Manned mission to venus's surface?

[Souper]

Well imagine how promising it would be to mine all that underground silicone. Something tells me Venus has a lot of valuable metals. Especially all those diamonds.

Now that we have a reason to go there, why not?

Besides one of the main reasons we'd want to go there is to see if we could.

[WinkAllKerb'']

oki fuel, granted ; but diamond seriously they worth nothing in term of energy right ?

Edited June 1, 2014 by WinkAllKerb''

[Kryten]

Well imagine how promising it would be to mine all that underground silicone. Something tells me Venus has a lot of valuable metals. Especially all those diamonds.

Silicone isn't naturally occurring, silicon is ridiculously common, and diamonds would take much less energy to just make than return from Venus.

[xenomorph555]

I am usually for manned missions, to the moon, mars, titan, they are all super exciting. But to venus nononoononono, reckless, expensive, hard, super mega dangerous. Venus is also very well... not the best target when you could go to places like titan.

I do believe however it would be a grand adventure and challenge so as a human I say go on .

As for is it possible, yes, to a degree, the people would not be able to leave the lander (which would be large cylinder or sphere).

[Reddragon]

At least the mission duration would be shorter than Mars missions.

[lajoswinkler]

Manned mission to the surface of Venus?

[NovaSilisko]

The "Science" Labs

[Vonar]

Well imagine how promising it would be to mine all that underground silicone. Something tells me Venus has a lot of valuable metals. Especially all those diamonds.

Now that we have a reason to go there, why not?

Besides one of the main reasons we'd want to go there is to see if we could.

Still it is WAY easier to mine in high pressure environments with robots instead of humans, and diamonds aren't going to do us much good without a way to get them off the surface of Venus and back to Earth.

Mining off world is as uneconomical for Mars, and it would be more uneconomical for Venus - Mars I should point out to you has a much lower delta-V requirement for most activities that require landing and taking off again then Venus does.

We will get to Venus eventually, but I wouldn't place any bets on it happening before 2200. I also wouldn't place any bets on it happening before a considerable amount of instu terraforming has all ready been done by robots.

[Souper]

Well at least we'd prove we could at least TRY to walk on it?

[Nuke]

Funny, no-one seems to have noticed this obvious statement !

Even millions of °K have been measured and created, the lowest temp is still 0°K with actual knowledge.

i figured it out from the op, and subsequently posted about it (look up).

[Vonar]

Well at least we'd prove we could at least TRY to walk on it?

I'm sorry, I'm still not seeing how a manned landing on Venus is a net benefit and as others have stated before Venus has a harsh enough environment that automated machines exploring for long duration's on the surface or in the atmosphere would be far more efficient then men walking maybe a few hundred meters and picking up a few small samples on the surface.

It is not hard to think of dozens of other programs that I want NASA to pursue before wasting the very limited funds that the space agency receives on a high risk low reword manned Venus mission, and while humans are nice to have on the mission most of these missions can be accomplished more efficiently through automation.

Edited June 1, 2014 by Vonar

[vger]

Well at least we'd prove we could at least TRY to walk on it?

Seriously, just let it go. We'd have less to contend with from going to fricking Mercury.

[NASAFanboy]

An manned mission to Mars is in the cards not because we are naturally curious, but because we want information about possible past habilitation by alien life forms and prospects of colonization by human settlers. When we went to the Moon, we didn't go because "we could", like JFK said, but because we had a threat (The Soviet Union), and we could not, at any cost, let that nation gain the "upper hand" over us in spaceflight. Today, we're reaching harder for Mars, why? Because we have a repeat the same scenario, this time with the Chinese. We (Or, the US Government), perceives China as a threat to American interests, and thus, we cannot let them gain the "upper hand over us". And sure, it may be illogical, but humans are illogical beings, or otherwise we would not have left the cave.

Is there an incentive to get us to Venus? A few forumers here mentioned "diamonds", but would it be that worth it, when, in the future, we can readily manufacture and use them on Earth without the cost of transporting them completely from another world. I recall stating in an earlier thread that Venus will face eventual human missions, possibly in the 2070's. The astronauts will live in pressurized habitats thousands of feet above the scorching surface and operate robots in real time through telepresence - they simply don't need to go down there. We don't have a threat to push us to Venus. The Russians, the Chinese, they don't want Venus, they want the Moon and Mars. There is no political drive to accomplish an surface mission. Any manned presence will be solely restricted to real time telepresence operations through habitats in the Venusian stratosphere.

[DerpenWolf]

Ok so let's say you to walk on the surface you have a big heavy super cooled mech suit how do you move it? You use actuators or something to help the astronaut move right! But wait... The suit now can move without an occupant and can move in any way the human could on the surface... Meaning the whole having a human in the suit to build or do repair work argument is totally invalid... Meaning having a manned Eva on the surface has no point because the robot can do whatever the human could do. And the delay between the surface and low orbit or geosynchronous orbit is not very bad so why not just have a human control a robot from space!!!! Also waking on Venus would probably be a &!+$# due to the thick atmosphere. My advice is that if you ever want to walk on Venus, blow off most the atmosphere and cool the planet down...

[vger]

^^^

In addition, I'd rather not be walking around in 400 degree weather, and suddenly finding out that I can't even try to get back to the lander because of a servo malfunction.

[Seret]

Well at least we'd prove we could at least TRY to walk on it?

The problem is that it's hard to imagine any situation where walking around on it would be of any use to us. Even if you invoke magical future-tech with advanced capabilities that just means that the same technology could be applied to a robot that would make it even more capable than a human for less cost and risk.

[Nuke]

Ok so let's say you to walk on the surface you have a big heavy super cooled mech suit how do you move it? You use actuators or something to help the astronaut move right! But wait... The suit now can move without an occupant and can move in any way the human could on the surface... Meaning the whole having a human in the suit to build or do repair work argument is totally invalid... Meaning having a manned Eva on the surface has no point because the robot can do whatever the human could do. And the delay between the surface and low orbit or geosynchronous orbit is not very bad so why not just have a human control a robot from space!!!! Also waking on Venus would probably be a &!+$# due to the thick atmosphere. My advice is that if you ever want to walk on Venus, blow off most the atmosphere and cool the planet down...

i never said any of that is practical. venus is such an impractical place for a manned mission. i think a manned mission to saturn (not its moons) would be more successful and would make more sense.

that second part now, about blowing up its atmosphere (especially after seeing tonight's episode of cosmos) i see that as a distinct possibility. the obvious method is brute force, smash a freaking comet into it. a better option would be to take that gas and move it to mars, terraform 2 planets for the price of one. perhaps a glancing blow with precise timing can send some of that gas out on a mars crossing trajectory. im sure there is a less crude way to pull it off though.

[jwenting]

The "Science" Labs

Same amount of 'science' as there is history on the "History Channel"...

[phoenix_ca]

We're talking about a planet where the surface is so hot it'll melt lead. And zinc. And tellurium. As someone said earlier, if there's a planet in our solar system that could be called hell, Venus would be it. Any sort of mission there just looks incredibly impractical when you consider the environment. Not with our technology. (Also, lols at the "thousands of degrees below zero".) Send robots, not squishy humans to that real-world version of Phlegethon (or you know just good ol' Judeo-Christian hell).

Any talk of putting a human on Venus should at the very least elicit this reaction:

No, that's not quite enough nope.

Okay barely enough.

I'll grant you that with an modern exoskeleton suit with mechanical assistance so that the squishy and weak human could actually move the darn thing could allow for said squishy human to actually move around in a suit large enough to create a cool environment and deal with the substantial pressure and really, really nasty atmosphere. But at that point, what is the point? Send a lander, or a bunch of landers, for the same capital cost as sending a human, and gather yourself way more data. Probes are expendable, and unless you're the USSR, astronauts are not. Bringing one home from Venus would be...problematic, and that's putting it mildly.

[the_bT]

I agree with all who say that a person that can only move with a suit that pretty much moves for them has no advantage over controlling that robotic suit remotely. But remote control is difficult with a time delay. The best deal you can get seems to be to control your robot from orbit. I believe coping with these long time delays for rover operation on Mars has lead to big leaps in autonomous control computers and driver assistance systems for vehicles (I have no evidence though).

I wonder if the same progress would have been made without the specific problem at hand. That claim is often made for technologies developed for spaceflight and rarely proved.

Now if you use some sort of human like robot without wheels (for whatever reason) you need new control systems I guess. Would either robot or control system be developed without specific problem to solve?

If robotic exploration of Venus leads to some affordable full body force feedback control setup that I can then abuse to play video games I'm all for it...

The robots may be useful too but what do I care

Also ...

The soviets DID last for 2+ hours, so we can do better.

Probes are expendable, and unless you're the USSR, astronauts are not.

Whats with all the hate on soviet tech? Are we that insecure as "the west" now that we need to badmouth ancient technology that was barely worse if at all then what "we" came up with? As far as I know the soviet space program has never treated humans as expendable.

[phoenix_ca]

Whats with all the hate on soviet tech? Are we that insecure as "the west" now that we need to badmouth ancient technology that was barely worse if at all then what "we" came up with? As far as I know the soviet space program has never treated humans as expendable.

The USSR had a penchant for getting their cosmonauts killed is all. (Though if you think their space program didn't seen humans as expendable, you're a bit off...the whole USSR treated humans as expendable. So did the USA. So did most countries. Throw enough bodies at a war and you're bound to win by sheer numbers as often the way of things. Other enterprises were no different, and hell in most of the world they still are no different.)

[Red Iron Crown]

I believe more US astronauts have died in spaceflight than Soviet/Russian cosmonauts.

I have great respect for the Russian space program, it has a flavor of practicality that I find appealing. Not to mention that they hit most of the milestones in the space race before the US, before the US decided a manned Moon landing was the real goal and declared victory.

[phoenix_ca]

I believe more US astronauts have died in spaceflight than Soviet/Russian cosmonauts.

Then I would say the exact same thing and be just as tongue-in-cheek about it. Penchant for killing their astronauts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents Besides I didn't say anything about the actual numbers, but the view of whether or not the humans are expendable.

[the_bT]

Ok, this is offtopic but I think I need to clarify my standpoint a little.

I don't think that if you consider something possible to do without injury and end up injuring or killing people in the process you are treating humans as expendable. If you however from the beginning assume that some goal cannot be reached without death and try regardless, then you do.

No space program has ever done this. Underestimating risks to appeal to politicians might have been done on both "sides" but not on a systematic basis I believe.

[jwenting]

I believe more US astronauts have died in spaceflight than Soviet/Russian cosmonauts.

but in a far smaller number of accidents... There have been only 2 fatal space missions in the US space program. Sadly they killed 6-7 people each.

Apollo 1 never left the ground, doesn't count as a spaceflight accident.

The Soviets have lost a similar number of people, but 2-3 at a time, far worse...