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Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

theguardian.com

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Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#21

Post by ravi_m »

loufe wrote: post #20

I've been wondering about the "experts say" part of a headline like this. Qualified people lending their opinion is an important piece of information to the context of the article, absolutely, but it also seems exclusive. It's not the opinion of the editorial board of The Guardian, however I also know for a fact that other "experts" would vehemently disagree. Would qualifying this as "some experts say" erode the conf…

Most likely the real reason is that articles with "experts say" in the headline performs much better than "some experts say" or "some experts wonder if".

The underlying reason for the higher CTR is that most readers want to engage with articles that are more certain than less and their inability to fill in the unstated uncertainty gets exploited.

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#22

Post by dehrmann »

ufmace wrote: post #10

I don't get what the point is of a crewed flyby. The crew would just be cooped up in the craft the whole time with nothing to do except take measurements with instruments that could just as easily be done by a machine. This isn't the Apollo era, we're pretty confident we can send spacecraft all over the solar system and keep humans alive in space for years.

It would essentially be an ISS mission with a few extra rocket burn stages and a different view.

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#23

Post by dylan604 »

United857 wrote: post #9

Clickbait headline -- the proposal is for a flyby, not a landing.

Has anything that has landed on Venus survived for more than a "few" hours due to heat/pressure? Landing humans on Venus seems more of a very cruel and unusual death sentence rather than some sort of a viable science mission. Now, if I were on death row and they offered me the choice of needle, chair, firing rage, or land on Venus, well, I know which one I'd take!

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#24

Post by dsr_ »

dylan604 wrote: post #23
United857 wrote: post #9

Clickbait headline -- the proposal is for a flyby, not a landing.

Has anything that has landed on Venus survived for more than a "few" hours due to heat/pressure? Landing humans on Venus seems more of a very cruel and unusual death sentence rather than some sort of a viable science mission. Now, if I were on death row and they offered me the choice of needle, chair, firing rage, or land on Venus, well, I know which one I'd take!

Landing on Venus would be ridiculous.

However, Geoffrey Landis has (among others) proposed that we put an atmosphere-floating habitat "on" Venus. PDF: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...

Abstract:

Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#26

Post by causality0 »

“You’d be learning about how people work in deep space, without committing yourself to a full Mars mission,” he said.

All of these "Not Mars" people always seem to fall into the same boat where they know there's zero point to sticking human beings and life support systems into an observation probe so they trot out this "it's good practice, guys!" horseshit. Scientific progress is not the point of putting the first set of boots on Mars any more than it was the reason for first climbing Everest. The point is to prove it can be done. After that you can quibble about the most efficient method of further human spaceflight development. It's like they're standing in the way of us learning to walk because they insist we figure out the best brand of shoe first.

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#27

Post by orbital-decay »

This was the original plan by Korolev and co, before the moon speech by JFK, and before the conditions on Venus became known. They wanted to figure out orbital assembly, and then circumnavigate Venus as the first step in the Solar System exploration. Hard to say how realistic it was, but modular orbital stations were an offshoot of that original vision, so it's been partially implemented.

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#29

Post by tuatoru »

xani_ wrote: post #4
hadlock wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the moon, we did not attempt to land there on the first go-around. Neil Armstrong was on Apollo 11. Apollo 4-6 were unmanned launches, 7-9 were testing the hardware with humans, mostly with "free return" orbits where even if the engines didn't start again, they would land back on earth in about a week. Apollo 10 was a wet rehersal that did everything except land on the moon#, including "parking" in lunar or…

> Going to Venus would allow us to simulate a mars free return trip, but in only 1 year (which would mean for a mars-class ship, a minimum safety factor of 3 (really, six) for fuel, water, air, food, medical supplies etc), instead of a 3 year mission with only a safety factor of 2. Simulate what ? Sitting in place ? We can do that on earth orbit. Engines running for long time ? No need for people aboard for that.

> Engines running for long time ?

Not with chemical rockets. Perhaps you meant "engines sitting idle for years in interplanetary space, and then restarting reliably".

Re: Target Venus not Mars for first crewed mission to another planet, experts say

#30

Post by layer8 »

ufmace wrote: post #10

I don't get what the point is of a crewed flyby. The crew would just be cooped up in the craft the whole time with nothing to do except take measurements with instruments that could just as easily be done by a machine. This isn't the Apollo era, we're pretty confident we can send spacecraft all over the solar system and keep humans alive in space for years.

> we're pretty confident we can […] keep humans alive in space for years

Are we? In outer space? Radiation, psychology/isolation, months away from any support in case of an emergency? My understanding is that there are a lot of open questions, and that even a mere fly-by mission would constitute a major new step in manned space flight.

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