Sending Men To Venus |
Sending Men To Venus |
May 12 2006, 03:27 AM
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#31
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10229 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
I'm all in favour of sending people to Venus, as long as I get to choose who goes! And I have a few candidates already.
Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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May 12 2006, 04:19 AM
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#32
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
...I have a few candidates already. So do I... we *are* talking about just sending them to Venus, right? Not worrying a wit about even *trying* to bring them back, right? -the other Doug ...this post *should* have been made on Bewithyou Day, which is the date immediately preceding May the 5th... Grrrooaannn... -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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May 24 2006, 05:06 PM
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#33
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Here is a depiction of a manned USSF Venus expedition (you know
this because they wrote it in big red letters on the side of the ships) from Erik Bergaust's 1962 children's book titled Space Stations: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~jsisson/gifs/stat1.gif If you haven't already, check out the Web site Dreams of Space with all the glorious books from our childhood (or not): http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~jsisson/john.htm When all spaceships looked like either V-2 rockets or tubes with balls attached to them, the Moon was always craggy and the mountains sharp, Earth never had clouds and always showed its Western Hemisphere, and the daring astronauts were all brave, serious, and men. Except when they depicted children, then it was usually a boy and girl travelling to the Moon together. -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
May 24 2006, 11:52 PM
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#34
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Guests |
Of course, those were also the days when every superhero worth his salt had a little boy and a little girl assisting him, too. James Thurber wrote: "I don't know what the parents of these children can be thinking of. When they should be at home or in bed or in school, they are usually trapped in a burning elevator shaft, or lying bound and gagged somewhere."
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Guest_DonPMitchell_* |
May 25 2006, 12:27 AM
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#35
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Guests |
Of course, those were also the days when every superhero worth his salt had a little boy and a little girl assisting him, too. James Thurber wrote: "I don't know what the parents of these children can be thinking of. When they should be at home or in bed or in school, they are usually trapped in a burning elevator shaft, or lying bound and gagged somewhere." Kids get into the darnedest things when you're not keeping an eye on them [attachment=5853:attachment] |
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May 25 2006, 08:04 AM
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#36
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Member Group: Members Posts: 593 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 279 |
If you haven't already, check out the Web site Dreams of Space with all the glorious books from our childhood (or not): http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~jsisson/john.htm Wow! But wait! "The Monkey in the Rocket" here is illustrated by...no...it can't be!? Sergio Leone?? Andy G |
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May 25 2006, 12:39 PM
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#37
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
Don:
Many thanks for posting an image with tentacles in it, especially of the deep, hungry, questing and wet variety! You have made my day! Seriously, though, a number of years ago I was lucky enough to go on a day trip to the bottom of Loch Ness (yup, that one) in a decommissioned Deep Sea Rescue Vehicle. For some reason the DSRV had been sold for a song by the US Navy, and had found it's way to Scotland. Although designed to carry dozens of stranded submariners, it only carried six people on the trip I took, so it was seriously roomy and not in the least bit terrifying. The Tom Swift book cover made me chuckle, because although obviously a naive 1950s effort it nevertheless was a reasonably accurate prediction of what the DSRV actually would look like! Unlike most submarines, the DSRV actually had a big glass nose, lots of space, and even a baby conning tower - so maybe some more Tom Swift gadgets will come to pass! Oh, and we saw no sign of anything monstery in Loch Ness; not a flipper, not a tentacle, not a thing! Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
May 25 2006, 01:32 PM
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#38
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Guests |
While, we're wandering off on this somewhat irrelevant subject, Allan Steele -- who's written some fairly good hard-science SF stories about the future exploration of the Solar System -- did one for "F&SF" a few years ago about Tom Swift Jr.'s wastrel son Tom Swift III, who spends most of his time getting as high as a kite and accidentally activates Dad's Giant Robot to go on a rampage through the local town (whose name I can't quite recall -- "Swiftville", wasn't it? Makes you wonder how Tom Swift Sr. felt about unions.)
Eventually, however, Tom manages to rise to the occasion of getting the Robot back under control (thereby avoiding a longer jail sentence than he would otherwise have received), and resolves to straighten up and follow in Dad's footsteps. "Little did Tom know that soon his HYDROPONIC MARIJUANA CULTIVATOR would lead him into an exciting adventure in the South Pacific." |
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Guest_Richard Trigaux_* |
May 25 2006, 02:17 PM
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#39
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Guests |
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Guest_MarkG_* |
Jun 28 2006, 02:42 AM
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#40
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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, 04:44 AM
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#41
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Member Group: Members Posts: 544 Joined: 17-November 05 From: Oklahoma Member No.: 557 |
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. It would be hard to get things to float on Saturn, given that the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen. Hot air ballooning would be possible, but still, you're not talking about much lift. On the other hand, a dense CO2 atmosphere has plenty to offer, even if you're using a breathable N2/O2 mix as the lifting gas. As for raw materials, future technology might allow for carbon nanotubes to form the shell of a buoyant structure, in which case the carbon could be mined from the atmosphere. Then there is the weather... from what I know I'd rather take my chances above Venus than in Saturn. And personally, I much prefer 0.9 g to 1.1 g, easy way to lose 20 lbs. |
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Jun 28 2006, 12:30 PM
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#42
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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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Guest_MarkG_* |
Jun 28 2006, 06:27 PM
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#43
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Yeah, would have been an exciting trip if it had happened . I'd never really considered the radiation risks in that way, but I guess when you're in space for a year and going even closer to the sun there's always a strong risk of some kind of solar flare coming your way.
I'm trying to get that one simulated in Orbiter, but it will take a while. |
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Guest_DonPMitchell_* |
Jun 29 2006, 05:50 AM
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#44
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Guests |
Interesting ideas. The Russian spacecraft designer Gleb Maksimov also planned a series of nuclear powered "Heavy Interplanetary Ships" (TMK in Russian) in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
[attachment=6468:attachment] Personally, I'd be excited if NASA was building a ship like this, at least more than I am about us spending $100 billion on the ISS. I think there are two problems that have to be addressed. First, how do you prevent the astronauts from getting fried by charged-particle radiation? And second, can human beings actually do any solid science on such a missions, that couldn't be done more cheaply by robots? |
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Guest_MarkG_* |
Jun 29 2006, 09:50 AM
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#45
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Guests |
QUOTE And second, can human beings actually do any solid science on such a missions, that couldn't be done more cheaply by robots? Yeah, I think that's the real issue. Unlesss you're going to send humans to live for a long period on the planet with the capability to travel widely and perform experiments along the way, odds are robots will do the same job for much less money. |
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