Any Missions to Venus planned (Landers)?

(Allen Thomson) wrote in message . com...
and you'd probably only have a working probe for a few hours at most...

*That* is the really sticky part. Venus surface missions are necessarily
very short, and that severely limits their appeal.

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed for
a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned facility?
I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power to suck heat
from a 20 C environment and dump it into the 460 C surroundings.

Any refrigeration engineers in the house?


CO2 makes for a rather super terrific freon.

Vertical pressure differentials are way more than enough to power
whatever you've got in mind. How many GW would you like?

There's off-the-shelf electric motor/generators for sustained
operation at 1000°F. There's ceramic bearings for much hotter yet, and
I suppose that I could go on and on.

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

(Allen Thomson) wrote in message . com...
and you'd probably only have a working probe for a few hours at most...

*That* is the really sticky part. Venus surface missions are necessarily
very short, and that severely limits their appeal.

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed for
a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned facility?
I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power to suck heat
from a 20 C environment and dump it into the 460 C surroundings.

Any refrigeration engineers in the house?

CO2 makes for a rather super terrific freon. I think Venus already has
lots of CO2.

Vertical pressure differentials/km are those way more than enough to
power whatever you've got in mind. How many GW would you like?

There's off-the-shelf electric motor/generators for sustained
operation at 1000°F. There's ceramic bearings for much hotter yet, and
I'll suppose that I could go on and on.

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

Firstly; the absolute very last thing we should be pondering is any
quest for contaminating the likes of Venus with inferior human DNA,
especially any DNA belonging to the likes of GW Bush.

Energy wise; there's way more available energy near the surface than
you can possibly shake a flaming stick at (day or night makes nearly
no difference).

BTW; CO2 makes for a rather super terrific freon. I seem to recall
that Venus already has lots of CO2, thus heat-exchanging simply isn't
a factor unless you're another absolute village idiot moron.

Vertical pressure differentials (4+bar/km) are those available anytime
of the day or night, offering way more than enough to power up
whatever you've got in mind. How many GW would you like?

Nowadays, there's the likes of off-the-shelf electric
motors/generators for sustained operation at 1000°F (811°K), and
there's ceramic bearings for much hotter yet, and I'll suppose that I
could go on and on.

Energy certainly isn't the problem, other than of what to do with
having so much surplus energy. There's also the efficient extraction
of H2O from those relatively cool nighttime clouds, thus the likes of
H2O2 shouldn't be any problem to create, unless having too much H2O2
is what bothers you.

Speaking energy wise; of any shortage you must have been referring to
the likes of Mars, as that God forsaken frozen and irradiated to death
sort of planet, of which decades worth of spendy exploration probes
haven't identified upon a single geothermal worth squat, nor is there
enough atmosphere to convert into squat, and of hardly enough solar PV
worth keeping a micro robotic probe alive, now that's defiantly a
shortage of energy. Unless you can obtain energy from all those
imacting meteorites, whatever is needed must be imported. At least our
moon offers a nifty thermal nuclear core, plus loads of He3 or 3He.

As for keeping the Venus style of hot and nasty out, thermal
insulation isn't a factor, at least not at R-1024/meter, as easily
obtained from basalt composites made into micro-spheres, and otherwise
of absolutely terrific fiber composite panels that'll structurally
exceed ten fold what most alloy steels can deliver.

The process of CO2--CO/O2 certainly takes care of mere humans, though
under that much pressure you'd likely not require more than 1% O2, the
rest N2 or of even substantially high levels of CO2 shouldn't kill you
right off the bat, unless you simply can't stop drinking Venus beer
and subsequently sweating like a stupid pig.

As for the only thing that's actually needed in orbit is the Venus L2
(VL2) laser and microwave transponder, as affording a relatively small
and efficient relay platform for sustaining itself as stationkeeping
at VL2, as for providing nearly continuous communications, as in live
two-way smut. I've been thinking along the lines of implementing a
TRACE-II sort of multi-functional imaging instrument and
communications solution, to also be including another SAR format of
imaging because, Venus nighttime is relatively dark, unless you're one
of those nocturnal lizard folk.

And, good grief almighty folks, why even bother going there in person,
when we can simply communicate with whomever and/or whatever?

Of course, if we're still not smart enough as to communicate via
laser/photons, such as most humans can't even communicate with their
dogs, much less their own kids, then perhaps we should leave well
enough alone.

Calling Venus;
If you're perchance interested in the hot prospect of achieving
interplanetary communications, as for that quest I've added lots into
this following page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

BTW; There's still way more than a darn good chance of there being
other life of some sort existing on Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

Some good but difficult warlord readings: SADDAM HUSSEIN and The SAND
PIRATES
http://mittymax.com/Archive/0085-Sad...andPirates.htm

David Sereda (loads of honest ideas and notions upon UV energy), for
best impact on this one, you'll really need to barrow his video:
http://www.ufonasa.com

The latest round of insults to this Mars/Moon/Venus class action
injury:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-what-if.htm

Some other recent file updates:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-gwb-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-illumination.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA


"Ool" wrote in message ...
"Sander Vesik" wrote in message ...
Cardman wrote:

I have been wondering for a while about terraforming Venus, where to
begin with it seems helpful to lower the heat. This can be done by
stopping sunlight from hitting the planet, which can be done by making
your own permanent eclipse.

Yeah, like a giant disc in Venus's L1 point.

except that is going to need enormous amounts of mass. and the thing
eclipsing will want to shed its energy somewhere, and you will get large
light pressure problems if it is reflective.

Well, the principle of the solar sailor could be applied the Use
solar wind to carry you out, use solar gravity to pull you in. If you
positioned the disc a little closer to the Sun than L1--just close
enough for gravity to cancel out the force of the wind--you'd be all
set.

That is, unless some solar eruption mucks up that delicate balance.
Actually I have no idea whether this could work. It's just an idea.
Maybe with some clever engineering you could keep the thing stable us-
ing the power of the solar wind itself, or maybe not...


Then again it's probably easier to find some way of binding all the
CO2 in the atmosphere...

Besides spendy and extremely time consuming probes to anywhere,
especially of Mars or further away, though even targeting upon Venus
seems a waste of time unless you're considering a stationkeeping
platform at Venus L2 and/or that of an interactive surface
communications kiosk.

Though firstly; the absolute very last thing we should be pondering is
any quest for contaminating the likes of Venus with inferior human
DNA, especially any DNA belonging to the likes of GW Bush.

Energy wise; there's way more available energy near the surface than
you can possibly shake a flaming stick at (day or night makes nearly
no difference).

BTW; CO2 makes for a rather super terrific freon. I seem to recall
that Venus already has lots of CO2, thus heat-exchanging simply isn't
a factor unless you're another absolute village idiot moron.

Vertical pressure differentials (4+bar/km) are those available anytime
of the day or night, offering way more than enough to power up
whatever you've got in mind. How many GW would you like?

Nowadays, there's the likes of off-the-shelf electric
motors/generators for sustained operation at 1000°F (811°K), and
there's ceramic bearings for much hotter yet, and I'll suppose that I
could go on and on.

Energy certainly isn't the problem, other than of what to do with
having so much surplus energy. There's also the efficient extraction
of H2O from those relatively cool nighttime clouds, thus the likes of
H2O2 shouldn't be any problem to create, unless having too much H2O2
is what bothers you.

Speaking energy wise; of any shortage you must have been referring to
the likes of Mars, as that God forsaken frozen and irradiated to death
sort of planet, of which decades worth of spendy exploration probes
haven't identified upon a single geothermal worth squat, nor is there
enough atmosphere to convert into squat, and of hardly enough solar PV
worth keeping a micro robotic probe alive, now that's defiantly a
shortage of energy. Unless you can obtain energy from all those
imacting meteorites, whatever is needed must be imported. At least our
moon offers a nifty thermal nuclear core, plus loads of He3 or 3He.

As for keeping the Venus style of hot and nasty out, thermal
insulation isn't a factor, at least not at R-1024/meter, as easily
obtained from basalt composites made into micro-spheres, and otherwise
of absolutely terrific fiber composite panels that'll structurally
exceed ten fold what most alloy steels can deliver.

The process of CO2--CO/O2 certainly takes care of mere humans, though
under that much pressure you'd likely not require more than 1% O2, the
rest N2 or of even substantially high levels of CO2 shouldn't kill you
right off the bat, unless you simply can't stop drinking Venus beer
and subsequently sweating like a stupid pig.

As for the only thing that's actually needed in orbit is the Venus L2
(VL2) laser and microwave transponder, as affording a relatively small
and efficient relay platform for sustaining itself as stationkeeping
at VL2, as for providing nearly continuous communications, as in live
two-way smut. I've been thinking along the lines of implementing a
TRACE-II sort of multi-functional imaging instrument and
communications solution, to also be including another SAR format of
imaging because, Venus nighttime is relatively dark, unless you're one
of those nocturnal lizard folk.

And, good grief almighty folks, why even bother going there in person,
when we can simply communicate with whomever and/or whatever?

Of course, if we're still not smart enough as to communicate via
laser/photons, such as most humans can't even communicate with their
dogs, much less their own kids, then perhaps we should leave well
enough alone.

Calling Venus;
If you're perchance interested in the hot prospect of achieving
interplanetary communications, as for that quest I've added lots into
this following page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

BTW; There's still way more than a darn good chance of there being
other life of some sort existing on Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

Some good but difficult warlord readings: SADDAM HUSSEIN and The SAND
PIRATES
http://mittymax.com/Archive/0085-Sad...andPirates.htm

David Sereda (loads of honest ideas and notions upon UV energy), for
best impact on this one, you'll really need to barrow his video:
http://www.ufonasa.com

The latest round of insults to this Mars/Moon/Venus class action
injury:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-what-if.htm

Some other recent file updates:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-gwb-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-illumination.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA


"Hansel" wrote in message ...
Am I the only one who would love to see a 360 degree panorama of the surface
of Earth's hellish twin Venus? It's such a fascinating environment.

Any probes planned at any time in the future? I know Venus is much harder to
land on than Mars, and you'd probably only have a working probe for a few
hours at most, but it's a lot closer than Mars at least. Mars has been
photographed from all over now, whilst Venus we only have the Venera images.

I mean the Venera probes did a fantastic job, but their shots of the ground
were just a tantalising glimpse really, with a hint of horizon in the corner
there.Wouldn't it be great to be able to look up and see what this place
looks like if you were standing there!

It just seems like all the probes go to Mars, it would be nice to have one
go to Venus and land, a panorama picture is worth a thousand words or radar
images

Kris
My Energia HLLV page: http://www.k26.com/buran/

The question "they must be able to do something" hasn't been answered,
though your negative stance about nearly everything under the sun
pretty much sums up the sort of "can do" or can't possibly do" issues.

Tell us specifically why it's supposedly so difficult to deliver a
sufficient laser beam onto and thereby sufficiently penetrate those
nighttime clouds of Venus.

Then tell us why the likes of TRACE can't image upon the nighttime
portion of Venus.

What's so damn hard about establishing a Venus L2 stationkeeping
platform.

Venus style aerodynamics is almost too good to be true, so why not
place an interactive kiosk onto their tarmac.

Calling Venus;
If you're perchance interested in the hot prospect of achieving
interplanetary communications, as for that quest I've added lots into
this following page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

BTW; There's still way more than a darn good chance of there being
other life of some sort existing on Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

Some good but difficult warlord readings: SADDAM HUSSEIN and The SAND
PIRATES
http://mittymax.com/Archive/0085-Sad...andPirates.htm

David Sereda (loads of honest ideas and notions upon UV energy), for
best impact on this one, you'll really need to barrow his video:
http://www.ufonasa.com

The latest round of insults to this Mars/Moon/Venus class action
injury:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-what-if.htm

Some other recent file updates:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-gwb-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-illumination.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA


(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Cardman wrote:
...especially when the lifespan is potentially 20 minutes There
won't be too many daily mission briefings with a Venus Rover

Surely they must be able to do something about that now? As if you can
build a lander to last the pressure, temperature and acid atmosphere...
Ok, so it is far from easy, but I am sure that there must be more than
a few ideas to keep a lander lasting longer than 20 minutes.

Vague notions, but nothing very effective. It's just a really, really
hard problem.

There are two ways to explore venus as far as I can see. (Excluding
orbiters)

1) A Lander
It's not the temprature, but the pressure that is the greatest
constraint to design, and the probe would robably need testing deep
under sea. It will howeve need internal cooling systems, and for that
would probably require a nuclear reactor anyway, which would help
longevity.

2) A Balloon
This avoids the pressure issue entirely by never going to the surface!
Floating at a few atmospheres the temprature is also vastly reduced
compared to the surface. At this height the cold nights are something
you need to watch out for! The Russians had planned (perhaps they
launched?) a venus floating probe, but I know it never got there.
Equipped with a nadir camera in the microwave you could get high
resolution images of the surface, although you couldn't control where
you went! Obvious atmospheric measurements will be taken too.

Nicholas Shanks
--

Space Fan

"Nicholas Shanks" wrote in message
. ..
There are two ways to explore venus as far as I can see. (Excluding
orbiters)

1) A Lander
It's not the temprature, but the pressure that is the greatest
constraint to design, and the probe would robably need testing deep
under sea. It will howeve need internal cooling systems, and for that
would probably require a nuclear reactor anyway, which would help
longevity.

A nuclear reactor generates heat which has to be dissipated. The core has
to be hotter than the environment which means a very high operating
temperature on Venus. Maybe possible, but difficult.

2) A Balloon

3. Airplane. It could fly down, take pictures, and then fly up before it
burned up.

Why not just call them, as that'll save us at least billions if not
hundreds of billions, and accomplish everything at light speed, as in
right now.

Calling Venus (it's even been a local laser area code no less);
If you're perchance interested in the truly hot prospect of achieving
interplanetary communications, as for that quest I've added lots, if
not a little too much, into this following page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

BTW; There's still way more than a darn good chance of there being
other life of some sort existing on Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

Here's the latest deliveries upon "what's new and of what's hot", as
offering a bit more context of what my three brain cells can deliver
on behalf of Sirius terraforming the likes of Mars, Earth and Venus.
*** http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-earth-venus.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/synchronized-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-sirius-trek.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA


Marvin wrote in message ...
"Ool" wrote in
:

"quibbler" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...

Has anyone, just for fun, ever sketched out what would be needed
for a long-duration Venus surface probe or, Ghu help us, a manned
facility? I suspect we're talking about major amounts nuclear power

Except that the nuclear plant itself would pose cooling issues of its
own.

Just what can we manage nowadays, in high-temperature heat exchange
systems? If you have enough power, and your refridgeration system can
accept a high-end temperature over 500 celcius, surely we can manufacture a
very long-endurance probe?

Assuming we can keep a cool enough core, can we build a rover for Venus?
I know its easy to make structural parts handle the temperature.
I know its possible to make 'power' electric gear to work at 500C, but its
an incredible pain to do so. Possibly better idea to power all movement
parts from inside a cool box, via mechanical power linkages etc.
I *think* its even theoretically impossible to have any electronics at that
temperature, so *all* sensors and computing will have to be in the cool
box.

So, using current tech but assuming a generous budget, could we build a
rover for Venus that has potentially long lifespan? Could we put useful
external sensors on it, or would we be limited to optical-only sensing of
the environment? Your thought on this, please.

Nicholas Shanks wrote:
There are two ways to explore venus as far as I can see. (Excluding
orbiters)

1) A Lander
It's not the temprature, but the pressure that is the greatest
constraint to design, and the probe would robably need testing deep
under sea. It will howeve need internal cooling systems, and for that
would probably require a nuclear reactor anyway, which would help
longevity.

In what way is the pressure a design problem?

How does pressure affect electronic circuits? Electric motors?
Integrated chips or image sensors?

The answer is generally "not much".

You have different electrical arcing concerns, if you fail to
properly insulate all your high voltage wires, but that's
very manageable.

Some capacitors have sealed cans full of electrolyte that
do badly in either zero/low or very high pressures, but you
can design with other types of caps.

I could (and in the past, have seen people) take a standard
off the shelf PC into a pressure chamber to a large fraction
of Venus' surface pressure. That's probably not possible with
typical COTS electronics today, with capacitors which will
possibly implode, but the design problem to get around that
is minor.


-george william herbert