move and power a rover on the surface of Venus. The jet engine would be powered by polonium-210 and would be surrounded by a liquid metal battery for its incredible battery efficiency.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The energy could be stored via a liquid magnesium-antimony battery. Such batteries have relatively high storage efficiency, low energy loss when idle, and energy shrinkage amounts that are so small, they are of no real concern almost at all. The battery would have a dense titanium sponge, coated with a protective coating. This would help in holding the metals in place during bumps, as when bumps do occur, there may be a risk of shorting the battery due to the (liquid) electrodes touching on accident. The battery would be heated to ~700C by the energy production system.
The power production system would depend on 1kg of polonium-210. The polonium would heat the antimony battery, as well as air passing through a direct air cycle nuclear jet engine. This would be the primary method of power generation. Venus' dense atmosphere would make this quite viable indeed. The main benefit could be higher energy production.
More details in the demo slides.
Space Agency Data
We used the open NASA data for Venus's atmosphere, which gave us the inspiration to use the very thick air to propel a rover.
Hackathon Journey
The Exploring Venus Together challenge was confusing at times, but it is said that without confusion, there is no learning, and we did indeed learn quite a lot. There was a little bit of informational asymmetry between members, which turned out to be incredibly useful, as each member could contribute different views and bits of knowledge and information such that we each could fill out some deficit in another.
We each learned a little about something, whether that be electrolysis, the forms of radiation, electronics, or how jet engines work.
Our journey started with brainstorming, as we did not initially know how to tackle the problem at hand. We decided to split our research into two parts: energy storage, and energy production. We did much research and went through many ideas, which were mostly unusable due to being either unpractical on Venus, or being too theoretical or young as a technology. Eventually we came to liquid Mg-Sb batteries, which, as we found, were not only appropriate for Venus' horribly hot surface temperature, but also had great energy efficiency, and very little energy loss while idle.
We also began to think about the fact that the atmosphere is quite dense, and that this would mean that using a stereotypical energy source (nuclear) would be wonderfully viable. Therefore we came up with the idea of nuclear powered jet turbines, and we checked wikipedia, and they already existed. This is where we came to now!
References
Data on properties of Polonium-210: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium-210
Mg-Sb battery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery#Liquid-metal_batteries
Mg-Sb battery: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221728663_Magnesium-Antimony_Liquid_Metal_Battery_for_Stationary_Energy_Storage