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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Jul 1 2006, 07:54 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
It's not THAT difficult to shield solar cosmic rays. They're relatively low energy. You do need pounds of mass <perferably low atomic weight mass> per square inch surrounding you (sea level on earth has 14 pounds of mass per square inch over it)
What's a real problem is high atomic weight high energy galactic cosmic rays. But 14 lb/sq-in stops most of them, and shatters most into smaller and lower energy particles (cosmic-ray showers, they call'm) The problem is the simple one of having to live inside a radiation shelter most of the mission. And you have to take that mass with you whereever you go. |
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Jul 1 2006, 12:14 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
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Jul 1 2006, 12:29 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
This calls to mind the idea of having a large "dead" space station anywhere you want to revisit -- a shield that is heavy and needs to be put in place, but only once, for future missions to crawl inside it like a crab, then leave (or be pried out) when they're done. Incidentally, it could be done for robotic flights as well as manned, if you had a known orbital niche you wanted to revisit. For example, a Jupiter orbiter between Io and Europa. One dedicated launch to put the big shield/shell in place could create a home for many future missions. Sort of like the infrastructure effort in putting a comsat in place, except the shieldsat could conceivably last ~forever. Why send such things, when you can use piles of rock and ice that Nature has provided? Assuming you can find piles of ice and rock in the orbits you want to use, of course. Really, though -- just dig into a low-mass moon or asteroid, and you're all set. This would work for most of the worlds in our system, with the exceptions of Mercury and Venus... -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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