Venusian Airships!

[kinnison]

Scrooge McDuck: What do you know about Dirigibles?

Captain Farley Foghorn (pilot for hire): Only that they are very hard to pronounce

how-nasa-could-build-a-cloud-city-over-venus

NASA thinking about using lighter then air craft to explore Venus. at 50km and "sea level" pressure you could go outside wearing in nothing but an oxygen mask.

So how can i do this is KSP?

this seems awesome

Almost as awesome as a similar mission to Jupiter or saturn

[Dispatcher]

Actually, Dr. Landis has been thinking of such things for Venus for years; NASA seems to flit from one idea to another (complete with cool graphics) without committing itself to set and achieve goals which actually further space exploration; at least that's my opinion. Of course the largest obstacle is budgetary limitations. As to Venus itself, wearing nothing but an oxygen mask might be a little uncomfortable, given that at the altitude in question, the sulfuric acid clouds are near or sometimes at that altitude. Even if the astronaut was wearing clothes, acid mist might ruin someone's day.

[Brotoro]

How to you get back to Earth?

[Streetwind]

Details, details!

[xenomorph555]

The 2 Vega probes carried balloon probes, they saw 2 problems:

1.acid rain that could melt it 2 days after entering atmosphere.

2.winds rating hundreds of miles per hour.

[Pipcard]

Call it "VenuSoar" (kinda like "Dyna-Soar" but for Venus)

[SmartS=true]

The 2 Vega probes carried balloon probes, they saw 2 problems:

1.acid rain that could melt it 2 days after entering atmosphere.

2.winds rating hundreds of miles per hour.

You could coat the balloon/blimp with Teflon, and the wind doesn't really matter, as it is constant, and your balloon/blimp will be going at almost the same speed.

[Newt]

The wind really does matter, if you need to be near the equator to rendezvous with the ship that is going to take you home, or to catch the new ships coming down with supplies.

[NERVAfan]

The winds are mostly east-west, though; staying on the equator shouldn't be difficult. According to this article there is zero north-south wind at the equator and a max of 10 m/s at 50 south latitude.

It talks about slow (daily up to multiple years) changes in wind speed, but it's not clear to me if there are brief (minutes or seconds) and local (on the size scale of a big airship) differences, which are what would matter for this purpose.

http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/51937-super-hurricane-force-winds-on-venus-are-getting-stronger/

The 2 Vega probes carried balloon probes, they saw 2 problems:

1.acid rain that could melt it 2 days after entering atmosphere.

2.winds rating hundreds of miles per hour.

Yeah the balloon would have to be made out of something nonreactive to sulfuric acid. But there are some plastics that can do that. (And I think more depending on how strong the acid is - Venus's cloud droplets in mostly CO2 would probably be a less harsh environment than total immersion in concentrated sulfuric acid.)