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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

#31

Post by xattt »

dehrmann wrote: post #22
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.

Is a fully-assembled ISS capable of withholding torsional stress that would come from insertion burns?

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

#34

Post by ncmncm »

unnouinceput wrote: post #19
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…

>finally Apollo 11-17 actually were "boots on the ground" Nitpick: Apollo 11, 12 and 14-17 were boots on the ground. 13 had no boots on the ground.

They had the boots, and meant to put them on the ground. But Fred Haise would have suffered more terribly.

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

#35

Post by xani_ »

readams wrote: post #12
turndown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think space is one of those places where you can appeal to unknown unknowns being a major risk factor and everyone agrees. But I personally think that the better option is to just do all of this on the moon. Making a human-habitable base on the moon, to me, still makes the most sense for preparing for habitation on other worlds.

Avoiding the need to wait 26 months between launch windows certainly reduces the degree of difficulty. Going from "oh we wish we had X that we didn't think of" to having it is literally almost 3 years on Mars.

It's not to avoid the difficulty, it's to make iteration safer and easier. Good luck seeing what failed if the craft that failed is flying somewhere between earth and mars

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

#36

Post by ncmncm »

dsr_ wrote: post #24
dylan604 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And, breathing air is buoyant.

N2 is only 13% of the atmosphere, but if my calculations are right, that means a very great deal more nitrogen than we have, just dissolved into a lot more air.

To terraform, release machines that crack CO2 in the clouds and drop diamonds. You release way too much oxygen, but that will bind to the surface minerals. Main thing is to keep the carbon from oxidizing again before you're ready.

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

#37

Post by ncmncm »

causality0 wrote: post #26

“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 se…

Going to Mars will be among humanity's least revered achievements. There is nothing there.

The only plausibly valuable exports from Mars might be the engines that got your supplies there. With their bells cut off.

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

#38

Post by AstralStorm »

layer8 wrote: post #30
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.

Indeed, we should rather attempt sending such a ship in one piece to the moon first. Right now we would have problems actually assembling such a craft. Note how long and cost intensive it was to assemble a bigger space station.

Gateway program is such a baby step, assembling a base in moon orbit.

Ultimately, we would need an orbital facility to assemble bigger ships well without paying the immense costs of ultra heavy launches.

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

#39

Post by ncmncm »

monocasa wrote: post #15
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…

The whole point of Apollo 10 was to be the dry run for Apollo 11. Doing all of that with no actual plans to land seems silly.

Anyway, with no plans to dip to cloud level.

Actually landing people on Venus could only be a disastrous mistake.

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

#40

Post by AstralStorm »

xani_ wrote: post #16
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, leaving the safety of Earth's magnetosphere. We haven't really ventured far enough for radiation to not be tempered by Earth's magnetic field, from what I understand. It would shorten the duration of radiation and help study the effects on astronauts.

So, go to moon. No real need to go to another planet just to irradiate some astronauts and in case shit hits the fan they have chance of surviving

Precisely the goal of Gateway, of which Artemis/SLS are pieces.
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