Nasa is considering a Manned Mission to Venus before Mars!

[AngelLestat]

I ultimately don't care where in particular we are going, be it the Moon, Mars, Venus, an asteroid, or god damn Alpha Centauri. I care about the fact that we need a long-term plan that we stick to for what we will be doing. The Space Race had a clear long-term plan for landing men on the Moon before the Soviets and we worked to accomplish that mandate, but today we have NASA and the US government who have a very bad case of ADD not being able to decide on anything long-term and flinging out ideas left and right. "We're going back to the Moo-- no we're going to Mar-- actually how about an asteroid in Lunar orbi-- seriously this idea about Venus is... wait, what were we sayin--OOOOOOOH SHINY".

And now you expect me to take them seriously? Wake me up when we're actually serious about doing whatever it is we will be doing.

You cann´t blame NASA, this vision to sent humans at the Venus clouds is very recent for NASA, they never thoght about this possibility before. Of course soviets did since 1970, because they were the Venus masters.

But in the west, the first scientist who realized about this possibility was Geoffrey Landis few years back.

Is a big change of perspective, but there is not much difference; we can go to a planet to float in some liquid, to be on ground, or to float in their atmosphere.

I would love to also explore Jupiter with a hot "air" ballon powered by a nuclear heater.

With this you can choose any altitude you want, it does not matter what gas you have inside your envelope, if you heated, it will be lighter than the surrounding.

Nasa knows that they need to plan a new manned mission to some place (not the moon) to capture again the attention of the world.

But mars is still too risky without ways to abort.

This mission is a lot shorted, 400 days VS a 600 to 900 days mars mission.

Also until you dont receive the money, you can present any different mission, only after you start to work hard in achieve that.

So there is no time lost here.

I'm pretty sure we would die on Venus.

Ok, that is kinda negative.. but more reason to watch it in TV!!

To be 100% honest. There is 3 robers in mars, and nobody gives a ****, I am not the exception.

Some answers from NASA in the comment section:

Thanks, but I expect some extra info, this project it does not seems to have an official web page.

EDIT: Albert, I will answer your post later.

[michaelsteele3]

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/index.html#.VJhKI6AEAA

Tell me if you see "HAVOC" in the H category.

I don't

If NASA officially stated they were going to do something as extreme as this BEFORE Mars, there would at least be a TRACE of it on their site.

[billbobjebkirk]

Remember guys, the last two letters in the name stand for Operations Concept. they're just going over the idea to see if it can be done.

[MoeKitsune]

Thank you! Thank you so much!

[TeMPOraL]

If I see a headless chicken I'm going to call it a headless chicken, not sugarcoat it and say that's a rooster of prime genetic heritage, and a headless chicken is precisely what NASA is right now with the lack of any solid long-term roadmap.

I ultimately don't care where in particular we are going, be it the Moon, Mars, Venus, an asteroid, or god damn Alpha Centauri. I care about the fact that we need a long-term plan that we stick to for what we will be doing. The Space Race had a clear long-term plan for landing men on the Moon before the Soviets and we worked to accomplish that mandate, but today we have NASA and the US government who have a very bad case of ADD not being able to decide on anything long-term and flinging out ideas left and right. "We're going back to the Moo-- no we're going to Mar-- actually how about an asteroid in Lunar orbi-- seriously this idea about Venus is... wait, what were we sayin--OOOOOOOH SHINY".

And now you expect me to take them seriously? Wake me up when we're actually serious about doing whatever it is we will be doing.

Well, part of the reason there was a plan during Space Race was that there was a clear and somewhat stable political goal there - beating Soviets to anything was something everyone in the office could agree on. Now NASA has to work in a political hurricane, where things change every few years. I recall some NASA guys saying between the lines (in some article I can't find now, so forgive lack of citation) that they basically design everything around still having something useful surviving when some politician decides that this particular thing is not going to space today.

The cause for not being able to stick to anything long-term is external (and, ultimately, somewhat the responsibility of the public - it's one of the reasons NASA is investing so much in PR & media coverage lately; apart from inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers, a potential mission that captures hearts and minds of many people will make it more difficult for some politician to cancel it because he can get more jobs in his district this way). With changing winds and unsure budget, it's really hard to have anything else than a very rough sketch for the future with lots of space to pivot.

[RainDreamer]

So, put NASA aside for a bit. How about other space agencies in the world? ESA, JAXA, "the Indian space agency that I forgot the name",etc, anyone know if they have anything fancy planned? NASA seems to get caught up with political games now. Maybe the others have less problems with this?

[AngelLestat]

Yes, I whole heartedly agree with Neil Degrasse Tyson(and anyone else) that we should should have manned space flight beyond LEO.

It's a disgrace to humanity that we put so little effort into it.

But that doesn't mean your road map needs to be as follow:

First Humans in LEO, First Humans on the Moon, 42 years stuck in LEO and then Venus Airships.

Why not? what is your next step then... Humans in GEO?

Will Airships with a small habitable space and a Venusian Sunrise inspire people?

Or will Human foot prints on Martian soil do that?

In my case, if they go outside the airship at 52km height with just an oxygen mask, they will make my day and all my future days.

Maybe that is too much to ask for the first month mission, but it will happen for sure for the next 1 year mission.

They wont stick their heads out of the craft or sit on a patio, because there is no plan to do stuff like that(You know; droplets of sulfuric acid).

Opposed to Mars were the astronauts can actually set their foots on the ground, explore and do experiments and actually take rock samples.

micro droplets you may said..

Imagine the amount of water in our atmosphere, 40% of humidity (you get wet with that?), in the Venus case there is a 1% of water-sulfure acid humidity.

You can be naked outside by 1 min or more, and you will not feel absoluty nothing. Extra time and you might start to feel some ardor in the skin.

Also, nothing that any latex suit (with mask) can not counter.

We are not clueless on what causes climate change, you should know that if your are pro-Venus-mission.

I dont know other way to explain it.. Read the pdf.

Clouds? Really? We don't understand much about clouds? Hurricanes I can understand, it's hard to predict hurricanes.

You think that I made it up? Not ask me, ask to the meteorologists.

I do agree that our understanding of climate is not complete and that it's a complex system. But we don't need manned airships on Venus to improve our knowledge.

Of course than several different missions to venus will collect more science that a single manned mission.

But we need a manned mission too, and right now a manned mars mission is too expensive and risky.

Maybe this mission can encourage people interest to take the next step in mars.

Or we could find out if it has DNA or something else, how it works, come closer to knowing why life exists, etc. etc.

For a life search quest, I would preffer an unmanned mission to europa under ice lakes. More chance to find complex life there.

I don't get why you think that a manned Airship safe us from climate change. The only thing which will safe us is to stop putting gases in the atmosphere that cause the greenhouse effect.

We will be long gone before the Earth is anywhere close of resembling Venus.

Because we dont know for certain what we put in motion burning already the 50% of fossil fuels who was storage over 1000 millions of years.

We know that some mass extintions happen before when similar amount of co2 was burn due massive volcan activity who burn huge carbon reservoirs plus forests.

Now we have a chain reaction effect which extra co2 melt ice, then earth reflects less radiation, then methane reservoirs escape to atmosphere, temperature rise, more water vapor reach the atmosphere which rise even more the temperature.

And right now we can not predict the right values of all these process. Because our climate understanding is basic.

Also understanding the climate, we can focus our resources in the best way to prevent this, maybe there is a better way than just cut our co2 emissions.

The biggest problem of humanity is global warming. (well in fact is the same huminity it self, the increase in poppulation)

- Time delays and bandwidth are a non issue for observational experiments. yes they are.

- We don't have meteorologist in Space to predict our weather, because sending the data down from satellites works just fine. why they will be in space? if the atmosphere is right here? lol

- CCD's on cameras(depending on their application) can see the whole electromagnetic spectrum, the human eye can only see visible light. So you would want to send those. you have limit bandwidth, here you can go back with many terabytes of data.

- Curiosity landed just fine with out the help direct human input and it's the most complex craft that landed on an other planet, deploying a few probes should be trivial in comparison. I already said it, I am agree that is always cheap to sent a probe than a human.. But we need a manned mission too! Now.. in ten years, not in 30 years.

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/index.html#.VJhKI6AEAA

If NASA officially stated they were going to do something as extreme as this BEFORE Mars, there would at least be a TRACE of it on their site.

If Nasa officially stated they were going to mars, then you will find a trace of that manned mission on their site

Remember guys, the last two letters in the name stand for Operations Concept. they're just going over the idea to see if it can be done.

yeah of course. The topic tittle it said: "they are considering"

[AngelLestat]

So, put NASA aside for a bit. How about other space agencies in the world? ESA, JAXA, "the Indian space agency that I forgot the name",etc, anyone know if they have anything fancy planned? NASA seems to get caught up with political games now. Maybe the others have less problems with this?

they should joint forces..

snip

yeah that.

[Albert VDS]

Why not? what is your next step then... Humans in GEO?

Mars, the Moon. How about some bases on those worlds.

In my case, if they go outside the airship at 52km height with just an oxygen mask, they will make my day and all my future days.

Maybe that is too much to ask for the first month mission, but it will happen for sure for the next 1 year mission.

They won't go outside, with the sulfuric acid and stuff.

micro droplets you may said..

Imagine the amount of water in our atmosphere, 40% of humidity (you get wet with that?), in the Venus case there is a 1% of water-sulfure acid humidity.

You can be naked outside by 1 min or more, and you will not feel absoluty nothing. Extra time and you might start to feel some ardor in the skin.

Also, nothing that any latex suit (with mask) can not counter.

So we've got a mission which costs an enormous amount of money, putting humans in a precarious situation, just to go outside for one minute?

Because you still haven't convinced me that you

I dont know other way to explain it.. Read the pdf.

You think that I made it up? Not ask me, ask to the meteorologists.

So show me those meteorlogist who say we don't know much about clouds.

Of course than several different missions to venus will collect more science that a single manned mission.

But we need a manned mission too, and right now a manned mars mission is too expensive and risky.

Maybe this mission can encourage people interest to take the next step in mars.

So what are the figures of this Venus mission? For example, the cost of Mars Directs is estimated at $30 to $50 billion.

For a life search quest, I would preffer an unmanned mission to europa under ice lakes. More chance to find complex life there.

The ice crust on Europa is 20 Km thick, you don't just drill through that and look around. That mission is in a whole other ball park than a mission to Mars.

Because we dont know for certain what we put in motion burning already the 50% of fossil fuels who was storage over 1000 millions of years.

We know that some mass extintions happen before when similar amount of co2 was burn due massive volcan activity who burn huge carbon reservoirs plus forests.

Now we have a chain reaction effect which extra co2 melt ice, then earth reflects less radiation, then methane reservoirs escape to atmosphere, temperature rise, more water vapor reach the atmosphere which rise even more the temperature.

And right now we can not predict the right values of all these process. Because our climate understanding is basic.

Also understanding the climate, we can focus our resources in the best way to prevent this, maybe there is a better way than just cut our co2 emissions.

The biggest problem of humanity is global warming. (well in fact is the same huminity it self, the increase in poppulation)

Yes climate change is a huge problem, yes we don't understand it completely and yes I'm all for doing science we ever we can.

And I'm sounding like a broken record again; the astronauts wouldn't have anything to do in such an airship.

- Time delays and bandwidth are a non issue for observational experiments. yes they are.

- We don't have meteorologist in Space to predict our weather, because sending the data down from satellites works just fine. why they will be in space? if the atmosphere is right here? lol

- CCD's on cameras(depending on their application) can see the whole electromagnetic spectrum, the human eye can only see visible light. So you would want to send those. you have limit bandwidth, here you can go back with many terabytes of data.

- Curiosity landed just fine with out the help direct human input and it's the most complex craft that landed on an other planet, deploying a few probes should be trivial in comparison. I already said it, I am agree that is always cheap to sent a probe than a human.. But we need a manned mission too! Now.. in ten years, not in 30 years.

- Come on, "yes they are" isn't a valid reason.

- What are you going to do with "many terrabytes" of space? Cassini has sent close to 500 GB of data in it's whole 10 year mission. You think you the HAVOC mission is going to produce more than that in 30 days?

That's more than 16 GB a day just to reach Casinni's amount. I highly doubt you'll even need more than 16 GB fore the whole 30 days.

- But of all places, why Venus?

If Nasa officially stated they were going to mars, then you will find a trace of that manned mission on their site

It's true that NASA has no set in stone goal to go to Mars(like any other space agency in the world), but of all the world that are mention in where are we going to go next the Moon and Mars are always mentioned.

I never heard them say "To the Moon, Venus and beyond".

[Kibble]

The primary reason for a piloted mission anywhere should not be to do planetary science, though they will be doing planetary science (because a piloted mission is hardly mass-sensitive to science equipment). In our situation, a neanderthal non-infrastructural space program, the primary reason should be to prove technologies and operational doctrines that will one day enable permanent habitation. We spent many years flying people up in tiny Vostok, Voskhod, Mercury, and Gemini capsules figuring out how best to keep people alive on low Earth orbit, and testing actual mechanisms that would one day enable us to permanently inhabit low Earth orbit with Mir, and Space Station.

If we want to live anywhere else, we need the Venusian, Lunar, or Martian Vostok equivalent, and then the Salyut equivalent, and finally a permanently piloted Space Station equivalent. Powerpoints don't prove hardware will work - only flying that hardware will. Venus looks very favorable on paper, but we may figure out its harder than we thought to keep aerostats on stable wind currents, or maybe the atmospheric processor experiment didn't produce as much O2 as we thought it would, so next time we bring an improved version of the experiment, and then on Cloud City they use a really big atmospheric processor to make their O2, based on the same hardware.

I'm pretty sure we could't have figured out all the technologies to keep Space Station going by just sending probes. Before 1961 we didn't even know if astronauts in micro-gee environments could even work effectively.

[BFGfreak]

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason for us to have men in the ISS when all the experiments can be controlled remotely from the ground? I would imagine that it would be the same principle, largly PR in an environment where death is only a few centimeters away.

[Dispatcher]

Sounds a lot like this thread:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/103713-Venusian-Airships%21

[PakledHostage]

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason for us to have men in the ISS when all the experiments can be controlled remotely from the ground? I would imagine that it would be the same principle, largly PR in an environment where death is only a few centimeters away.

Good point. Why do we have people on the ISS? There is a disproportionate amount of money spent on the ISS. Just a fraction of it would fund missions like EJSM -Laplace, TSSM, etc. I can't help but think we'd learn more from robotic missions like those than we do from flying people on the ISS.

[NERVAfan]

The point of human spaceflight isn't purely science. Maybe not even mostly science. I think exploration has value as a human activity beyond pure science.

And I'd argue that if there weren't humans in space, there would be much less human interest in space and thus less money for space science too. If there was no ISS, there's no realistic way politicians would spend all that money on science missions instead.

I think one of the reason Mars gets more missions (disproportionately, according to some people) while Venus has relatively few is that we think of Mars, but not Venus, as a likely next destination for human exploration. If there was zero chance of humans ever going to Mars, there'd probably be less interest (and thus eventually less money) for Mars science.

[NERVAfan]

Nasa knows that they need to plan a new manned mission to some place (not the moon) to capture again the attention of the world.

But mars is still too risky without ways to abort.

Well, I would say "NASA is too risk averse" rather than that going to Mars is too risky. I don't think it would be unreasonably risky for exploring someplace totally new.

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason for us to have men in the ISS when all the experiments can be controlled remotely from the ground? I would imagine that it would be the same principle, largly PR in an environment where death is only a few centimeters away.

Well, yes.

IIRC one of the main points of ISS is learning about long-term human spaceflight (theoretically as a preparation for Mars or whatever, though we don't really seem to be moving in that direction).

The other (probably the main point, at least for the politicians in charge of the funding) is as a demonstration of working together with other nations (especially US/Russia in the post-Cold War era).

The actual science experiments are kind of an afterthought AFAIK.

[AngelLestat]

Mars, the Moon. How about some bases on those worlds.

Moon again? after 46 years our biggest next step will be moon??

And mars is out the question for the next decade, there are many issues which are not solvet yet.. too expensive and risky. But a previus mission to venus may help to push a mars mission. People tend to think that if you do one, you will not do the other. But not, is all about getting the people attention.

So we've got a mission which costs an enormous amount of money, putting humans in a precarious situation, just to go outside for one minute?

Because you still haven't convinced me that you

????? who said that? try to focus in the discussion. If you make me a question I answer. But you need to take into account my other answers instead come out with these comments.

So show me those meteorlogist who say we don't know much about clouds.

http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2010-09/28_Bony_CERES_ScienceTeam_sep2010_final.pdf

“... the modelling of time dependent clouds is perhaps the weakest aspect of the existing general circulation models and may be the most difficult task in constructing any reliable climate modelâ€Â

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Circulation_Model

The effects of clouds are a significant area of uncertainty in climate models

The clouds of Venus are still a mystery, its effects are completely different from our predictions, solving that will inprove significantly our current models.

So what are the figures of this Venus mission? For example, the cost of Mars Directs is estimated at $30 to $50 billion.

We dont know yet, but Mars direct (I am a zubrin fan) showed to be too risky, it fails to provide the minimum safety requirements, but I guess you already knew this.

But is not only that mission:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/31/getting-to-mars

http://rt.com/news/199240-space-...-mars-colonization/

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191862-the-first-mars-one-colonists-will-suffocate-starve-and-be-incinerated-according-to-mit

The ice crust on Europa is 20 Km thick, you don't just drill through that and look around. That mission is in a whole other ball park than a mission to Mars.

Why you need to drill? You use the same Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator to melt the ice all the way down.

It just need to be powerfull enoght. The ice that it melts will instant sublime due the lack of pressure, so you have a hole like the one you will make with a drill.

So you keep connection with the surface through a cable.

At least that is my idea.

Yes climate change is a huge problem, yes we don't understand it completely and yes I'm all for doing science we ever we can.

And I'm sounding like a broken record again; the astronauts wouldn't have anything to do in such an airship.

yes me too, because I said a lot of times all the reasons why we need to sent astronats, being the most important "to inspire a new generation" and because we can not go to mars yet.

- Come on, "yes they are" isn't a valid reason.but I already answer this in previous post, and I was not the only one who answer this.

- What are you going to do with "many terrabytes" of space? Cassini has sent close to 500 GB of data in it's whole 10 year mission. You think you the HAVOC mission is going to produce more than that in 30 days? We dont have 10 years, and we can have 10 TB in just one month. It can record in full HD in all frequencys all the trip, Havoc in its whole journey will travel 285000 km, 7.5 laps around venus.

- But of all places, why Venus? At 52 km, Is the place more similar to earth in the solar system. Also due all its advantages. I love it.

It's true that NASA has no set in stone goal to go to Mars(like any other space agency in the world), but of all the world that are mention in where are we going to go next the Moon and Mars are always mentioned.

I never heard them say "To the Moon, Venus and beyond".

As I said before, this is a new idea for NASA, they never realized of this possibility until now...

Venus looks very favorable on paper, but we may figure out its harder than we thought to keep aerostats on stable wind currents, or maybe the atmospheric processor experiment didn't produce as much O2 as we thought it would, so next time we bring an improved version of the experiment, and then on Cloud City they use a really big atmospheric processor to make their O2, based on the same hardware. .

O2 is not the problem, that is too easy in Venus..

We need to figure out how hard is to get water from the atmosphere (the tiny sulfure rain).

From the last probes, it seems that wind is not a problem, is too constant in the whole planet without turbulance.. of course we need to be sure.

But water its the biggest problem for colonize venus. There is 15000 km3 of water in the atmosphere, but the atmosphere is so thick, that is almost nothing in comparison.

People see sulfure acid as a problem... but I would love if it will rain as at earth the same amount of acid there. Then it will be too good to be real, a perfect place to sustain a new civilization and economy.

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason for us to have men in the ISS when all the experiments can be controlled remotely from the ground? I would imagine that it would be the same principle, largly PR in an environment where death is only a few centimeters away.

Yeah, lets sit here to watch TV as in the Wall-e movie, meanwhile robots fill their lifes living all the adventures which we are too lazy and death to do it.

Lucky for us, robots still can not perform so well as the ISS astronauts do.

Sounds a lot like this thread:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/103713-Venusian-Airships%21

Before post, I search for a similar topic, but I dint notice any.

Also I post it in the first second which gizmag publish it. So I dint imagine that it was a 2 day old news.

I think exploration has value as a human activity beyond pure science.

And I'd argue that if there weren't humans in space, there would be much less human interest in space and thus less money for space science too. If there was no ISS, there's no realistic way politicians would spend all that money on science missions instead.

If there was zero chance of humans ever going to Mars, there'd probably be less interest (and thus eventually less money) for Mars science.

Agree.

Edited December 23, 2014 by AngelLestat

[Tiberion]

You guys can't just gloss over the "human" part of human space flight. The exploration of space by humans leads to us being Earth-independent, which at some point in the future that none of us (and hopefully not even our great-great grandchildren) will see will allow the human race to survive should it become impossible on Earth. Or even just as a means of expanding out into the universe even if Earth remains perfectly fine.

Learning about whats in the rocks on Mars, or what is under the ice of a moon, or anything that robotic missions can do are very good things to know, but by far our biggest hurdle is learning how to live in space, or in other places. Long duration human spaceflight, and the science we gather from it is key to this. It's pretty much been the focus of the Russian space program (outside of other political considerations) and its been a huge part of NASA as well, not just in the early days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, but with a lot of the shuttle missions as well. And its certainly the primary mission of the ISS. Someday the ISS will retire, and we might reach the limit of what we can learn from a station in orbit. The next step is almost surely Mars, and before that they'll prepare via orbital missions around the Moon and just maybe to some asteroid orbiting it (who knows, it could still happen)

Certainly a Venusian airship sounds more exotic, but again the benefit of sending people would be learning more about surviving in different environments. You can predict how a person living in a Venusian airship will react, but until it happens, its just a prediction.

We aren't playing KSP here, where we're trying to get as many science points as possible in the smallest number of missions. There is no "one" way to explore space

[Talavar]

NASA can't even afford to launch their own rockets at the moment. Sadly, this is currently a pipe-dream at best..

[PakledHostage]

Agree.

I don't. Look at how much attention Rosetta and Philae have received recently. And MSL. And Spirit & Opportunity. Hubble. Kepler. I grew up during the Voyager grand tour era. I wasn't the only one who was captivated by it. Every couple of years we were treated to beautiful new images of our solar system. Short of something going wrong, I don't recall the manned space program ever being as prominently in the spotlight as the robotic planetary science missions.

As I said above, missions like EJSM, TSSM, etc get canceled for lack of funding while missions like HORUS don't even proceed beyond the feasibility study stage. Don't tell me that a balloon and/or boat on Titan wouldn't captivate the public. Or that a mission to Jupiter's moons or an orbiter about Uranus wouldn't inspire kids. Likewise, a robotic balloon in Venus' clouds would send back photos to fire the imagination. These things are possible with a fraction of the funding that currently gets allocated to the ISS and an even smaller fraction of the money that would be needed to send people to Mars or Venus.

In an environment where budgets are tight, I would rather that money be spent where it yields the biggest PR and scientific ROI. That, to me, is clearly the robotic missions.

Edited December 23, 2014 by PakledHostage
Added Hubble and Kepler

[Tiberion]

The biggest scientific ROI is the ISS, though if you roll all of the NASA Mars rovers as well as the orbiters together as one project its probably close.

As for PR, I'd say Orion EFT-1 and the #ImOnboard campaign probably wins that pretty easily, and it was only an unmanned test flight for some future manned mission. There was just an insane anount of celebs and people involved all the way through 2014. I can't imagine how much it will expand when they actually launch people out of Earth orbit again

There is no waiting for manned missions to be more favorable. You either press on through budgetary issues and do them, or you don't and you don't progress human spaceflight, and we remain chained to Earth.

[EzinX]

If Venus has 84% of the gravity of Earth, why is it practical for a SSTO to reach orbit from 52 kilometers on Venus? What's the delta-V requirement for that maneuver?

Regardless of whether going to Venus is a good idea or not, I'm just wondering how you get from your cloud city back to orbit without needing a spacecraft about the size of the one that got you from the ground on Earth to orbit. Balloon launchers have been proposed for Earth but they don't pass the pencil test.

This does make me wonder : suppose you wanted a long term cloud city. Could you send down robots by basically compressing the lift gas in the balloons they use so they fall to the surface slowly and gracefully? They would descend to the surface, mine it for resources, then ascend back up. Most of the robots would be made of systems that can take the pressure evenly across all the parts.

[Nibb31]

Moon again? after 46 years our biggest next step will be moon??

We have only just scratched the surface of the Moon. Having gone there in the past is irrelevant. Scott and Amundsen reached the South Pole over 100 years ago, yet there is now a thriving permanent base where 50 to 200 scientists are still doing research and returning science all year round.

There is a lot of scientific work that can be done on the Moon: astronomy, geology, biology. It's also a great place to test engineering solutions from dust mitigation to radiation shielding, ISRU, closed-loop life support, in vacuum and partial-gravity.

As you say yourself, we are not going to Mars in the next decade (and probably not in the next 20 years either). The Moon is far more achievable, only 3 days away. And building an infrastructure that allows (and requires) permanent access to the Moon is a much better way to secure funding and to make it economical than to keep on chasing dreams of Mars or Venus or Europa and not going anywhere for the next 47 years.

Building a small semi-permanent outpost on the Moon is something we can realistically achieve. Cloud colonies on Venus or moisture farms on Mars are pipe dreams. I'd rather see us achieve the smaller goals than keep on dreaming about stuff that won't happen.

[AngelLestat]

You guys can't just gloss over the "human" part of human space flight. The exploration of space by humans leads to us being Earth-independent, which at some point in the future that none of us (and hopefully not even our great-great grandchildren) will see will allow the human race to survive should it become impossible on Earth. Or even just as a means of expanding out into the universe even if Earth remains perfectly fine.

Yeah agree, and if this happen, I hope you make the mod -Hooligan Labs is not real enoght.

I don't. Look at how much attention Rosetta and Philae have received recently. And MSL. And Spirit & Opportunity. Hubble. Kepler. I grew up during the Voyager grand tour era. I wasn't the only one who was captivated by it. Every couple of years we were treated to beautiful new images of our solar system. Short of something going wrong, I don't recall the manned space program ever being as prominently in the spotlight as the robotic planetary science missions.

Ok, one social experiment for you, ask anyone in the street about space activities they may know.. they will mention when we go to the moon, ISS, and maybe hubble and voyayer. Maybe they hear about other missions, but they can not give any name or detail of those missions.

As I said above, missions like EJSM, TSSM, etc get canceled for lack of funding while missions like HORUS don't even proceed beyond the feasibility study stage. Don't tell me that a balloon and/or boat on Titan wouldn't captivate the public. Or that a mission to Jupiter's moons or an orbiter about Uranus wouldn't inspire kids. Likewise, a robotic balloon in Venus' clouds would send back photos to fire the imagination. These things are possible with a fraction of the funding that currently gets allocated to the ISS and an even smaller fraction of the money that would be needed to send people to Mars or Venus.

In an environment where budgets are tight, I would rather that money be spent where it yields the biggest PR and scientific ROI. That, to me, is clearly the robotic missions.

They already sent ballons to venus but without camera.. when they sent probes they dont care about the public, also they have so limited bandwith that is only enoght to get some science, but not much to show.

There was already a lot of mars rovers, yet even this is the only that people may see.

BORING is the word.

You think this is the way to get people attention?

Nobody really cares about these missions, taking into account that people are who paid for these missions, if you dont get their attention, you will have less money to invest in space.

I will show you how to get people attention:

HAVOC, The mission project to fly through the Venus clouds, destined to understand the earth´s fate against the biggest problem that humanity even face, the climate change!

Join the crew in this risky journey since the apollo mission or colon, to solve some of the misteries hiden in our twin hell planet, to avoid make the same mistake here on earth.

Real time pictures transmissions with brief resume at the end of each day.

Post documentary of 10 chapters showing all the trip odyssey with the 100 TB of data collected of all sensors and the 5 HD camera recording full time.

Merchandising of the mission, with RC blimps at scale, PC game including all missions phases (build your floating colony) and the movie.

Thats is how you get in no time, the next huge budget for the next mission you want to do, at the same time people understand that the climate change problem is real, more if NASA get in so much trouble to find an answer. Without mention the prestige that NASA and goverment will get with this mission

If Venus has 84% of the gravity of Earth, why is it practical for a SSTO to reach orbit from 52 kilometers on Venus? What's the delta-V requirement for that maneuver?

Well the amount of atmosphere that you need to cross from that height is the same as earth, but the venus gravity and circunference is lower, So I will said 6500 to 7000m/s.

Regardless of whether going to Venus is a good idea or not, I'm just wondering how you get from your cloud city back to orbit without needing a spacecraft about the size of the one that got you from the ground on Earth to orbit. Balloon launchers have been proposed for Earth but they don't pass the pencil test.

A blimp in the venus atmosphere at 50km has 30% more lift than a blimp at earth surface.

But if you wanna launch a rocket from 10km of altitude with a blimp here on earth, you will need a hugeee blimp because the atmosphere at 10km is too thin.

This does make me wonder : suppose you wanted a long term cloud city. Could you send down robots by basically compressing the lift gas in the balloons they use so they fall to the surface slowly and gracefully? They would descend to the surface, mine it for resources, then ascend back up. Most of the robots would be made of systems that can take the pressure evenly across all the parts.

If you wanna take things from the surface if you have a cloud city, the best way is with a hot "air" ballon, you just heat the gases inside your envelope to be more lighter than the surrounding, you need a nuclear heater instead combustion.

There is a lot of scientific work that can be done on the Moon: astronomy, geology, biology. It's also a great place to test engineering solutions from dust mitigation to radiation shielding, ISRU, closed-loop life support, in vacuum and partial-gravity.

I know, but is not the best place to get public attention right now.

As you say yourself, we are not going to Mars in the next decade (and probably not in the next 20 years either). The Moon is far more achievable, only 3 days away. And building an infrastructure that allows (and requires) permanent access to the Moon is a much better way to secure funding and to make it economical than to keep on chasing dreams of Mars or Venus or Europa and not going anywhere for the next 47 years.

A mission to Venus, which is much more expensive, you get some of that money back just because it has more marketing. And I am not saying you get the money from the media, you get the money because people get most interested in space, so they will not put excuses in the senate "why we are going to the moon, we were already there, there is things more important to solve here".

Your budget limit it does not depent much of the country condition, it depends on the public opinion.

Edited December 23, 2014 by AngelLestat

[Charzy]

Yeah, instead of people going "Why are we going to the moon, we were already there, there are things more important to solve here", people will be going "What the hell are you people doing spending all our tax money on sending people to Venus when we could be doing something actually useful?!"

[Nibb31]

NASA is not an entertainment company. The PR is secondary, and you can put PR spin on any kind of mission.

NASA's job is to advance space science and technology. "Getting the public interested" is not part of its mandate. It needs money, but the money comes from Congress, not the public. Members of Congress are not elected on their space policy, they are elected on their political label and the electoral promises.

People are not more "inspired" by Mars or Venus than by the Moon. They are inspired by jobs, taxes, JayZ and Rihanna, and the latest smartphone. Most of them don't know that the ISS exists and think that NASA sucks up 25% of the US budget. Space exploration is way down on the average public's list, and swapping destinations between the Moon, Mars or an asteroid hardly even registers.

The best way to advance space science and technology is to select goals that are achievable, and achieve them. It isn't to distill PR spin on Mars and Venus when everybody knows that those goals are out of reach.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Nibb31