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This is another mission done quite a while ago, not so much time after heat shield magic wings were indepedantly discovered by several players. In terms of mission finish time, it was the first craft of its kind to complete a full mission of any sort, as well as the first EC powered ssto. These kind of SSTOs are remarkably efficient in terms of getting into orbit, reaching at least 30% of effective payload fraction launching from Earth with a still acceptable thrust to weight ratio, and without any crazy mass optimisations. They are also ideal for tackling atmospheric bodies with high dv needs and mid to moderately high gravity levels. With this kind of basic setup, stock super-kerbins, super-jools, real scale Earth sized planets lacking oxygen, real scaled superearths and some real scale gas giants(fine for at least the dv requirements of Saturn) and super-scale terrestrial planets, at leasts up to 10xearth, can be orbited single staged, with various level of difficulty.

Cooling Venus with enormous space mirrors sounds crazy and awesome. Terraforming also requires some speculative technologies like space tethers, mass drivers and mining of Mercury and Europa for materials. What do you think, does this plan look good? I see some minor issues with the way it was laid out in the video, though. For example, they suggest removing CO2 ice from frozen Venus using mass drivers, forgetting that there’s still a 3 bar nitrogen atmosphere left. Firing a mass driver in a 3 bar atmosphere will probably cause spectacular fireworks and explosions. Also, do you believe that humanity can actually commit to a thousand-year project like this, that won’t be of any economic benefit and will cost a tremendous amount of money, without some kind of authoritarian political will?

Before: After: Before: After:

From my previous experimence with rapier-nerv ssto on Earth, I though that venus ssto, of any kind (I assumed prop-nerv conventional wing craft), was impossible, due to how hard it is to go past beyound 10000m/s on lvn while still having decent twr. However couple months ago, I saw that some people were discussing that some parts were capable of generating a lift/drag ratio of hudreds, so I searched through the parts and found the magic parts( an specific arrangements of certain parts, dm me for detailed construction, since Stratzenblitz75 has a lot cooler mission ahead that will explain the working of magic wings in detail, so I won't spoil it), we will call this setup the "magic wing" from now. I put this aside for a while, since I was not able to resolve the misterios torque this setup was producing, and hence completely unable to control my craft. However recently, I discovered that the solution was remarkebly simple, by simply putting the Col instead of the geometric centre of the "magic wing" exactly below the craft dry and wet com( which coincide with each other), I got close to 0 aerodynamic torque, hence I was able to control the vehicle with only reaction wheel, which means I can get craft l/d really close to the theoretical maximum l/d ratio of "magic wings", after resolving the issue with takeoff and landing, I made a prototype electric ssto that can get into LEO with about 3000m/s of margin and about 7% of LEO payload fraction and only consuming 7900m/s of dv. This low dv use meant that I can reduce my twr a lot further, and hence put in a lot more xenon gas and having more dv. So I decided to do this mission, and the craft has following stats: 13.1t takeoff mass, 23500m/s of vacuum dv, 0.03 of initial vacuum twr, 2 ion engines powered solely by RTGs, 2 small dlc rotors, each with 6 R25 ducted fan baldes. To leo dv usage was about 8200m/s ,which leaves us with 15300m/s of dv, and the effective payload fraction was 33.9%, counting unused xenon tanks as payload. Earth launch:https://imgur.com/a/Wx0L5eE

Last Thursday Putin made his last state of the nation address this term. The unexpected second half of the address can be summed up as the following: Among a menagerie of superweapons presented was the RS-28 Sarmat heavy ICBM with Yu-71 Avangard maneuvering reentry vehicles (surprising no-one) and a nuclear turbojet-propelled cruise missile (which, as far as past actions go, surprised everyone). These do present a tangible boon to Venus exploration, as I’ll detail towards the end. First, some ground rules: We’re talking about the missile and not about Putin; the thread slipping into political flaming will send us all off to the Gulag, so don’t do it We, however, charitably assume that the retired KGB lieutenant-colonel isn’t lying While the information on the turbojet is extremely sketchy, the past lack of evidence or international furore suggests it’s not a fallout-spewing death machine. One would expect broad-spectrum nuclear contamination above Scandinavia, both from a running Project Pluto jet and from crashed “hot” reactors. Instead, what we get is a burst of ruthenium in the Urals, and a minor, elisive spike of iodine-131 that USAF promptly threw its best CBRN recon platform at. Similar to the Moon landing, you wouldn’t expect the other side to keep quiet. This is consistent with past Soviet developments, though. One is the reactor ejection and recovery system envisioned for the ASW variant of An-12, and the other was previously considered for the atomic Tu-95 - a closed-cycle jet with no exposure of the core to outside air. Lack of air inside the core makes operating the reactor immensely easier - NERVA designers got a lot of grey hair trying to factor in the neutron moderation properties of the propellant flow. This also means the nuclear turbojet can safely operate with media other than Earth air. We know full well that turbojets can’t operate on Venus - chemical turbojets. Many KSPers have toiled with electric propellers on Eve, and some did resort to Project Pluto. Separately, Russia’s Venera-D probe is progressing at a snail’s pace, with the primary aim of building a lander that will last 24 hours. That... isn’t terribly ambitious. What if we injected some old-school Apollo coсk-jousting and armed Venera-D with a cruise missile? Currently, studies of Venus atmospheric missions are dominated by advanced derivatives of VeGa baloon probes. These can last for a while depending on the power source, but they are at the mercy of the wind and the initial deployment location. A high subsonic cruise missile-derived drone would cover infinitely more ground throughout a lifetime comparable to most competing aerobots, with a reliable energy budget from its propulsion system. The requisite core capabilities are implicit in the weapons systems being presented. Aside from the nuclear powerplant, the intercontinental cruise missile/loitering munition would have to be capable of advanced autonomouc operations and even threat charecterization, which is crucial because it would only get brief comm windows with Earth. Meanwhile, the Avangard MARV by necessity provides experience with aerodynamic deceleration in aggressive reentry modes, and with precise autonomous navigation and maneuvering in said reentry modes - a Venus aerobot won’t be able to rely on GLONASS. So, does this cloud of fallout has a silver lining?

Here's a link to the article. The electronics have actually been tested in a Venus-like environment for 33 days.

So, its time to land an unmanned probe on the surface of Venus. I've never done this before. Do you have experience or any advices for me? Do I need additional engines or is a single parachute enough for a safe touchdown ? I had the Idea to place everything inside a 2m ServiceBay with a Heatshield Down below and a parachute on the top, do you think that could work? By the way, here is my current TechTree:

I want to share/store documents and plans I (and others!) make for interplanetary missions. I intend to start with basic/boring information, like ballistic coefficients, heat shield information, etc.that will be useful to see for planning a mission. I intend to draw from data of actual carried out or planned missions, but feel free to post information about missions you've carried out with the full RSS/RO/RP-0 stack in KSP 1.1 or 1.2. For starters, I've got this document which lays the ground for a Venus balloon mission. A heatshield is required to slow the craft down at Venus, of course, but the idea is that a balloon/probe combination would be great for gathering information from Venus. I also have the notion that using a balloon would be the best way to attempt to bring a probe back to Venus' orbit from the surface of Venus. Once the balloon & payload are up past most of the atmosphere, a rocket could be used to rise the rest of the way to orbit. https://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/SSPO/SP/VenusUpper/Presentations/gage_VenusEntryBalloonsUAVs.pdf

Venus she's easy! or maybe not. She's hot, and has great tracts of land. Not that its a high pressure arrangement to sample her wonderful science. It will take more time to float to her surface than to do three full moon missions. Playing a Career mode game (Hard setting except for load/save allowed) using RSS as my baseline mod. This is a 1.2.2 game so I’m using SMURFF, SpaceY and other mods to get to an acceptable power to weight ratio for launches, Using tweakscale and procedural fairings, SXTcontinued and near future mods for extended tech tree parts, community tech tree and SETI for an unmanned first push, TACLS for life support and I'm full enforcing a cleaned up orbit ( If i have to delete space junk it costs me 100k funds) and use Stage Recovery to get funds back (Set 7k Burnup Speed and 7-14m/s Landing, otherwise default) I tested various re-entries to make sure the 7k Re-entry speed was actually survivable for my designs. SCANsat and CactEye pad out the game but I’m using Comnet with only KSC ground station instead of RemoteTech for communications. Um oh and 104 mods in my CKAN installed list total... I have Saturn Second stage Nuclear and Timberwind nuclear engines in custom modded items, generally don't use them, specifically only on missions leaving from above 500km orbit. None of the designs is dangerous outside of the basic nukes in space argument. I use a minimum of 12m from crew compartments as a design requirement for nukes. Some of the more extreme nuclear engine design would warrant more though. If I’m using a Timberwind 450 the engine is likely 30m+ back just because of the amount of tank it needs to be useful. Regardless once i get the SSME available it was all that for main and second stages. I use Solids only if really needed or its a real simple mission. After Luna I started deciding what to do next, mars window was way out and I started to investigate Venus first. Time to set up comms. I probably could have got away without the comnet first but I believe its the first step given how many missions have failed because communications are crap. It also eliminated the need for huge antenna on the landers and probes. COMSATS Venus Comsat Network, sent 4 relays in an array planned aero-braking to drop dV, middle of aero-brake maneuver, deflated heat shield, and ejected compacted relay sats, barely staying out of atmosphere, each sat had barely enough maneuver 680m/s to get circular in a reasonable Eq. orbit. in trying to switch craft during the near disaster, got locked onto the structural frame that the relay sats coupled to during transit, (just some pipe sections a de-orbit motor and small probecore, mechjeb, antenna and batteries, one small solar panel). nothing burned up, very close but high drag really slowed it down fast. followed to ground, it litho-braked with the sacrifice of one of the spent couplers and I got my first Venusian data (telemetry & temperature). The Comsats got me a few more experiments and squarish 1200km orbit network (Intended to be 3000km). SCANSATS Scansat probes went out next, didn't have SAR yet. Radar altimetry, Biome scanner and Survey scanners along with High orbit and Low Orbit Science Sats, discovered that venusian day is longer than its year! Very long scan time, skipped two useful transfer windows. As the last of my Apollo moon missions finished scienceing the crap out of the moon I sent a second science/Scansat wave. SAR high altitude, recon and Survey detail sats along with my missing space science. Took a while to get all the gravity scans. Kerbal Alarm Clock estimates took front stage. My first comsats & scansats went to mars during this time so it was hectic. Descent to the surface! Originally I had intended to ignore Venus landings unless the were historical missions from RSS Historical missions pack. However the ease of landing space junk on the surface made me prioritize it given the shorter transfer and delay times for manned missions and sample return. Venera Missions, first two missions sent using my best guesses and did not include all the instruments since I did not have all at this point, using DMagic's instruments also. Midlands for the win. Stopped using the Inflatable shield because it was to hard to control drag, and it flipped on my first mission, lucky that a couple of solar panels was all that was lost. Landers overbuilt soviet style. Found out parachutes won't deploy at 12m/s in 70atm. drogue shoots in pre-deploy would not stop spinning, but full deploy brought the landers down straight. Any lifting surface is detrimental to landing except maybe airbrakes/gridfins. Reality is that they probably melted on the way down since they didn't include temperature control of any kind. past initial re-entry anything that is dropped will make it to surface probably with a safe speed (kinda 12m/s seems like max on higher terrain). Major Probe Volley! After re-design of the probes, left me with R2D2 looking canisters filled with science I tried sending two for testing. Mainly finding more accurate landing position. The agonizing wait during the drop! don't like x4 physical landings regardless of speed, read a book, made some tea. Determined that below 50k altitude ASL engines are indeed totally useless. Determined total batteries i could get away with. Solar is great assuming they survive re-rentry heat. Next eight came in as a docked cluster. Horrible experience with all eight lagging my computer. They consisted of unmanned landers, transmit only, everything possible to fully transmit, all biomes. Still very slow descent, probes hit 11m/2 without drogues, tiny landing gear, set of small airbrakes. Temperature was not an issue, though activated thermal panels cooled the pods. Even at 4xphysical time warp the descent was horribly long, cheated gravity to x10 for the 4th and later probes just to lessen the real time spent on the mission, took over 4 real hours to get all biomes sampled. Noticed during the first and second mission that engines and RCS became useless for anything except re-entry phase, determined 300-800 m/s of retro and 40-50 RCS got a good accurate landing, both mechjeb and trajectories projected over shot landings. Rovers might be faster than planes on venus. Trajectories as usual seemed more accurate. Sample return! Attempt one consisted of a real simple pod, stack of ascent rockets, stack of batteries and eight ducted fans. ran out of batteries at 20km, drag was to high for the system to get up. Second try replaced most of the batteries with capacitors and almost made it. The ducted fans didn't have enough thrust to get me above the point I needed for thrust on my bottom stage (4xlarge Ullage motors with flat ISP). floated back down. Third try, nukes, capacitors in drop pods, more ducted fans (too many). the ducted fans started crashing the computer with some bad interaction of mechjeb's dV calculation. Think it had something to do with staged capacitors, the ducted fans and some kind of circular calculation. After 12 program restarts including one full on computer freeze I gave up on the ducted fans. I think it can work. Fourth try, Balloons! Used the HL inflatable parachute. Made it too small. I didn't see the dirigible icon in VAB so I undersized the balloon and it wasn't enough to get me up to 50km. Also discovered the kraken hates unbalanced balloon lifted craft, spinning it until my probe core sped off at Sol escape velocity. Try Five. Bigger balloon, used RoverDude's control pod. was great but in dropping from the balloon frame I clipped a tank and blew up. Try Six. made it to orbit. Barely 165x147km Orbit and forgot a docking port. Using a Timberwind 45 design basis Nuclear rocket for everything except initial separation and orientation. Tumbled a lot, need cleaner separation and deploy-able control surfaces. Spinning and very slow ascent to be safe enough. Agonizing pain of slowly changing inflation of the balloon as the velocity dropped below 10m/s. Going above 30 resulted in explosive spin (actually five iterations of this design blew up on ascent) because I got impatient and inflated too fast. Try Seven. Changed balloon “Cirrus” real lift variant, started including life support (TACL) and more support in general. (return vehicle prepositioned in 350x350km EQ orbit). Lift vehicles started passing 500k for the missions, plus one 180k refueling mission in my planetary band parking orbit. Determined need for 140+ days on orbit life support and ~100days transit (3500m/s dV transit + 3000dv to bring it into parking orbit for re-use). So generally needing 13k dV for fast missions. Total life support of near a year. Loaded Solyent Green/Red life support mod for TACL. Tested 5 iterations most problems were hard to control on drop, re-entry. Had one burn up too bad for use, two had hard landings as they came in at an angle and fell over. Try eight. After a successful orbit and rendezvous and realizing my rcs balance and SAS sucked on the final manned return pod, removed all but 5days LS from pod. Pod is located inside a set of cargo-bay modules, Three cooling stages are included, larger amount of RCS. Has about 1200dV to spare for any orbital maneuvers. First unmanned test, drop from balloon at 0.35atm, drop first stage tanks, drop second stage tanks, drop third on way to circ burn, mechjeb ascent.... takes me in 180deg counter orbit. 14kdv to get plane change. /sigh Second test I get to balloon separation and drop, launch and start up, run into balloon and explode. Load and try again, manually pilot, then beginning the ascent guidance to nice clean 350k orbit. Try Nine. new design includes sepatron to get balloon spun away from vertical. Full flight plan unmanned test including return using a large nuke powered 5m transit bus. Optimized the balloon to get a stable point of 100m on earth, gave me >1atm on venus lift final so ascent using my normal motors is possible, Used timberwind 45 again as ascent motor and staged the tanks on layered side pods. Transit bus includes LS reprocessing, cargo bay with supplies and excess life support equipment space for 3 crew (Intended for one man missions) that includes an earth orbit return pod. Is 10tons of Fairing excessive? 750k funds to orbit, a refueling and off it went. Mission went great, max inflated to balloon from ground level, it goes supersonic immediately and starts climbing fast (150m/s peak), drop the science and landing gear stage just as take off happens. Nice stable verticle ascent with a little wobble. Fins might help be they are hard to include. Ballon shot clear and spun off to the side, ascent arced nicely past it and almost all my spare dV went unused. Docking went a little rough, not sure if its the Covered Jr. docking ports I used. So now I have an extra emergency return vehicle in orbit. 5million Funds well spent. Time for Real Manned Mission(tm). Manned (Womaned) Mission! Valentina did the first mission solo 144days of waiting, 96d+102d transit, 5 seconds of EVA (hot hot hot), and many minutes of up and down above venus. Now for 7 more times, all in transit, Valentina sits in the abort return vessel. A spare lander is coming along also. Rescue mission at worst case or if I miss a biome target. Best case 1.2m worth of orbiting space junk. Thought about exploring using a rover or folding aircraft, but its way to slow unless I’m right on a boundary even then its a serious mission to get one and also have the balloon launched rocket in the same place. I kinda doubt i could even get close enough for a rescue mission to actually work. Should have positioned a grapple rover to avoid to EVA problems (fire clad space suits). Now on to more missions, to places like the canyons (looked kinda dunish to me) as harley kerman plants his flag...too hot, oh well maybe just the EVA report. I wonder why he had that red bar over him during his EVA. I think I heard him swear at the ground control. Glad I installed chatterer also glad I didn't waste weight on the ladders. Kerbals must be highly compressible mushrooms! Manned mission ascents on venus involved, SAS set to radial out, gridfins retracted, set balloon inflation to 100%, drop landing stage and speed off into the sky. Final peak ascent speed 192.5m/s at 12-15km. Crossed 50km at 150m/s and dropping rapidly. oscillated at 0.80-0.63atm ~55-56km. Set mechjeb for ascent 350km -180deg Inclination (because 0=180deg on Venus for no apparent reason), Ascent path numbers [60km, 100m/s, 250km, 1deg, 35%] Let go of balloon, fire engines, active autopilot. Orbit 350x349km with 1600-1800m/s maneuver fuel, meet up with transit bus at 300km orbit. Off equator I had the bus maneuver a bit for plane changes. In those cases I had left it in a higher 500km orbit and it performed most of the plane maneuvers. Venus Rotates so slow that I didn't ever spend more than 500m/s to get co-planar even considering the lack of control over launch window. Only needed 100-300m/s to compensate for any bad timing in the Hohmann transfers. That said I’m pretty sloppy with rendezvous maneuvers. Really want RP-0 1.2.2 now, need to try this again. (Am i a masochist?)

Hey gents! I've made it! Just like Macollo few years ago! Thanks for him for inspiring me! It was very hard, i think it's one of the hardest achivements in Kerbal Space Program! This mission took me a month of real time but it was totally worth it!

It's 2100. For some reason technology has not progressed beyond 2017 tech. We have colonized the Moon, Mars and some of Jupiter's moons. Then a survey probe detects Exotic Useful Resource™ in high concentrations on Venus, in a pattern similar to iron concentrations on Earth. How would mankind go about mining Venus?

Hey guys! I am new to the kerbal community and really hoping y'all can help me out! I am writing a novel about life among the clouds of Venus and I need help figuring out some basic science about how people would do it. I have done quite a bit of research online but there still remains a number of questions I can't seem to answer. They are as follows: 1. What is the range of atmospheric pressure above Venus in the range of 20-50 Km? I understand that near the top would be about 1 bar. 2. What would the temperature range be like in this 20-50 km area? I have heard wildly different estimates. Some say that towards the bottom of this 20 km the temperature would be near tropical climate and that higher up, close to the 50 km, the temp would be closer to sub-polar. Then again, others have said that even near the top of this range the temp would be well above 150 Fahrenheit. This would imply that it would be even warmer the lower you go. 3. My third question should be fairly easy to clear up. The habitat design in my book mimics airships. The things I need to know are how much mass can a given quantity of air lift, and what would be the pros and cons of helium, hydrogen, and earth air. Should there be any other gases I should consider? 4. The highest mountain on Venus is about 11 km as I understand. Would it be practical to mine resources from mountain tops to fuel an expanding economy? If it wouldn't, what other options would there be? My understanding is that asteroids would be too far away to be practical and that the atmosphere wouldn't have enough elements to meet all of the expected needs. 5. How hard would it be to get water from sulfuric acid? Are there any other things I need to know? Remember, I am a noob at this and really want my book to be scientifically accurate. Thanks a ton for any help you can offer me!

Theoretical paleoclimatology of venus. WATCH the CLICK BAIT. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hellish-venus-might-have-been-habitable-for-billions-of-years/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20160810

*"Orbit" means the lateral movement of your craft across Eve in a clock-wise direction, similar to what it would be on Venus in real life. See Rule #4. **Use of Hyperedit is prohibited for everything except tests of your design. ²I don't need pictures of your tests, however, you are welcome to provide your development process. †See modlist. ††Not compatible with anything of similar fashion. E.g. having ten Kerbals is not compatible with twenty Kerbals. You only get points for the twenty Kerbals, not twenty and ten. Applies to more than two terms also. The Eve Luxury Floatation Aerostat Habitat (ELFAH) challenge is one of the hardest, most captivating, and most difficult ones in the history of Eve challenges. As some of you might've known, the HAVOC project has been developed by NASA. The plan consists of five steps: Robotic exploration into the Venusian atmosphere Crewed mission to orbit Venus for 30 days Crewed mission to Venusian atmosphere for 30 days Crewed mission to Venusian atmosphere for 1 year Long-term human presence in a floating balloon. This, as-well as my own fantasies, has challenged me to get back into KSP and try this out. However, this summer I am moving to California, and my YouTube channel is taking a very serious turn now, so uploading a silly KSP video will be..well..silly. Therefore, I challenge you, the KSP forum community, to complete this challenge! I did do something very similar about a year ago, and it worked alright until I lost control of the ship and crashed into this mountain over here: http://i.imgur.com/ThEbQGO.png Now, for the challenge rules and similar, less intriguing things: ˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘RULES˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘ Please no cheaty methods like Kerbal ladder propulsion or similar. Come on lads, I have faith in you! Version 1.0 or later, please. Old versions are subject to approved exceptions. Maintain a manageable part count. No more than 800 parts please. You must "orbit" around the Equator, or somewhere close to that. Polar orbit is fine as-well. No diagonal or weird-shaped orbits.* Altitude requirement is to be no less 12,500m and 60,000m. 12,500m is not very survivable, and 60,000m is.. well.. it's just cheating at that point. The in-betweens are up to you. Your craft must be able to haul at least four Kerbals. It's a shame that there is no wind on Eve at this time, so you will need to use propulsion. It needs to be 100% sustainable, Eve doesn't need any more carbon than what it already has! The speed of movement must be no less than 10 m/s and no more than 40 m/s. Ion engines (good luck with those), KAX propellers, and other, electric-powered engines / props are allowed.† The way you get here matters! Provide plenty of documentation (pix) of your trip to Eve. I don't need more than five. Use of HyperEdit is highly prohibited.** The craft must be stable (altitude-wise). I know it's hard, but it's more than possible. I've accomplished it myself, before I did something wrong and crashed. Do note that my attempt was in version 0.25, and that was a while ago, so a lot of things changed from then, but I have to assume that it's still possible. Documentation: Papers, Please! Please provide ample documentation (pix) of your entire mission.**² ˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘MODLIST˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘ (^I think this one includes an electric propeller? Correct me if I'm wrong please.^) (^Seems to work with 1.1.2, but official update not out yet. You can use it anyway.) Any designing assist mods. Any visual mods. No aerodynamic mods, must use stock physics only. Solar panel and battery mods and mods I've never heard of before are subject to approval. ˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘COURT˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘ Badge: your craft meets all the rules (criteria). Good job! + 50 points: your craft is very neat-looking. Very subjective and up to me. + 75 points: your craft carries ten Kerbals.†† + 75 points: your craft is under 600 parts.†† + 100 points: your craft travels at 30 m/s. + 100 points: your craft carries fourteen Kerbals.†† + 200 points: your craft is under 400 parts.†† + 300 points: your craft carries twenty Kerbals.†† + 500 points: your craft is under 200 parts.†† + 500 points: your craft underwent no testing whatsoever, and it is your first attempt. In this case, please provide the documentation for your developmental process in its entirety. + 2,000 points: your craft carries 100 Kerbals.†† + 2,000 points: your craft is under 100 parts.†† + 5,000 points: your craft is primarily propelled by ion engines. Eve atmosphere. + 5,000 points: your craft carries more than 100 Kerbals.†† + 7,500 points: your craft gets to Eve primarily using electric propulsion of some sort. + 10,000 points: your craft consists of a main module, several transportation vehicles for transport around Eve or from base to base, and has many great things that an on-ground base would have. + 20,000 points: your craft is reusable. + 100,000 points: your craft is 100% stock. P.S. Let me know if you find any rule / judgement unfair or confusing. I will fix it promptly. ˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘LEADERBOARD˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘ TheOptimist: +50 appearance, +100 speed higher than 30 m/s, +300 more than twenty Kerbals: 450 points. ˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘BADGE˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘˘ P.S.S. Thanks to NASA for the original picture!

How would war be carried out on / around Venus? I know, you're probably wondering why they'd be fighting over Venus in the first place. Here are the conditions: The year is 2200. All the hypothetical scientific advancements and construction projects, economic expansion etc. predicted for 2200 are fully available. The backstory is as follows: Two factions (the Red and the Blue) were once at peace and had focused the last 200 years terraforming and colonizing Mars. Their plan was to use the newly-terraformed Mars as a gateway to the colonization of the remaining solar system... until they found Venerium, a very valuable resource. They then declared war and now fought over it. Red and Blue have exact same 2200 tech. Advances in 3D printing tech allows complex electronic, metal, plastic, glass, essentially all elements in the periodic table to be made in a matter of several minutes provided they have the resources to do so. For the most part, their machines are unmanned. Due to the 3D printer's limited size, in order to build larger structures, it prints out various modules and uses the help of a crane to assemble the full building. It can build more of itself in a deployable form to make it small enough to fit inside its fully deployed version. TL;DR self-replicating machines in the future fight for Venus over Venerium. Our scenario begins at the beginning of the war. Red is based on Earth, while Blue is on a terraformed Mars. Red prefers more powerful weapons and armor, but slower building and slower / sluggish movement. Red is more specialized and organized. Blue is the opposite, high building speed and high speed / maneuverability, but less powerful weapons and armor. Blue is more adaptable and creative.

The event will occur on 2016/04/06, at around 08:30 UTC. Exact time depends on your location on Earth - after all, the object that occults is much closer to us than to the target of occultation. Expect several minutes of difference. Venus will slide behind the Moon in less than 30 seconds, then stay behind it for more than an hour, and then slide out. The event will be visible some 17° away from the solar disk, so be careful. Stay in a shade behind a building or something to remove the glare. The event can be seen with a naked eye because Venus is always visible like that, but it would be much easier if you used a telescope or at least binoculars. Check it in Stellarium or any similar software for exact local time of the event.

Because a recent thread was derailed by an argument about whether or not a Venus colony was a good idea or not, I'm going to try to make this a thread for discussion. I, personally am rather biased by landism, so I'd say Mars would be the better choice.

Does anybody here have any idea why the Soviets launched so many Venus probes? I mean, I'm not complaining, but they did launch a LOT of Venera and Vega probes- with over 14 missions logged between the two programs (not all being successful)- not to mention the Soviets launched the majority of Venus probes, and made the first Venus landers. I'd wonder why they would spend so much tim and effort there, while other space agencies have generally given it much less attention (especially NASA).

Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft is visiting Venus for the second time -- this time to stay, hopefully. The JAXA spacecraft had failed orbital insertion in 2010, with its main engine prematurely shutting down less than 3 minutes into a 12 minute burn due to a salt formation. On December 7, Akatsuki will attempt a second orbital insertion manoeuvre, a 20 minute, 33 second burn that will be carried out by the spacecraft's 20 N, RCS thrusters. The thrusters have already been tested for 10-minute burns, which is still way beyond the very short angular-moment-dumping manoeuvres they were designed for. However, on a positive note, the engineers have managed to make the spacecraft a bit lighter by dumping 65 kilos of propellant from the main engine tank. During its 5-year unplanned heliocentric cruise, Akatsuki has almost always been inside Venus' orbit, exsposing itself to temperature and radiation conditions 37% worse than those planned. The probe reached its last perihelion in August and is now getting further away from the Sun. Also, even if Akatsuki succeeds in this second orbital insertion attempt, it will be on a not-so-scientifically-rewarding orbit, at least compared to the original orbit it was designed to reach. The new orbit will have a period of 15 days, instead of the 30-hour-orbit engineers and scientists originally hoped for. A manoeuvre scheduled for March should lower the orbital period to around 9 days. Despite everything, there are some good signs: three of Akatsuki's five camers have recently been turned on for the first time in more than four years and everything seems fine with them. The other two will be activated only after the orbital insertion burn. The orbital insertion burn is slated to start 541 km above Venus' surface. Sources: SpaceflightNow and Polluce Notizie