Why don't we have a Venus rover by now?

[bigdad84]

Simply as the title states? We have rovers on the Moon and Mars... Why not Venus? I know there is extreme temperatures and crushing pressures, but this is the 21st century. I am pretty sure it could be overcome.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

I believe it's the atmosphere that gets ya.

[meve12]

Because Venus, contrary to the name, is not a nice place.

Surface pressure and temperature is 92 atmospheres and 462 Celsius, respectively. It's basically a planet size pressure cooker.

The Soviets did send the Venera probes down, but none lasted more than an hour and that was just Viking style probes, no roving.

[Dispatcher]

Your photo is of an example of a proposed sterling cycle engined rover. Runs on heat. Should roll fine until it forms a puddle of molten metal. But it might last a few hours or so.

[Space Viking]

Because we don't have a well-managed and properly funded program for such kind of mission, I guess? Since the series of Venera landers did actually perform above expectations on the Venusian surface, it was proven our engineering was more capable than previously thought.

A rover designed for Venus would require some extensive R&D (since some critical technologies are pretty much bleeding edge). The proposed Venus rover concept seen on the original post is meant to be capable of an ambitious 50 days mission duration, which would truly be an outstanding achievement if proven possible.

[Nuke]

what about a drone aircraft of sorts? keep it high up in less dense/hot parts of the atmosphere.

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

what about a drone aircraft of sorts? keep it high up in less dense/hot parts of the atmosphere.

I would ask: What can a high atmosphere drone achieve an orbiting probe can not?

[Nuke]

I would ask: What can a high atmosphere drone achieve an orbiting probe can not?

doesnt venus have really brutal cloud cover?

[Jacob01]

I would ask: What can a high atmosphere drone achieve an orbiting probe can not?

I heard that perhaps microbes could survive in Venus' upper atmosphere along with water vapor. Perhaps it could check for those?

[Space Viking]

what about a drone aircraft of sorts? keep it high up in less dense/hot parts of the atmosphere.

I would ask: What can a high atmosphere drone achieve an orbiting probe can not?

Well, the idea is you can have something performing studies on the actual surface. Neither an aerial drone nor an orbiter can do that.

[Seret]

I know there is extreme temperatures and crushing pressures, but this is the 21st century. I am pretty sure it could be overcome.

Well, yes, but it isn't easy. You're talking about an environment that's analogous to the inside of a gas turbine. We can engineer materials to withstand that, but frankly it's right on the edge and developing a range of new devices (sensors, bearings, electronics etc) that could cope is a big challenge. Gas turbines handle high temperatures by (amongst other things) actively cooling the blades, that's difficult if the whole environment is that hot, where would you move the heat to?

Control would be a huge problem. How do you design electronics to operate at three times the melting point of solder? You could insulate the hell out of it, but then you're only looking at operating for a short period. Active cooling (heat pump?) adds complexity and weight, and ups the power demand.

[Scotius]

Additionally, we have a lot of interesting, relatively easy to reach targets in our solar system. Mercury, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter and Saturn, outer giants...There is simply no incentive to sink mounds of cash in venusian hell of an atmosphere.

[TimMartland]

The cost of building a heat-resistant rover would be so high it wouldnt be worth the fact that it would probably melt to a point of being unusable after an ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM of a week

[kahlzun]

Because no-one really cares whats on Venus's surface? It's been lacquered with lava & acid & heat for so long that it's dead.

Mars might have life, somewhere, and we will probably build a base there at some point.

But Venus? No-ones going to go there for a long time.

[Starwhip]

Well, the thing would have to be autonomous, since signals would be unreliable in the thick atmosphere. It would also have to be able to survive in the literal hell of the surface, and use very expensive, very delicate instruments without destroying them. Which, in that temperature, would be nearly impossible. And why go there when w already have?

[Seret]

No-ones going to go there for a long time.

That's not the reason we do planetary science. No one's ever going to Saturn either, should we tell Cassini to come home?

We explore because we want to learn. The Russian probes learned a lot, but I'm sure Venus still has plenty of secrets to give up. As difficult as it would be, I think we should send more probes to Venus at some point.

[ZedNova]

lets just dump a bunch of inflatable mini-blimps with propellers and sensor packages.

[pat8996]

If life wouldn't survive on Venus what makes you think a freaking rover would survive.

[Comrade Jenkens]

I think a swarm of low budget heat insulated landers would be best. Designed to survive for max a day and gather as much data as possible in that short time.

[MrZayas1]

The reason why we cannot get rovers on venus right now is like you said, extreme temperatures, and a crushing atmosphere. Now this may seem like of course people would be able to come up with something, but it isn't possible, right now. The first and main reason is that the atmosphere would crush any bit of fragile equipment. Second, the heat on the planet would melt all the electrical equipment, as most are made out of copper, gold, and tin. Two, the solar panels would get very little sunlight due to the amount of cloud cover the atmosphere has, and would run out of electricity (if you hadn't melted already) So really a lander or rover on venus would be very impractical, and we can gather alot of evidence from earth about venus, and it really doesn't interest us as human beings because it would cost more to put things on venus than would grant scientific value. Hope this answers your question! Have an awesome weekend!

[Seret]

lets just dump a bunch of inflatable mini-blimps with propellers and sensor packages.

Propellers wouldn't be a lot of use, the atmosphere is so thick and windy that it would be tough to fight against. Better off just drifting with the wind. The corrosive atmosphere and high winds could make it difficult to build a lighter-than-air craft rugged enough though.

[xrayfishx]

Propellers wouldn't be a lot of use, the atmosphere is so thick and windy that it would be tough to fight against. Better off just drifting with the wind. The corrosive atmosphere and high winds could make it difficult to build a lighter-than-air craft rugged enough though.

Lighter than air? Sure, it's hard. Lighter than Venusian atmosphere, however, is doable.

[asmi]

Propellers wouldn't be a lot of use, the atmosphere is so thick and windy that it would be tough to fight against. Better off just drifting with the wind. The corrosive atmosphere and high winds could make it difficult to build a lighter-than-air craft rugged enough though.

Actually that's exactly how last few landers (starting from Venera-11 if my memory serves me) in Venera series performed final descend. Remember that the definition of "lighter-than-air" depends on the properties of said air, at 90+ atm it's VERY different than at 1 atm. These landers used parachutes for initial braking only, and jettisoned them at about 10 km above the surface, after that they were just falling down. Their shape was designed so to give them very low terminal velocity at Venusian atmospheric conditions, they've even built incredible airtunnel that was capable of simulating that atmosphere specifically to test various airfoils in order to find the best one.

These landers weighed over 1 mT, and yet touchdown speed was only about 7 m/s. I've also remember reading somewhere that human would have a terminal velocity of less than 1 m/s in such conditions (if we forget for a moment that it would be crushed by the pressure and burnt by the temperature)!

Edited February 14, 2014 by asmi

[Seret]

Remember that the definition of "lighter-than-air" depends on the properties of said air, at 90+ atm it's VERY different than at 1 atm.

True. Titanium baloon anyone?

[Dispatcher]

The proposed Venus rover concept seen on the original post is meant to be capable of an ambitious 50 days mission duration, which would truly be an outstanding achievement if proven possible.

THAT would be impressive. I assume the 50 days does not include flight and orbit time? All in situ, so to speak? Now if it could broadcast color video and stereo audio along with the other science, THAT would be something!