Nasa is considering a Manned Mission to Venus before Mars!

[_Augustus_]

We should go to Venus and establish a floating base in the atmosphere within 30 years. Period.

I want to go to Venus before I'm old

[Bill Phil]

It's insane to think about going to Venus or any other planet without an Earth-LEO-Moon Infrastructure. Like the plan for the 1969 STS. If they had done that, we would have been on Mars by the early 80s. Assuming it got enough funding.

It's such a shame, really.

[AngelLestat]

I'm not 20, I'm 45. Pretty sure I've got a good grasp of the flow of time, as well as a good enough grasp on reality to understand that exploiting venutian resources ain't happening in the next 50 or 80 years. No matter how many nuclear blimps you send.

My apologies then. But when I drop numbers, is not random or without a good understanding.

Maybe the lack of space activity since apollo give you a conviction than everything happens very slow. But the technology never stop, we were just waiting and looking up there for the right moment.

Already give you many economical examples of how things happens like the money invested in wars that is unimaginable, but if you take a look of the motivations. Then are similar to what we may get on venus.

Is not all about how many you spent and how much money you get in "mining" the next year.

Something like this inspire the world, it gives prestige to the country owner. All the great minds wants to go and live in that country, because things happens and projects are exciting. The biggest asset of any country are the great minds. Which can create google, silicon valley or any big company who bring money to the country with many new investors. Besides you can sell the new technologies that you develop, etc.

Then you need to count that we might have soon a complete reusable program from spacex, or skylon in ESA. Those technologies can make drop the space cost by a HUGE amount, which will create a new market for space bussiness that nobody imagine before.

The few predictions that I did before, some was already prove it, others goes in good track like this Venus Concept, which I defend before NASA notice it.

So take my word or not. Right now the only thing that can stop a Venus colony it depends on how difficult would be collect sulfuric acid to get water.

That is the main drawback that might have.

If you think supersonic craft are impervious to weather (winds, crosswinds, lightning, etc.); I differ with that notion. Besides, supersonic craft begin and end flights transitioning with subsonic (relative) speeds.

Is all about aerodynamics, kinetic energy and inertia.

A supersonic craft has speeds at least 4 times more than the stronger winds, so if you have a vertical wind of 300km/w (worst case) and your speed is 1200 km/h, then your apparent wind vector change only 10 degress, not even close to stall, in fact is like a very light maneuver for the aircraft.

In fact, these kind of airplanes are used to fly through hurricanes with many meteorologists inside:

http://www.ecu.edu/renci/_photos/HurricaneHunter/PlaneLanding01.jpg

In addiction the rocket from the havoc concept has 2 very small wings, that rocket is all about speed and aerodynamics; plus all the 99% of evidence show that earth atmosphere has at least 1000% more turbulence than venus atmosphere.

The very thing you mention about the Moon makes it nearly ideal due to its proximity to Earth. Unlike other permanently crewed bases further away, Lunar bases allow reasonable and regular personnel rotations to and from Earth. This should negate any harmful effects of the 0.17 Earth G Lunar gravity. At just days away, the Moon is ideal for establishing our first "real" base "out there". If we want to keep personnel at the Moon for extended times (or they get stranded), limited centrifuge rides could be used to simulate 1 Earth G periodically. Learning from this, it might still be necessary for any Mars base personnel to use such centrifuges to keep them more fit. We don't yet have enough information on the effects (or lack of effects) of the Martian gravity on human and animal health. As I'm sure you've pointed out, Venusian gravity is likely to be well tolerated by humans.

I dint find any in internet, no even a mention, so I draw one up:

It can be made of an inflatable tether, then you need to block the view of the other side to not confound the senses, that same tether-roof that we see is iluminate from the center to provide soft light. I guess is not possible to project a sky mimic day and night.

Then in needs some kind of superconductor magnetic shield to block radiation.

But the thing is...

If you will use the moon as refuelling base (maybe with a moon space elevator to make things easier) and maybe mine some things to sent earth.

Why we need humans there? Is not like the other places where you have 5 or 15 min of delay. And you need humans there to take real time actions.

Moon has only 2 seconds of delay. It can be manage it by tele-robotics. Maybe is necesary to have some humans there as a "moon center", but does it.

It would not be our second home.

I'm not going to take a side one way or another.

aghhh too boring.. take a side already!

It's insane to think about going to Venus or any other planet without an Earth-LEO-Moon Infrastructure. Like the plan for the 1969 STS. If they had done that, we would have been on Mars by the early 80s. Assuming it got enough funding.

It's such a shame, really.

If spaceX completes its reusable program, then it will be as cheap as that.

So if NASA do this we can expect amazing sunrise and sunset pics

only some pics??

If we get a manned mission, then we also get many terabytes of HD video. Watching every move that the crew does and all that they see with perfect detail, exploring other world like if we were watching a movie. They can made a 10 episode documentary of all the mission.

Edited January 2, 2015 by AngelLestat

[Bill Phil]

If any program has no infrastructure to fall on, they will fall the way to the bottom.

[PakledHostage]

Is all about aerodynamics, kinetic energy and inertia.

A supersonic craft has speeds at least 4 times more than the stronger winds, so if you have a vertical wind of 300km/w (worst case) and your speed is 1200 km/h, then your apparent wind vector change only 10 degress, not even close to stall, in fact is like a very light maneuver for the aircraft.

It doesn't work like that. Lift is a function of airspeed and angle of attack. At high speed, you may only need one degree of AOA to maintain level flight. If you suddenly increased AOA by a factor of ten (to 10 degrees), you'd increase the lift produced by the wings by roughly a factor of 10 as well.

This is why airliners slow down when they encounter bad turbulence . They could suffer catastrophic structural failure if they flew too fast through severe turbulence because they aren't built to handle the loads that can be generated at high speed. They could literally pull themselves apart. If you go slow enough however, the wings and tail can't produce enough lift to bend/break themselves or other parts of the structure because they will stall before forces get high enough.

Edited January 2, 2015 by PakledHostage

[AngelLestat]

Pakledhostage, try to remember what are we talking about.

Supersonics crafts with high TWR, tiny wings or small V wings and high inertia (aircraft density).

Or just take a look to the rocket wings in the video.

By other hand you are talking of structure stress limit which is only relative to cargo airplanes or low speed airplanes.

Combat aircraft can reach angle of attack of 90% (with stall of course) but they recover without any problem due its TWR. They dont have structure stress problems either.

So now be honest and tell me, you really think that a tiny wing rocket like that may have problems due turbulance? And all this making the wrong assumption (because it is against all the evidence) that venus atmosphere is turbulent.

[shynung]

A craft speeding in an atmosphere doesn't need wings to have problems with high angles-of-attack. In fact, objects that are long and thin, like rockets, have a tendency to break apart if flown sideways at any significant AoA. Plenty of rocket launches have ended in fireballs because of this, like this Proton for example. Combat aircrafts can get away with high angles-of-attack because they are designed precisely to do that when evading missiles, along with the fact that they are much shorter, stubbier, and sturdier than a rocket.

[Dispatcher]

Angel: I think that any craft which enter and leave the atmosphere must be able to carry a significant amount of personnel/ supplies/ imports/ exports. This implies designs which are different than high speed, agile military craft. My earlier point remains unaddressed: even supersonic craft must start and end a flight at subsonic speeds (and are in fact stationary relative to the landing/ take off surface or platform).

[PakledHostage]

Pakledhostage, try to remember what are we talking about.

Supersonics crafts with high TWR, tiny wings or small V wings and high inertia (aircraft density).

Or just take a look to the rocket wings in the video.

It doesn't matter. The physics are the same whether it is a fighter jet or a transport aircraft. Fighter jets may well sometimes fly by hanging on the engine at 90 degrees angle of attack, but they aren't doing it at supersonic speeds.

And while it is true that high wing loading (i.e. high lift per unit area) mitigates the effects of a sharp edged gust, my point still stands. Sharp edged gusts of the magnitudes you are describing can not be hand-waved away.

Maybe it is as a result of a language barrier, but you seem to have an overly simplified understanding of aerodynamics. I am only trying to help you fix that.

[AngelLestat]

Ok, I forget that a rocket needs to be as light as possible and its weakest part are the farings, although this rocket does not use farings.

But I invite all to take a break of being 10000000% negative trying to find the smallest problems and make them huge, is like be in the Final Destination movie.

What is funny.. that I never read: "oh yeah, all the other things that you point seems ok or right" or.. "that is a good concept or it can be a solution.." or "oh, I dint knew that"

Dispatcher mention a possible way to get artificial gravity in the moon (without said if its in orbit or not), I help him with that making a design.. and you comment nothing. Is sad.

Edited January 2, 2015 by AngelLestat

[shynung]

If you haven't noticed, the first stage of that Proton burst into flames seconds after the fairing broke off. The only way it could do that is if the fuel tanks experience a structural failure, leaking off the hypergolic fuel inside, and letting them ignite outside the tank.

It's not the case that me, or anyone else being overly-negative-thinking to put forward the argument that the HAVOC mission concept is rather implausible. In fact, most technical problems around HAVOC (or practically any piece of technology) can be solved or gotten around with good design, engineering, and enough funds. Instead, the relevant question would be something like: "For what purpose do we send men in rocket-delivered blimps to the atmosphere of Venus, when easier and safer ways to gather resources or scientific data about Venus are already available?" I mean, space probes have been the staple of space-oriented scientists to know better about objects in the solar system for decades, with scientific equipments that are increasingly sophisticated and can observe and/or measure a lot of things without putting anyone in harm's way, so why bother send someone when a probe can do just as much, at a much cheaper price?

TL;DR: we're just being realistic.

[PakledHostage]

Instead, the relevant question would be something like: "For what purpose do we send men in rocket-delivered blimps to the atmosphere of Venus, when easier and safer ways to gather resources or scientific data about Venus are already available?"

I 100% agree. I would love to see another mission to Venus funded and successfully executed. Particularly if it was a multi month long study of Venus' climate, atmosphere, geophysics and remote sensing of its surface using a balloon probe. And I agree with you, AngelLestat, that such data may be vitally important to helping us understand our own planet's climate. The point of contention for me is whether or not we need to send people. We can do a lot of sophisticated data gathering and picture taking without physically being there.

Edited January 2, 2015 by PakledHostage

[Papa_Joe]

...

aghhh too boring.. take a side already!

...

In actual fact, I did at the end. I'm for both the Venus mission (in concept) and for a manned mission to Mars. I firmly believe that we as human beings have a need to "go where we have never gone before". Politics, economics, and the current (sad) state of the human condition on our planet aside, it is a must to have a manned presence. Robotics are great, and teach us a lot, but there is not yet a replacement for "boots on the ground" (or in the atmosphere, heh), and what we can learn well beyond what a machine can to by actually being there.

We learn so much from our surroundings by being there and this as yet cannot be replaced.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Papa_Joe

[Borklund]

Why is this thread stickied? It is a ridiculous topic for any number of reasons. First, whatever probability you assign to humans landing on Mars in the near future, you've got to assign a much lower probability that we'll send humans to float around on airships in the Venusian atmosphere, because we simply know so much less about Venus and there has been almost infinitely more research, hardware testing and actual spaceflights done with regard to Mars and landing humans there safely. It would take a lot more time and money to pull any manned Venus mission off, let alone one involving giant dirigibles, compared to a manned mission to Mars. Money that doesn't exist. NASA have not even spent a single dollar on a manned Mars mission yet, not even planning. Hell, they've barely been allowed to start planning work on ARM. There are is no manned Venus mission in the works. It is one of any number of hypothetical, "wouldn't it be neat if we ..." missions that otherwise idle mission planners at NASA come up with (See: HOPE). Even if NASA could get the authorization and funding to go to Venus, why would anyone want that? It's a distraction from the only viable location for the off-planet, permanent, self-sustaining settlement of humans in our solar system: Mars.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

It's a distraction from the only viable location for the off-planet, permanent, self-sustaining settlement of humans in our solar system: Mars.

Mars might prove to be unviable. We've never shown that humans can develop from childhood to adulthood in a different gravitational environment. Plants grow differently in micro g so there is reason to assume that humans(more complex) will grow differently. That 'differently' has a non-zero chance of being 'death before adulthood' in all cases outside of a 1g environment. This means that we may never be able to have a self-sustaining colony outside of Earth, or, at least, Earth-like gravity.

This brings up another question. How do we test this? I can't think of a way to test human growth in a different gravitational environment without that test being, at some point, immoral. I know morality is subjective, but 'growing' a child just to see if it lives will be frowned upon by the general public(for good reason). Any ideas/info on how to test this morally, or is this too off topic for this thread?

[shynung]

This brings up another question. How do we test this? I can't think of a way to test human growth in a different gravitational environment without that test being, at some point, immoral. I know morality is subjective, but 'growing' a child just to see if it lives will be frowned upon by the general public(for good reason). Any ideas/info on how to test this morally, or is this too off topic for this thread?

I think that idea merits a new thread.

[Nibb31]

How come this silly thread deserves to be stickied?

[Borklund]

This is getting slightly off topic, but I'll run with it.

Mars might prove to be unviable. We've never shown that humans can develop from childhood to adulthood in a different gravitational environment. Plants grow differently in micro g so there is reason to assume that humans(more complex) will grow differently. That 'differently' has a non-zero chance of being 'death before adulthood' in all cases outside of a 1g environment. This means that we may never be able to have a self-sustaining colony outside of Earth, or, at least, Earth-like gravity.

It is true that we have not shown that humans can develop from childhood to adulthood in a different gravitational environment, but that doesn't mean that we won't ever figure it out. We may never be able to have a self-sustaining colony outside of Earth, but what if we could? It would be cool to find out regardless.

This brings up another question. How do we test this? I can't think of a way to test human growth in a different gravitational environment without that test being, at some point, immoral. I know morality is subjective, but 'growing' a child just to see if it lives will be frowned upon by the general public(for good reason). Any ideas/info on how to test this morally, or is this too off topic for this thread?

Wandering into OT, and I'm not sure a dedicated thread for this subject would stay on topic and, eh, not deviate into less civilised areas of discussion quickly. First thing that comes to mind is animal testing, rats for instance. You might not think that we could learn a lot from rats but they're actually not a bad analogue with regard to a lot of human physiology.

[Vanamonde]

The thread is stickied because it is one of Sal_vager's threads of the month.

[Dispatcher]

. . . Dispatcher mention a possible way to get artificial gravity in the moon (without said if its in orbit or not), I help him with that making a design...

That's an interesting graphic you came up with. What I had in mind was more like a centrifuge ride, within a room of the Lunar base. Your's is an interesting implementation. It would allow people (and pets or dairy animals perhaps) to stand and walk freely, rather than just being seated/ harnessed at the end of a centrifuge arm.

- - - Updated - - -

. . . the only viable location for the off-planet, permanent, self-sustaining settlement of humans in our solar system: Mars.

You missed the candidate which is only a few days away: our Moon. As for any discussion about the positive and negative impact of the 17% Earth G environment, this is addressed in some of the posts above. Thus, the Moon is as valid a place for a permanent base as is Mars (even with volunteer personnel permanently domiciled there; should that be part of a testing requirement).

It actually makes more sense to have long period staggered personnel rotations at any non-Earth bases, including Mars; these could even be considered "vacations". Lunar base(s) would of course make shorter term rotations practical.

As for resources, I'm not aware of anything obtainable at Mars which isn't also obtainable at the Moon. Mars of course has its thin atmosphere of mostly CO2 (which also mitigates radiation and mediates temperatures), but the Moon has water deposits in polar and perhaps other craters; from which water can be used as is and also split into fuel & oxidizer. Bases should be buried in order to mitigate radiation and also mediate temperatures. The "soil" of either could be fertilized and used for growing crops, which also provides additional O2. Each of these two "worlds" also has mineral/ metal/ energy resources which can be exploited. I'd argue against stripping the lunar regolith for He3, as its abundant at our gas giants.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Why is this thread stickied? It is a ridiculous topic for any number of reasons. First, whatever probability you assign to humans landing on Mars in the near future, you've got to assign a much lower probability that we'll send humans to float around on airships in the Venusian atmosphere, because we simply know so much less about Venus and there has been almost infinitely more research, hardware testing and actual spaceflights done with regard to Mars and landing humans there safely. It would take a lot more time and money to pull any manned Venus mission off, let alone one involving giant dirigibles, compared to a manned mission to Mars. Money that doesn't exist. NASA have not even spent a single dollar on a manned Mars mission yet, not even planning. Hell, they've barely been allowed to start planning work on ARM. There are is no manned Venus mission in the works. It is one of any number of hypothetical, "wouldn't it be neat if we ..." missions that otherwise idle mission planners at NASA come up with (See: HOPE). Even if NASA could get the authorization and funding to go to Venus, why would anyone want that? It's a distraction from the only viable location for the off-planet, permanent, self-sustaining settlement of humans in our solar system: Mars.

Mars is a hostile, cold, unforgiving, energy-poor dustball. The only benefit of a Mars mission is the solid ground and potential insight into its history - viability-wise, it's no better (and in some ways worse) than the Moon. The atmosphere is too thin to effectively protect against small meteorites and radiation that gets in without a magnetic field, the Sun is dim even when there are no dust storms, and heaven forbid you forget to close and cover up those huge solar arrays when one starts. And you have to endure all that for the dubious advantage of being able to walk or drive around your landing site (no long-distance exploration with the power reserves and resources limited), and dig up and examine rocks.

Comparing this to Venus, you have two things mainly: A huge supply of carbon dioxide, and great amounts of sunlight. Rockets that get your crew to (and from) Venus mainly use liquid hydrogen. The blimps are covered in solar panels that produce a constant supply of electricity. Electricity, plus carbon dioxide, plus hydrogen, equals the Sabatier reaction, which produces methane and water. Methane plus pyrolysis (probably with electric heaters, though you could probably just dip a capsule into the lower atmosphere) produces atomic carbon and hydrogen. The same process is used for maintained life support on the ISS, except here you are basically floating in a free source of oxygen, should you need it, and you can produce it as fast as you can deploy new solar panel blimps. If the weather proves agreeable, you could have a giant floating blimp city that cranks out power, oxygen, and carbon. And if you're resourceful with a 3D printer or some other processes, a source of free carbon means you can manufacture plastics, carbon fiber, and graphene. Yes, you'd need to process humongous amounts of atmosphere to get usable amounts of carbon, but there is lots of atmosphere, and a floating city doesn't have to have a night if it can move fast enough. And if it amasses a supply of LOX to fuel exploratory rocket probes, the hydrogen would have to be the only resource to be shipped in - and it is already used as fuel anyway. Plus Venus has actually decent atmosphere for meteorite protection, non-freezing temperatures (to put it lightly), and the weather is unlikely to pelt you with anything a good coating of teflon can't protect against. The only thing you lose out on is being able to walk on and dig up a surface of another planet. You can still do a lot of science on Venus with the right equipment, like probes that are designed to come back up once they're in danger of failing.

As for manned versus unmanned, people probably said it already, but nothing beats having actual brains on the scene. No signal lag, no need for highly complicated programmable drones that might fail in spectacular new ways on contact with two percent more water vapor than expected, and actual of course the actual hands those brains operate are indispensable for on-site repairs of things. The only downsides are the need to keep the humans fed and watered - the latter is solved with hydrogen (lots of obtainable oxygen, as already established), and the former is not really a number I can just conjure up, but I assume dehydrated foods are reasonably compact and can last for a while, so you'd only need resupply missions what, every few months? I think the crews would want to rotate out sooner than the food supply would run out, heh.

[shynung]

As for manned versus unmanned, people probably said it already, but nothing beats having actual brains on the scene. No signal lag, no need for highly complicated programmable drones that might fail in spectacular new ways on contact with two percent more water vapor than expected, and actual of course the actual hands those brains operate are indispensable for on-site repairs of things. The only downsides are the need to keep the humans fed and watered - the latter is solved with hydrogen (lots of obtainable oxygen, as already established), and the former is not really a number I can just conjure up, but I assume dehydrated foods are reasonably compact and can last for a while, so you'd only need resupply missions what, every few months? I think the crews would want to rotate out sooner than the food supply would run out, heh.

A trip to Venus takes months. If one of the crew is critically injured during the mission, it would be nigh-impossible to simply send him back to Earth for treatment. That means squeezing medical supplies for these emergencies in, which eats into the delta-V budget.

Also, having actual brains on the scene is ridiculously expensive. It needs double the delta-V than an unmanned probe comparable in capability, since the probe doesn't have to come back. In addition to life support and medical support mentioned above, a manned mission taking a long time and distance from the Earth needs a considerable amount of radiation shielding, the weight of which further eats into the delta-V budget.

While unmanned probes can and sometimes do fail in unpredictable ways, they are relatively cheap in comparison to manned missions. A viable strategy of reducing the probability of mission failure is to send multiple probes, something not easy to do with a manned mission. And the capabilities of computer technologies today allow for more sophisticated probes that are more capable at handling unexpected circumstances (like a dangerously-steep landing spot) than their predecessors.

[Bill Phil]

Venus is a much more hellish, hot, strange place that has acid rain as it's only rain. Freakin ACID RAIN.

I'll stick with Mars thank you. Plus, radiation on Mars' surface is about as much as LEO. Oh, and because of the no magnetic field thing, you have no radiation belts in orbit. And, Mars has two Asteroidal moons, which can be used for ISRU by an orbital infrastructure.

Mars FTW.

[luizopiloto]

Venus have more chances to have life forms than Mars..

[Borklund]

Mars is a hostile, cold, unforgiving, energy-poor dustball. The only benefit of a Mars mission is the solid ground and potential insight into its history - viability-wise, it's no better (and in some ways worse) than the Moon. The atmosphere is too thin to effectively protect against small meteorites and radiation that gets in without a magnetic field, the Sun is dim even when there are no dust storms, and heaven forbid you forget to close and cover up those huge solar arrays when one starts. And you have to endure all that for the dubious advantage of being able to walk or drive around your landing site (no long-distance exploration with the power reserves and resources limited), and dig up and examine rocks.

Comparing this to Venus, you have two things mainly: A huge supply of carbon dioxide, and great amounts of sunlight. Rockets that get your crew to (and from) Venus mainly use liquid hydrogen. The blimps are covered in solar panels that produce a constant supply of electricity. Electricity, plus carbon dioxide, plus hydrogen, equals the Sabatier reaction, which produces methane and water. Methane plus pyrolysis (probably with electric heaters, though you could probably just dip a capsule into the lower atmosphere) produces atomic carbon and hydrogen. The same process is used for maintained life support on the ISS, except here you are basically floating in a free source of oxygen, should you need it, and you can produce it as fast as you can deploy new solar panel blimps. If the weather proves agreeable, you could have a giant floating blimp city that cranks out power, oxygen, and carbon. And if you're resourceful with a 3D printer or some other processes, a source of free carbon means you can manufacture plastics, carbon fiber, and graphene. Yes, you'd need to process humongous amounts of atmosphere to get usable amounts of carbon, but there is lots of atmosphere, and a floating city doesn't have to have a night if it can move fast enough. And if it amasses a supply of LOX to fuel exploratory rocket probes, the hydrogen would have to be the only resource to be shipped in - and it is already used as fuel anyway. Plus Venus has actually decent atmosphere for meteorite protection, non-freezing temperatures (to put it lightly), and the weather is unlikely to pelt you with anything a good coating of teflon can't protect against. The only thing you lose out on is being able to walk on and dig up a surface of another planet. You can still do a lot of science on Venus with the right equipment, like probes that are designed to come back up once they're in danger of failing.

As for manned versus unmanned, people probably said it already, but nothing beats having actual brains on the scene. No signal lag, no need for highly complicated programmable drones that might fail in spectacular new ways on contact with two percent more water vapor than expected, and actual of course the actual hands those brains operate are indispensable for on-site repairs of things. The only downsides are the need to keep the humans fed and watered - the latter is solved with hydrogen (lots of obtainable oxygen, as already established), and the former is not really a number I can just conjure up, but I assume dehydrated foods are reasonably compact and can last for a while, so you'd only need resupply missions what, every few months? I think the crews would want to rotate out sooner than the food supply would run out, heh.

*deep breath*

Okay. Venus is a hot hellhole with a literally crushing atmosphere. Solid ground and guaranteed insights into its history are not the only benefits of a manned Mars mission vs a manned Venus mission. Is it infinitely better than your pie-in-the-sky (or rather airship-in-Venus's-sky) idea. Mars' atmosphere is thin, but it's there. It does a good job of protecting against some of the worst types of solar and cosmic radiation (which is just one reason why Mars is better than the Moon, but that's neither here nor there). The sun isn't dim on Mars at all, not in normal conditions, that's why most surface missions to Mars have had solar panels. Dust storms, while they block out sunlight, also clean solar panels (see both MER rovers). Plus, it would be idiotic not to take with you an alternate source of power on a critical mission like a manned one. Even if there wasn't one, you'd have batteries and generators. There's nothing "dubious" about being able to walk or drive around your landing site, that's the whole point. That's golden. If I sent you somewhere to explore and told you to stand still in the one spot I dropped you off, and I set off on a walk or took a drive in a car, who'd you think would come back with the most information about the place? You could explore long distance on Mars, why couldn't you? Electrical powered rovers could get you tens of kilometers in one day, and keep going, day after day. On your Venusian airship, you're confined to your pressure vessel, looking out at some clouds.

You get the Sabatier reaction on Mars too, and it's a hell of a lot easier and less risky because it's on the ground and not in some giant airship floating in the sky. That's not to mention the fact that humans cannot survive on oxygen and water alone. You can grow crops in Martian soil. I would go on but I realised I'm wasting my time when you mentioned graphene. Graphene is not necessarily the saviour of mankind. We haven't figured out how to make anything more than a few atoms large out of Graphene yet. I recommend you read this article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/material-question

Also, having actual brains on the scene is ridiculously expensive. It needs double the delta-V than an unmanned probe comparable in capability, since the probe doesn't have to come back. In addition to life support and medical support mentioned above, a manned mission taking a long time and distance from the Earth needs a considerable amount of radiation shielding, the weight of which further eats into the delta-V budget.

While unmanned probes can and sometimes do fail in unpredictable ways, they are relatively cheap in comparison to manned missions. A viable strategy of reducing the probability of mission failure is to send multiple probes, something not easy to do with a manned mission. And the capabilities of computer technologies today allow for more sophisticated probes that are more capable at handling unexpected circumstances (like a dangerously-steep landing spot) than their predecessors.

NASA could pluck you from your chair, put you in a probe, send you to Mars, transmit the instructions and tell you to go out and do what Curiosity has taken three years to do, and you could do it in under a day. Do you know how far Curiosity has travelled in three years time? About 9 kilometers. Even at a slow speed of 3 km/h, you'd catch up to it in three hours. That's not to mention all the things you can do. The human eye and instinct is something a rover will never have. You could pick out interesting objects and features and analyse and value their importance on the fly, something mission controllers in California spend weeks and weeks on, before sending a pre-planned set of commands to Curiosity. If anything comes up, they have to wait. Curiosity can automatically detect and avoid some rocks, that's it. It doesn't know when to perform scientific experiements or when to take experiments, and even if it did, it doesn't have the resources it would need. You should read this article: http://astrobites.org/2012/03/29/dispelling-the-myth-of-robotic-efficiency-why-astronomers-should-support-human-exploration-of-the-solar-system/

Basically, human missions are way more expensive, but also astronomically more efficient. Robotic exploration is great for places humans can't go, but they're limited. There's a third option, teleoperated robots from orbit, but that's still very expensive - you have to send the robots and the humans, and even if the humans aren't going on the surface of Mars (for example), they still have to go almost the entire way and back, and they still don't get as efficient as human autonomy.

Venus is a much more hellish, hot, strange place that has acid rain as it's only rain. Freakin ACID RAIN.

I'll stick with Mars thank you. Plus, radiation on Mars' surface is about as much as LEO. Oh, and because of the no magnetic field thing, you have no radiation belts in orbit. And, Mars has two Asteroidal moons, which can be used for ISRU by an orbital infrastructure.

Mars FTW.

Why would you have to have to use Mars' moons for ISRU? Everything you need is on the surface of Mars. Trips to and from those moons would just be a waste of energy.

Venus have more chances to have life forms than Mars..

No.

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These posts are really typical of people who may confess to be interested in space exploration, but are actually not very knowledgeable about it. If you want to call yourselves space advocates, and you actually want to see the expansion of mankind beyond Earth's confines, you need to forget all you pretend to know about space elevators, stanford toruses, nuclear engines and kickstarting thorium reactors with bitcoins, and get real. Direct your energy towards learning about actual, plausible space exploration and if you're a US citizen, write your congressperson and senator and implore them to direct NASA in the right way and to give them more money.