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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Guest_MarkG_* |
Jun 28 2006, 02:42 AM
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Guests |
Incidentally, there's a much more detailed file about a proposed NASA mission to Venus using Apollo hardware at:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1979072165.pdf It's a while since I read through the whole thing (it's a couple of hundred pages) but from what I remember it didn't require any nuclear engines, just an uprated Saturn V (probably with solid boosters attached to the first stage). |
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Jun 28 2006, 12:30 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
Mark:
Great link! It's basically a plan to send a wet workshop S-IVB to Venus, with a new mission module between the S-IVB and the Apollo spacecraft. Included would also be one or more Venus probes. All in all, it looks like a comfortable way to fly to another planet - though the radiation discussion is quite scary (eye cataracts due to radiation damage would be no problem, as onset would be after mission end...). The Apollo SM might be provided with an SPS backup capability altered to use two LM descent engine packages instead of the SPS, and - oddly - the configuration at Earth departure would be similar to current Lunar EOR plans, with the CSM docked to the Mission Module and thus flying backwards. The development process included a test mission in high (25,000 miles) Earth orbit, and was seen as being linked to space station development too. Is there a word for nostalgia for things which never took place? Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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