Manned mission to venus's surface?

[Creature]

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

I'm now picturing massive underground silicone deposits, wobbling about causing all kinds of tectonic anomalies. The manned mining mission will be paid by the plastic surgery business. And on Venus, of all the places. I can definitely see the marketing possibilities here.

[HeadHunter67]

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.

Three astronauts were killed in a spacecraft - if that doesn't count, then neither does Columbia, which was a "plane crash" by your definition.

[EDIT: Oh, and Challenger exploded at 15km, well below the Kármán line or 100 km, so by your definition, that doesn't count either...]

The total number of American astronauts killed in spacecraft is 15 - 3 on Apollo 1, 7 on Challenger, 5 on Columbia (the other two crew members were from Israel and India).

On a totally unrelated note, William McCool sure looked like Kevin Bacon, didn't he?

Edited June 2, 2014 by HeadHunter67

[HeadHunter67]

So you're all implying we'll NEVER set foot on venus? Bah!

I'm not saying that a manned mission to Venus is a scientific impossibility - I'm saying that some of the things you suggest are scientifically impossible. Cooling something past the level at which all molecular activity ceases (0 K/-273.15 C/-459.67 F) is not and can never be possible.

If we need a giant robot exoskeleton to walk on Venus, what's the difference between that and staying in the capsule? Why would we go through all that trouble just to say we imitated a human activity on a planet that is unsuitable for even the briefest habitation?

Venus could certainly be terraformed - and it's a process that would literally take centuries. By then, it will be a moot point - there are thousands of better candidates for colonies, out among the exoplanets we've discovered.

It's great that you dream big - but you have some egregious misconceptions about how science works. If you want to see any of that dream become a reality, you owe it to yourself and to humanity to get educated. People who use phrases like "thousands of degrees below zero" should refrain from scientific discussion, and concentrate on their homework.

[christok]

Since we're resorting to Wikipedia links, negative thermodynamic temperature is a real thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature

But, yeah, it's not much use for a cooling system.

[HeadHunter67]

Indeed - it would, in fact, be a heating system. The link is not as simple and straightforward as the phrase "negative temperature" would suggest. Without enthalpy, and in a state where increasing the energy increases entropy, Absolute Zero is still the coldest you can make something.

[Skyler4856]

How exactly does one make something thousands of degrees below zero?

Through violation of the laws of physics, duh...

But on a serious note, Absolute Zero is absolute.

[Rainbowtrout]

First of all, as said before, millions of degrees below 0 is out of the question. We will land on Venus one day, but how? I'm not sure. We would have to increase our technological capabilities by a lot. Maybe, we'll be exploring the stars, and one of our closest neighbours will still be wanting a planet-warming* party.

*Might be a planet-cooling party. Depends if we're ambitious enough to attempt to terraform Venus.

[kidolvski]

"thousands degrees below zero"

In the universe where I live, the absolute zero is still -273 C.

[christok]

I think super's had enough punishment over the negative temperature thing. Let's show some mercy here.

Far more interesting to me, personally, would be the question of how you get off the planet. The surface escape velocity is only 1 km/s lower than Earths, in addition to the difficulty of getting through the atmosphere (and balloon-launched vehicles count as difficulty). It's difficult enough getting to orbit from the surface of our own little planet and I'm afraid that getting an entire launch vehicle to Venus sounds beyond our capability for the time being.

[shynung]

Far more interesting to me, personally, would be the question of how you get off the planet. The surface escape velocity is only 1 km/s lower than Earths, in addition to the difficulty of getting through the atmosphere (and balloon-launched vehicles count as difficulty). It's difficult enough getting to orbit from the surface of our own little planet and I'm afraid that getting an entire launch vehicle to Venus sounds beyond our capability for the time being.

A Space Launch System Launch System? Better stock up on those SLS boosters.

Also noteworthy in difficulty was designing a return vehicle that can withstand Venus' atmospheric temperature and pressure. No currently-available material is able to withstand this level of abuse while also doing useful work.

I'm beginning to wonder why we named such a planet after a goddess of love and beauty.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm beginning to wonder why we named such a planet after a goddess of love and beauty.

We knew little about surface conditions when it was named.

[christok]

I'm beginning to wonder why we named such a planet after a goddess of love and beauty.

I don't wonder. I think it appropriate.

[shynung]

We knew little about surface conditions when it was named.

I don't wonder. I think it appropriate.

I think 'Lucifer' is more appropriate, now that we know what it's like down there...

[Transits]

*cough* terraforming *cough*

[vger]

I think 'Lucifer' is more appropriate, now that we know what it's like down there...

Venus is an analogue for Hera (Goddess of Fire), so... good enough.

[Red Iron Crown]

Venus is an analogue for Hera (Goddess of Fire), so... good enough.

Venus is the counterpart to Aphrodite, as I understand it.

[christok]

Now I'm a little confused because I thought you'd all get the reference and I'm no longer sure if you did.

Lucifer is another name for the planet Venus.

[vger]

Oh yeah *facepalm* that whole "Morning Star" thing.

Aaanyway, before we derail any further...

Venus is now officially more forbidden than the Genesis Planet.

[lajoswinkler]

Have you watched the newest Cosmos? The authors depicted Venera 13 probe in a totally bad shape, as it was melted and corroded. There is no reason for that. The surface does not have corrosive properties for alloys used on the lander. Sulfuric acid never reaches the ground, and the traces of corrosive chemicals form a passivated layer of products, disabling further corrosion.

Either this is a subtle propaganda, or the people working on this didn't do their job right...

[Moon Goddess]

We knew little about surface conditions when it was named.

We knew less than "little" about the surface when it was named.

When it was named we didn't know it had a surface, we knew

1. It's the brightest star in the sky

2. It only appears in morning and evening

3. It's one of these strange wandering stars called "Planets"

also, we knew at that time that stars and thus planets were balls of fire set against the firmament of the sky

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

I think 'Lucifer' is more appropriate, now that we know what it's like down there...

I've already claimed 'Lucifer' for Kepler-70b

The latin adjective 'lucifer' means "light-bringing." And that planet isn't just so hot it glows, it's hotter than the surface of the sun, as hot as an A9 or F0 class star. It's so hot it emits enough ultraviolet radiation to give you "sunburns" (assuming you somehow blocked all the radiation from its parent star and positioned yourself so that you received the same total radiation intensity from the planet that Earth gets from the sun). Compare that with typical glowing-hot planets, which emit mostly infrared with a bit of red light. Also, Kepler-70b has actually been through hell and back; it started out as a gas giant that was engulfed when its star turned into a red giant, but the star prematurely blew off its outer layers before the planet could be entirely vaporized, becoming a B subdwarf star and leaving the planet's rocky core still in orbit.

The same is also true for Kepler-70c.

[Red Iron Crown]

We knew less than "little" about the surface when it was named.

When it was named we didn't know it had a surface, we knew

1. It's the brightest star in the sky

2. It only appears in morning and evening

3. It's one of these strange wandering stars called "Planets"

also, we knew at that time that stars and thus planets were balls of fire set against the firmament of the sky

That's true. Though my point that it was named Venus before it was known how hellish the surface conditions were is valid, I think; the distinction is largely semantic.

[KerikBalm]

Initially, it wasn't even known that the "morning star" and the "evening star" were in fact the same thing...

[vger]

Lajos, any idea why they put a diffracted fishbowl effect on that Vanera image?

Maybe it's meant to be heat shimmer, but to me it almost looks like a photo taken with a crude microscope.

[Science-Recon]

"thousands degrees below zero"

In the universe where I live, the absolute zero is still -273 C.

If I'm not mistaken, you can get a negative kelvin temperature although it requires strange matter of negative energy or something along those lines. I'll have a look.