243
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
243 points (92.6% liked)
Technology
59080 readers
3566 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It might seem unintuitive, but there's an area above the clouds that's actually really very mild as far as conditions go. It's also closer/easier to get to than Mars and various useful components can be harvested from the atmosphere which is quite dense while Mars doesn't have much.
Also, breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere so habitats filled with gas humans can breathe would actually be buoyant. You wouldn't even need a pressurized spacesuit to go outside, just an air supply.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus
Thank God we perfected "landing somewhere in the upper atmosphere" in the 70s.
Am I misunderstanding or are you skeptical about it being possible to stop before reaching the surface? Because if so, that seems kind of weird. One would just need to deploy the balloons or whatever at the appropriate point. As far as technical challenges go, I'd guess this is actually going to be easier than safely getting something safely down to the surface.
ezpz just design automatically unfoldable balloon that can survive in clouds of sulfuric acid
Russia managed to land a probe safely on the surface of Venus that survived for almost an hour and sent back pictures... in 1975. The probe was called Venera 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9
By the way, it used an unfoldable parachute to slow its decent, that presumably could not only survive in clouds of sulfuric acid but near the surface where conditions are much more extreme.
Nothing about landing (or floating, in this case) a probe on a different planet is "ezpz" but comparatively speaking, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine it being possible given what humans have already accomplished with less advanced technology. So why be snarky and contrary for no reason?
Nah you misunderstood. I actually think it's extremely easy to travel to Venus, drop from orbit and deply several tons of Air just at the right time for the descend to be slowly reversed until you reach the correct height.
Not sure why you feel the need to be snarky here.
I never said it was "easy" in the general sense. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of the procedures that were used to land rovers, on Mars for example. They were both quite difficult and complex, requiring precise timing and a bunch of steps to happen exactly as needed or the rover would smash into the surface or burn up on entry.
"Drop from orbit and inflate some balloons at the right time" is comparatively easy compared to the complex procedures that were used for the Mars missions. Obviously, deploying a probe on a different planet is always going to be a difficult and complicated task.
Alright the ocean gate guy can just link up with you then and we're set
I'm talking about the approach in general. Is OceanGate guy the one to pull it off? Probably not.
If you're being reasonable here, you have to compare the difficult with trying to create a colony on other planets like Mars. There are major challenges involved there too, like distance, lack of atmosphere, less accessible resources that could be used to maintain the colony, etc. The only thing I'm arguing here is compared to colonizing Mars, for example, there are points in favor of Venus. If you read the Wikipedia article I linked, you'll also see this isn't an idea OceanGate guy came up with and it's also not really all that new either. Reputable organizations like NASA have seriously looked into this previously.
In the 80s, not the 70s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program
To add to this, one of the potential advantages is that you could use the temperature gradient as you drop further into the atmosphere as an energy source - making it one of the few areas in the solar system where you wouldn't be reliant soley on solar or nuclear.
That's a good point, although with sunlight so accessible and abundant and nuclear waste not being an issue (presumably you can just drop it to the surface) I'm not sure what the benefit would be of using that approach.
The issue with solar power on a planet is what you do during the nights (which are over 100 earth days long on Venus). The issue with nuclear is the danger of a launch failure with a craft full of fissile material - that would change if we could source the fuel from off earth but we're not at the stage of being able to do that yet
Again, good points. Also, I definitely wasn't taking the length of days into account!
Isn't it hard to get to because of it being closer to the Sun and requiring more deltaV?
Based on the Wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Advantages ) it doesn't seem like that's the case. Optimal launch windows are more frequent and flight time is reduced (although it's not a massive difference). That section doesn't specifically mention delta v or fuel requirements but I assume if there was a notable difference aside from the flight time part that there would be something about it.
I'm far from an expert, but I'd guess in a way stuff like fuel requirements don't really vary that much with distance, just time. This is because the vehicle will accelerate to some set speed and just coast for most of the way before decelerating at the other end. At least with current rocket propellant-based approaches, it's not feasible to include enough fuel for the thing to be actively thrusting for more than a fraction of the total time.