Sending Men To Venus |
Sending Men To Venus |
Jul 20 2005, 04:40 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 212 Joined: 19-July 05 Member No.: 442 |
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. |
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May 11 2006, 05:06 AM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2262 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Melbourne - Oz Member No.: 16 |
It's going to take an awfully long time for a rock the size of Veus to cool enough to freeze CO2 I would imagine.
I remember reading (a long time ago) of another idea, that would have split the CO2 atmosphere into an O2 one with a lot (and I mean a lot) of carbon dust coving the surface, although quite how that helps matters I can't remember! But anyway, why get rid of the atmosphere when it provides such a nice habitat at 50km... http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/pvsee/publica...ony_STAIF03.pdf James -------------------- |
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May 11 2006, 06:04 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
But anyway, why get rid of the atmosphere when it provides such a nice habitat at 50km... http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/pvsee/publica...ony_STAIF03.pdf James Wow, "cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus"... This is an intriguing idea, it recall me the cloud city from "Empire Stikes Back"! -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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May 11 2006, 08:02 AM
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
Wow, "cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus"... This is an intriguing idea, it recall me the cloud city from "Empire Stikes Back"! Saturn would be much more suitable for a floating city- you have plenty of raw material nearby (in the Saturnian moons) and gravity at reasonable atmospheric depths is still close to 1g. |
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Guest_DonPMitchell_* |
May 11 2006, 10:03 AM
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#5
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Guests |
Saturn would be much more suitable for a floating city- you have plenty of raw material nearby (in the Saturnian moons) and gravity at reasonable atmospheric depths is still close to 1g. Ah, I didn't realize Saturn is only 1.1 g. Still, it's pretty cold there. The idea of building a thermal shield is actually Edward Teller's. He also proposed using dust in the stratosphere to fight global warming. The time constant for Venus is about 100 years. If you could cut off enough sunlight, you'd have to wait a couple centuries for it to reach equilibrium again. I believe if you could get rid of the cloud cover, the cooling process would speed up some. At lower temperatures, some of the CO2 would start to be absorbed into the crust by the natural transformation of silicates into carbonates. That might take a long time. Some estimate that the Earth would have a sealevel pressure of 20 atm if all carbonates were broken down. I'm not a big fan of short-term expensive one-time manned missions. I'm proud that we did the Apollo missions, but the cost was staggering -- more than 5 percent of the total federal budget was spent for several years. I don't even like the ISS. But I am a fan of terraforming. I don't think human space travel will make sense until there is a real destination for people. A normal human being will go to Mars because he can live there, he can start a new life or be with people who already live there. People compare spacetravel to airtravel, but think about why airtravel is a big industry. I don't fly from Seattle to Minnesota to pick up a rock and them come home. I fly there to visit my family. I think economics ultimately drives huge ventures. You just can't colonize a planet by pure romantic energy alone. You have to engage productive and practical people, who actually do things in society. It's basically a real estate development project, but what kind of financial instrument can you create that people will believe in, but which returns on investment in 200 years? There is a problem for you in applied economics: Mars Real Estate Futures! |
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