Experts Call For Trip To Venus Before Crewed Mission To Mars (theguardian.com) 125
Noam Izenberg, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University's applied physics laboratory, is making a case for sending a crewed mission to examine Venus en route to Mars. "Venus gets a bad rap because it's got such a difficult surface environment," said Izenberg in a report presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Paris last week. "The current Nasa paradigm is moon-to-Mars. We're trying to make the case for Venus as an additional target on that pathway." The Guardian reports: There are notable downsides. Walking on the surface would be an unsurvivable experience, so astronauts would have to gaze down at the planet from the safety of their spacecraft in a flyby mission. In its favor, however, Venus is significantly closer, making a return mission doable in a year, compared with a potentially three-year roundtrip to Mars. A flyby would be scientifically valuable and could provide crucial experience of a lengthy deep-space mission as a precursor to visiting Mars, according to a report presented at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris last week.
Izenberg said there were practical arguments for incorporating a Venus flyby into the crewed Mars landing that Nasa hopes to achieve by the late 2030s. Although the planet is in the "wrong" direction, performing a slingshot around Venus -- known as a gravity assist - could reduce the travel time and the fuel required to get to the red planet. That would make a crewed flyby trip to Venus a natural stepping stone towards Nasa's ultimate goal. "You'd be learning about how people work in deep space, without committing yourself to a full Mars mission," he said. "And it's not just going out into the middle of nowhere -- it would have a bit of cachet as you'd be visiting another planet for the first time." "We need to understand how we can get out of the cradle and move into the universe," he added.
There is also renewed scientific interest in Venus. The discovery of thousands of exoplanets raises the question of how many might be habitable, and scientists want to understand how and why Venus, a planet so similar to our own in size, mass and distance from the sun, ended up with infernal surface conditions. Izenberg said a Venus flyby "doesn't yet have traction" in the broader space travel community, although there are advocates within Nasa, including its chief economist, Alexander Macdonald, who led the IAC session. Of course, there are those who push back against such an idea. "It's really not a nice place to go. It's a hellish environment and the thermal challenges for a human mission would be quite considerable," said Prof Andrew Coates, a space scientist at UCL's Mullard space science laboratory.
He said Venus was rightly a focus of scientific exploration, but that "a human flyby really wouldn't add very much."
Izenberg said there were practical arguments for incorporating a Venus flyby into the crewed Mars landing that Nasa hopes to achieve by the late 2030s. Although the planet is in the "wrong" direction, performing a slingshot around Venus -- known as a gravity assist - could reduce the travel time and the fuel required to get to the red planet. That would make a crewed flyby trip to Venus a natural stepping stone towards Nasa's ultimate goal. "You'd be learning about how people work in deep space, without committing yourself to a full Mars mission," he said. "And it's not just going out into the middle of nowhere -- it would have a bit of cachet as you'd be visiting another planet for the first time." "We need to understand how we can get out of the cradle and move into the universe," he added.
There is also renewed scientific interest in Venus. The discovery of thousands of exoplanets raises the question of how many might be habitable, and scientists want to understand how and why Venus, a planet so similar to our own in size, mass and distance from the sun, ended up with infernal surface conditions. Izenberg said a Venus flyby "doesn't yet have traction" in the broader space travel community, although there are advocates within Nasa, including its chief economist, Alexander Macdonald, who led the IAC session. Of course, there are those who push back against such an idea. "It's really not a nice place to go. It's a hellish environment and the thermal challenges for a human mission would be quite considerable," said Prof Andrew Coates, a space scientist at UCL's Mullard space science laboratory.
He said Venus was rightly a focus of scientific exploration, but that "a human flyby really wouldn't add very much."
So, what are the humans for? (Score:2, Flamebait)
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They're there for the part where it arrives at Mars.
It happens after the visit to Venus.
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Only they don't really need the slingshot if the rocket refuels in earth orbit. Elon said they can make the trip in three months. Instead of a regular Hohmann transfer to meet Mars' orbit (which takes more than 8 months), it would accelerate a lot more to an orbit that crosses Mars', then slow down again to meet it. Requires a lot more fuel, but in orbit refueling would make it possible.
A slingshot around Venus would certainly be cool and interesting, but I doubt it could beat a three month direct trajector
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It might be the best solution if the next Mars launch window is 18 months from now. That's one real value from this idea, opening up a second set of launch windows to Mars beyond the usual every-26-months.
You'd have to do more orbital mechanics number crunching than I feel like doing this morning to figure out how often and how useful these new launch windows are.
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You limit the crew to eccentric billionaires so that the project pays for itself.
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+1 for nerdy and pedantic joke.
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Gotta stop by Mercury first.
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In its favor, however, Venus is significantly closer, making a return mission doable in a year, compared with a potentially three-year roundtrip to Mars. A flyby would be scientifically valuable and could provide crucial experience of a lengthy deep-space mission as a precursor to visiting Mars, according to a report presented at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris last week.
Making it all the way to the second paragraph of the summary is tough, huh?
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Well, for one, I suppose it might allow for an abort scenario. Venus is quite a good planet for gravity assist maneuvers, and by adjusting the approach distance you can control the trajectory, thus - at times - allowing for a choice between Mars OR Earth.
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What crucial pre-mars deep space experience would be gained that couldnâ(TM)t be figured out with the already planned lunar gateway?
The deep space part.
Test people and equipment one step at a time (Score:2)
Are they there to wave as Venus goes by, take up room, make things more expensive and complicated?
They are there to test humans and life support equipment beyond lunar orbit. Once upon a time NASA used to test people and equipment one step at a time. Looking back, It seemed like a good idea.
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*This* is what I don't understand with regards to the significant financial costs of engineering time plus risks of sending human meat puppets deep into outer space with the expectation of their safe return. Why for? We have sensors! Our sensors are in deep space for decades already, (refer to Voyager). We're all over Mars. Venus sounds freaking amazing, but why add the complexity and cost and risks of human interplanetary travel? To me is seems more like a national pissing contest. (...of course humans do
Misdirection (Score:3, Insightful)
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Who's "They"?
A random scientist at John Hopkins has precisely zero control over congress's NASA budget. Its just a guy whos not part of *any* decision making orbit making a suggestion.
Re: Misdirection (Score:2)
If people can't live there with current tech, send robots
At 900F ambient temperature and 75 X Earth's atmospheric pressure, are there any material components that could be forged with our current tech to make a robot? Me thinks not.
Re: Misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
The first Venus landers disagree.
75 atmospheres of pressure equals 750 meters under sea on earth - not that complicated.
Re: Misdirection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Misdirection (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to go down to the surface. A balloon with a normal earth atmosphere (80% N2, 20% O2, at 1 atm) would be buoyant in Venus's atmosphere. Where the pressure is 1 atm, the temperatures are mild -- near room temperature.
The atmosphere is mostly CO2 and Nitrogen with traces of SO2. It would be toxic to breathe, but exposure to the skin would be mostly harmless. No spacesuit would be needed, just a breathing mask and goggles.
We could build a Sky City like in Empire Strikes Back. It would be way easier to establish than a base on Mars, where the atmosphere is almost non-existent, the soil is toxic, nitrogen is rare, temperatures are frigid, sunlight is dim, and gravity is too weak for human health.
Re: Misdirection (Score:5, Insightful)
On Mars, you can make bricks of local material or tunnel your base out of rock or use a natural cave. On Venus, you will forever only live in the spaceship you launched from Earth -- which means your humans are never better off than if they were in orbit (or on Earth, for that matter) letting robotic probes dip into the atmosphere.
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On Venus, you will forever only live in the spaceship you launched from Earth
Not true. You can lower robotic mining rigs to the surface and winch up the ore.
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Call me when you can lower and winch ore from platforms dozens of miles up in Earth's atmosphere, before we talk about making it work in the vastly harsher conditions of Venus. That sort of technology is centuries, maybe millennia away.
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You don't have to winch it up in one go.
You can have multiple levels, each supported by balloons, and have a cascade of cables.
Or forget the cables and just bring the ore up to Sky City by inflating a balloon and carrying it up with buoyancy.
On Venus, Nitrogen provides as much buoyancy as helium does on Earth.
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Re: Misdirection (Score:2)
Nuke Mars IMO
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Humans will be more effective astronauts on Mars than if they were operating robots from Earth, though. A Martian astronaut can actually collect samples and study things in a lab much more efficiently than robots. A Martian astronaut can explore a valley on foot or with a Mars buggy in a fraction of the time it takes a rover. A Venutian astronaut has no such advantages.
The fact that it's an easier life to stay on Earth is irrelevant if we're discussing exploratory trips and not trying to justify building c
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Yeah, it's those traces of SO2 that are the problem here. Try putting some sort of fabric that could be used as a hull for that "balloon" into an atmosphere that contains SO2 usually leads to very little balloon in the long run.
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There are plenty of fabrics that will not react with SO2.
Kevlar is an obvious example. Polyester is another.
Re: Misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (emphasis mine):
NASA's Glenn Research Center has summarized the perceived difficulties in colonizing Venus as being merely from the assumption that a colony would need to be based on the surface of a planet:
However, viewed in a different way, the problem with Venus is merely that the ground level is too far below the one atmosphere level. At cloud-top level, Venus is the paradise planet.
Landis has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities, based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 oxygen/nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth.[11] In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above the Venerian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System beyond Earth itself – a pressure of approximately 1 atm or 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.[12]
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Unless said colony consists of people happy to live in a small gondola then either you'll need a balloon the size of a city or you'll require some other lift propulsion.
"the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System beyond Earth itself"
Thats a pretty low bar frankly. And its not as if someone could go outside in a t-shirt and a breather as the air would still be full of sulphur dioxide.
Its hand waving sci fi, not a realistic prospect.
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It would be way easier to establish than a base on Mars, where the atmosphere is almost non-existent, the soil is toxic, nitrogen is rare, temperatures are frigid, sunlight is dim, and gravity is too weak for human health.
If we can get to Mars we have this "pressure vessel" thing down pat. A maximum of 1 ATM internal pressure (less if we want to bump up the oxygen content) is no big deal.
Fortunately astronauts eat very little soil, the only scenario where this is a problem. (Extracting the highly soluble chlorates with water in a closed system fixes this "problem" quite easily so that Martian regolith could be used for a soilless growth medium, and the astronauts could eat it if they want.)
BTW - while we are talking about wa
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Where the pressure is 1 atm, the temperatures are mild -- near room temperature.
Yes, but at those altitudes all you can see is the outer layer of the atmosphere and you might as well use remote sensing. Electronics operating to 200C are currently used in downhole applications. That would get you to the top of the troposphere [wikipedia.org], and allow much more interesting observations.
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We talked about pressure ...
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-or-
Be more careful which "Reply to This" you are clicking in the future, since (I hope) this was a response to someone else.
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The heat is the bigger problem. 462C or more. No way to shed that heat, it's all around the lander. The best you can do is pre-cool the lander and then insulate it, but that's only going to get you hours at most. It makes any kind of probing difficult because the instruments need to be on the outside of the lander, or you need to bring material inside through some kind of airlock.
Make Venus cooler. Growing plants removes CO2. (Score:2)
Atmosphere of Venus [wikipedia.org]
Carbon dioxide 96.5 %, Nitrogen 3.5 %, Sulfur dioxide 150 ppm, Argon 70 ppm, Water vapor 20 ppm, Carbon monoxide 17 ppm, Helium 12 ppm, Neon 7 ppm, Hydrogen chloride 0.1-0.6 ppm, Hydrogen fluoride 0.001-0.005 ppm
The water vapor is 20 ppm. (Score:2)
"Venus Might Have Oceans of Water..." (Score:2)
Eventually, it seems, in a slowly cooling Venus, the water from inside the crust would move to the atmosphere of Venus. Slowly, the percentage of water would increase. That would allow more plant growth.
Antarctic bacteria "make their own water". (Score:2)
Antarctic bacteria live on air and make their own water using hydrogen as fuel [theconversation.com].
Places on Venus are hidden from the Sun. They are cooler. Atmosphere of Venus [wikipedia.org]. Quoting:
"... a warm layer in the night side mesosphere at the altitudes 90-120 km.[3][2] The temperature of this layer, -230 K (-43 degrees C), is far higher than the typical temperature found in the night side thermosphere, -100 K (-173 degrees C)."
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Perhaps use orbital cannons to launch useful minerals into space and slightly affect the spin rate at the same time. It might take many such launches, but they will add up if there is a deliberate effort made to do so (and maybe if there isn't).
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True. If only we hadn't lost the knowledge of the ancients: how to make a Venus lander, and how to make Led Zeppelins.
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Planets are not just their surfaces. Venus's middle cloud layer is the most Earthlike place in the solar system outside of Earth. Temperatures. Pressures. Gravity. Acid mists (though high molarity) are sparse, more like a bad vog, with visibility measured in kilometers. Could probably stand outside in shirtsleeves for a few minutes (wearing an oxygen mask with eye protection) and have no more harm than some possible dermatitis. Radiation shielding overhead with the mass of 5 meters of water. Normal earth a
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Radiation. The astronauts that left Earth's orbit have suffered a lot of chromosomal damage leading to heart conditions among one of the issues. The only solution we currently have is water which will cause cosmic rays to collide and produce less damage. Water though is heavy, and we'd need to encase the astronauts in it to protect them.
There is also the tissue degradation from not having enough gravity around, humans have grown in gravity and do not take well to it being missing.
None of this might bother t
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I'm not convinced that a Moon Base is worth building. There isn't a lot on the Moon, and the environment is in some ways much harsher than Mars. No atmosphere at all, so no erosion, which makes the moon dust very sharp. On the Apollo missions the EVA suits were worn out by the time they left, the dust having damaged them so much.
Lunar orbit makes more sense as it gives access to the surface, and a staging area for a trip on to Mars. Put the resources into a permanent settlement on the red planet.
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A moon base is worth building simply because it's close, but at the same time far away. Said base would probably be mostly automated anyhow, more of a "server room with a life support system" than "industrial metropolis". But like sending Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan and not the President or VP, you can do certain work without some of the risks associated with bringing it all the way back home. It may go sideways, but you're willing to take the risk where there's no NIMBY contingent.
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Russia is going to be lucky to be able to get anything into orbit in a year or two, much less meaningful participate in a moon base. China has a somewhat better shot, but they don't have anything nearly as far along as Artemis in terms of achieving that goal. I don't like the way Artemis has been done either, but it is a real rocket that exists and has significant lifting capability. We also have the Starship on deck.
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Some of Russian space program was in Ukraine (Score:2)
The US is letting China and Russia plan and move forward ...
Russia? A non-trivial part of the Russian space program and infrastructure to support it was in the Ukraine. Russia is back to trampolines when their current inventory of parts runs out.
Robots and remotes. (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was a kid, I loved the idea of space colonization but at some point you have to grow up and realize we aren't adapted to other worlds.
Think about it, one of the recent experiments on the ISS was to cut metal in space and make sure it could be done
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nan... [yahoo.com]
The best candidates for colonization, the Moon and Mars, respectively have gravitys 1/6th and 1/3rd that of Earth's. What do you think is going to happen when a woman gives birth on these worlds? It's also a certainty that a Mars born human isn't going to be visiting earth to try and live in what to them would be 3 gravitys.
We are far better off looking towards building artificial habitats that can create a human compatible environment and using robots and other types of remotes for long term exploitation of hostile environments.
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"What do you think....." is never the right question in science. "How can we find out....." is. I dont know, send a dog up there, and see what happens I guess. We'll know if it works long before its actually born. Or if we're feeling game, heres one for the religious fundamentalists: Find a volenteer who's willing to have a late term abortion, and just monitor how it grows in the 7 months prior to getting the coathanger. We'll know soon enough.
However you are to some extent right. We need the habitats, not
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There's no need to go to the Asteroid Belt. There are plenty of NEOs [wikipedia.org] right here in our neighborhood, with quadrillions of tonnes of resources, including iron, nickel, and many rare earth metals.
The temperature is warmer and solar power is much more intense than in the Asteroid Belt. Transportation to and from Earth is way faster and less energy intensive.
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The NEOs might try to run, considering the Oscar-worthy slap in the face we just gave one of their cousins.
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You are right about science but this isn't science this is large scale engineering and civic planning.
Then there is the matter of of how do you find out? This is the place to do animal experiments long before you start to lay the foundations of a civilization.
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Why would a Mars or Moon born person want to visit Earth?
How many people on Earth are willing to visit Mars? I would assume reciproke it is more or less the same percentage.
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Well they are going to need to negotiate buying oil from us.
Think about it, what are they going to use for plastics.
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Good news: there's plenty of methane on Mars, and people are researching how to use methane to make plastics. [futurity.org]
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Why does a hairless monkey* born to temperate climates want to go to Antarctica? Why does said naked ape go anywhere? To see what is there.
*Yes, I'm aware homo sapient is technically a ape and not a monkey. Hairless monkey just rolls off the tongue better.
People will visit when convenient (Score:2)
Why would a Mars or Moon born person want to visit Earth?
You never visited, and have no desire to visit, the lands your family originally came from? You are not curious? Imagine when it is now also the land your species came from? A place with "habitats" that have windows and doors that just open to the local environment, where you can walk outside without a pressure suit and O2 supply.
How many people on Earth are willing to visit Mars?
It will depend on how convenient it is. A nice comfy Airbus is about US$350 from England to Virginia, it will take about 5 hours.
Compare that to the Jamestown colony's 4+ month
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You never visited, and have no desire to visit, the lands your family originally came from? You are not curious? Imagine when it is now also the land your species came from? A place with "habitats" that have windows and doors that just open to the local environment, where you can walk outside without a pressure suit and O2 supply.
Nope.
Where my ancestors came from: no one knows.
And the idea to be Mars/Moon born and have a desire to go to Earth is alien to me.
OTOH: I'm Earth born, and would love to go to Mars
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You never visited, and have no desire to visit, the lands your family originally came from? You are not curious? Imagine when it is now also the land your species came from? A place with "habitats" that have windows and doors that just open to the local environment, where you can walk outside without a pressure suit and O2 supply. Nope. Where my ancestors came from: no one knows.
An inexpensive genetic test may remedy that.
And the idea to be Mars/Moon born and have a desire to go to Earth is alien to me. OTOH: I'm Earth born, and would love to go to Mars.
Again, its a matter of convenience. When it is as convenient as a US resident visiting Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. there will be tourism. Just like US residents visiting other continents, and others visiting the US.
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An inexpensive genetic test may remedy that.
Then define ancestors.
The last 10,000 years? They came from the far east - Siberia more or less.
2 million yeas? Something like Kenia comes to mind.
When it is as convenient as a US resident visiting Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. there will be tourism.
Yes, that seems likely.
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The last 10,000 years? They came from the far east - Siberia more or less.
That might be an interesting place to check out, at least outside of mosquito season. :-)
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You have an interesting point of view. Without taking sides, let me just point out some of the (to me) respective advantages of the two approaches:
Colony on a planet
Artificial habitat
The disadvantages o
A floating colony on Venus is the most colonizable (Score:2)
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If you haven't noticed, we aren't adapted to most of this world either.
A naked human, most places, is going to die. Probably of drowning. If we limit our naked humans to land, then in many places they'll die of exposure.
It's only by augmenting ourselves through technology (primarily clothing), that we don't die of hypothermia.
There is no bad weather ... (Score:3)
It's only by augmenting ourselves through technology (primarily clothing), that we don't die of hypothermia.
Perhaps I am misinformed, but I heard there is a saying in the nordic regions: "There is no bad weather, just bad clothing".
I think that perspective expands well to pressure suits.
Orbital habitat, 1G (Score:2)
The best candidates for colonization, the Moon and Mars, respectively have gravitys 1/6th and 1/3rd that of Earth's. What do you think is going to happen when a woman gives birth on these worlds? It's also a certainty that a Mars born human isn't going to be visiting earth to try and live in what to them would be 3 gravitys.
They won't, they will give birth in orbit where they spent much of their pregnancy. In a habitat spinning at a rate that approximates 1G. Kid will grow up there too. Adults planning on returning to earth will need to spend some time there too. A colony will need both ground and orbital habitats.
But we are not talking about colonizing now. We are only talking about human exploration. So your point is a bit of a straw man. Mars is less hostile than the Moon. Yet we have gone to the Moon and are planning on
Dumb (Score:2)
There are always people with pet projects and looking for government funding for the grinding of some personal axe, but there's no practical purpose to sending people to Venus within the next century or two (or three...)
First, it's way too hot and the atmospheric pressure is way too high... look at how beefy the unmanned Soviet landers were and how short their operational lives on the surface were (time to snap a few pics and radio them home...) and, no, this is not the result of too many cars with tailpipe
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no, this is not the result of too many cars with tailpipes and "runaway greenhouse gasses" - the planet is just too damned close to the sun, a massive un-shielded NUCLEAR FURNACE. Crack a basic physics book and refresh your memory on the reduction of absorbed energy from an emitted source and how it relates to distance, then consider the difference in distances between [a] sun and Earth, and [b] sun and Venus... then reverse and consider [c] sun and Mars.
The 735K surface temperature on Venus does have something to do with the greenhouse effect. After all, it only gets one quarter [wikipedia.org] of the solar irradiance of Mercury, which maxes out at 700K.
might be a good plan (Score:2)
If NASA goes with something like the Hermes [fandom.com] from The Martian, an interplanetary ferry built with a planed decade+ operation life, then a short 1 year trip to Venus would make for a great shakedown cruise to make sure everything works before sending it on a three+ year mission to Mars.
Stupidity Incarnate (Score:2, Troll)
"Researchers" who work on Venusian studies think it would be a good idea to do a flyby of Venus "because a gravity assist ''might'' make a trip to Mars faster".
- Venus is 30% closer to the sun making solar heating at Venus much worse, likely over twice the heating at Earth orbit.
- The Mars lander Starship would need massive changes to be able to keep its both it's propellants & payloads cold enough to go so much closer to the Sun. To have the massive amounts of propellant a Venusian gravity assist worth
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Thanks for the correction, which does invalidate some of my post.
Spaxe-X would still need to make major changes to not boil the cargo and landing propellants.
Also, a gravity assist would accelerate Starship, Great the detour to Venus may not prolong the trip even if the total trip distance is longer, but what does that do when it arrives at Mars and they want to LAND? That extra speed makes the aerobraking that much more violent & these researchers don’t think it’s important enough to mentio
Why not land? (Score:2)
Start with the moon (Score:2)
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There's a few things in play - one, we've already been to the moon, and any initial mission to Mars needn't be to establish a base just to put people on the surface.
And while the moon does have a (significant) advantage in proximity to Earth for resupplies, the actual environment of Mars is likely to be a little better - the length of a day is nearly the same as Earth (compared to a lunar day being 28 Earth days), the gravity is higher than the moon, and there is some atmosphere to make the temperature a li
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Exactly. If the goal is to learn how to do deep space missions the moon is an excellent first step. It takes exactly the same effort to swim in a 4 foot deep salt water pool 10 feet from a house as it does in a 2 mile deep ocean 1000 miles from shore but the risk is a hell of a lot less.
In addition escaping from moon's gravity is trivial vs earths. Much better to build a permanent base there or even in orbit there and launch deep space missions from there.
It really depends on if your goal is to personall
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How about starting at the bottom of the ocean? When we can build a city there, we can think about the moon.
A scientific base on the moon or mars, like the Antarctic bases, makes some sense. But why'd you want to live in any of those places?
Home (Score:2)
I think someone just wants to go home, inhabiting one of the astronauts.
To what end? (Score:2)
What would the value of humans be on a mission to Venus? There are already debates about ever using humans for space exploration, given that robotics can do most of what humans can do, and sometimes more. Venus is a poster child for that argument - we can't set foot on Venus, but robots can (granted, previous missions to the surface didn't last long, but I bet it's solvable these days if a funding agency is interested).
The gravity-assist argument is reasonable if you can do so without added risk to crew or
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Experts? (Score:2)
As far as I can tell the list of experts listed in TFA are one scientist and a NASA economist. What experts are advocating for this other than those two?
History (Score:5, Informative)
This researcher may be thinking he's come up with something novel here, but Venus flybys have been cast about as part of Mars mission profiles for a long time. A gravity assist from Venus can, counterintuitively, have a lower delta-v requirement. And although you can't land and take a walk around, a Venus flyby would still be really cool, and provide the crew with a useful high point in an otherwise long and boring transit.
Here's a white paper from NASA from 1984 [nasa.gov] that laid out detailed mission profiles and identified launch opportunities through 2045. Michael Collins (Apollo 11 CM Pilot) used an Earth-Venus-Mars trajectory in his dramatized Mission to Mars [google.com] book.
Stupid (Score:2)
This makes no sense. The main advantage of humans on Mars is speed and dexterity. I've once heard it said that a human on Mars could do more science in a day than a robot could in a year (those timeframes might need adjusting from the quote, but you get the idea).
If you're stuck on a spaceship from orbit though then the humans are experiencing the same limitations that an orbiting spacecraft would have - its pointless. Unless you need people on the surface of an object manned missions are stupidly expens
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I think the point is more to do a limited trial of how humans behave and are affected by an extended duration space mission, without having to commit to a mission as long as a mission to Mars would be. The humans are really test subjects not explorers.
That said, you could get half that information just by sticking a bunch of dummies or REM balls with dosimetry on them in a human-capable spacecraft.
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This makes no sense.
That's because you are thinking about it terms of scientific return on investment. A NASA speaker at a conference I attended described his agency's purpose as "Americans want Americans in space." So think of a Venus flyby as cool opportunity to showcase Americans in space, and it starts to make more sense.
For science ROI, let robots work at a tenth of human speed, at a hundredth of the cost.
Re: (Score:2)
And how much mass (and power) in support would the human need compared to the robot? More than 360 (or 687, depending on whose year you're using for comparison) fold difference and the robot may be looking the less expensive option again.
You'll need to factor the costs (consumables, power, mass of your "flying greenhouse" food source) of at least a one-way trip for the astronaut too. Two-way trip if it
Venus is a better first destination than Mars (Score:3)
Mars is small, cold, and has very low gravity and atmosphere. The thing about Venus is that we could build floating cities. A breathable nitrogen/oxygen 1ATM gas would actually be buoyant in the CO2 based atmosphere of Venus, comparable to helium in earth's surface atmosphere. From a safety viewpoint this is huge, because a leak in the hull is not an explosive pressurization danger. The gravity of Venus is about 90% of earths, compared to 38% on Mars. This means it's much more likely that Venus gravity causes no long term effects. By going high enough in the atmosphere, you can balance temperature and pressure to something close to normal human experience. Venus is also net closer to earth.
Like Artemis (Score:2)
I can certainly see a value in Venusian flyby as an intermediate step but I agree that there's little/no value (and rather high risk) sending humans on such a flight.
Like the plan for Artemis to fling a dress-rehearsal empty vehicle around the moon and back as a test. Originally I thought this was a pretty big waste of resources but this is just the risk-averse NASA in 2022 and we have to be honest that our capabilities of remote/autonomous operation have multiplied exponentially. In 2022, Apollo's 7-10 c
Voyage... (Score:2)
This was the Mars mission profile in Stephen Barnes' "Voyage".
Re: (Score:2)
Dammit. Stephen BAXTER, not Barnes.
Colonize Venus! (Score:2)
Mars and Venus are both inhospitable environments in their own ways.
But Mars' problems are all deficits: there's not enough heat, there's not enough atmosphere, etc. OTOH Venus' problems are all surplus: There's too much heat, too much atmosphere, etc The human race has demonstrated that they are much more skilled at consuming resources than they are at conserving them; this makes Venus a better choice.
Also (and I know orbital mechanics complicates this) Mars is "uphill" while Venus is "downhill".
Time to re-read ... (Score:2)
Phobos and Deimos a better practice target (Score:2)
Manned missions are more a show-piece than scientific exploration. Robots can collect samples much cheaper and wider*.
And Venus is just not photogenic. A better trial run for a Mars landing would be a Phobos or Deimos landing. Having a big-ass Mars looming in the background would make great photos, arguably even more interesting than on-Mars photos. The landing system can be much simpler because those moons have piddly gravity. You just need good "tent anchors" to keep from bouncing away.
* Some argue that h
Re: (Score:3)
Quite the contrary, you're only going to do that because of the limitations of chemical rockets. Cassini didn't slingshot Venus on the way to Saturn for science reasons, it did so because going straight to Saturn would've taken longer.