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.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I worked on the heavy-nuclei detector in HEAO-C. We actually calibrated it in space using iron nuclei, which are pretty abundant in cosmic rays. I've heard that astronauts occasionally see flashes of light, when one of these passes through their eye and generate Cherenkov radiation.

There has been some research on using strong magnetic fields to shield a craft from cosmic rays. I don't know if that is practical or not.

Perhaps research on suspended animation will open up better possibilities for dealing with multi-year interplanetary missions -- allowing a crew to be kept safe in small shielded areas, and eliminating the need for massive supplies. Some dogs have been maintained in a clinically dead state for many hours without ill effect. But it's far from perfected or safe at this point.

[Bob Shaw]

I worked on the heavy-nuclei detector in HEAO-C. We actually calibrated it in space using iron nuclei, which are pretty abundant in cosmic rays. I've heard that astronauts occasionally see flashes of light, when one of these passes through their eye and generate Cherenkov radiation.

Don:

I think the mechanism for 'seeing' cosmic rays actually involves direct stimulation of the optic nerve - the eyes aren't involved at all.

It's still scary!

Bob Shaw

[dvandorn]

Don:

I think the mechanism for 'seeing' cosmic rays actually involves direct stimulation of the optic nerve - the eyes aren't involved at all.

It's still scary!

Bob Shaw

Were there ever a set of results posted for the ALFMED experiments flown during Apollo lunar missions? They had a nice setup, with a head-enclosing box that contained film on five of six sides. The idea was that you'd be able to calibrate film hits against taped reports of light flashes reported by the test subjects.

One of the things this was supposed to settle was whether the crews were seeing real light generated inside their eyeballs, or whether the flashes were indeed the result of direct hits on the optic nerves of the brain.

I don't ever recall seeing any results that settled this question. Anyone have any more info about it?

-the other Doug