Nasa is considering a Manned Mission to Venus before Mars!

[AngelLestat]

Yeah.. I always said it, many thoght that I was crazy by my claims.

The mission is called High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, or HAVOC

EDIT: New full pdf from the mission:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y5gu06h0u7n7v66/HAVOC-Final-Outbrief-General-pdf.pdf?dl=0

.

It can be easier sent a manned mission to venus than mars.

Easy to float in venus than at earth.

240% more sunlight than mars, to feed any energy needs.

Thick atmosphere above to protect the astronauts from radiation.

Similar temperature and pressure. at 52km height. (A lot cheaper than deal with not pressure)

All the technology needed for the mission is already in use.

Easier to keep a self sustaint habitat for longer periods, previous studies fail to do the same in mars.

Almost same gravity than earth 0.85g at 52km height (not health issues)

Shorted mission and travel time.

Extra launch windows

Lower comunications delays (half than mars)

1- HAVOC would begin by dispatching a robot into the Venutial atmosphere to study the environment and make sure there are no surprises.

2- After that, NASA would send a manned mission to orbit the planet for one month.

3- If all went well, the crew would then enter the planet’s atmosphere and float among the clouds for another month.

4- Later missions would send a crew to stay in the planet’s atmosphere for a year. And if that was successful, then…

5- We could begin to establish permanent floating cities on Venus.

----------------------Previous Post---------------------------------------

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68857-Terraforming-Venus?p=960786&viewfull=1#post960786

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71519-Cloud-cities/page8

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/69572-Venus-terraforming-fact-checking-Chemistry-edition

Edited January 7, 2015 by AngelLestat

[dryer_lint]

So we have a project to explore Venus with blimps?

Let's restate: We're going to put people on top of a ton of explosive and light it all, sending them to a planet millions of miles away. The trip takes several years. Then the people detach from their ship using more explosives and enter Venus with plasma and fire raging around them. The ship will deploy a gigantic blimp and float for a month without ever touching the ground. Then the crew exits the blimp with a missile (admit it, that thing was totally a missile) to get back to their ship.

This sounds awesome.

[xenomorph555]

They are not planning to do this before Mars and even then this mission is pointless, nothing would be achieved and so much could go wrong (like burning alive in acid wrong).

[Starman4308]

I very strongly doubt NASA will try this one before a manned Mars mission. The gain from a manned mission to Venus's atmosphere is basically 0: there is nothing to be done in Venus's atmosphere which could not be done remotely. On the other hand, a Mars mission is likely to be roughly equal in cost, much safer, and actually have a point to it: people are excellent at excavating things and other tasks which might be performed on the Martian surface.

[Kibble]

Venus has even more advantages as compared to Mars than you mentioned! The launch windows occur much more frequently (every 1.6 years), because of the albedo of Venus' clouds you can have double sided solar panels, and the Venus-facing side would be 90% as efficient! The trip time between Earth and Venus is shorter (.4 years). And by carefully selecting where in the dynamic atmosphere your balloons are, you can probably circle the planet with a period of close to 24 hours. In situ resource utilization is also very possible by processing the gases at the 52km altitude, and while Venus may be drier than the driest desert, it is rich in many other compounds and elements that could be useful for sustainable presence.

[Motokid600]

Yea, but for what? Can we skim helium/hydrogen perhaps?

[xenomorph555]

Venus has even more advantages as compared to Mars than you mentioned! The launch windows occur much more frequently (every 1.6 years), because of the albedo of Venus' clouds you can have double sided solar panels, and the Venus-facing side would be 90% as efficient! The trip time between Earth and Venus is shorter (.4 years). And by carefully selecting where in the dynamic atmosphere your balloons are, you can probably circle the planet with a period of close to 24 hours. In situ resource utilization is also very possible by processing the gases at the 52km altitude, and while Venus may be drier than the driest desert, it is rich in many other compounds and elements that could be useful for sustainable presence.

While they could do a flyby or orbital mission, this balloon mission is just insane. Besides there is no reason to build a balloon city, it would be expensive, it would be dangerous, there are zero resources because you can't even touch the ground, there is nothing to gain and finally it would never expand. Use the resources to build a Mars base.

[AngelLestat]

Thanks kibble, I forget to mention the launch windows and the shorted travel time. (I will addded in the first post)

Also venus average distance to earth is half than mars, so comunication delay is not a big problem...

A manned mission to mars will take 3 years, but to venus will take only 1 year.

You can also use aerocapture to brake when you reach venus. Mars atmosphere is not enoght to make those kinds of maneuvers.

The mission is not pointless, venus still hide the holy grail of greenhouse effect, understanding that may save the earth.

Or in the worst case, it will complete and fix all the meteorologist math models to improve any wheather prediction (money jackpot)

This can also open the possibility to a permanet floating city into the future.

They are not planning to do this before Mars and even then this mission is pointless, nothing would be achieved and so much could go wrong (like burning alive in acid wrong).

You can not burn alive in acid

Just take a look at ppm of micro acid dopplets in the atmosphere.. You can take a big breath, then go out without cloth, stay there holding their breath and then go back to your ship, and you will not feel nothing. The problem with the acid is in long term. But you can solve that with just teflon. Or any other material not reactive to sulfure acid. Each factory in earth deal with sulfure acid all days. And not micro dopplets.

I very strongly doubt NASA will try this one before a manned Mars mission. The gain from a manned mission to Venus's atmosphere is basically 0: there is nothing to be done in Venus's atmosphere which could not be done remotely. On the other hand, a Mars mission is likely to be roughly equal in cost, much safer, and actually have a point to it: people are excellent at excavating things and other tasks which might be performed on the Martian surface.

Mars is not much safer.

Dust entering in your engines, pressure, sustainability (right now all sustainability studies to mantain a crew alive in mars failed), even if you think that you can solve those problems, a small change in the gas values or something you did not calculate, all the crew die.

Edited December 20, 2014 by AngelLestat

[K^2]

They are not planning to do this before Mars and even then this mission is pointless, nothing would be achieved and so much could go wrong (like burning alive in acid wrong).

I'd totally go. I mean, I think I'd prefer to walk on Martian surface, but flying a blimp on Venus? Sign me up!

[Newt]

Yea, but for what?

I hardly thank that the point is material resources. To this day, and into the foreseeable future, not a single space mission will be for materials like that.

As for xenomorph, even if we were to land, we could not feasibly build or get something back to Earth, especially not if we need to carry crew, too. Ever try to take off from Venus in RSS? Venus is difficult to get out of, but we can fly around in the atmosphere. There are even layers where air as on Earth will float a spaceship easily. Especially in conjunction with teleop robots this could represent an enormous expansion in venusian exploration.

I think that the point of this sort of flight would be to explore the place. Venus just is interesting and we have not figured everything about it out that is to discover. That sort of sentiment of 'well, what do we get out of it' just seems silly. We get knowledge, and understanding. I think that that alone should be enough to go to a new place.

(I would go, too)

[Starman4308]

Mars is not much safer.

Dust entering in your engines, pressure, sustainability (right now all sustainability studies to mantain a crew alive in mars failed), even if you think that you can solve those problems, a small change in the gas values or something you did not calculate, all the crew die.

No sulfuric acid atmosphere, no hurricane-level winds, no need to figure out the best way to launch a rocket from mid-atmosphere, no need to figure out how to preserve said rocket from sulfuric acid...

Gee, Mars sure sounds safer than "Thou shalt not return" Venus.

It also helps that the astronauts would have something to do on Mars, unlike Venus, where the crew would twiddle its thumbs and look at all the instruments that could've been sent on an unmanned mission.

[Kibble]

While they could do a flyby or orbital mission, this balloon mission is just insane. Besides there is no reason to build a balloon city, it would be expensive, it would be dangerous, there are zero resources because you can't even touch the ground, there is nothing to gain and finally it would never expand. Use the resources to build a Mars base.

Well there's no real reason to build a Mars base either! Yet, anyway. I am assuming a far future (Hundreds of years?) with resource and transportation infrastructure in space (the only time where it is at all necessary to build a piloted base anywhere but Earth). The profitable extraction of resource will almost certainly come from asteroids, not planets. Some asteroids have volatiles in the form of hydrated clays, so you can extract water ice (to make O2, H2, and H2O2 for rocket fuel, H2O for drinking, O2 for breathing, and H2 for sabatiers, etc) and ammonia ice (to make N2O4 and NH3 for rocket fuel). There are a significant number of metallic asteroids as well, so you can extract all kinds of metals (especially valuable aluminum!), all without having to touch the surface of Mars or Venus, deep in their respective gravity wells.

But there are also several reasons to park asteroids on orbit of planets, where you can use the Oberth effect for easy capture, and easy access (because small bodies on orbit of a massive body are extremely accessible), and so they wouldn't be on unstable, often inclined and eccentric, solar orbits. It also simplifies the logistics of supplying piloted bases if they are in the same neighborhood. There are only a few reasons not to park asteroids on orbit around Earth, but those reasons are very strong (and hopefully very apparent).

I was just making a case for centering space infrastructure around Venus because of its many benefits over Mars for the aforementioned purposes. Plus balloon cities and rocket balloons (rockoons?) are so super cool!

EDIT : There is acid in Venus' atmosphere, but there isn't that much acid. It would be simple (but not entirely trivial) to shield your stuff, probably amounting to a spray-on plastic coating. (manufacturable in-situ?)

Edited December 21, 2014 by Kibble

[KerikBalm]

I'd support a robotic venusian cloud mission... but what is gaine by sending people?

Prestige?

Not worth it... with the cost of that, you could go unmanned to Europa... and get some real science done

[SuperFastJellyfish]

While they could do a flyby or orbital mission, this balloon mission is just insane. Besides there is no reason to build a balloon city, it would be expensive, it would be dangerous, there are zero resources because you can't even touch the ground, there is nothing to gain and finally it would never expand. Use the resources to build a Mars base.

All of these reasons can be applied to a manned Mars mission as well. Manned missions to either planet, while cool, are pointless until they are cheaper than robotic missions that can do comparable science for a fraction of the price. We haven't built a base on the Moon yet. Why are we so ready to jump on to Mars or Venus when we haven't even established a presence on our own Moon? It's only a few days away compared to the 5+ month Mars and 3 month Venus and is just as useless to put humans on. It would be a vastly cheaper mission and would develop technology necessary to build bases on the other useless hunks of rock in our solar system. There's no rush so why jump the gun? It makes sense to me anyways.

Edited December 21, 2014 by SuperFastJellyfish
ninja'd by multiple people. heh

[Starman4308]

EDIT : There is acid in Venus' atmosphere, but there isn't that much acid. It would be simple (but not entirely non-trivial) to shield your stuff, probably amounting to a spray-on plastic coating. (manufacturable in-situ?)

Alright. We can probably make a Teflon coating or something.

Now, will it stand up to a year in space, followed by reentry, and still perfectly seal your craft? Are you willing to trust human lives to that, particularly when there is no science to be gained which could not have been done unmanned?

At least Mars has rocks and stuff astronauts can pick up, and the challenges are basically understood and solved problems.

[Kibble]

Alright. We can probably make a Teflon coating or something.

Now, will it stand up to a year in space, followed by reentry, and still perfectly seal your craft? Are you willing to trust human lives to that, particularly when there is no science to be gained which could not have been done unmanned?

At least Mars has rocks and stuff astronauts can pick up, and the challenges are basically understood and solved problems.

The main point of a piloted mission should never be to do science (unless its for teleoperation). Science can always be done easier unmanned.

[KerikBalm]

My guess: because as soon as you get an atmosphere, peopel start imagining clouds, going outside without a pressure suit on (won't work for mars), and living there.

I think its an emotional response to something instinctually familiar.

Venus is hell, Mars is Hell frozen over.

Living on Mars isn't as ridiculous as living on venus, as we know it was once habitable or close to it....

But until we're about ready to colonize it, I see no rason to send people there.

And we're nowhere near ready to colonize it.

[Starman4308]

The main point of a piloted mission should never be to do science (unless its for teleoperation). Science can always be done easier unmanned.

Tell that to the people designing a Mars sample return mission. Fingers and hands are downright wonderful for tasks like sample collection, weird experiments like "can we plant stuff in Martian soil?", transferring samples to return rockets, and "Hey, that's funny, can you hand me the excavation chisel Bob?"

There are reasons for a manned Mars mission. They are eclipsed by the costs, but at least there is some reason that a manned mission could return more science than unmanned.

[Kibble]

Tell that to the people designing a Mars sample return mission. Fingers and hands are downright wonderful for tasks like sample collection, weird experiments like "can we plant stuff in Martian soil?", transferring samples to return rockets, and "Hey, that's funny, can you hand me the excavation chisel Bob?"

There are reasons for a manned Mars mission. They are eclipsed by the costs, but at least there is some reason that a manned mission could return more science than unmanned.

I don't even see why Mars sample return is considered at all. The main point of sample return is so that you can process it with our massive Earth scientific equipment and laboratories, without having to rocket them all the way to the site. But it takes a massive, complicated payload (much more massive and complicated, if you put people on it too) to do sample return from Mars, and it begs the question as whether that is more efficient than just building a massive Mars Science Super-Laboratory with all the equipment you would of used to process the samples. Then it can rove around and use that equipment to do science with more Martian dust (an option not available without another sample-return mission)

[magnemoe]

The main point of a piloted mission should never be to do science (unless its for teleoperation). Science can always be done easier unmanned.

More cost effective not easier. As other say humans are far better doing geology stuff. However an manned mission is also far more expensive.

An manned mission is also of an far larger scale so you can defend sending heavier stuff like an drilling rig to take deep samples.

However it will be as expensive as 50 robot missions who can land on 50 locations.

[xenomorph555]

You build a base in Mars to expand humanity, eventually that base will be able to utilize the resources and grow. On a Venus sky city it cannot grow, it cannot access any resources to grow further, you either expensively send more stuff there or it stays as a very small outpost.

[Kibble]

You build a base in Mars to expand humanity, eventually that base will be able to utilize the resources and grow. On a Venus sky city it cannot grow, it cannot access any resources to grow further, you either expensively send more stuff there or it stays as a very small outpost.

You are underestimating the resources that can be extracted from the atmosphere of Venus.

[SubzeroSpartan7]

There is also from what I can tell no way to return so that makes me a little dubious.

[Pipcard]

There is also from what I can tell no way to return so that makes me a little dubious.

Didn't you see the video?

[xenomorph555]

Didn't you see the video?

While I agree returning to orbit isn't necessarily impossible you can't use a cgi powerpoint video as a hard fact point of evidence for something. There are great complexity's in creating space systems, the giant pegasus might not work.