What you learn today
- Mars, Vulcan, Venus and Europa
- Heating or cooling
- Use outside air
The same chip that keeps the base warm on Mars cooks it on Vulcan. Before you build a climate control, look at the planet.
The worlds at a glance
| World | Outside temperature | Outside air |
|---|---|---|
| Mars | around 3–10 °C at noon, around −52 to −47 °C at night | thin, almost only CO₂ |
| Vulcan | around 127 °C at night, far above 600 °C at noon | methane, pollutant, CO₂, hydrogen, no O₂ |
| Venus | 464 °C, the same day and night | dense: CO₂, hydrochloric acid, nitrogen |
| Europa | around −139 to −149 °C | oxygen |
Heating or cooling
- Mars: Heat at night, often nothing during the day. A radiator outside is strong cooling at night – and barely any during the day.
- Europa: Always heat. Radiators outside are pure cold traps.
- Vulcan: Never heat, always cool. A radiator only cools a loop that is hotter than the outside air – so even at night above 127 °C. Heat from the base first has to be pumped onto such a hot waste loop with an air conditioner.
- Venus: Like Vulcan, just without a cool night. Hardly any loop runs above 464 °C, so there is no way around the air conditioner.
Using the outside air
Where it is colder outside than inside, a radiator loop cools for free. You only need the air conditioner when the outside is not enough:
sub tmp room MARGIN
slt free outside tmp # clearly colder outside?
and tmp warm free
sbn PUMP HASH("Radiator") On tmpOn Vulcan CO₂ is the outside air worth having: not flammable, not toxic and free at the door – a good coolant for loops. The rest of Vulcan's air (methane, hydrogen) you keep away from every oxygen line.
A Mars chip on Vulcan switches the radiator pump off from noon on because “outside is warmer” – rightly so. A chip without that comparison fills the base with loop gas at 600 °C. Always compare inside and outside before a radiator gets gas.
If the outside sensor is missing, slt with NaN is 0 – the chip then takes the air conditioner instead of the radiator. More expensive, but safe.
Exercise
Task
Two gas sensors: “Raum” inside and “Aussen” outside.
- Too warm (above 25 °C) and outside at least 2 K colder than inside: pump “Radiator” on, air conditioner “Klima” off
- Too warm, but outside not colder: air conditioner on, pump off
- Too cold (below 18 °C): wall heater “Raum” on
- Room sensor gone: everything off, flashing light “Klimawarnung” on
Hints
Hint 1
sgt warm room WARM and slt free outside tmp with tmp = room − MARGIN.
Hint 2
Pump = warm and free, air conditioner = warm and not free (seqz tmp free).
Hint 3
Heater: slt tmp room COLD. With NaN all comparisons give 0 – the devices switch off by themselves.
Quiz
4 questions. You pass from 60 % – the server does the grading.
Complete the day
- Passed the simulator exercise
- Passed the quiz with at least 60 %
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