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_DonPMitchell_* |
Jun 30 2006, 03:32 AM
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"Sending Men To Venus" has had some interesting ideas. Should a manned orbiter control a rover? That's sort of a manned and an unmanned mission. The argument was made that if ISS is successful, then manned orbit of Mars or Venus would be successful. But that begs the question of the usefullness of ISS.
To me, unmanned spaceflight serves a short term goal of answering scientific questions. But I think it can have a long-term goal of preparing the way for manned exploration or colonization. There is an important issue of how to plan that efficiently, but unfortunately, the space programs of every nation have been highly political. America sent men to the Moon because it had become a contest between the USA and USSR to prove who had the superior society. For China its propoganda, maintaining control of a dictatorship. For Europe, its a source of pride and emerging national identity as a union. But given $100 billion, how do you make the most progress? Do you blow it on collecting one rock from Mars, and then never go back again? Do you build an expensive new space station to explore low-Earth orbit, so thoroughly understood already? Or do you dole it out to a series of robotic missions that lead up to some actual plan? I don't see that plan. ISS and Bush's Mars and Moon missions all seem like missions with a politcial agenda. And scientists struggle and compete over the remaining slice of the NASA pie. Does everyone else believe things are just fine as they are? This becomes a controversy only when people lose their tempers instead of engaging in discussion. Incidently, I assume this thread can be moved to the "manned flight" folder at any time. Why not do so? |
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