Venus Revisited

Astonishingly, this actually has space history in it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3387895.stm

"Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two
Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and
recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian
surface..."

His page is at http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm ; the images
themselves seem to be ferreted away somewhere on a page that's 404ing,
but there's a good solid history of the Soviet (and the contemporary
American) program of Venus probes there. I've read parts of it, and
commend it to your attention...

--
-Andrew Gray

VERY nice surface images indeed!!


On 13 Jan 2004 17:13:00 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

Astonishingly, this actually has space history in it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3387895.stm

"Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two
Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and
recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian
surface..."

His page is at http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm ; the images
themselves seem to be ferreted away somewhere on a page that's 404ing,
but there's a good solid history of the Soviet (and the contemporary
American) program of Venus probes there. I've read parts of it, and
commend it to your attention...

--
remove 'ss' to reply!

Guy's Space Shuttle Payload Bay page:

http://www.netspace.net.au/~pargoo/

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:39:44 +1100, Guy Parry
wrote:

VERY nice surface images indeed!!


On 13 Jan 2004 17:13:00 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

Astonishingly, this actually has space history in it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3387895.stm

"Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two
Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and
recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian
surface..."

His page is at http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm ; the images
themselves seem to be ferreted away somewhere on a page that's 404ing,
but there's a good solid history of the Soviet (and the contemporary
American) program of Venus probes there. I've read parts of it, and
commend it to your attention...

I'm wondering if there's any plans for new probes to the surface of
Venus... with todays advancements in heat resistant alloys etc, a new
probe would be able to gather a magnitude more data, and hopefully for
a longer period of time (even a day/night cycle would be good)

Cheers,
Richard

In article ,
Richard Stewart wrote:
I'm wondering if there's any plans for new probes to the surface of
Venus...

Nothing much at the moment. It's still very difficult to operate for any
length of time on the surface -- keeping the electronics cold is the
biggest problem -- and that severely drives up the cost of doing anything
there, which makes it an unattractive target.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In message , Henry Spencer
writes
In article ,
Richard Stewart wrote:
I'm wondering if there's any plans for new probes to the surface of
Venus...

Nothing much at the moment. It's still very difficult to operate for any
length of time on the surface -- keeping the electronics cold is the
biggest problem -- and that severely drives up the cost of doing anything
there, which makes it an unattractive target.

Given that you don't need parachutes or airbags, would it be cost
effective to drop a whole pack of Beagles, at intervals of about three
weeks?
I can see that launch window problems mean you would have to do this
from an orbiting bus, which would add enormously to the cost.
--
Rabbit arithmetic - 1 plus 1 equals 10
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

In article , Richard Stewart wrote:

I'm wondering if there's any plans for new probes to the surface of
Venus... with todays advancements in heat resistant alloys etc, a new
probe would be able to gather a magnitude more data, and hopefully for
a longer period of time (even a day/night cycle would be good)

http://www.msss.com/venus/vgnp/vgnp.txt.html is a discussion from (I
think) about 1992, about building a long-lived Venus lander for
investigating seismology; it was costed to fit in the Discovery program,
but intended as a proof-of-concept precursor to a series of similar
landers to put a "network" in place.

(A contemporary Venus equivalent to Mars Pathfinder?)

It was rejected, but there were two probes to Venus which were finalists
at the same time, as the estimable Bill Higgins tells us:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...fnalf.fnal.gov

(The proposal to put six ground beacons and six floating ones on Venus
is a concept that does seem to have interesting potential...)

BTW, it's kind of interesting to look at the press release he quotes:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...jpl.nasa.go v

If I read it right, the projects which would become Stardust, Deep
Impact, Mars Polar Lander, and MESSENGER can all be noted there...

--
-Andrew Gray

Henry Spencer wrote:

Nothing much at the moment. It's still very difficult to operate for any
length of time on the surface -- keeping the electronics cold is the
biggest problem -- and that severely drives up the cost of doing anything
there, which makes it an unattractive target.

Note, however, that NASA is, among other concepts, soliciting proposals
for a Venus In-Situ Explorer (VISE) under the recently released
Announcement of Opportunity for the New Frontiers Program 2003 and
Missions of Opportunity.

http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_s/n...ain.html#2.1.2

I know of at least one VISE-type proposal in preparation and have heard
rumors of another.

--


Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii

Richard Stewart wrote:

I'm wondering if there's any plans for new probes to the surface of
Venus... with todays advancements in heat resistant alloys etc, a new
probe would be able to gather a magnitude more data, and hopefully for
a longer period of time (even a day/night cycle would be good)


That would be some impressive vehicle, given that it would have to
survive for 234 Earth-length days.
Although what would be interesting to do is drop one near what might be
an active volcano at night, and see if you can pick up it's glow.

Pat

In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
Nothing much at the moment. It's still very difficult to operate for any
length of time on the surface -- keeping the electronics cold is the
biggest problem -- and that severely drives up the cost of doing anything
there, which makes it an unattractive target.

Given that you don't need parachutes or airbags, would it be cost
effective to drop a whole pack of Beagles, at intervals of about three
weeks?

I think it would be difficult to make that work well. With each one,
you're starting from scratch with new hardware and a new location. And
something simple like Beagle will have a surface life measured in minutes;
if you want even a few days, the design gets much harder.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Andrew Gray wrote in message ...
Astonishingly, this actually has space history in it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3387895.stm

"Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two
Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and
recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian
surface..."

His page is at http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm ; the images
themselves seem to be ferreted away somewhere on a page that's 404ing,
but there's a good solid history of the Soviet (and the contemporary
American) program of Venus probes there. I've read parts of it, and
commend it to your attention...

Right on target, as Venus offers evolution if not terraformed life a
far safer bet than Mars, and certainly a whole lot more survivable
than our moon.

"Moon Dirt isn't just Moon Dirt, it's absolutely Everything Dirt"

I have absolutely no doubts that once upon a time Mars had a
sufficient atmosphere, thereby a warmer and radiation protected
environment, possibly even long enough to have sustained either
natural evolution and/or of some well intended terraforming on behalf
of establishing some life similar to human.

Unfortunately, there are certain limits to which life and of it's
DNA/RNA as we know it can coexist within the confines of what Mars has
had to offer for the past few thousand years, and certainly things are
not getting any better. Whereas Venus still offers a survivable
atmospheric buffer zone that's also loaded with all sorts of natural
energy opportunities.

The more the likes of Mars core cools itself off, the worse becomes
any opportunity for that planet to revive itself, short of receiving a
massive infusion of artificial energy, such as what 1000 terawatts per
year as derived from our lunar He3 might have to offer.

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

The latest insults to this Mars/Moon injury:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm

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

http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm