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?
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Momentum is building to explore Venus
61–70 of 179 posts
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The risk that Venus is or was once host to some form of life, and humans deliberately contaminating Venus with life would obscure any evidence of it. That is a very serious worse-case scenario because non-earth life would be truly invaluable to biology. It seems like a remote risk to me, but not something to shrug off. Particularly since the usefulness of introducing life to Venus is itself quite remote.
Life in temperatures that melts lead? Oh... or do you mean in the atmosphere?
For all we know the Soviet Vega missions could have introduced airborne microbial life into the high atmosphere. We may have already seeded Venus.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#63I'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…
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.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because we've failed to terraform much closer, less inhospitable environments, and the risks for getting it wrong are very high.
Which environments are you referring to? Venus is the closest planet to Earth. The Moon is the only significant body between the two. And by 'we've failed to terraform', did you mean 'we haven't tried yet'?
We're currently in the process of terraforming earth to make it slightly less habitable.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#65So I had two thoughts while reading it: Is it possible that in the 3 billion years that it had liquid water, Venus evolved advanced life that managed to trigger runaway greenhouse warming? Secondly, is Venus’s atmosphere a worst case scenario for global warming here or is there something that would prevent it happening?
I see no reason why intelligent life with high technology could not have developed on Venus. Say, several hundred million years ago. And perhaps they triggered runaway greenhouse warming, which vaporized the oceans. And so perhaps it was the loss of the oceans that ended plate tectonics, not the other way around. I doubt that runaway greenhouse warming could get so extreme for Earth. I recall reading that solar input…
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Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#66Why couldn't you vacuum insulate the electronics and place some kind of radiative cooling on top of them? You'd need the cooler to be able to radiate all the radiative energy coming into the chamber from outside it, plus what the electronics generate. You'd want the thermos type chamber to be reflective to radiation from one side only. It would depend on how low energy you can get the electronics, plus how efficient…
Pretty sure a completely passive cooling system able to maintain its inside cooler than its outside would violate thermodynamics somehow.
I'm not a physicist though.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Even all-out nuclear war would leave the Earth far more habitable than Mars. We'd need to come up with quite the feat to extinguish life here, think steering a Moon-sized asteroid.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#68I'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…
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.
We don't need to cool it down. We could float a platform about 49.5 km above the surface of Venus, where the temperature and pressure nearly match the earth at sea level. To launch a probe, we could simply drop it from the platform.
This article about Venus is very enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#69Because 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 it could be quite heavy and robust. This vehicle could bounce between the surface (for science) and the upper atmosphere (for recharging). In the upper atmosphere the probe could make more coolant from the atmosphere using solar power, and then it could make another dive to the surface.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which environments are you referring to? Venus is the closest planet to Earth. The Moon is the only significant body between the two. And by 'we've failed to terraform', did you mean 'we haven't tried yet'?
We're currently in the process of terraforming earth to make it slightly less habitable.
Terraforming means making it Earth-like. Did you mean terra-deforming?