NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities For Venus Exploration

An anonymous reader writes: IEEE Spectrum reports on a study out of NASA exploring the idea that manned missions to Venus are possible if astronauts deploy and live in airships once they arrive. Since the atmospheric pressure at the surface is 92 times that of Earth, and the surface temperate is over 450 degrees C, the probes we've sent to Venus haven't lasted long. The Venera 8 probe sent back data for only 50 minutes after landing. Soviet missions in 1985 were able to get much more data — 46 hours worth — by suspending their probes from balloons. The new study refines that concept: "At 50 kilometers above its surface, Venus offers one atmosphere of pressure and only slightly lower gravity than Earth. Mars, in comparison, has a "sea level" atmospheric pressure of less than a hundredth of Earth's, and gravity just over a third Earth normal. The temperature at 50 km on Venus is around 75 C, which is a mere 17 degrees hotter than the highest temperature recorded on Earth.

The defining feature of these missions is the vehicle that will be doing the atmospheric exploring: a helium-filled, solar-powered airship. The robotic version would be 31 meters long (about half the size of the Goodyear blimp), while the crewed version would be nearly 130 meters long, or twice the size of a Boeing 747. The top of the airship would be covered with more than 1,000 square meters of solar panels, with a gondola slung underneath for instruments and, in the crewed version, a small habitat and the ascent vehicle that the astronauts would use to return to Venus's orbit, and home."

Comments

As with all space missions:

[ledow]

As with all space missions:

Fabulous.

Let's do it.

Start planning now.

Go, go go.

When will it happen?

I have a feeling in 50 years time this will be dragged out of the archives and the same idea posited once more.

Re:As with all space missions:

[TWX]

Honestly I don't think that this is viable, mainly because the airship is a pretty damn big single point of failure without an option to fail-safe, and if astronauts can't roam the surface of the planet then there's not a lot of benefit to sending humans as they'll effectively be cooped up inside of the craft the same as if they're traversing open space.

This isn't Empire Strikes Back, some glorious cloud-city.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of mission calls for extra Fabulous!ness. I refer the interested student to steampunk, Space:1889, and similar subjects for inspiration.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm... airship athmospheric entry, someone at nasa has been watching way too much Iron Sky

Re:As with all space missions:

[RingDev]

75 C = 167 F.

"17 degrees" in this case means a 30 degree F jump. And while 138 F is survivable for short durations with a lot of hydration, 167 F would not be anything to attempt to live in.

We're not talking about an air ship where you can take a leisurely stroll on the pool deck admiring the Venetian sunset. We're talking about a space ship that is suspended in a convection stove.

-Rick

Re:As with all space missions:

[MozeeToby]

mainly because the airship is a pretty damn big single point of failure

How so? I assume the envelope would be divided into separate cells and the pressures and temperatures involved mean that the actual pressure difference between inside and outside the envelope is basically nill. In other words, if something springs a leak you'll have quit a bit of time to get it repaired, your lifting gas will escape at the rate of diffusion.

they'll effectively be cooped up inside of the craft the same as if they're traversing open space.

Except the craft can be much, much more capable because the environment is much friendlier to human life than open space. Given enough power, you could even work towards pulling breathing (and lifting for that matter) gasses and water out of the atmosphere, not directly but by processing the CO2 and acids.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Jesrad]

Meat starts cooking at around 60C.

Re:As with all space missions:

[butalearner]

That single point of failure isn't as bad as you might think, because the pressure could be the same on the inside and outside. Cloud-top Venusians wouldn't even need pressurized suits, just breathable air...and protection from the sulfuric acid. And some way to deal with the 200+ mile per hour winds, perhaps by sort of riding them around the planet. I imagine many unmanned missions would precede a manned one, to set up some infrastructure (power generation, oxygen extraction, food crops, etc.) and provide some back up systems.

I'm not sure how they would be able to leave, though. Rocket launches are difficult enough with solid ground and a non-corrosive atmosphere.

Re:As with all space missions:

[TWX]

Okay, a fundamental question then... What's the mission?

I don't see a mission for humans hovering over Venus. This isn't like a possible geology excavation on Mars where it might actually be easier if humans are on-site to direct or operate machines for specific applications.

I believe that humans should go explore space, but I also believe that with only finite resources and commitment to doing it, the effort should be focused on places where humans can actually be boots-on-the-ground to rove, to explore.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Ihlosi]

We're not talking about an air ship where you can take a leisurely stroll on the pool deck admiring the Venetian sunset. We're talking about a space ship that is suspended in a convection stove.

Or a sauna. On the plus side, you get plenty of solar power to run your AC with.

Re:As with all space missions:

[BarbaraHudson]

Okay, a fundamental question then... What's the mission?

I don't see a mission for humans hovering over Venus. This isn't like a possible geology excavation on Mars where it might actually be easier if humans are on-site to direct or operate machines for specific applications.

I believe that humans should go explore space, but I also believe that with only finite resources and commitment to doing it, the effort should be focused on places where humans can actually be boots-on-the-ground to rove, to explore.

If it's floating above the clouds, it would be the ideal solar observation post. Gravity almost like earth, temperature tolerable.

As to why to do it, think of our increased dependence on communications networks. Would be nice to have a better understanding and earlier predictability of solar events that can take the networks down.

Re:As with all space missions:

[WindBourne]

Not likely. One of the large costs with any of these missions is launch. With SpaceX pushing re-usable systems, and about to drop their prices a great deal in about 3 years, it will make missions like this possible.
In addition, keep in mind that Musk is now looking at building a satellite factory. Once he starts that, he will be after all sat manufacturing to make them cheap. While this is an airship, the guts will be satellite based.

Re:As with all space missions:

[DanielRavenNest]

As a space systems engineer, I would agree. There isn't much benefit to putting humans in the Venusian clouds. It adds weight and risk to the mission. They can just as well stay in orbit, controlling a robotic exploration blimp.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Okay, a fundamental question then... What's the mission?

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/11/29/forget-asteroidssend-a-manned-flyby-mission-to-venus/

A circumnavigation of Venus would test our ability to function in deep space, to enter a planet's gravitational influence, to create robust shielding for the higher radiation at Venus's relatively close proximity to the sun, to devise zero-g strategies for long-duration flights -- all of which would bolster us for an even longer journey to Mars. Besides, for a long-duration mission, we might not want to commit our astronauts to landing on Mars only to find out that they could not walk, their musculature had so degenerated upon arrival. In contrast, the crew of a long Venus round-trip would land not on a faraway planet but back on Earth, where medical attention is readily available if needed.

Re:As with all space missions:

[itzly]

In short: it's pointless, but it provides valuable practice for future, equally pointless, missions.

Re:As with all space missions:

[TWX]

I'm sorry, how is sending humans to Venus, already a long flight, to experience conditions significantly different than those on Mars, going to help us more than say, sending a crew up to ISS for eight months, then transferring them to a craft to send them to the moon, to have them live on the moon for a few days or weeks, to then send them back to the station for eight months, to then send them back to earth?

We could send a rescue mission straight from Earth to the moon a hell of a lot faster than we could send one to Venus, and we already have experience with landing on and taking off from the moon, so developing craft to do that mission would be much easier, and could be part of a greater set of missions to the moon in general.

If we really want to test sending humans outside of the region of space protected by Earth's magnetic field, how about sending astronauts in a solar orbit, to end up at the moon? If we have existing lunar missions, we could even have a short-flight team waiting for them when they arrive, to study their physiology from the long duration flight and recovery in a lower-gravity environment, without those doing the study necessarily being subject to it themselves.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Pointless like Christopher Columbus sailing accross the Atlantic Ocean to find an alternative route to India and discovering America by accident in 1492? After all, everyone believed at that time believed the world was flat and ships would fall off into the void.

Re:As with all space missions:

[itzly]

Finding a shorter route to India wasn't a pointless mission. And we know enough about the solar system that we can be reasonably certain that we don't accidentally bump into a luscious planet on our way to Mars or Venus.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Another proposal was to use Venus as a slingshot to Mars if the launch window for a direct Mars flight was ever missed. I find it fascinating that people always think of space flight as being outward (i.e., towards the outer planets) while ignoring Earth's sister world next door.

Re:As with all space missions:

[neoritter]

No, no one at the time believed that the Earth was flat... Columbus was an idiot who thought that the distance between Western Europe and Eastern Asia was a lot smaller than people had thought/calculated.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Everything I was taught about Christopher Columbus was wrong! Damn public school education!!

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why they decided to match Earth's pressure and deal with the temperature difference, as opposed to matching Earth's temperature and dealing with the pressure difference, or doing a compromise.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I believe that humans should go explore space,"

Okay, a fundamental question then... What's to explore? The cubic light minutes of utter vacuum between planets? We can explore that just fine from right here. The dead rocks floating here and there? What's to explore? We already know what's there.

And are our machines not part of "humans"? We are looking at the computer monitors, after all.

"where humans can actually be boots-on-the-ground to rove, to explore."

That's a religious circular argument. Are you eight years old? When's the last time YOU roved around THIS planet to explore?

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm made of meat!

Re:As with all space missions:

[itzly]

Would be nice to have a better understanding and earlier predictability of solar events that can take the networks down.

We already have satellites looking at the Sun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, an AC that can shed heat into a 167F atmosphere.

Re:As with all space missions:

[RandomFactor]

So are they .

Re:As with all space missions:

[ShanghaiBill]

Everything I was taught about Christopher Columbus was wrong! Damn public school education!!

I attended public school, and remember learning in 5th grade that Eratosthenes of Alexandria accurately calculated the radius of the earth around 200 BC. In addition to changing shadow heights as you move from south to north, the curve of the earth is visible against the moon during a lunar eclipse. Both the Ancient Greeks and the Romans were well aware that the earth was a spheroid, and knew the approximate radius.

Either the school you attended was exceptionally bad, or you spent a lot of time not paying attention.

Re:As with all space missions:

[MozeeToby]

Hi there. This is wrong. Just... incredibly wrong.

People had known the earth was round for hundreds if not thousands of years before Columbus. They had even done the math and experiments to figure out it's size (and gotten pretty close to being right about it). You can't actually navigate long distances on Earth without that knowledge. So what made Columbus special? He did the math wrong and thought the earth was 1/3 the size it actually is. That's also why he thought he was in the Indies in spite of having traveled a fraction the distance it actually would take.

The reason no one had ever tried to make the trip before wasn't that they thought they would fall off, it was that they thought they would run out of supplies and die. Which is exactly what would have happened to Columbus if there hadn't been a massive continent for him to run into.

Re:As with all space missions:

[ShanghaiBill]

If it's floating above the clouds, it would be the ideal solar observation post. Gravity almost like earth, temperature tolerable.

Other than costing 10 million times as much, how would that differ from putting a telescope on a high altitude balloon in the earth's stratosphere?

Re:As with all space missions:

[Chelloveck]

A circumnavigation of Venus would test our ability to function in deep space, to enter a planet's gravitational influence, to create robust shielding for the higher radiation at Venus's relatively close proximity to the sun, to devise zero-g strategies for long-duration flights -- all of which would bolster us for an even longer journey to Mars.

We've already done most of those things. Function in deep space? We've sent many successful probes all over the place, adding a human payload doesn't change the physics. Enter a planet's gravitational influence? Ditto. Create robust shielding? We need to figure that one out before leaving the Earth-Moon system, and test it on a probe before committing people to it. Devise zero-g strategies for long duration flights? Been working on it ever since Skylab, no need to even leave Earth orbit to study the effects.

None of these things require or even benefit from using Venus as a target, nor does Venus make a good testbed for missions elsewhere. With the Moon or Mars, the problems on the surface are very similar to the problems on the journey: Low pressure, low gravity, exposure to radiation. With Venus the problems are exactly the opposite of those on the journey. High pressure, high heat, corrosive atmosphere. Venus is a pressure cooker full of sulfuric acid. That makes Venus a lousy analog of anywhere else in the solar system, with the possible exception of Io. If we're going to spend the effort on surviving Venus there has to be some reason for it that's unique to that planet. "Practice" ain't it.

Re:As with all space missions:

[rwa2]

I hate to bring politics into a science discussion, but unfortunately politics is what determines funding. And politics is what put humans on the moon.

Yes, putting humans anywhere in space (or anywhere hostile to biological habitation) is basically a super-expensive camping trip. That never stopped us in the past from building capsules that can take humans to the bottom of the oceans or hurtling across the skies or stationed at the south pole and other places where robots could do the job just as well or better.

Politically, will countries / corporations be able to "own" the resources (or even just the science / IP) discovered in space without a human presence to plant a flag and occupy? I mean, we're not to that level of competition yet, but say sometime in the future when we're mining asteroids and there's a really valuable asteroid that everyone's trying to claim. Would we consider it legal for the first mining robot to arrive to claim the entire thing? Or is it fair game for whichever robot gets there first to take their fill? Is it an act of war for a robot to knock out / disable a competing country's robot? It obviously is if you're knocking out a human-inhabited space colony, but otherwise you're just squabbling over money.

Anyway, I'm glad that NASA is doing the math on what is at this point just a proposal / thought exercise. No harm in having thought things through, in the off-chance that Venus was suddenly struck with a strong case of unobtanium-fever.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

Not nearly as good an observation post as it would have in orbit. And as long as we're doing orbital observations there's not much reason to involve a planet at all, unless it's our own.

Not to mention that if you're studying something hundreds of millions of miles away from your sensors, there's not much point in having people standing next to the sensors unless they need to be repaired or modified. You could just as easily be sitting on Earth and have the information forwarded to you, it's not like you could send a warning any faster than you could send the raw data.

Re:As with all space missions:

[geekoid]

How to you think you get to glorious cloud cities?
Through intermediary steps, that's how.*

*Alternative answer: Fly the Millennium Falcon**. I see what you were going to do there

** What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon!

Re:As with all space missions:

[neoritter]

I wouldn't blame him. Protestant and anti-religious propaganda pushed these false stories around.

Re:As with all space missions:

[geekoid]

"Okay, a fundamental question then... What's the mission? "
Develop technologies the make life here better? learn more about human biology beyond earth. Make another step to spreading our species, Conduct better tests on captures particle. Control descent to the planet with sensors. Look for life in the upper atmosphere.

Re:As with all space missions:

[alvinrod]

The notion that people believed the world was flat is a myth. The Greeks had worked out the earth was spherical almost two thousand years prior to Columbus's voyage. Globes had been made be various different groups of people for hundreds of years prior to Columbus's voyage as well.

What Columbus argued was that the circumference of the world was much smaller than had been estimated (he was wrong about this) and therefore the distance to India would be much shorter than most speculated. The reason the islands he landed on are referred to as the West Indies is because Columbus initially thought that he had made it to India.

His voyage wasn't pointless, but it was based on some bad assumptions. He certainly discovered something new (one could argue that the Vikings or other groups found it first, but apparently they didn't disseminate that information very widely) but it was more of a happy accident than anything else.

Re:As with all space missions:

[geekoid]

They talk about lowering their price, but it's based on how prices drop in other areas' something we have learned that is foolish to do when it come to space travel.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Either the school you attended was exceptionally bad, or you spent a lot of time not paying attention.

I was misdiagnosed as being mentally retarded. Never mind that I consistently blew out the annual examinations on the genius side (i.e., these were "statistical flukes," as not the threaten the 3X funding I represented for the special ed classes). I graduated from the eight grade with fifth grade math/writing skills and a college-level reading comprehension. After skipping high school and teaching myself at home, I got an associate degree in general ed at the community college. A decade later I went back to school to learn computer programming while taking two classes per semester and working 60 hours per week for five years. I even made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Space Nutter ignorance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The amount of horseshit between your ears is astounding. And you've just shown everybody just how ignorant and crassly stupid you are. Forever.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Create robust shielding? We need to figure that one out before leaving the Earth-Moon system, and test it on a probe before committing people to it.

Which was why the Orion space capsule completed a 3,600-mile orbit to fly through the Van Allen radiation belt, as well as simulate a 20,000 MPH atmospheric return entry. With the exception of the Apollo missions, most manned flights were restricted to Low Earth Orbit.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Ranbot]

Okay, a fundamental question then... What's the mission?
 

To establish Cloud City...preferably before Blly Dee Williams passes away.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting out to space and coming back safely isn't pointless. Spending more and more time out there, going farther from safety is a good practice. We should first try to learn how to walk before we start to run.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

If you read my other comments, you would have noticed that I admitted to being wrong and cited the exact Wikipedia link that you cited.

Re:As with all space missions:

[itzly]

We should first try to learn how to walk before we start to run.

Run where, exactly ? It's a cold dark vacuum out there.

Re:As with all space missions:

[reve_etrange]

People had known the earth was round for hundreds if not thousands of years before Columbus.

Definitely thousands. (Like 1.8 thousands).

Re:As with all space missions:

[dywolf]

No No No No a million times NO.

Prior to 1492, everyone knew the world was round, and had known so since the time of Ptolemy if not before.

FTFY.

Yes, he did sail west based on his knowledge that hte Earth was round.
But no, Columbus did not sail west to show the flat earthers they were wrong.
And you should stop spreading that myth.

Everyone knew the Earth the round.
But no one believed sailing west was a shorter more direct route (and this was based on math and geometry)

In case you missed it, the sea route from Europe to India has to go around that big hunk of land called Africa.
That route involves sailing south several thousand miles, then back north another few thousand, as well as traversing the eastward distance.
It's a long, dangerous route taking as long as a year there and back
It was desirable though due to the Sil Road (overland) being unsafe in recent years due to the rise of the Ottomans.

And this is still the time when most sailing is done in close proximity to shore, with shore not far over the horizon.
And the open ocean not being well charted yet if at all.

If the earth was round, which every one knew, and of a specific diameter, which was also already calculated and fairly accurate, then it was apparent that the westward distance to India was indeed longer than the Eastward distance to India.

But math of a sphere is simple and easy, whereas the math of actual navigation of sailing ship taking a long roundabout route around africa is more difficult and less accurate at the time.

And that brings us back to Columbus.
His bet was essentially that while the direct distance was obvious longer, that he could make up for it with directness by not having to go around Africa.
This view was based on the ideas of geography of Toscanelli, who did not concieve of a large land mass in the way.

It was a risky venture in the face of a known and profitable route, and few would take him up on it (businessmen being ever adverse to risk).
But he finally got his sponsor and off he went.

And it turned out he was wrong.
Both his math was wrong, as his assumption that there would be nothing in the way.

A good summary of his flawed reasoning and surrounding factors is presented on the wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... ) :

From d'Ailly's Imago Mundi Columbus learned of Alfraganus's estimate that a degree of latitude (or a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56 miles, but did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile rather than the shorter Roman mile with which he was familiar (1,480 m).[30] He therefore estimated the circumference of the Earth to be about 30,200 km, whereas the correct value is 40,000 km (25,000 mi).

Furthermore, most scholars accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Eurasia spanned 180 longitude, rather than the actual 130 (to the Chinese mainland) or 150 (to Japan at the latitude of Spain). Columbus, for his part, believed the even higher estimate of Marinus of Tyre, which put the longitudinal span of the Eurasian landmass at 225, leaving only 135 of water. He also believed that Japan (which he called "Cipangu", following Marco Polo) was much larger, farther to the east from China ("Cathay"), and closer to the equator than it is, and that there were inhabited islands even farther to the east than Japan, including the mythical Antillia, which he thought might lie not much farther to the west than the Azores. In this, he was influenced by the ideas of Florentine astronomer Toscanelli, who corresponded with Columbus before his death in 1482 and who also defended the feasibility of a westward route to Asia.[31]

Columbus therefore estimated the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan to be about 3,000 Italian miles (3,700 km, or 2,300 statute miles). The true figure is now known to be vastly larger: about 12,500 km. No ship in

Re:As with all space missions:

[reve_etrange]

We could also set up telescopes on the far side of the moon, which would have immense scientific value (especially in the IR spectrum region).

Re: As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because insulation weighs less than a pressure vessel.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

Away from the big, bad, scary alien.

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

I saw one proposal of putting a manned space station in orbit on the far side of the moon and/or at L2 point (i.e., stable orbit outside lunar not facing the sun).

Re:As with all space missions:

[reve_etrange]

I'd support it (big surprise, eh?). I think some kind of manned Lagrange mission is important, since the experience would be needed e.g. to service the James Webb space telescope or visit a captured asteroid.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

Not exactly. Even Columbus had a fair idea of the diameter of the planet - where he got it wrong was estimating the width of Eurasia at almost double the actual value, which put the east coast roughly where he encountered the Americas. Considering that he made the estimates based on the log books of explorers who crossed extremely rough terrain and couldn't measure longitude*, being off by a factor of two is hardly a symptom of idiocy. Unless you have reason to believe that a substantially more accurate and trustworthy estimate of the width of Eurasia was well-known in Europe at the time?

* measuring longitude requires a clock that can be transported while keeping accurate time - the sort of thing that was *extremely* difficult at the time, especially on long rough journeys. The moon's position against the stars could also be used, but the accuracy is poor**, and the technique was apparently still just gaining recognition in the early to mid 1500s, well after Columbus's voyage. And even centuries later it was considered insufficiently accurate for seafaring purposes.

** the moon moves only 0.5 degrees per hour meaning an error of 1 degree in measuring lunar position translates to 2 hours of time inaccuracy, or 30 degrees of longitude - about 2,000 miles at the equator.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

If there's such a tendency I suspect it's mainly because everything closer to the sun is extremely hostile to human life, and even human artifacts. Cold is easy to overcome, heat is a far more challenging problem. But I think it's probably mostly that you're conflating "outward = away from Earth" with "outward = away from Sun". Who hasn't heard of the various Venus probes?

Re:As with all space missions:

[Rei]

I'll begin by stating that I I don't support such a mission, as I prefer robotic exploration. But this proposal isn't as extreme as it may sound - it's probably a heck of a lot easier than landing on a planet and taking off. It's only 640 m/s from earth escape to Venus (3/5ths that of Mars). Transit time is less and launch windows a lot more frequent. Venus offers very easy aerocapture. You don't have to deal with the randomness of the surface - your "landing" is a lot more forgiving. Your habitat is probably simpler, not having to deal with a surface (although there's a few potential complications that need to be studied, such as storms, and I don know the radiation level at the desired altitude). Keeping it aloft is easy - even normal earth air is a lifting gas on Venus. Solar energy arriving at Venus is double that of Earth. Nearly earth's gravity eliminates a lot of the uncertanties about skeletal and muscular wasting.

One of the neat things is that a person could potentially step outside without any sort of special suit, just an oxygen mask. It's a "maybe", though, as there's a few complicating factors. It's 37C (100F) at the same sort of heights that it's about 600mb; for US analogies, it's Phoenix temperatures at Mount Whitney air pressures (lower or higher for both, depending on your exact altitude - you can choose). So it's not a perfect match - but probably tolerable. But there's two potential complicating gases: SO2/sulfuric acid and carbon monoxide. Breathing them is right out, but even long-term (hours at a time) skin exposure might be problematic at the given concentrations; it's not certain whether at these altitudes they'd be prohibitive. They would however make eye protection a must at the very least, the eyes are more sensitive to both CO and SO2 than the skin.

Manned or not, the main advantage of a Venus blimp would be the lower altitude it would provide to scientific equipment versus satellites. So you'll get a lot more information on the atmosphere, which could help answer questions about Venus's evolution (and how other worlds in other systems might be). You'll get higher resolution radar imaging of the surface. You simplify to some extent sample return missions from the surface, as each sample collection doesn't have to be a self contained return mission. Etc.

One thing on Venus I'd love to see studied more is the super-reflective radar surfaces. It's now believed to be due to a "galena snow", snow made of shiny, electrically conductive lead sulfide. I'd really love to know more about the surface minerology of Venus in general.

Re:As with all space missions:

[BarbaraHudson]

Not as close as Venus. And by that logic, we should cancel all Mars missions until the existing ones fail.

Re:As with all space missions:

[BarbaraHudson]

Other than being half the distance from the sun ?

Re:As with all space missions:

[BarbaraHudson]

If you want to do manned flights, orbital stations have a few problems. There's the lack of air pressure, lack of anything exceeding microgravity, and extremes of heat and cold at the same time. Also, in orbit it's not possible to tap the sulfuric acid clouds to get the essentials - water, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Plus there is reason to believe that microbial life of some sort exists in the clouds.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

Actually, as I recall the upper atmosphere is almost entirely CO2. You'd still likely need some protection from incidental exposure, but nothing like you'd need deeper in the atmosphere where sulfuric acid becomes the dominant component. And the atmospheric probes we've sent suggest that wind turbulence is less than expected (though still extreme) - and that's really the only reason you would care that the ground you couldn't hope to reach anyway is passing at 200+mph.

And I see no reason why rocket launches would be substantially more difficult: just dangle your rocket below a floating "launch platform", start firing the rockets at less than local gravitational acceleration (so it doesn't start to climb), and cut it loose. It can then drop down while maneuvering to a safe distance from the platform, before beginning its climb. It would take a bit more fuel, but is nothing a Falcon 9 couldn't handle - except maybe the dangling part, the superstructure would probably have to be modified to safely support itself in tension as well as compression.

However, I don't see any reason to even consider such a floating habitat unless we discovered something *really* interesting on the planet, or need a fuel depot in the inner system - something that seems unlikely in the next few centuries considering the inhospitably warm nature of the inner solar system, and the lack of anything interesting beyond Venus and Mercury - neither of which seem to offer much of non-scientific interest, at least at our present level of technology. But hey, I guess it's nice to know that there will still be challenging frontiers awaiting us even after the Moon and Mars have thriving colonies of their own.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

>we might not want to commit our astronauts to landing on Mars only to find out that they could not walk, their musculature had so degenerated upon arrival

Ummm... didn't we learn anything in the ISS?

Re:As with all space missions:

[MaWeiTao]

I really don't understand what the hell you're talking about. Every time I've ever heard the flat earth myth brought up it's been by people trying to discredit religion, to remind us of how oppressive and stupid the Church was during the Middle Ages.

Re:As with all space missions:

[itzly]

Not as close, but close enough. And even if we wanted to see more, the easiest step would be to use a better telescope. The next easiest would be to send a satellite in a closer orbit around the Sun.

Re:As with all space missions:

[itzly]

How would you get a Falcon 9 to Venus, and how big would a balloon have to be to carry it ?

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

They would however make eye protection a must at the very least, the eyes are more sensitive to both CO and SO2 than the skin.

"My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"

Re:As with all space missions:

[__aaclcg7560]

We learned how to play nice with the Russians, especially during hockey season.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

Umm, air pressure is only an issue if you open the door - which you wouldn't want to do on Venus anyway, unless you want to die of carbon dioxide poisioning.

Microgravity is a legitimate issue, but centripetal force can overcome that, and a rotating "tethered dumbbell" station is well within the limits of current material science.

Heat and cold extremes are only an issue if you can't average them out effectively, by, say having a thermally conductive hull. I recall no major issues on that front from the ISS, though the problem would admittedly grow worse as you get closer to the sun. Rotating would also go a long way to solving that problem as well.

Meanwhile the atmosphere offers plenty of CO2 and some nitrogen, but no hydrogen aside from the paltry amount in the 25ppm water vapor, and extracting that in the presence of the 150ppm sulfur dioxide is likely going to be a challenge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

And as far as "cloud mining" and gathering samples of potential microbial life are concerned, what's wrong with simply dropping a skyhook from your orbital station? It's not like you're trying to support the growth of an offworld colony, there's *way* more hospitable places in the solar system to do that. In fact most any large carbonaceous asteroid would likely qualify.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

Well, if you're flying to Venus presumably you're doing so via a big honking rocket. And presumably you plan to ride the same rocket home again. Maybe even a Falcon 9, if you weren't taking too much with you.

Not sure just how big the balloon would have to be, but lets see... Falcon 9 v1.1 takeoff mass: ~500 tonnes. Density of CO2 at STP: ~2g/L
500,000 kg / (0.002kg/L) = 250,000,000 L = 250,000m^3, or about 25% larger than the Hindenburg (assuming lift-gas density is negligible).

Re: As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's certainly livable at 55% Earth pressure. There are cities at 5000m with that pressure.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Triklyn]

well, similarly, not much purpose in doing a lot of stuff in space. not much purpose in going to mars at all. no point in going to the top of our world, nor going to the bottom of the ocean. sometimes you don't know what you don't know, but you know how to get a good look at its shadow.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that, no. Everyone knew the world was round and how big it was (It's trivially proven by trigonometry which was understood by the ancient Greeks, and formed the basis for navigation at the time), except Columbus, who thought the world was smaller that it is and based his mission on that false premis.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

*Lots* of stuff being done in space that couldn't plausibly be done by robots, micro-g research can't be done on Earth. Stuck in a tin can floating above Venus though, you've basically got all the disadvantages of being on Earth, and none of the advantages.

Mars and the Moon both have potential to host self-sustaining Earth colonies (especially Mars) by applying existing technology, so there's plenty of potential there, if probably not as short-term lucrative as the rape-pillage-and-plunder that has characterized most modern colonization efforts.

I'm not arguing against exploring Venus, it's just that all the usual specious arguments against human exploration of space actually *apply* there. You can't survive on the surface, no matter what protection you have. You can't even stick your hand out the window of your airship without it starting to dissolve. So long as humans are restricted to living within a sealed system isolated from the surrounding environment the only possible benefit of them being there at all are the advantages of a shorter distance - mainly time and energy costs for transferring signals and samples. And compared to the difficulties in creating a lighter-than-air station in a toxic, corrosive atmosphere, just boosting the samples to an orbital station built on tried-and-true technology is probably going to be a lot safer, easier, and cheaper. Someday our technology will no doubt enable us to walk around on the surface and perform real science and exploration in person - but until then there's nothing to be accomplished by getting humans any closer than orbit.

As for visiting the farthest reaches on Earth in person - that's always been mostly a vanity project. Not that there's anything wrong with that, provided you're footing the bill yourself, but after the initial survey the missions with serious funding have pretty much all had a clear idea of what they hoped to accomplish beforehand.

Re:As with all space missions:

[BarbaraHudson]

Umm, air pressure is only an issue if you open the door - which you wouldn't want to do on Venus anyway, unless you want to die of carbon dioxide poisioning.

Unlike needing a full pressure suit, think scuba gear and a protective layer. The temperature at 52km is a bit chilly at 13C / 55F, but it is in many respects a lot more hospitable than a space station in orbit.

Meanwhile the atmosphere offers plenty of CO2 and some nitrogen, but no hydrogen aside from the paltry amount in the 25ppm water vapor,

The clouds are made of sulfur dioxide - (SO2) which produces a sulfuric acid rain (H2SO4). So, mining that rain gives you H2O, or O2 and H2. In the absence of atmospheric oxygen, you can safely use H2 as your lifting gas, and not have the leakage problems that using monatomic helium gives.

Or you can look here.

Re: As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

The space nutter troll is not listening. Now that you fed him he's too busy masturbating.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

The future lies in space. It could be a million years before we reach the nearest stars, all nearly-invisible red dwarfs, but our solar system is big enough to keep us busy almost forever. The first step is setting up self-sustaining colonies that care for the orbiting solar power stations we'll build one day for Earth.

Material from the moon will be used at first. An industrial colony will process the lunar soil and fling both completed building materials and pulverized tailings into orbit with linear accelerators. By streaming the dust through the focus of a huge mirror, we heat it to the melting point, and use it to build miles-long hollow cylinders, in layers, like making a clay coil pot. Literally a titanic "3D printer". The ends are closed and the whole thing is set spinning. Inside, we have the ground area of a whole county. Enough room for forests, towns and cropland, safe from the cold and radiation of space. Another mirror arrangement brings sunlight inside.

After surrounding the moon and earth with rocky, orbiting colonies, Mercury will be the next frontier. Though made of different materials, it's only a bit bigger than the moon. Established technology will likely work there as well. Solar energy is much more concentrated, and we won't need such big mirrors. Mercury orbit will become the power station for the solar system, beaming concentrated energy to outlying colonies, stations, research vessels and ore freighters. Even more colonies will be built here, nourished by the abundance of energy.

After Luna and Mercury, there will be very little use of the other planets, other than small moons. Planets are just too darn hard to get on and off of. None have proper gravity or pressure for us. We'll live and work in space, and mine the rocks that are already floating about in easy reach. We'll wrap giant drawstring sacks around an asteroid or comet, and pulverize it to our heart's content inside. After all the useful minerals and chemicals are separated, the rubble becomes yet more colonies.

The moons of Mars will be our first asteroids, but Mars is not likely worth colonizing. Venus might be a possibility, but only if the ground is covered with metals, ready to be hoisted up to mankind's floating cities. It's worth keeping an eye on for it's abundant energy, sources of air and water, and vast territory protected from radiation. The asteroid belt will be the largest source of mineral and chemical wealth, powered by Mercury transmissions or nuclear power.

After the first few generations, mining and colony-building will be nearly automated. Humankind will populate the solar system for the same reasons we settled the American Frontier - Freedom (sanctuary). Each colony potentially being the cradle of a new culture, though we'll all remain in constant touch if we choose. Earth may have more people then, than it has today, yet the vast majority of humans will be colony dwellers.

Whoever develops nanotechnology may well have the keys to the stars, but with the ability to manipulate microscopic scales, we could repair the Earth and turn Venus into a second paradise in a couple decade's time, too. We could even colonize Saturn, building a world with almost a hundred times the surface area of Earth. Saturn's gravity around the cloudtops is about 1G. All we need is to fill it with floating cities, or pave it with a floating foam made of diamond to have a gargantuan surface to walk upon.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

People had known the earth was round for hundreds if not thousands of years before Columbus.

Technically correct, but incomplete. Some people knew it. This was the kind of ideas that had very limited circulation. Remember, this is before the printing press was invented, and on a time where religion ruled the show (on occidental countries, the Arabic world was much better back then, and in fact, the few occidentals that got news of those ideas received them via translations from Arab).

As for the vast majority of people (that included populace as well as people in power position, like the Spanish kings), it was dragons over there.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Ihlosi]

After Luna and Mercury, there will be very little use of the other planets, other than small moons.

I disagree.

Planets are just too darn hard to get on and off of.

Only if you use primitive launch technologies which require the ascent vehicle to carry all of the necessary energy and reaction mass for the ascent.

Seriously, you think that in your scenario, we'll still use rockets as the main way to get off planets?

The first thing we need is one or more ways to launch things into space where most of the energy and reaction mass is not carried by the launch vehicle.

None have proper gravity or pressure for us.

Venus could be cooled down with a solar shade in space (which could double as a power plant) and be transformed into something more habitable than its current state.

Also, some applications work in a wide range of gravity. You can have fairly normal kitchens, bathrooms, swimming pools, showers, sinks and toilets on Mars, despite only having a third of the gravity of Earth.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Triklyn]

farthest reaches, at least marianas style were all about finding different life. everest :) yeah, vanity.

one great thing about people, we're incredibly finicky, need a shit ton of maintenance, yadda yadda yadda, so damn fragile. but we've got these unparalleled manipulators attached to our arms, and don't need constant monitoring from earth. Like, literally, you can build in redundancies sure, but for replacing a lightbulb, tightening a screw, replacing a solar panel, just reacting to when the unexpected happens, people are pretty good.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

I absolutely agree, and strongly support human exploration in situations where those arms can actually leave their protective tin can to interact with the environment. But hands aren't much good for working with gasses, or in environments that would kill even a man in the best protective suit we can make that would still allow mobility. Deep-sea exploration gets a bit of a pass in my mind simply because it's so difficult communicating through large distances of water with any kind of bandwidth, and tethers introduce all sorts of issues of their own.

Re: As with all space missions:

[MickeydotFinn]

We'll use the airships to pull out mixatalis, the vital agent used to process unobtainium.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Triklyn]

you give us some nice remote controlled robots with some nice dexterity, and i'd say people exploration isn't that important. Low latency is also pretty key, as getting directions from earth is a pretty slow thing

Re:As with all space missions:

[neoritter]

Columbus used an earlier and rejected position for the East coast of Asia and assumptions based on Marco Polo's travels. At that time, everyone was using Ptolemy's estimates. Ptolemy estimated that Asia's East Coast was 180 degrees East of the Canary islands, versus Columbus' 225 (old estimate) + 28 (Marco Polo) + 30 (because Columbus). So yes a more accurate and trustworthy estimate was being used at the time.

Further, if Asia's East coast was further East, then the Atlantic would be smaller and would be potentially traversable by contemporary ships. It just so happened that Columbus was a lucky idiot and the Caribbean was just about where he thought Japan was. Mariners of the day thought he was stupid to think he could traverse the Atlantic to reach Asia and not starve before getting there. Which was the reason he couldn't find anyone to fund his exploratory voyage. You can complicate it all you want, but the basic issue at hand was that Columbus thought the Atlantic was smaller than what the majority of everyone else thought it was.

Re:As with all space missions:

[neoritter]

What don't you understand? You seem to grasp what I'm saying.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Immerman]

Thanks. Hadn't heard a lot of that before.

Re:As with all space missions:

[pepsikid]

Seriously, I didn't mention rockets at all, did I?

I love the space elevator/beanstalk idea, but we're several human generations away from the first full-scale model. For getting on and off of planets and moons, I think we'll probably have transorbital skyhooks first. A grappling device at the end of a space-anchored cable will periodically swing down and "catch" high-altitude flying launch vehicles, moving at sub-escape speed, to pull them onward into space itself. Another grappler on the other end of the cable serves as the counterweight, which holds another vehicle headed home. The cable is far shorter than a space elevator, and the system is essentially in low orbit, rotating around a shifting point somewhere along the cable.

Typical interplanetary propulsion will be through solar wind sails, ion thrusters and maybe nuclear rockets. It's going to be slow, so there will be swarms of roomy interplanetary "ocean liners" on permanent tour between the Solar System's destinations, following meandering paths which again, cost very little in energy but take their time. These will be like mini-colonies, but with mostly temporary residents. Perhaps colonists will get some practice here for life in their future home.

Earth-moon-Lagrangian and inter-colony transportation may be through a network of space-slingshots much like the skyhook. AKA "rotovators" or space tethers. Freight and passenger modules are caught on one end of an anchored cable, whirled around, and released at just the right time to send them on to their destination, or yet another slingshot. This system relies on precision timing, but is extremely low-cost in terms of energy. Folks could board on Earth at a relatively conventional airport, and ride in the same seats all the way to the colonies or interplanetary 'liners.

If we're to make nuclear rockets routine, we'll first need to have already reached the asteroid belt - and gotten lucky with what resources we found there. If we're to make antimatter rockets routine, we'll need to have already built immense production facilities in Mercury orbit. And there's the problem of thousands of these torchships pointing their ultra-radioactive exhaust here and there.

So; a few hundred more years of chemical rockets, yeah. They'll still be heavy, complex, dangerous and expensive. And why go through all that just to get to and from solid ground when we have materials floating around everywhere, and can build our own habitats to fit our biological needs precisely. We just wait for the robots to finish a new colony, then we toss a can of settlers at it, lol. The issue with gravity isn't whether the plumbing works. It's that our bodies work properly only under 1G. It's far easier and cheaper to build space colonies with the proper characteristics, than it is to rebuild a lethal world or breed a new species tolerant of inhuman environments.

Oh, and if you want to cool Venus down with a solar shade, you'll first need a society stable enough to maintain a complicated, expensive project for many millions of years. Venus doesn't shed much heat, and it isn't absorbing much any more, either. The clouds are very reflective. Once Venus is stripped and chilled, you'll still just have a nice, cool sterile rock. Venus won't be of much use until we can disassemble and reassemble matter itself.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Ihlosi]

I love the space elevator/beanstalk idea, but we're several human generations away from the first full-scale model.

Which is why we should stop dreaming about it and stark working on things that are feasible with our technology. Mass drivers, launch loops, laser propulsion, you name it.

Venus won't be of much use until we can disassemble and reassemble matter itself.

Actually, we don't need anything that exotic (matter generation) for starters. We need a universal chemical synthesizer, which can assemble chosen molecules from a set of given input compounds. Basically a very flexible chemical plant. It doesn't need to create matter, just rearrange given molecules into new molecules.

Re:As with all space missions:

[pepsikid]

In learning school, the people of my tribe were taught that molecules ARE matter.

Anyway, I disagree with putting off the cheap, automated construction of simple, straightforward "space concrete" colonies in favor of throwing our entire planet's disposable income, for millions of years, into gussying up a hellhole like Venus or Mars. If we someday invent antigravity or anything else that makes it feasible to commute from Marinaras Deep-Sea City on Earth to Mars each day to work at Yeastburger King, we'll move into the planets then.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Ihlosi]

In learning school, the people of my tribe were taught that molecules ARE matter.

Atomic nuclei are matter. Disassembling and reassembling atomic nuclei, however, is an entirely different beast (several orders of magnitude difference in energy) than disassembling and reassembling molecules.

Re:As with all space missions:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like you're just standing in a corner somewhere muttering to yourself.

Let's chose a name

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose : The Hindem-Tanic!

Re:Let's chose a name

[Anonymous Coward]

someone mod this up, it made me lol at least.

Re:Let's chose a name

[war4peace]

Titanburg is more catchy. Catchier? Damn my English.

Re: Let's chose a name

[tysonedwards]

Skytanic?

Awesome!

[OwMyBrain]

I've been wondering for years why we couldn't send a dirigible probe to Venus, but apparently the Russians have already done that! I think this is much more realistic than a manned mission to mars and I hope the idea gains traction.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

dirigibles have a rigid structure, blimps structure comes from the pressure in the envelope. Rigid is big and heavy, and if deploying, complex. We could probably pull off a buckeyeball sort of structure, but that's still a lot of mass. Balloons are probably better for this application. If it weren't for the corrosive atmosphere, I think an electric powered airplane would be ideal, but that place is hell on seals (and every other organic, and most inorganics too)

Re:Awesome!

[Ihlosi]

I've been wondering for years why we couldn't send a dirigible probe to Venus

Balloons are neither dirigbles, nor dirigible. They just provide buoyancy.

Re:Awesome!

[Immerman]

Actually, from what I can find dirigible is a largely obsolete synonym of the generic "airship", which were originally called dirigible balloons (from the French "dirigible", meaning steerable or navigable). An (admittedly brief) google search didn't find any cases of dirigible being used specifically for rigid airships.

The distinction you are making is more legitimately between the two sub-types of airships: "blimps" and "rigid airships" (the latter of which are frequently called zeppelins thanks to the fact that large rigid airships were pioneered by the German Zeppelin Company)

And Yet;

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't even go back to the moon.

This will happen right after NASA makes pigs fly.

Re: And Yet;

[tysonedwards]

Pot Bellied Pigs fly quite regularly on commercial aircraft as "service animals" as do miniature chetlan ponies, for what it's worth! What a glorious day we live in thanks to the ADA! Some amazing breakthroughs in science must be coming any day now, right? Right?

Re: And Yet;

[Grench]

Those would be Shetland ponies. i.e. ponies from the Shetland Isles, north of Scotland.

Airship

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they build it, they abandon it

Makes me wonder

[causality]

Since the atmospheric pressure at the surface is 92 times that of Earth, and the surface temperate is over 450 degrees C, the probes we've sent to Venus haven't lasted long. The Venera 8 probe sent back data for only 50 minutes after landing.

What would it take to create a probe that could survive these conditions and send back data indefinitely? Is it even currently possible to engineer electronics that can either operate at those temperatures or be insulated and cooled sustainably? If you had infinite funding and the best engineers in the world, how would you even begin to address this?

Re:Makes me wonder

[war4peace]

Ditch that idea, focus on asteroid mining as a stepping stone towards interstellar travel.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Khyber]

What would it take? Likely a new revolution in physics/thermodynamics.

Re:Makes me wonder

[itzly]

Ditch that idea. If your goal is interstellar travel, focus on better propulsion.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because vacuum tubes don't work near those temperatures. Electrons don't jump out of hot metals. Yes, we need a revolution.

Thermionic Integrated Micro Modules were a reality in the 1960s, just as semiconductors were taking over, so they just stopped working on them.

Then there's fluidics, why not use hot gases in valves to do logic?

Diode/core logic, etc... There are many ways to do logic at high temperatures.

Re:Makes me wonder

[itzly]

How many vacuum tubes can you fit in the mass budget ?

Re:Makes me wonder

[Khyber]

Yea, you go ahead and find me materials that can operate in all those harsh conditions indefinitely.

Good luck.

Re: Makes me wonder

[tysonedwards]

Infinitely is a long time span to design for. And frankly speaking the sun will expand engulfing Venus and this proposed probe well before the clock expires on Infinity.

Re:Makes me wonder

[iggymanz]

there is no reason the probe has to send data back "indefinitely". Small disposable probes can be released periodically

Re: Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Space mining eh?

The real question is, how much will space diamonds be and do I need to learn Yiddish in order to buy the good ones?

Re:Makes me wonder

[geekoid]

You're funding my search, right?
Oh you're not putting you money were your mouth is? shocking.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it need to be indefinite? Just long enough for the mission. And if it's such a problem, what's the probe itself going to be made of? Oh my!

And what "harsh" conditions? Space is the future for the Species! Not on this rock!

Space is filled with jellybeans, puppies, and rainbows, and technology always gets better and we are now doing things once thought impossible so therefore we will solve that problem too.

Simple.

And just for your information, in WWII they developed proximity fuzes for artillery shells. So if vacuum tubes can withstand 100000G accelerations (actually it's jerk, or setback, even worse) and 20000RPM rotations with WWII technology, well, technology always gets better, right?

And cathodes can run much hotter than 450C.

They used Nuvistors for years in down-hole applications for the oil industry because they were rugged enough.

http://www.quartzdyne.com/circ...

Where is the mindless extrapolation of technology now? Someone puts a pencil on tape and gets a few layers of graphene, you whackjobs are already buying your spacesuits for a Space Elevator ride, but try to get you nutcases to realize what already exists and you shut down like an oyster.

Reality problems?

Jules Verne

[wcrowe]

It's like some sort of Jules Verne, 19th century idea of space exploration. It makes a lot of sense though. At least the unmanned mission looks like a real possibility.

it can be air filled

[dominux]

earth atmosphere air is a lifting gas on Venus, the airship could be full of normal air, and the people live inside it, not slung under it in a gondola. The pressure inside would only be a little different to the pressure outside, so a small hole in the skin of the airship wouldn't be an explosively big problem, air would just mix with the corrosive and fairly nasty outside atmosphere. It would need fixing, but it is nothing like a hole with a vacuum outside. Venus is a fairly nice place overall, lots of solar, interesting chemicals in the atmosphere. The only problem is that the ground is too far down.

Re:it can be air filled

[Jesrad]

Also mind the day duration: the Venus sidereal day is 243 Earth days. That makes for a worse than polar night, solar panel-wise, and that's not even counting the permanent, thick cloud cover. There just is no point in reaching the venusian ground and its lead-melting heat. It's far better to hang in the high atmosphere, well above the sulfuric acid clouds, and loft around in the 200 mph winds, circling the planet every 4 or 5 Earth days.

Re:it can be air filled

[schlachter]

but what's the point of sending humans to suspend them in air there? what does it lead to? What can they do that probes can not?

Re:it can be air filled

[Anonymous Coward]

Local oversight and possible remote control of probes can lead to faster, nimbler exploration campaigns (hours for probes to plan their next move vs. seconds for a human), opportunities for more lab tests to be done (because we can be on hand to pick which tests matter on the spot rather than bouncing data, analysis, and instructions from Venus to Earth and back).

Basically, we're more versatile and agile.

Re:it can be air filled

[Anonymous Coward]

Survive an Earth asteroid strike for one.

Venus colonies should be a number 2 priority, behind asteroid mining.

Re:it can be air filled

[itzly]

You compare seconds vs hours, but you overlook the fact that the R&D phase will take decades vs years. And what's the rush anyway ? Venus isn't going anywhere.

Re:it can be air filled

[dargaud]

Survive an Earth asteroid strike for one.

Yeah and then what ? It's not like you can find raw material to rebuild civilization when you are suspended 20km up in the air...

Re:it can be air filled

[pavon]

That said, the total payload mass that the ship could support is roughly the same whether it is inside the airship or outside in a gondola, and the more space you want to make available for use, the more mass you would have to dedicate to structure rather than payload. So it would be less cramped than a tiny capsule, but you would still need large expanses of mostly empty space to provide the needed buoyancy.

In practice, it might be better to have a balloon filled with a less dense gas to decrease the total volume needed to support the desired payload, and then have an attached air-filled "gondola" that is nearly as large as the balloon.

Re:it can be air filled

[itzly]

Indeed. It's going to be much easier to rebuild civilization if you stay here on Earth, and hide in an underground bunker until the worst is over.

Re:it can be air filled

[visualight]

What useful things can be harvested from the atmosphere? Are there chemicals that could be used to make plastics? Could a small habitat expand into a floating city?

Re:it can be air filled

[Phase Shifter]

The sulfuric acid itself might be useful. It shouldn't be too hard to split into SO3 and H2O.

SO2 was used as a refrigerant prior to WWII, and could be produced by reducing the SO3, then used to cool the airship to temperatures more suitable for electronics/experiments/humans.

Re:it can be air filled

[invid]

The NPC is a science fiction story that takes place in the atmosphere of Venus (disclaimer, I wrote it). I tried to present a realistic view of how an actual colony might function there.

Re:it can be air filled

[dominux]

fair point, I don't think putting humans in the Venus atmosphere is a massively good idea until it is a viable place for full time colonisation, which it could be. If we are going to colonise another planet it is better than Mars in terms of energy and resources. I think in the shorter term airship probes would be good, as well as solar powered fixed wing flyers.

Re:it can be air filled

[surd1618]

They can die in storm or turbulence-related accidents, making the whole mission much more dramatic and Hollywood-worthy.

Re:it can be air filled

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I'm in favor of sending lots of extremophiles to Venus and seeing if they can survive or even show signs of (slowly) altering the environment. At some point we are going to have to start contaminating places with a biological presence even if we aren't sure that life is already there.

Re:it can be air filled

[Immerman]

>Basically, we're more versatile and agile.

I agree, and that's a great reason to send humans to the Moon, Mars, etc, where they can do interesting and adaptable things On Venus though pretty much everything would have to be suspended by balloon in the 200+mph winds of the upper atmosphere. Agility is of no benefit when you are restrained within a dirigible, and versatility is of limited use when you're basically limited to riding the wind where it takes you while trying desperately to maintain a reasonably constant altitude. How much science can be done on gas samples by humans that can't be done by robots?

Now, if we had surface probes we were controlling, then eliminating the time delay might be useful, but it would still probably be safer and cheaper to simply operate them from an orbital habitat. Then if you want to engage in versatile experimentation on solid samples you can simply boost them into orbit for collection

Re:it can be air filled

[Anonymous Coward]

but what's the point of sending humans to suspend them in air there? what does it lead to? What can they do that probes can not?

Humans could analyze surface samples returned by automated probes, instead of sending the samples all the way back to Earth.

Re:it can be air filled

[Immerman]

Well, it's mostly CO2 (96.5%), some nitrogen (3.5%), and a lot of trace stuff - sulfur dioxide at 150ppm, Argon at ~75ppm, and some water, carbon monoxide, helium, and neon at 25ppm each.

So... not that much on it's own other than oxygen, unless you could cost-effectively extract the water. But import hydrogen and you've got the building blocks for food, cellulose-based building materials, and methane and other hydrocarbons (aka rocket fuel). Could make a good refueling depot if we were doing other projects in the inner system (building solar collection arrays?), but not much to recommend it as a colony destination.

Re:it can be air filled

[Anonymous Coward]

carbon dioxide and lots of energy.

A civilization with molecular nanoassemblers could build whole airship clusters out of diamond. When you think of it that way, Venus is a good choice for shipyards in that scenario. use a skyhook to get you from cruising altitude to Orbit.

Re:it can be air filled

[schlachter]

that's the near term solution.

one would hope that 10,000 years out we've diversified a bit and put ourselves on other planets/bodies.

perhaps 100,000 years out we've diversified to other solar systems.

Re:it can be air filled

[schlachter]

i assume your post is sarcasm, but just incase it's not...

what molecular analysis capabilities do humans have...aside from smell?

Rocket size for escape

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Gravity there is roughly equal to 1G, and horizontal velocity is not significant, I can't see any reason why the size of a rocket required to get humans off one of these habitats would be significantly less than one that is required to get one off Earth. OK there's a bit of a benefit to being 50km up, but with no real velocity, surely they would need something equivalent to provide a similar delta v. The mass of such a rocket would surely be prohibitive (it would sink any balloon of this size, not to mention problems getting it there). Of course no such issues if for humans it is a one-way trip. Are my assumptions right or am I missing something?

An airship city?

[the_skywise]

Golly... where have I heard of that before...

They could call it Columbia...

Re:An airship city?

[mjwx]

Golly... where have I heard of that before...

They could call it

Cloud city
 
/grabs blaster rifle

Now get off my moisture farm, damn kids.

not a serious proposal

[itzly]

As soon as they said "manned", it was obvious that this isn't serious. There's no purpose to sending people to sit forever in a closed capsule.

Re:not a serious proposal

[gcnaddict]

Other than, you know, zero-delay research of atmospheric conditions on Venus.

You know, the first steps to determining if there's even a distant shot in hell of terraforming the place in a century or three.

Re:not a serious proposal

[itzly]

You are worried about a few hours of delay in a mission that will take decades ?

Re:not a serious proposal

[tehcyder]

As soon as they said "manned", it was obvious that this isn't serious. There's no purpose to sending people to sit forever in a closed capsule.

You say that, but there are plenty of mentally ill people on slashdot who would happily live in a tin can for a couple of years, and die on Mars living in a small tin hut.

Re:not a serious proposal

[blue9steel]

You know, the first steps to determining if there's even a distant shot in hell of terraforming the place in a century or three.

At the moment I'm not seeing a reason why it's worth the investment. I love space and wish we were doing more but human exploration is expensive and has low ROI. What we really need to do is figure out how to commercialize space, we're not going to get very far at the current pace of a few billion here and there. Only private industry can afford to put in the trillions that would be required to really get things moving.

Re:not a serious proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction - there are plenty of mentally ill people on slashdot who would force us all to pay for someone else to live in a tin can for a couple of years and die on Mars in a small tin hut.

Re:not a serious proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as they said "manned", it was obvious that this isn't serious. There's no purpose to sending people to sit forever in a closed capsule.

You say that, but there are plenty of mentally ill people on slashdot who would happily live in a tin can for a couple of years, and die on Mars living in a small tin hut.

In all fairness, there are plenty of mentally healthy people on /. who would happily live for years in a tin can IN SPAAAAACE!, or in a tin hut ON MAAAARS! Etc.

Re:not a serious proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Trillions?

Nothing that can cost trillions can be done by "private industry". The entire world GDP is $100 trillion a year.

Such a project would require government investment, but it would be along the lines of imperialism. The goal has to be the government underwrites the cost of exploitation in part. Historically, this was through allowing advanced banking, special legal privileges (corporations), and government financed military forces. These were huge costs, and simply never could have happened without massive government involvement.

Sulfuric acid

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to assume that even at 50 km, the air would be filled with sulfuric acid fumes and there would be NO waters. It would still make Hell seem like Club Med.

One interesting fact that everyone seems to have forgotten is that once you get under the cloud deck, the air is clear so you might have a beautiful view as your airship gets corroded....

Re:Sulfuric acid

[mrego]

Corrosion is well understood and can be handled. Where else (outside of earth) can you find 1G, near earth temperature/air pressure, free energy (solar), radiation shielding, an atmosphere from which you could make water if not air, and a relatively short (6 month) trip away ?! None of those are on Mars. Combine with a skyhook/elevator and drones to fly below the clouds and there are plenty of opportunities for exploration especially of the Maxwell Montes (11km high!) and Maat Mons (highest volcano). And perhaps could become a base to explore Aten/Apohele asteroids.

Re:Sulfuric acid

[mrego]

Forgot to mention future robotic mining of Venus for elements like aluminum, iron, titanium, manganese...

Re:Sulfuric acid

[Immerman]

How do you figure we could get water? There's less than 25ppm water in Venus's atmosphere, versus 150ppm sulfur dioxide. Nor are there any other hydrogen-containing molecules from which it could be synthesized. Air could at least be be made from CO2 and nitrogen, with enough energy.

Also, anything that's flying below the clouds is down in that acidic atmosphere that has wreaked havoc with everything we've sent so far. Could be problematic.

Meanwhile on Mars we have:
- Free solar energy (less efficient than than on Earth, much less Venus, but still)
- 0.4 g. (Is 1g a magic number for some reason? Maybe, but so far all we know is weightlessness causes problems, a lot of which would probably be resolved by *any* significant gravity.)
- 24.7 hour days (within the narrow range that humans can be entrained to)
- radiation shielding (a few meters of sand is WAY more effective than some air and magnetic fields
- An atmosphere almost identical to Venus's except in density (and the absence of the caustic sulfur dioxide)
- fresh water in practically unlimited quantities in the ice caps, and possibly extractable from the soil as well
- The fact that with CO2, water, and nitrogen you can grow plants to produce air, food, and all manner of cellulose-based construction materials.
- the aforementioned sand - good for lots of things beyond radiation shielding, especially if we can develop a binding agent from local resources.
- solid ground to build upon, provide for recreational activities, and provide all manner of hands-on research opportunities.

Sure, it's cold - but heat is cheap. Especially if we took a nuclear reactor along instead of solar panels - a 25-50MWe modular reactor could be lifted to orbit by a single Falcon Heavy, would provide more electricity than a comparable mass of solar panels (even with current mass-rich designs), and would generate a comparable amount of heat as well, making it a much better investment.

Plus it's really only the ground that's cold - insulate the bottom of your boots and the rest of you is already essentially in a budget vacuum thermos. Shedding heat will likely be a bigger challenge than keeping warm, and thanks to that cold, cold ground that shouldn't prove too difficult.

Woo hoo ... steampunk!!

[gstoddart]

Airships? Floating cities?

Hell yeah!! Space exploration has needed to take a steampunk turn for a while now. We totally need more brass goggles and leather aviator jackets.

I for one welcome our new Cloud City overlords.

Let's do it.

[Ihlosi]

The airship idea is a great idea. Not with astronauts (there wouldn't be much to do for them, unlike on Mars, where they could look at rock formations, dig holes and play golf), but a robotic airship would get a much closer look at Venus than any satellite.

Plus, it would be a "first".

Sending human beings ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok I understand the added value of sending humain beings on the Moon or Mars, but to drift in a balloon in Venus' atmosphere what's the point ?

resident evile part duh

[Anonymous Coward]

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1000s of our genuine spiritual & physical allys continue dying daily from 100% preventable starvation, rockets red glare, babys bursting in air etc... still no one is responsible,,

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Solar irradiance in the article?

[Ihlosi]

The article states that Venus gets 40% more solar irradiance than Earth and 240% more than Mars. I wonder where these numbers come from. From the inverse-square law, Venus would get about twice the solar irradiance of Earth, and about four times the irradiance of Mars ...

Re:Solar irradiance in the article?

[reve_etrange]

I wonder where these numbers come from.

Different magnetic fields strengths and atmospheres (or lack thereof). The values themselves are probably empirical data from the previous unmanned probes (as opposed to theoretical calculations assuming a location just outside the magnetic field).

Re:Solar irradiance in the article?

[Ihlosi]

Different magnetic fields strengths and atmospheres (or lack thereof).

Photons shouldn't be affected by magnetic fields. And the numbers given in the article correspond suspiciously well to an inverse-distance relationship.

Re:Solar irradiance in the article?

[reve_etrange]

And the numbers given in the article correspond suspiciously well to an inverse-distance relationship.

Why did you make the parent comment specifically stating the opposite?

Re:Solar irradiance in the article?

[Ihlosi]

Why did you make the parent comment specifically stating the opposite?

Err, I didnt?

The correct relationship is an inverse-square-distance (1/(d^2)) relationship. Compared to Venus, Earth is about 140% of Venus' orbital radius from the sun (and therefore gets 1.4^2 the solar irradiance) and Mars is about 240% farther from the sun (and therefore gets 2.4^2 the solar irradiance).

The numbers in the article give an inverse (not squared) relationship, which would be correct for distances, but not for solar irradiance.

Re:Solar irradiance in the article?

[reve_etrange]

My bad, I thought you wrote "inverse-square" the second time. The irradiance depends on the latitude and declination as well as the distance from the sun - I found this site with detailed formulae. Basically in addition to the inverse-square factor is a sinusodial factor for the angle and a logarithmic factor for the atmospheric absorption, but it turns out the inverse-square part really is dominant for the average values at the top of the atmosphere, just like your intution. These data also support that.

They might not be referring to top-of-atmosphere values, though, so there's no way to tell if they're actually mistaken without knowing what atmospheric heights they're comparing. The atmospheric effect is surprisingly large even on Mars, where the attenuation is at least 1.2-fold and as high as 150-fold during a storm (from the Viking data from the first link).

Vaporware

[Russ1642]

This won't happen in my lifetime.

RIP Venus Express

[Anonymous Coward]

ESA also declared end-of-mission for Venus Express the other day.

I'm way more curious about Venus than Mars. I hope we can explore it more.

Really cool idea

[robstout]

But the smart-ass in me has to wonder if someone in NASA has been reading too much steampunk.

Re:Really cool idea

[bluefoxlucid]

Seen it.

Great idea but let's make it more efficient

[pubwvj]

By eliminating the return trip this could be far more effective and efficient. Permanent settlers would not need a return vehicle so all that energy and material could be used to take more materials and people.

Re:Great idea but let's make it more efficient

[tehcyder]

By eliminating the return trip this could be far more effective and efficient. Permanent settlers would not need a return vehicle so all that energy and material could be used to take more materials and people.

People like you are why the term "space nutter" exists.

You aren't going to permanently settle anywhere in a 100m long airship, and the surface is basically uninhabitable.

There is absolutely no point sending humans to Venus, unless as a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

Re:Great idea but let's make it more efficient

[__aaclcg7560]

There is absolutely no point sending humans to Venus, unless as a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

That's what they said about Australia. A penal colony at Venus might work.

Re:Great idea but let's make it more efficient

[pubwvj]

I guess you missed the part about if there was no return flight they could take along a lot more which would allow for a far larger airship. 100m is big. Make it bigger. The return equipment allowance would let it be 1,000m or more.

People like you are an example of lack of vision. Sad.

It's also sad that you feel so threatened that you resort to name calling. That's childish.

Love the science mission

[WindBourne]

This actually makes sense for an interesting science mission. Not sure if it makes sense for humans to go there, but loads of science can be done from above.

A Crewed Version?

[l0ungeb0y]

Considering that a surface mission is completely unfeasible and that they would effectively be little more than equipment operators, it seems the only benefit to a manned mission would be "less latency" in controlling the equipment vs drone style operators based here on Earth. Personally, aside from "bragging rights" for pulling off the first manned Venus Mission I do not see anything that could remotely justify the risk of life and massive financial costs a manned mission would incur.

Re:A Crewed Version?

[by (1706743)]

But the bragging rights could be pretty cool -- it sounds like at these altitudes it would be a breathable atmosphere. Would be very cool to be the first human beings to breathe another planet's atmosphere!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Let cool

[dargaud]

I like the idea of building a gigantic monomolecular sheet at the L1 point of Venus to reflect/deflect part of the sunlight, letting Venus cool off. Below a certain temperature parts of its atmosphere start to condense, also dropping the air pressure by a significant amount. Possible terraforming in a much easier way than on Mars, hardly any high tech involved except for a sheet factory and tanks of raw material at L1.

Re:Let cool

[Gavagai80]

A cool Venus would actually still be much harder to live on or terraform than Mars, because it has no water (in any phase).

Re:Let cool

[kit_triforce]

Of course this could destroy various aspects of Venus worth studying, and there is even a remote possibility of destroying some sort of alien ecosystem we have yet to discover. Before we set out to change the planet, let's understand it first. Mining the atmosphere (and further along the surface) for chemicals could make a cloud city financially viable in the far future (sooner and faster than terraforming), but since we have extremely limited data as to what is actually there we need to explore first, and explore well.

Sulfuric acid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the sulfuric acid in Venus' atmosphere slowly eat away at any metal in the airship's frame?

Re:Sulfuric acid?

[jeffb (2.718)]

What do you suppose they use for shipping sulfuric acid?

Re:Sulfuric acid?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a witch! burn him!

Pointless

[Sperbels]

Venus will never be inhabitable until we can radically alter the atmosphere. Colonizing the atmosphere is pointless. Where are you going to get raw materials? It would be far easier to hollow out an asteroid and colonize the interior than it ever would be to establish a presence on Venus.

Why is no one else calling BS?

[frovingslosh]

"and the ascent vehicle that the astronauts would use to return to Venus's orbit, and home."

The summary establishes that the gravity is about Earth gravity. The "ascent vehicle" can't be something small and simple like the stories say was used to get the astronauts off the moon. With a 1G gravity well we would be talking about a large launch vehicle here. And, unless NASA has been wasting our tax dollars just for show then that also implies that it would need all of the launch pad accessories that we use here in our own 1G environment, you don't just launch something like that from a balloon suspended in hot acid.

Re:Why is no one else calling BS?

[Billy the Mountain]

+1 Pretty much what I would have said.

Re:Why is no one else calling BS?

[Moof123]

Yep, BS. Making a manned trip to Venus seems to be the height of contrivance. If the humans will sit in a balloon the whole time, what exactly is gained over just sending telemetry back from an unmanned balloon?

NASA really fits the adage of "Big Hat, No Cattle."

I wish them the best, but they have really lost their way, and have no coherent mission anymore.

Re:Why is no one else calling BS?

[fahrbot-bot]

Ya, but you'd already be 50km above the surface. How would that affect the launch budget?

Re:Why is no one else calling BS?

[bananaquackmoo]

For one thing, the knowledge of how humans can survive living in a balloon around another planet?

Why NASA doesn't make a transport spaceship?

[master_p]

All that is needed for manned exploration of the solar system is a transport spaceship, with rotating sections for gravity and nuclear propulsion.

Re:Why NASA doesn't make a transport spaceship?

[itzly]

Space is no place for fragile meatbags. Let the robots do the exploring.

Re:Why NASA doesn't make a transport spaceship?

[jsepeta]

But what if Veeger leads the intelligent machines back to Earth?

Re:Why NASA doesn't make a transport spaceship?

[KeensMustard]

All that is needed for manned exploration of the solar system is a transport spaceship,

Incorrect.

I assume Ben Bova was part of the original team ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because his book "Venus" is all about Blimp exploration on Venus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_%28novel%29

Hydrogen blimps

[buback]

I don't see why they would use helium. Hydrogen would be much easier to deal with since it can be readily extracted from the hydrogen sulfide clouds. There wouldn't be any Hindenburg's since there's no oxygen in the atmosphere to react with.

It's also more bouyant, so the gas bag would be smaller for the same weight, and you could launch it from earth with less delta V.

DeNiro was right

[jsepeta]

I should have become an air conditioning technician.

I would not want to be on this mission

[Anonymous Coward]

If the blimp drops in altitude due to some sort of failure.. .. death the worse way possible.

We gotta get NASA to stop smoking crack....

[rgbatduke]

and then writing science fiction. I don't even disbelieve what they say, it's just being said without any sort of consideration of either the cost or the benefit. Hey, I can write novels about mining the asteroid belt, extracting He3 from moon rock for fusion fuel, building orbital space cities, and settling the moon too, except that Heinlein and many others already did most of this, and all of their novels presuppose some method of getting around that doesn't cost a gazillion dollars and thousands of megajoules per kilogram moved. With that kind of cost, why hire crack smokers to write SF? There is a lot of work a lot closer to home that is ALREADY too expensive for the benefit.

In the meantime, time to write another SF novel: "The Floating Cities of Venus". Yeah, got a nice ring to it.

rgb

clarification

[micahraleigh]

Is this the same NASA that spent over $200M to build a tower that did nothing?

The unmanned mission is an obvious first step

[Applehu Akbar]

But I see a hidden advantage to the manned proposal. For the first time, we would have a ship above a planet that was not in orbit. This would be an ideal base for teleoperated robotic probes to the hellish surface, because latency would be no problem. Consider how much more flexible the missions of our Mars rovers could be if we could control them in real time. We would need to provide for "parking" the probe at times when the dirigible drops below its horizon, or find a wind-free eddy to keep station in.

Cloud City

[DarthVain]

Whatever you do, don't let the guy who administers the floating city wear a cape, it will go right to his head...

Isn't there Sulfuric Acid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Venus' atmosphere was corrosive? If so then that manned balloon had better be unlike any designed previously. All those robotic probes only had to last a few hours. A manned mission has to be viable for months I would guess.

flapping meat

[Anonymous Coward]

You made my day.

Depends on where in the atmosphere you are.

[Ihlosi]

I thought Venus' atmosphere was corrosive?

Some parts of it are. The higher your altitude, the less sulphuric acid you'll find.