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TIL: Vega-1 and Vega-2 did ~10,000 km and ~8,000 km flybys of Halley’s Comet. Vega-2’s photo of the potato-shaped nucleus is stunning.
Halley looks eerily similar to Churimov-Gerasimenko [0] in that image! I wonder if this dumbbell shape is common in comets and why should that be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasime...
Absolutely fascinating. The technology that already existed in the 60’s and 70’s is mind boggling. Also, there is something really exciting about looking at pictures of an alien planet. :)
It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better terraforming target than Mars [1]. This romantic notion of Mars has rooted itself deeply at this point (eg with Elon Musk) but Mars is basically a more distant and inconvenient Moon. Almost no atmosphere (in fact, just enough because dust storms will occasionally just coat all your equipment), the Sun is weaker and gravity is still very low.
Venus's atmosphere is about 3% nitrogen and 97% CO2. It has about 100x the atmosphere of Earth, which means there's actually more atmospheric nitrogen than on Earth. And abundant CO2 means oxygen is abundant.
Absolutely fascinating. The technology that already existed in the 60’s and 70’s is mind boggling. Also, there is something really exciting about looking at pictures of an alien planet. :)
The United States landed probes on Mars in 1976.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program
The Voyager program:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
The Space Shuttle was developed in the 1970’s
Supersonic commercial flight… bullet trains in Japan and France…
As a kid in the 1970’s, I imagined 2021 would be much more futuristic.
It's wild we have any images of the surface of Venus at all given how hostile Venus is. Given how hostile it is, it seems unlikely we'll go back anytime soon. These images were really a product of the Cold War where the US focused on Mars. It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better terraforming target than Mars [1]. This romantic notion of Mars has rooted itself deeply at this point (eg with Elon Musk) b…
It's wild we have any images of the surface of Venus at all given how hostile Venus is. Given how hostile it is, it seems unlikely we'll go back anytime soon. These images were really a product of the Cold War where the US focused on Mars. It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better terraforming target than Mars [1]. This romantic notion of Mars has rooted itself deeply at this point (eg with Elon Musk) b…
Temperatures on the surface of Venus are around 500 deg C, the pressure is around 90 Gs and the atmosphere is actively corrosive with superheated sulphur dioxide etc. While you may indeed be right about terraforming, settling on Mars seems like a cakewalk by comparison.
(On Venus at 50 miles up, the atmospheric pressure is approximately the same as Earth, whereas on the surface it's the equivalent pressure of Earth's Mariana trench.)
The probes were optimized for surface operations with an unusual looking design that included a spherical compartment to protect the electronics from atmospheric pressure and heat for as long as possible. Beneath this was a shock absorbing "crush ring" for landing. Above the pressure sphere was a cylindrical antenna structure and a wide dish shaped structure that resembled an antenna but was actually an aerobrake. They were designed to operate on the surface for a minimum of 30 minutes. Instruments varied on different missions, but included cameras and atmospheric and soil analysis equipment. All four landers had problems with some or all of their camera lens caps not releasing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Temperatures on the surface of Venus are around 500 deg C, the pressure is around 90 Gs and the atmosphere is actively corrosive with superheated sulphur dioxide etc. While you may indeed be right about terraforming, settling on Mars seems like a cakewalk by comparison.
I had a fictional concept of gas mining in the atmosphere of Venus (like Bespin's Cloud City) but I couldn't think of a way to mitigate corrosion of the materials you'd use to build it by the sulphur dioxide... (On Venus at 50 miles up, the atmospheric pressure is approximately the same as Earth, whereas on the surface it's the equivalent pressure of Earth's Mariana trench.)