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Momentum is building to explore Venus

nature.com

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Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#121

Post by m4rtink »

mandevil wrote: post #91
SaberTail wrote: post #54

I'm glad Venus is getting more attention. Mars seems to get the most attention as a place to visit, but we seem to ignore Venus. Venus has a few things going for it that I think make it a better choice for permanent human habitation than Mars. * Venus has nearly Earth-like gravity (8.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²) * The atmosphere 50 km above the surface is the right temperature for liquid water, and has a similar atmos…

The Soviet Union always put more attention on Venus, and the US more on Mars. From what I can tell this dates back to before there were actual space programs, so I strongly suspect this has to do with the science fiction in the respective languages. For example in H.G. Wells 1898 War of the Worlds, the bad guys are from Mars, Edgar Rice Burroghs John Carter series is about Mars, etc. whereas engineer cosmonaut Konsta…

One reason could be that early soviet space probes had big issues with durability, generally caused by their unreliable pressurized & gas cooled (generally pure nitrogen at atmospheric pressure) electronics - US generally used much more reliable vacuum rated electronics).

For this the signifficantly shorter flight time to Venus is a big advantage, not to mention that a lander wont survive for long anyway, further reducing issues with probe longevity.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#122

Post by m4rtink »

ahje wrote: post #78
curtis wrote: post #69

Because of Venus's think atmosphere, landing a probe or rover is really easy. The downside, also because of Venus's thick atmosphere, is that the surface is really, really hot. That limits the lifetime of hardware on the surface. I think it ought to be possible to design a probe that's more like a submersible than a rover. Technically it would be an airship rather than a submarine, but given Venus's thick atmosphere…

An airship seems like the most survivable option for longer missions. I wonder if it would be possible to use one as a carrier for smaller drone-ships. Wind speeds on Venus are quite low, but the force is probably quite insane considering the atmospheric pressure.

For the record the soviet Vega probes deployed a couple baloons and they worked just fine for quite a while.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#123

Post by Brakenshire »

mandevil wrote: post #91
SaberTail wrote: post #54

I'm glad Venus is getting more attention. Mars seems to get the most attention as a place to visit, but we seem to ignore Venus. Venus has a few things going for it that I think make it a better choice for permanent human habitation than Mars. * Venus has nearly Earth-like gravity (8.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²) * The atmosphere 50 km above the surface is the right temperature for liquid water, and has a similar atmos…

The Soviet Union always put more attention on Venus, and the US more on Mars. From what I can tell this dates back to before there were actual space programs, so I strongly suspect this has to do with the science fiction in the respective languages. For example in H.G. Wells 1898 War of the Worlds, the bad guys are from Mars, Edgar Rice Burroghs John Carter series is about Mars, etc. whereas engineer cosmonaut Konsta…

Russia got the first probe on Venus, so maybe it’s success being celebrated and reinforcing more interest.

I just saw an episode of the new BBC series Planets talking about this. One thing they mentioned was that it was seriously suggested even in the 40’s that there could be rainforests and a fertile surface underneath the cloud cover on Venus. Could see the mystery in particular being an interesting thing to grow up hearing about.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#124

Post by ndiscussion »

wainstead wrote: post #101

The Soviets succeeded in returning surface images from a number of their landers, and the photos are quite tantalizing. http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm "Venus Revealed" is a pretty good read: https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Revealed-Clouds-Mysteriious-Pla...

very cool, thanks for sharing

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#125

Post by Baeocystin »

colordrops wrote: post #112
aeternus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than a basically unlimited supply of CO2 however, what would the advantage be compared to a just a space station? With Mars, you can mine building materials from the surface.

You can live there long term since there is gravity.

Is Mars' gravity too low for long-term habitation?

I know that we know that zero-G is a negative, but do we have any idea if it's a threshold that needs to be reached, a linear response to G-force that scales from untenable to fine, etc?

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#127

Post by fouc »

Has anyone considered colonizing asteroids? If you can spin the asteroids you can generate enough centripetal force to mimic gravity.

Not sure what the chances of asteroids being solid enough to be spun without flying apart though. Another option would be to build a track around the asteroid and move a colony along that track.

Need about 1 kilometer of radius from center and 1 rotation per minute to generate 1 g force.

Interesting.. gravity train: https://i.imgur.com/Q2D5i1K.png

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#128

Post by BurningFrog »

Baeocystin wrote: post #125
colordrops wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live there long term since there is gravity.

Is Mars' gravity too low for long-term habitation? I know that we know that zero-G is a negative, but do we have any idea if it's a threshold that needs to be reached, a linear response to G-force that scales from untenable to fine, etc?

The only way to really find out is to go there and live for a while :)

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#129

Post by BurningFrog »

sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #85
modzu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well you said it: we know exactly how to heat up mars (greenhouse gases) but its not so clear how to cool down venus. also mars has water.

I wouldn't say we know exactly how to heat up Mars. Without a magnetic field, any atmosphere we conjure out of the polar regions would escape into space. We are far, far closer to completely reversing the effects of climate change on Earth than we are to teraforming Mars.

Yeah, but I believe it takes ~10 million years for a Mars atmosphere to escape.

So it could be entirely feasible to treat the Mars atmosphere as a tire, that you "inflate" every now and then to keep the pressure constant.

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