Quote:
Originally Posted by Ara Pacis
I'm not an expert on aerogel, but after reading the wikipedia article I still wonder if they would be able to maintain themselves at the pressures of the venusian surface or if the friable aerogels would shatter. It's an interesting idea worth exploring.
However, something else comes to mind. Even if you manage to maintain the rigidity of the habitat shell, how do you plan to anchor it? After all, the bouyancy of a 1 atm shell under 90 atm would make it want to pop up like a cork. It'd be like trying to hold a balloon underwater.
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You never heard about deep sea exploration?Pressure on Venuse is like the pressure in the 1 km depth of the sea.It will stay anchored like a deep sea habitat.And batyscape get humans to the depth of 11 km and that wessel survived it without problems.The pressure on the Venus is not as high as you may think, in the laboratory condition there were created much higher pressure, and pressure 11x than on Venus is in the Marianic Abyss - even multicellular life survive there, under 990 bars!
And about the shattering of an aerogel;
http://eetd.lbl.gov/ECS/aerogels/sa-working.html
It will shatter only if there is a RAPID PRESSURE CHANGE, not only high pressure, it can support 1000x it's own weight but can shatter if you punch into it. And why not just place the aerogel under the carbon-metal layer under 1 atm.?The layer of the metal will be a little hotter but if white not too much and that aerogel will completely isolate it from the inside.