Orion Venus flyby?

[_Augustus_]

I'm just curious, what would be needed to do a Venus flyby with SLS and Orion? I'm assuming existing architecture such as B330s, Node 4, and MPLMs.

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

I would think that you could use a similar space craft for what you would do for a Mars flyby. You could also combine the two.  If we used b330s, node four and mplms to build a spacecraft for anything, that would be nice.

[tater]

You could send rather a lot of probe mass for what that entails for literally zero improvement in scientific return.

"Yup, that's Venus!"

"Take a selfie in front of the window!"

Profit?

[_Augustus_]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

You could send rather a lot of probe mass for what that entails for literally zero improvement in scientific return.

"Yup, that's Venus!"

"Take a selfie in front of the window!"

Profit?

You could do a dry run of a Mars flight but with less mass and time, and what about HAVOC?

[tater]

I'd make the same observation about Mars, honestly. The difference is that you could actually land on Mars, and the selfie taken there is worth it just for the awesome factor. Venus isn't even photogenic... 

[todofwar]

18 hours ago, tater said:

I'd make the same observation about Mars, honestly. The difference is that you could actually land on Mars, and the selfie taken there is worth it just for the awesome factor. Venus isn't even photogenic... 

Matter of opinion I think. I thought HAVOC looks much more awesome than landing in a big vacuum desert. And it's probably easier to do since you don't have to land and the atmosphere is thick enough for you to not need sky cranes or other landing mechanisms.

[tater]

1 minute ago, todofwar said:

Matter of opinion I think. I thought HAVOC looks much more awesome than landing in a big vacuum desert. And it's probably easier to do since you don't have to land and the atmosphere is thick enough for you to not need sky cranes or other landing mechanisms.

Manned spaceflight is a PR stunt. Sure, it's my opinion that Venus is not a good PR stunt compared to Mars, but I think it's not an inaccurate opinion. Pictures from Mars would at least look like Mars, HAVOC images would look like any number of airline flights most of us have had. 

Any argument for humans visiting other worlds needs to look at the interest they generate, nothing else matters, as there is zero scientific reason to send people anywhere, and the benefit of robots over people is increasing with time as our ability to create truly autonomous systems increases. I come down hard sometimes on manned spaceflight, even though I am actually in favor of it, but I think the goals need to be looked at realistically, and the goals are incredibly superficial.

[todofwar]

18 minutes ago, tater said:

Manned spaceflight is a PR stunt. Sure, it's my opinion that Venus is not a good PR stunt compared to Mars, but I think it's not an inaccurate opinion. Pictures from Mars would at least look like Mars, HAVOC images would look like any number of airline flights most of us have had. 

Any argument for humans visiting other worlds needs to look at the interest they generate, nothing else matters, as there is zero scientific reason to send people anywhere, and the benefit of robots over people is increasing with time as our ability to create truly autonomous systems increases. I come down hard sometimes on manned spaceflight, even though I am actually in favor of it, but I think the goals need to be looked at realistically, and the goals are incredibly superficial.

Oh I agree completely that in scientific terms it's making less and less sense to send people anywhere in the solar system, unless we get serious about the idea of colonizing another world (and that is it's own discussion). I suppose for PR reasons Mars still wins, but I fall into that small minority of people far more intrigued by Venus than Mars. So when I get a trillion dollars I'll go ahead and send someone over there to take a selfie, but until then Mars will probably be the place we go for a manned flyby followed by landing. 

[tater]

I'm certainly interested in Venus, but the mass/cost budget of doing a human mission has a vast opportunity cost vs sending unmanned instruments.

[DDE]

Not sure when it comes to SLS's upper stages, but this was planned with Orion by using an S-IV wet workshop:

Spoiler

 

[todofwar]

On Friday, September 09, 2016 at 0:08 PM, tater said:

I'm certainly interested in Venus, but the mass/cost budget of doing a human mission has a vast opportunity cost vs sending unmanned instruments.

Yeah, I'm excited at the possibility of VERITAS or DAVINCI or both getting the green light.