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Sending Men To Venus
gndonald
post Jul 20 2005, 04:40 PM
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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_BruceMoomaw_*
post Jul 30 2005, 01:30 AM
Post #2





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Oh, yes, the Niven story didn't mention the possibility of super-refraction producing a "bowl-shaped" surface on Venus -- buit then, that idea, which became briefly faddish in early 1970s SF (one of John Varley's first stories was "In the Bowl") turned out to be totally wrong as soon as the Soviets landed cameras. Indeed, it seems to be extremely hard to predict in advance the way an atmospheric planet's sky will look to a landed spacecraft; the various possible optical properties involved are just too complex, and very slight variations in them seem to have effects too great.

As for Venus' H2SO4 clouds: nobody seems to have guessed that one in advance before Earth-based studies nailed them in 1973 -- the closest anyone had come before was hydrochloric acid.

So Niven can hardly be blamed for missing those possibilities -- but he CAN be hammered, in no uncetain terms, for his portrayal of Venus as pitch-black below the clouds and his prediction that no unmanned landers would touch down before his crew did. Both those items, as I said, were violations of elementary scientific common sense, not subtle misses. (It's true that huge numbers of science writers had a strange blind spot in the early 1950s about unmanned probes showing us the vistas of new worlds before humans got there -- that turns up, in regard to the Moon's farside, in an Arthur C. Clarke story as late as 1957! Maybe they didn't want to believe it. But by 1965 there was no conceivable excuse even by that standard. Indeed, by 1963 Andre Norton -- not exactly the most scientifically reliable SF writer -- was writing about unmanned "peeper probes" being used to explore the past via time machine.)
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- gndonald   Sending Men To Venus   Jul 20 2005, 04:40 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Keep in mind that one of the main reasons for bein...   Jul 20 2005, 07:04 PM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jan 8 2008, 07:00 PM
- - gndonald   I don't think that a manned Venus mission woul...   Jul 21 2005, 03:14 AM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jul 21 2005, 03:45 AM
- - mike   Shielding would have to be a part of the design, b...   Jul 21 2005, 05:07 AM
- - edstrick   Note that Venus actually includes environments whe...   Jul 21 2005, 06:59 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Here's a thought: Venus, at closest approach, ...   Jul 21 2005, 09:08 AM
|- - ljk4-1   In his 1997 book Venus Revealed, David Grinspoon i...   Jul 21 2005, 03:25 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jul 21 2005, 04:25 PM)In...   Jul 21 2005, 08:31 PM
|- - Chmee   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jul 21 2005, 04:31 PM)Just ...   Jul 21 2005, 08:33 PM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (Chmee @ Jul 21 2005, 03:33 PM)Dont wor...   Jul 21 2005, 08:55 PM
- - Chmee   Larry Niven wrote a good short story back in the s...   Jul 21 2005, 03:35 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jul 21 2005, 08:55 PM)Ju...   Jul 22 2005, 01:19 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   The Niven story was "Becalmed In Hell", ...   Jul 22 2005, 01:27 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jul 21 2005, 08:27 PM)Th...   Jul 28 2005, 06:21 PM
|- - Chmee   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jul 21 2005, 09:27 PM)Th...   Jul 28 2005, 06:39 PM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jul 29 2005, 03:37 PM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jul 29 2005, 10:37 AM)I fee...   Jul 29 2005, 04:10 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Actually, there are a few people I would like to s...   Jul 28 2005, 06:07 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Oh, yes, the Niven story didn't mention the po...   Jul 30 2005, 01:30 AM
- - DonPMitchell   If you haven't seen it, Voyage to the Planets ...   May 10 2006, 11:06 PM
- - PhilHorzempa   I would like to mention one of my pre-occupations,...   May 11 2006, 04:08 AM
- - jamescanvin   It's going to take an awfully long time for a ...   May 11 2006, 05:06 AM
|- - dilo   QUOTE (jamescanvin @ May 11 2006, 05:06 A...   May 11 2006, 06:04 AM
|- - helvick   QUOTE (dilo @ May 11 2006, 07:04 AM) Wow,...   May 11 2006, 08:02 AM
||- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (helvick @ May 11 2006, 01:02 AM) S...   May 11 2006, 10:03 AM
|||- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 11 2006, 06:03 ...   May 11 2006, 02:17 PM
|||- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ May 11 2006, 07:17 A...   May 12 2006, 02:54 AM
||- - Holder of the Two Leashes   QUOTE (helvick @ May 11 2006, 03:02 AM) S...   Jun 28 2006, 04:44 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (dilo @ May 11 2006, 07:04 AM) Wow,...   May 11 2006, 02:10 PM
- - Phil Stooke   I think Carl Sagan discusses this in Pale Blue Dot...   May 11 2006, 05:13 AM
- - Phil Stooke   I'm all in favour of sending people to Venus, ...   May 12 2006, 03:27 AM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ May 11 2006, 10:27 P...   May 12 2006, 04:19 AM
- - ljk4-1   Here is a depiction of a manned USSF Venus expedit...   May 24 2006, 05:06 PM
|- - AndyG   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ May 24 2006, 06:06 P...   May 25 2006, 08:04 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Of course, those were also the days when every sup...   May 24 2006, 11:52 PM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 24 2006, 04:52 P...   May 25 2006, 12:27 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Don: Many thanks for posting an image with tentac...   May 25 2006, 12:39 PM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 25 2006, 12:39 PM) ...   May 25 2006, 02:17 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   While, we're wandering off on this somewhat ir...   May 25 2006, 01:32 PM
- - MarkG   Incidentally, there's a much more detailed fil...   Jun 28 2006, 02:42 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Mark: Great link! It's basically a plan ...   Jun 28 2006, 12:30 PM
- - MarkG   Yeah, would have been an exciting trip if it had h...   Jun 28 2006, 06:27 PM
- - DonPMitchell   Interesting ideas. The Russian spacecraft designe...   Jun 29 2006, 05:50 AM
- - MarkG   QUOTE And second, can human beings actually do any...   Jun 29 2006, 09:50 AM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jun 29 2006, 02:19 PM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jun 29 2006, 07:19 AM) ...   Jun 29 2006, 07:32 PM
- - dvandorn   Enough with the anti-manned-spaceflight agenda? P...   Jun 29 2006, 11:58 PM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 29 2006, 04:58 PM) ...   Jun 30 2006, 12:54 AM
- - elakdawalla   The issue with Bruce Moomaw was not which opinion ...   Jun 30 2006, 02:25 AM
- - centsworth_II   It could be argued that the "Venus" foru...   Jun 30 2006, 02:45 AM
- - DonPMitchell   "Sending Men To Venus" has had some inte...   Jun 30 2006, 03:32 AM
- - RNeuhaus   I would rather change the forum name from UMSF to ...   Jun 30 2006, 03:39 AM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jun 29 2006, 11:39 PM) ...   Jun 30 2006, 04:41 AM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jun 30 2006, 04:39 AM) ...   Jun 30 2006, 07:25 AM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jun 30 2006, 03:39 AM) ...   Jun 30 2006, 04:52 PM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jun 30 2006, 12:52...   Jun 30 2006, 05:45 PM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jun 30 2006, 06:26 PM
- - dvandorn   Don, I must say that, with your clarifications, I ...   Jun 30 2006, 08:08 PM
- - edstrick   It's not THAT difficult to shield solar cosmic...   Jul 1 2006, 07:54 AM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jul 1 2006, 12:14 PM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jul 1 2006, 07:14 AM) T...   Jul 1 2006, 12:29 PM
- - DonPMitchell   I worked on the heavy-nuclei detector in HEAO-C. ...   Jul 1 2006, 10:10 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ Jul 1 2006, 11:10 A...   Jul 1 2006, 11:34 AM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jul 1 2006, 06:34 AM) D...   Jul 1 2006, 12:26 PM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jul 1 2006, 04:34 AM) D...   Jul 1 2006, 08:37 PM
- - MarkG   QUOTE Why send such things, when you can use piles...   Jul 1 2006, 07:28 PM
- - dvandorn   OK, here's a question that reveals an area of ...   Jul 2 2006, 01:39 AM
|- - DonPMitchell   Here is some information from Caltech's Space ...   Jul 2 2006, 04:30 AM
- - dvandorn   It still occurs to me that surface sample return i...   Jan 10 2008, 07:54 AM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jan 10 2008, 08:21 AM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jan 10 2008, 09:21 AM) ...   Jan 10 2008, 08:43 AM
- - Doc   I don't know if this has already been consider...   Jan 10 2008, 11:15 AM
|- - JRehling   [...]   Jan 10 2008, 06:54 PM
- - Greg Hullender   I like the floating base idea. Balloons, not rock...   Jan 11 2008, 12:59 AM


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