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Momentum is building to explore Venus

nature.com

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Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#41

Post by theseadroid »

gnulinux wrote: post #18
albemuth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they would have just gone to Earth

How do you know? Can we go to Mars today? What if earth gets destroyed before we can emigrate to Mars? (assume that Mars is a clone of earth i.e. the same conditions we have in Earth) Also it's possible earth wasn't suitable for Venisian life back then.

Say if we suddenly realize earth is going to be unsuitable for all life forms in a year. What would we do? I would fire as many rockets as possible to Mars, carrying all kind of life forms on earth, and hope a few of them will survive and possibly evolve to Mars' environment.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#42

Post by tlb »

cytherean wrote: post #3
tlb wrote: post #2

The enabling technology we need more of is electronics that can work at 500 C. People have demonstrated small-scale integrated circuits, but nothing like a microprocessor. https://science.nasa.gov/technology/technology-stories/elect...

Not really - we don't have to land on the surface of Venus to explore it. https://www.space.com/29140-venus-airship-cloud-cities-incre...

The atmosphere is opaque, so you can't see much from high up.

The most interesting science (to me) would be to look for fossils or other signs of life, for which you have to land and dig.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#43

Post by dmos62 »

nickserv wrote: post #29

I wonder why there isn't a balloon mission being studied. The upper atmosphere has temperature and pressure similar to Earth at sea level. Maybe the wind is a big problem? Or insertion from orbit?

"Soviet Union explored the Venus atmosphere with unmanned balloons in 1985 during the Vega mission". Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#The_Venus_mission

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#44

Post by _Microft »

Isamu wrote: post #32

Stay tuned for the Venus mechanical maker challenge: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-make... >With its sulfuric acid clouds, temperatures over 450°C, and 92 times the surface pressure of Earth, Venus is one of the most hostile planetary environments in the solar system. Prior missions have only survived hours! But an automaton (or clockwork mechanical robot) could solve this problem. By utiliz…

This is great, I didn't know they were following up on this concept. I had read an article [0] from 2017 before but wasn't aware of any further developments.

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/space-robots/jp...

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#45

Post by Robotbeat »

Isamu wrote: post #32

Stay tuned for the Venus mechanical maker challenge: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-make... >With its sulfuric acid clouds, temperatures over 450°C, and 92 times the surface pressure of Earth, Venus is one of the most hostile planetary environments in the solar system. Prior missions have only survived hours! But an automaton (or clockwork mechanical robot) could solve this problem. By utiliz…

Yes. NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio has one, I believe. They were building it when I was an intern ~6 years ago.

Of course, Glenn also has high temperature electronics. Memory is hard to come by, but simple analog and digital circuits are feasible (enough for data digitization, multiplexing, some forward error correction, and transmission to orbital assets).

Here are a couple papers on the idea of all-high-temperature-electronics designs (which I think are a lot more realistic and effective than a mechanical automaton, as fun as that sounds) for a long duration lander design (can be adapted to a rover, etc, as well) related to the work I did:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201400...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457651...

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#46

Post by labster »

tlb wrote: post #42
cytherean wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - we don't have to land on the surface of Venus to explore it. https://www.space.com/29140-venus-airship-cloud-cities-incre...

The atmosphere is opaque, so you can't see much from high up. The most interesting science (to me) would be to look for fossils or other signs of life, for which you have to land and dig.

Not much evidence would be able to survive those temperatures and acidity levels. If you really want to dig through the molten earth, bring a titanium shovel.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#47

Post by bluGill »

barkingcat wrote: post #11
hsnewman wrote: post #4

I've always wondered why we don't seed it with some biology that can eat the components of the Venusian atmosphere (ie: sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide) to make a more habitable planet over time.

Because what if there are Venusians there already and we cannot afford to wage an interplanetary war.

They might be there and we don't know about it. However the ability to wage interplanetary war implies are a lot of technology that we would be able to detect. Even if we assume they have the space ships in "mothballs", they would need to test and maintain them - something we can detect - or risk that they don't work when they need them.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#48

Post by bluGill »

gubbrora wrote: post #36
ianstallings wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is debate within the scientific community about changing other planets in general. Not everyone is convinced that we should alter or terraform to suit our needs. Some related links: https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/intpolicy/ https://www.astrobio.net/mars/should-we-terraform/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_terraforming

This is like nimbyism on steroids. "No one build anything what if there is Rare Science in our backyards". I mean yes I do kinda see your point, but priorities man. There are ridiculously large advantages to colonizing the universe and destroying a few samples is a low price.

Particularly when we don't even know have reason to believe there are samples. If/when we detect life elsewhere we can talk about leaving it alone, but there are plenty of rocks in the universe with no life that we can work with.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#49

Post by jerf »

gnulinux wrote: post #18
albemuth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they would have just gone to Earth

How do you know? Can we go to Mars today? What if earth gets destroyed before we can emigrate to Mars? (assume that Mars is a clone of earth i.e. the same conditions we have in Earth) Also it's possible earth wasn't suitable for Venisian life back then.

Because the level of destruction imposed on Venus implies a degree of power a great deal beyond what we have now. Venus has 93 times the atmosphere of Earth. Wrecking Earth's atmosphere to that extent on a short time frame due to intelligent life's activity isn't just burning a tons of hydrocarbons, it would be going out to the Solar System and pulling in mass in quantity to be dropped in to the atmosphere. By the time they got there they ought to have the capacity to do a lot of other things too.

It isn't particularly plausible that life destroyed Venus. It's especially not particularly plausible that it just so happens that life did it to Venus using exactly what happens to be a fashionable thing to talk about here on Earth at this exact time.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#50

Post by sprucely »

stcredzero wrote: post #28
gdubs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered the same thing! A little while back two NASA scientists published a paper on how you would detect the existence of a previous advanced society on Earth. Apparently, over a long time scale it's actually fairly difficult. Not at all my area, but it doesn't seem like we can actually answer that question you posed. It's fascinating. Carl Sagan's COSMOS might be the first time I'd ever heard about Glob…

A little while back two NASA scientists published a paper on how you would detect the existence of a previous advanced society on Earth. Apparently, over a long time scale it's actually fairly difficult. Now imagine detecting one, when the entire planet is covered in a 90 bar atmosphere with sulphuric acid clouds. I'll update my downer Sci-fi novel premise. Humanity makes its first Alcubierre drive warp ship. On its…

I'll buy that book when you write it.
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