Sending Men To Venus Options

[gndonald]

While it is likely that future Venus missions will be robotic craft, at one point someone in NASA carried out an interesting contingency study on sending a manned craft to orbit Venus.

The file (Click here:Manned Venus Mission 1967) works on the assumption that either the NERVA project had been carried through to completion or that NASA had retained the capacity it was developing for Apollo.

While the author does not rule out the possibility of a landing on Venus, he notes that owing to the unknown surface conditions they would be highly unlikely.

Launch times are given as being between 1975-1986 and are designed to allow 40 days in orbit at Venus.

As someone who was growing up during the period mentioned I would like to say that such missions would have been far more interesting than what actually occurred.

[Greg Hullender]

I like the floating base idea. Balloons, not rockets, would probably be the best way down to the surface and back up to it.

To get from the base into space, perhaps the best bet would be a rocket with some sort of lifting body so it could accelerate horizontally rather than straight up. At least you're never thrusting directly against gravity then. (And you don't need to design a rocket that'll work at 600 C). It'd need to bring its own H2 for the return flight, but the O2 could be made in situ, and that's 75% of the mass requirement.

--Greg