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Venus: The Forgotten Planet
Anonymous Coward from Winnipeg writes "These days many of us are consumed by daily batches of spectacular images from our twin Marsbots and international fleet of Mars-orbiting craft. But we should not forget our sister planet, Venus, which has undergone significant exploration in years past. Don P. Mitchell's home page features an intriguing refinement of Soviet surface images using modern reprocessing techniques. Don also includes a terrific overview of the Soviet Venus exploration program. Complete radar mapping of Venus was provided by Magellan ten years ago. Sadly, according to the Venus Exploration Timeline, only two new missions to Venus are envisioned: ESA's Venus Express (using leftover Mars Express and Rosetta equipment) and JAXA's Planet-C orbiter. Apparently, no landings on Venus are planned - is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo?" (We've mentioned Mitchell's reworked images before -- amazing stuff.)
venus? my vote would be neptune, for the planet that gets the least press coverage...
and mars for the planet that gets the most, outside of ours...
We do cold and dry much better than hot and caustic. And Mars has all the potential for life evidence (or so we think) so it gets a lot of focus. I think Venus still takes a back seat to the moons of Jupiter. That's where the future action is going to be.
You forgot to mention the BepiColombo that will laucnh on 2011-01-01: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=BEPICLMBO
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I find this article funny. Mars can be inhabited and explored by humans, and there are a lot of possibilities about what could be done there. The martian gravity is weaker then earths, so it becomes much cheaper in fuel costs to launch missions from mars. Add the proximity to the jovian asteroid belts, and we have all the resources we need to do a lot of neat stuff. Venus isn't habitable by humans. Now this doesn't mean that we shouldn't send any probes there, but first thing is first.
Some of the moons of planets are interesting as well. It is hard to draw a line. It is good to have redundancy as you see in the Mars case, as well as we learn to make long dinstance missions. On the other hand we oversee many of the close stars/trabants which want to be explored
People look at Mars these days, almost as the "next Earth"...dreams and hopes from businesses the world over of exotic minerals, huge deposits of iron and whatnot, and this drives many to support Mars exploration
There are also those who of course, believe that Mars is chiefly where we will dump those extra billions of people we are going to have in the next 100 years.
But Venus should not be forgotten, it is a legitimate testing ground for technology and a potential "gold mine" in itself.
Landing is not currently possible with the level of technology you puny earthlings currently possess. Our atmosphere would crush you faster than you can say Venusian.
i believe one of the reasons for such neglection is due to the thick layer of cloud covering the planet. i myself would be put off observing the Moon or Saturn from my backyard if there's cloud hanging in the sky.
:)
having said that, we have seen amazing ground-penetrating technology used on Mars Rovers. So maybe some of these gears can be re-used?
it'll be rather amusing if Venus does have lives kicking under the thick cloud as we speak, but we failed to further investigate it
The most compelling reason to not send bots to Venus, but to Mars, would be Venus' surface temperature. If you think the greenhouse effect is bad on Earth, try an atmosphere comprised almost exclusively of greenhouse gases, and hop in a notch towards the Sun.
Try surface temperatures in the range of 400-500 degrees C, and watch closely as that poor overclocked Pentium powering the robot overheats like an Eskimo who's in Rio de Janiero to watch the carneval.
Thanks, I'd rather try for Mars first, with temperatures in the much more comfortable range for Earth-invented technology. Hell, we don't even have to shield it for temperature most of the time, as it is just marginally cooler on Mars and the electronics gives off some heat by itself to stay warm.
We know that life can exist in the harshest environments here on Earth. There are extremophiles (no, not X-Games lovers) that live at the bottom of the ocean near tectonic vents where the temperatures are hundreds of degrees above what humans could stand. Not to mention that there isn't any light down there for photosynthesis or anything of the sort.
If life can exist there, it's more than likely that similar life could exist on Venus with its very extreme environment and bountiful liquid (unlike dry Mars).
Could the Soviet explorers have found primitive life there and for fear of starting widespread panic decided to keep the whole thing quiet. Just declare that Mars is the target for the future and keep Venus missions underwraps?
It's a little bit tin-foil inducing, but considering that Venus has water which we have 'decided' is one of the fundamental building blocks of life, could it be so far fetched that life spontaneously originated there on its own?
I have been pwned because my
the interesting thing isn't which planet gets less or more, but why they get less or more.
mars gets the most because its the closest that might be able to support its own life
europa isn't a planet but it still gets points for life, however its farther than mars
venus is close but doesn't have a chance of life as we think of it. Venus does however have excellent energy harvesting/producing possibilities as soon as we are more space capable
Good luck in hell.
No, the lack of a stampede to Venus is not evidence of a loss of "advanced space travel capabiilty".
It is a function of limited resources and the obvious sense that Mars is more likely to have been, or be, hospitable to life than Venus.
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I've always found Venus to be an interesting planet, but I agree with the focus on Mars. I think one of the first major step to interstellar travel will be establishing a base on another planet, and Mars is our (closest) best shot. Europa and Titan would be good supply stops on the way out of the solar system.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
You know the saying, women are from Venus...; ergo geeks don't get any women, so therefore Venus is forgotten.
In contrast, Mars is much simpler: domes to hold atmosphere in (with the possibility of terraforming to make a breathable atmosphere), and you're pretty much there.
After Mars, there is a good prospect of moving on to Jovian moons, possibly Saturn's moons as well. Venus, however, doesn't have much to offer us until we've had a chance to refine our space-going technology with Mars and Jovian adventures.
Excellent to see old, crappy images reworked with hi-tech to reveal things the original science team were never capable of seeing! What amazes me about the images is that there's enough light on the surface to actually see ANYTHING! I mean, isn't the surface pressure on the order of hundreds of atmospheres? To me, that implied some sort of soupy and only partly transparent atmosphere. The radar map of the surface is remarkable in that there are no craters visible - evidence of extreme and recent volcanic activity I assume. All together a very interesting planet - but one unlikely to see human footprints until we've throughly explored the Jupiter system I susppect. Just how on Venus would you design and use a pressure suit that can take the rather dangerous and corrosive Venusian Atmosphere, at ridiculous temeratures and pressures?
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Look at all the problems we've had with landing a craft on Mars - a planet whose surface we can see, which isn't THAT much farther away than Venus (both are too far to do say, human controlled robotics directly). And Mars is just a cold mound of rock, with some relatively flat spots. Its not a huge strecth of existing terrestrial technology to build a Mars rover - all you need to do is keep the electornics warm, and use low power so that you can use solar.
Now, on Venus, the surface temperature is about 750'K - 900'F. now, a server room conks out at a LOT lower temperatures than that. And... did you want to build the lander out of mostly metal? Might not be so smart - it rains sulfuric acid all the time on Venus. That's nasty stuff if you're a lander. Oh, and solar power is out - that sulfuric acid rain comes from a pretty thick cloud cover.
We're also exploring Mars because it seems to be a RELATIVElY Earth-like planet - in that, maybe we can make it work for permanent human habitation.
Venus would just require radically new technology to land on, which isn't smart because the scientific benefits, while real, could be eclipsed in terms of */$ (bang per buck) on other places. And it doesn't look like humans are EVER going to live there. IMHO, the biggest problem that the space program now has is capturing our imagination - a preparing for humans on Mars does it, studying volcanoes on Venus is interesting, but doesn't scratch the human itch for exploration as well.
It's sexism pure and simple. Mars is the male god of war, and Venus is a goddess. The male chauvenists are the REAL reason almost nobody cares about Venus, and to think, I thought sexism was dead. It's a male dominated solar system.
Thermal insulation, asbestos and such + lotsa LN?
90 bars found on Earth at 900m under water. I see things online of probes going over 10 times deeper. As far as the heat, I have no idea.
Um, we can send shit and people(well, really more shit) deep into the ocean were we it survives and is put unde more then 90 bars. The heat is not really that hot. I mean it melts people. But 462C is not enough to melt steal. So not even close to imposable.
K
What if we sent some torpedo to Venus that somehow magically scooped all the atmosphere off. Here's my question: Would it come back on its own, or would it be gone forever?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Yeah but this is 1970's technology that was stripped down as much as possible to save costs on weight. And how can we imagine that our rockets would even function correctly under those terrible conditions? It would be like firing a stream of hot gas within a tank of lava. OK, extreme example, but I never understood that part of the Venus missions. There's a lot to our space exploration programs that have left lots of question marks that scientists have never fully answered for me. Perhaps MJ-12 decreed that we were not ready to handle the truth.
I had a friend working with NASA when they were naming geological features on the surface of Venus. Since all features were named after women, I managed him to persuade him to name a crater after my girlfriend, as a birthday present to her. Not bad, Venus being the planet of love and all that -- and certainly better than naming a star (star-naming companies are scammers, their catalogues are not recognised by the IAU).
The only drawback, of course, is she's not my girlfriend anymore. However, every time I see Venus on my evening cycle home from work, I'm reminded of her and the crater. Fond memories indeed!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Don't submarines routinely survive pressures greater than 90 atmospheres? Back in 1960, the US Navy sent a specialized sub down into the Marianas Trench. That's about 35,000 ft down. Going by memory (so someone feel free to jump in and correct me), 33ft down in the ocean = 1 atm. So, that's about 1060 atmospheres. I always thought the difficult problem with Venus was its caustic atmosphere. That's what destroyed the Soviet probes, not the atmospheric pressure.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
shouldn't we be taking care of Earth? Check this out:
, 12 374,1153530,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0
Scary.
Perhaps this page may shed a little light upon your question.
Ok, correcting an AC won't do much good, but what the heck:
First, it's "Kelvin", never "degrees Kelvin". 750 Kelvin. Be careful with that -- it's one of the signs you can tell people you don't really know the subject you're talking about.
Second, a Kelvin can be defined as the equivalent degree Celsius, plus 283.15. 750 Kelvin equals about 450 degrees Celsius.
If I'm not mistaken, I wrote "in the 400-500 degrees Celsius range"? How would this be way out?
It's amazing that we could land these probes under such harsh conditions, but the British couldn't place Beagle 2 on Mars and the Americans messed up back to back with the MPL and orbiter missions back in 1999/2000. Sadly we could do much more with our space program thirty years ago than we can today on our shoestring budgets.
I know that the continual 1200 F sulfuric acid rain is a bummer.
Maybe we could nuke the planet into a nuclear winter to cool it down?
I think I'm going to patent it.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The problem with Venus is that it is one of the most hostile environments we've yet to find in our searches. It's hot, it's acidic, and so it's hard on equipment, and it's potential for harboring life is low (given what little we know about the subject).
Our first objective in exploring the universe is answering the "are we alone" question. If we can find something as simple as bacteria on another planet, then it sets the groundwork for finding other more highly evolved forms of life. We just need to really prove that life is out there. I have zero doubt that there is, but we still have to proove it.
Once we find aliens, fine, then it might be neat to look at Venus.
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THRILL at its seductive mistresses of mayhem!
MARVEL at the wonders of the future!
EXPERIENCE the mysteries of the forgotten planet.
Our biggest threat came from our very own solar system.
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Did anyone anyone think cheap sci-fi feature when reading the heading?
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
Perhaps this is the reason why we have not seen Venus landers:
Venus today is a scorching, hell-like place -- totally dry, with a surface temperature hotter than the melting point of zinc (800 degrees F) and an enormously heavy, largely carbon dioxide atmosphere, 100 times as dense as Earth's.
I don't know for certain but I imagine that would complicate things enourmously.
Time makes more converts than reason
If we can learn to land on Mars with a much better track record, than perhapds will we be advanced enough to start building probes to explore Venus. But at 400 million a pop, I don't think anyone will want to pay for a whole five minutes of time on Venus just yet.
/ headlines/2001/venus.html
see:
http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive
The annonymous contributor from Winnipeg has given us a really cool link: http://www.mentallandscape.com/
Theres much more to it than just Venus - though the material supplied on that subject is pretty damn good.
Nikola Tesla; Rockets; Ion engines; lots of cool stuff. Explore the site - really fascinating stuff.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Its actually ridiculously easy to land on Venus. You don't even need a parachute. The Venera craft didn't use parachutes they just had a dish shaped structure at the top like an umbrella and in the enormously dense atmosphere that was enough to slow the craft to landing speed. However, once there surviving is very difficult, the major problem is the heat. We can build craft to go down 11 km in our oceans, and survive sulphuric acid environments no problem ... but you can't keep an object permanently cold (or cold for extended periods) in such a hot environment.
I'm sure Venus has an interesting history and is worth exploring one day. But probably not for a while. Though the pics are very intriguing.
Bitter and proud of it.
Your conspiracy theory, like almost all conspiracy theories, contains elements of both truth and falsehood. No, we almost certainly won't polar bears cavorting over the poles of Venus. However, Venus is undubitably friendly to Earth life. The question is to which types of Earth life it is friendly. We know that thermophiles and other such extremophiles can survive in similarly challenging environments on Earth. However, it would likely require some fairly major bio-engineering in order to prepare such Earth organisms to live on Venus.
/.ers have experienced before.
Beyond even just the well publicized extremes of temperature and pressure, any life-form on Venus would have to contend with heavy metal snow and clouds made of sulfuric acid. While I'm sure that we have separate varieties of extremophiles on Earth that can cope with each of these challenges separately, creating a synthesis of these traits would require significantly greater experience with practical genetic engineering as well as significant funding. We just don't have the funds right now to return Venus' friendship, which I'm sure is a situation that
"I would give my right hand to be ambidextrous."
1. attach microphone to your 'puter, dude.
2. open sound recorder, on your `leet XP box
3. blow into above microphone
4. ???
5. Die
Damn, the idiots are out tonight. Maybe a full moon? or is it a full Venus?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
That was the Trieste, designed and built by the Frenchmen Auguste and Jacques Piccard. The US Navy bought it from them. To my knowledge, since that great achievement, nobody has ever gone deeper (or even as deep), so it's not exactly a good example of "not hard".
In order to terraform Venus, you'd have to pump out all of the greenhouse gasses (which is what maked the temperature on Venus even hotter then Mercury. ) Then we'd have to totally change the atmosphere. Assuming you could do all of that, you'd then be able to live on a planet that has days 5800 hours long. ( I hope you like sleeping with the light on. )
"...is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo?"
No, I think it's more a case of space agencies not wanting to toss their multi-million dollar probes into a nintey atmosphere, 850 F (450 C) cloud of sulphuric acid 850 F (450 C)where probe lifespans are measured in hours. The cost to knowledge-gain ratio is staggeringly out of proportion on those missions. At least on mars you stand a decent chance of getting a return on your investment.
It's more a case of space agencies saying "Yep, that's nasty stuff. Let's move on for now."
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I suppose the French can lay an equal claim to them too?
The really great thing is that after America is consigned to the history books under the heading 'Other empires of note', the scientific benefits will still be there ...
Don't forget to watch for the pairing of the Moon and Venus tomorrow night at 6:30 - 7:00pm (Eastern Time) in the West sky. They'll only be about three degrees apart in the night sky.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It's not that hard to find information on the lander on the web. Read up on it.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/venera75.html
As for it being "stripped down", consider that they used a Proton to launch the thing, and could send over 5 tons of payload to Venus. Both Venera-9 and -10 were around 5,000 kg mass. The lander proper was about 660 kg, with a 900 kg protective shell. Put stuff in a one-ton steel sphere, and it tends to be protected from pressure. The surface temperature of 450 C is not really all that high, nowhere near enough to melt iron or steel, and certainly not much compared to the temperature during entry. (I'd say "re-entry", but of course the lander hadn't been there before...)
One interesting feature of the lander was that it was in free fall from 50 kilometers up, and hit the ground doing about 7 meters/sec. Airbags? We don't need no stinkin' airbags!
It's pressure+heat+acid that's the problem. The probes that landed we're destroyed within hours. You can make a probe resistant to high pressure, but that takes strength of material. This usually means weight. You can make a probe resistant to heat, but it'll be damn hard to keep it cool for any length of time when the ambient temperature is 500 deg C. You can make a probe resistant to acid, but the metals used for structural integrity dissolve metals. Yes, we sent a sub to the deepest depths on earth, but that's nothing compared to trying to have a lander last more than a few hours on Venus. Maybe when we perfect high strength ceramic composites we can do it. Oh, and the nuclear power plant on board to power the cooling system. ~X Random Quote: "It's hard to shovel shit when already in over your head."
~X~
I don't think you can go deeper. Isn't the Marianas Trench the deepest point in the ocean?
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
I think that Brad Guth hasn't forgotten Venus
The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
The problem with Venus missions is that the surface temperature is 450C and 90 atm (90x the pressure on Earth). I work for a company developing new high temperature piezoelectric materials for use in a drill for surface sampling. The goal is a 2 hour survival of the probe. That should give you an idea of the harsh conditions there.
What about Pluto? It's the only planet that has never been visited by probes. It would more appropriately be "the forgotten planet".
Yes, I agree, as another poster noted, it's the planets beyond Saturn that really get neglected: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
At least Cassini is going to Saturn. I can't wait for that, especially the probe to Titan.
I really wish more probes would go to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. I find them absolutely fascinating. I guess it's a cold temperature thing--I'm fascinated by cold.
I really hope I'm alive to see the New Horizons misson arrive at Pluto. I think I've come to the decision that I'm going to make every effort to keep myself alive until I can see pictures of Pluto. That's going to be absolutely amazing.
Not that Pluto is such an impressive planet--or planetoid?--just that to actually see it would be such an impressive feat.
I'd completely forgotten about Venus.
sig under development
wow thats awesome, do you have any proof at all, or are you just karma whoring?
Look for a crater named "Marianne". Haven't got a clue where it is, but that's what she was called.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
1. Think of the Delta V it would take to ship a small submarine to Venus. 2. Imagine what it would take to get a small submarine to operate in 850 deg F. 3. Imagine what it would take to get a small submarine to operate in a soup of sulfuric acid, with heavy metal snow all around to soak up a lot of the heat the submarine puts out. So yeah, putting a probe on Venus is d&#$@d difficult, and the Russians deserve major respect for getting it done with the Veneras. Is it impossible? Naw. Would it be really, really damned expensive to put a Veneran variant of Spirit or Opportunity on the surface of Venus. D&#n straight.
is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo? No, it's more a case of not wanting to spend a lot of money exploring something that will never be of any use to us, ever. At least Mars still holds out the promise of potential human habitation. You do know why Bush wants to go to Mars, don't you? So that there will be a place to send "unlawful combatants" when Guantanamo Bay gets too full!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I'm too busy[1] to learn chemistry so if someone would do the equivalent of 1+1 in chemistry on this question, I'd appreciate it!
/. but just leave it there, k?
[1]: apparently not too busy to read
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Now, I'm sure we could build something that could go there and survive for a while, it's just not quite what the space program is looking for. The reason Mars is so popular is because it's the one most likely to have life on it, whereas Venus is slightly (see above ;)) inhospitable....
--<Mike>--
That's what amazes me about people who talk about terraforming Mars, etc. They talk like it would be so simple. Even if we had the tech to move comets, etc., and the various other things we would need to do - we DON'T have the knowledge of WHAT to do.
We can't seem to understand our OWN atmosphere enough to know what things (good or bad) we are doing to it even unintentionally. We can't agree on Global Warming, etc...
So what makes us think we will know just the right recipe for a cozy atmophere on Mars? We don't even know the right recipe for one here on Earth yet.
This space available.
Interesting, especially in light of a previous post indicating that there aren't any craters visible on Venus.
Visible usually means 'visible light'. And, indeed, the surface of Venus cannot be seen in visible light, due to the thick cloud cover. However, it can be seen using radar, and the surface was mapped extensively, and to unprecedented accuracy, using the radar aboard the NASA Magellan spacecraft. You would know this if you had bothered to follow the links in article.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Interesting, especially in light of a previous post indicating that there aren't any craters visible on Venus.
Further to my previous response to this false assertion, this page on the Magellan website discusses the fact that small craters on Venus have been assigned female first names.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
For electronics to work in high heat conditions like on Venus, it's time to go back to vacuum tubes... They like heat. For memory, we can use magnetic cores with a high Curie point. I wouldn't mind working on a Nuvistor-based computer, or even integrated thermionics with welded wiring and ceramic substrates. Anyone want to hire a 32 year old 'old style' electronics expert?
TIMMs
I'd put up a few bucks of my own money to fund a study on the effects of high temperatures, high pressures, and corrosive vapors on spammers.
Does NASA have a Paypal account?
Because of the greenhouse effect
"Martians are from Mars, Venusians are from Venus"
So, according to Futurama, peddlers of stupid metaphors managed to finally sort that one out, even if it did take them 1000 years. I say that's far too optimistic.
I don't get it when it comes to picking which planet to terraform. Mars will never work, its core is dead, which is why the planet is dead with little to no atmosphere. Venus's core is still kicking, we just need to bleed off some of the atmosphere and increase its rotation a little. Still a monumental task but doable, whereas Mars is dead and will remain that way without an active core.
"I don't which is worse, that everyone has a price, or that the price is always so low"--Hobbes
Going deeper would require a subterrene, not a submarine.
rj
Venus will be the first extraterestrial body that we will terraform.
This will be accomplished by bio-engineering a class of organisms that will have the following characteristics:
1) Asexual reproduction.
2) Sulphur/oxygen/carbon based metaboism.
3) Builds "Balloon" cells so it can "float" in the CO2 sea that is the venusian atmosphere.
4) Short life span.
5) The discarded Carbon/Sulphur/Nitrogen skeleton must not ignite, returning the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
These organisms will be introduced into the the Venusian atmosphere by floating, automated seeding ships. In a few hundred years we oughtta be able to move in there.
What we can do about the crappy weak magnetic field and the six month long days and nights, I haven't got a fucking clue.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
uh, there's deep sea craft that is subject to pressure like that, and it does just fine. they also bring them close to underwater volcanic activity which is pretty darn hot.
in any case, the atmosphere is full of electrical storms taking place in clouds of sulfuric acid... atmospheres allow for terrible wind storms and such too. i would think it easier to just put a "space station" on the surface of the moon or on mars, then to risk going to a planet with atmospheric conditions that may (but probably won't) be hospitable to humans...
A great read is David Grinspoon's 'Venus Revealed.' Interesting, funny, and the inspiration for my lame sig.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
According to this article, Venus may have microbes in its clouds.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, the first "maps" of Venus were from '61.
They were done by bouncing RADAR from Earth -- I think it was using the Goldstone tracking station near Barstow, California, but it may have been the Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico.
Using those original echo patterns, Richard Goldstein was able to do some primitive mapping of surface details, as well as determine the rotational period of Venus (not to mention discover the fact that Venus rotates retrograde).
(Goldstein's my Dad)
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
I had a friend working with NASA when they were naming geological features on the surface of Venus. Since all features were named after women, I managed him to persuade him to name a crater after my girlfriend.
Hmmm. Out of idle curiosity, did the Russians also name things after women only? I'm assuming that since they sent so many probes there they must also have claimed some naming rights.
For that matter, do the Russians refer to the planet as "Venus" or something else?
Three Squirrels
Well, the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature answered my question, and also seems to suggest that in fact not everything on Venus has a woman's name.
Craters though are! Sadly Melissa is not on the list.
Actually, check out the whole USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. It's very cool.
Three Squirrels
Don't tell the patent people.
In patents, "comprising" means "includes". It is open-ended, meaning that other elements can be added even though not listed, and the description will still fit.
example: a chair comprising three legs and a seat. A chair having a back or four legs or both satisfies this definition and would infringe such a patent claim.
"consisting of", however, basically means "is made of". It is close-ended, meaning that other elements cannot be added without going outside of the description.
example: a chair consisting of three legs and a seat. A chair with four legs or a back does not meet this definition and thus would not infringe such a patent claim.
for further info, see the USPTO discussion here.
thats become the forgotten planet. The outer planet have
all had multiple probes in the past 20-25 years. Same
with Venus, and Mars.. well we can't throw enough junk
at that rock. AFAIK, Mariner 10 was the one and only,
and that only made 2 or 3 passes after getting a boost
after a Venus rest stop.
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/venusian.html
Get rid of everything Micro and Soft: Buy Viagra and/or Linux
...if we don't send more probes to Venus?! I mean, hey, there's a big movie remake starring Jim Carey and the way I see it, NASA needs to start slinging probes to Venus to satisfy the Hollywood overlords, or the six milllion dollar man is going to have to fight the reanimated corpse of Andre the Giant in Robot Bigfoot make-up.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Heh. By that same token, you could reason that Cabot Cove, Maine is an exceptionally nasty place to live considering that they have a murder every week, even though it's a pleasant little east-coast town.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The reason we send so many more probes to Mars than to Venus is that a good day on Mars is a lot like a bad day in Antarctica, at least if you're a robot probe. A good day on Venus is more like a bad day in Hell.
It's not forgotten, just shelved. Its surface is a corrosive, lead-melting hell; there's really not much of interest there for exploration or exploitation. In the list of Solar System objects to explore or exploit, Venus is way, way, down on the list. As in, arguably dead last.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
On the other hand, if we decide we're running out of dirt after we've filled up Siberia and the Sahara, colonizing the surface of the ocean is probably much more efficient than doing Antarctica. Among other things, you can do it in warm-climate areas, and you can do some of it in places that have enough energy and nutrient sources to grow food supplies; Antarctica's a tough place to do much hydroponic farming, and the Linux geeks won't let you eat all the penguins. It does require technology, since there are problems like riding out hurricanes and not getting your rafts broken up.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'll tell you why:
Woman are for Venus
MAN are from Mars.
If the girls want to see Venus let THEM explore it...
Is JAXA a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems...
What killed the Soviet and American landers was the temperature. The Soviets used various chemical processes to cool their probe - which is very simple and incredibly robust (no pumps or power supply needed). They used materials such lithium nitrate; as they melt they absorb enormous amounts of heat from the surrounding environment.
Pack the probe with cannisters of such a substance and as it melts it keeps the probe cool. When it has all melted, the temperature inside the probe keeps rising. When their refrigeration packed up, the electronics burned out.
Of course all of the early failures of Venera 3 to Venera 6 was because no one had expected such enormous pressures.
Best wishes,
Mike.
And not to mention the computer consoles running on 20,000 Volts! Slightest bit of damage to the ship and they explode in a shower of sparks, killing another redshirt.
:o)
I mean, even using PCs with Windows I've only twice had any type of explosion. Kids, don't use a monitor right after its been stored in a damp garage for a few months... Incident no. 2 was also monitor related, an old monitor gave up the ghost with enough "poof" to fry the graphics card. But of course, CRT monitors DO have whopping great voltages
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
"We will have to speed up the axial rotation of the planet, well, maybe it is possible by using directed nuclear explosions, or by inducing a strong electromagnetic field upon the planet's core (I don't know how to do that.)"
Err yeah. I think you've been watching too many Sci Fi B-movies. Thanks for playing...
Acid rain may form in the high atmosphere but it evaporates LONG before it reaches the ground. Venus is a dry desert and probably has been for
the last 4 billion years.
Why? Simple. Whatever you do to the planet or its atmosphere you can't change the fact that its 30% closer to the sun that the earth and receives
a LOT more solar energy per square meter. Even assuming it was made the same as earth in every other way it would STILL have an equatorial temperature
close to boiling point which would make the whole system very unstable since if you had large oceans they would rapidly
evaporate leading to huge amounts of water vapour in the air and a runaway greenhouse effect. Again. Ok , you limit the amount of water on the planets surface but that just means most
of it will end up in the atmosphere so rather putting a damper on the idea of a flourishing earth life. At the VERY BEST you'd end up with a small patch of almost inhabitable land near the poles.
Not really worth the effort I think you'll agree.
I haven't noticed that anyone has mentioned the actual cost of going to Venus which, fuel-wise, is much more expensive than going to Mars. It's much cheaper to go to an orbit further from the sun than it is to go to one towards it due to the inertia a rocket will already have from Earth's orbit.
You can't just aim towards Venus and go. You have to slow down the rocket's relative orbital speed. That's a lot of fuel. So it's also a matter of cost/benefit.
I know there are some high standing areas on Venus. Maxwell Montes rises about 35000' above the planetary mean. The lower pressure means lower temperature. Does anyone know what the average temperature of such regions might be? They might be better places for spacecraft to land.
an ill wind that blows no good
.. announces a new Java API that will allow developers to remotely operate Venus landers launched by the Soviet Union over 20 years ago! ORA has plans to publish a 10,000 page definitive guide written by a community college undergraduate for the must have price of $500.
It irritates me no end that we're quite willing to spend 100 billion plus dollars to Kill Other People, never mind the reasons, but wouldn't dare suggest that we spend more than a couple of billion on space exploration.
Think of all of the jobs that an 87 billion dollar space program could generate. Think of all the body bags and misery that 87 billion spent on a war bought.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
It's not a doctoral thesis or anything but I've been doing a bit of armchair research on what it would take to terraform venus and I've posted it to my blog. If you're interested take a look.
I'd appreciate some constructive error checking.
Blaze a trail to the New World
The Cassini probe reaches Saturn this summer promising years of photos. It last the NASA billion dollar mega-probes. It took two decades to fund, design, launch and arrive.
So I guess what we need is an equatorial trench somewhere where the air pressure is higher.
I wouldn't go so far as to call the atmosphere "toxic." IIRC it's mostly CO2 which is a normal component of earth's atmosphere. All you'd really need to do is introduce some specific plants that were UV-resistant and could take low pressure and you'd be good to go.
(Vastly oversimplifying, I know, and probably leaving out huge chunks of the process, but you get the idea)
+++ATH0
You say that the problems on Earth can be solved with present technology, and that the obstacles to the solution of those problems are social and political. Fine.
So how would pulling the people working on the space program off of it untie the social and political knots?
You don't want an automechanic building your house, and you don't want an architect fixing your car--why, then, do you want to force rocket scientists to muck about in politics?
I claim not that only politicians should work in politics, but that people forced into fields that they have no passion for don't do much, if anything, for causing progress in those fields. Architects can enjoy messing about with cars, and being very able mechanics, and mechanics can love the design and construction of buildings along with cars, but most do not.
For example, the theory of continental drift was proposed by a meteorologist. As evidence has panned out, he was right, but do you really want Al Roker studying the fault lines near you?
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates