NASA Plans Blockbuster Return To Venus (sciencemag.org) 61
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Venus can no longer wait. NASA will send two new robotic missions to Earth's hothouse twin, the agency's new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced this afternoon at his "State of NASA" speech here at the agency's headquarters. The missions, together costing up to $1 billion, mark NASA's first visit to the planet since the early 1990s, whereas nearby Mars has seen a host of robotic visitors. They're expected to launch by the decade's end.
The scientific case for exploring Venus has long been strong. No planet has more to say about how Earth came to be. Mars is tiny and frozen, its heat and atmosphere largely lost to space long ago. Venus could host active volcanoes, and it may have once featured oceans and continents, which are critical to the evolution of life. Plate tectonics roughly like Earth's might have held sway there, or might be starting today, hidden under the clouds. Venus also proves by example that orbiting within a star's "habitable zone" doesn't guarantee a planet is suitable for life. Understanding how Venus's atmosphere went bad and turned into a runaway greenhouse, boiling away any oceans and baking the surface, could help astronomers studying other solar systems distinguish truly Earth-like exoplanets from our evil twins.
The scientific case for exploring Venus has long been strong. No planet has more to say about how Earth came to be. Mars is tiny and frozen, its heat and atmosphere largely lost to space long ago. Venus could host active volcanoes, and it may have once featured oceans and continents, which are critical to the evolution of life. Plate tectonics roughly like Earth's might have held sway there, or might be starting today, hidden under the clouds. Venus also proves by example that orbiting within a star's "habitable zone" doesn't guarantee a planet is suitable for life. Understanding how Venus's atmosphere went bad and turned into a runaway greenhouse, boiling away any oceans and baking the surface, could help astronomers studying other solar systems distinguish truly Earth-like exoplanets from our evil twins.
Re: (Score:2)
You should have used OVH for hosting, you can even get a VPS or physical server, with no bandwidth limitations, without any IDs.
Why? (Score:3, Funny)
Can they not get Netflix there or something?
Misunderstood the title (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Misunderstood the title (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They would all melt.
Re: (Score:2)
Forget the late fees. Imagine the damaged return fees.
Description of damage: all returned items were melted.
Re: (Score:2)
Egads, can you imagine the late return fees from *Venus*?!
No need to return it. On Venus, every DVD is a self-destructing Flexplay [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:1)
Butters - "Must have my 'precious'".
Re:you know what this sounds like (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
like a colossal waste of money, all the resources required to do this could go into something more useful and meaningful right here on earth where we have real world problems that effect everyone's lives, but nope, they want to blow it on sending a bunch of hardware to another planet
I guess it's like you posting here instead of doing some charity work, isn't it?
Re: (Score:3)
like a colossal waste of money, all the resources required to do this could go into something more useful and meaningful right here on earth where we have real world problems that effect everyone's lives, but nope, they want to blow it on sending a bunch of hardware to another planet
I guess it's like you posting here instead of doing some charity work, isn't it?
Sadly, the work that needs to happen within Earth-bound charities, is to jettison the incessant greed that has infected them.
Legally re-define what a "Charity" is first. Then perhaps many more people will feel better about donating time or money towards them instead of feeding insane "Executive Director of Charity" salaries.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps get off your ass and look for a real charity to donate your time. Hint: look in your local community. It's often not too hard. Many of them are small and don't have executive directors. Many of them don't even ask for cash. They need food, clothing, toiletries, and donated labor for handling (sorting, distribution) those items.
Re: (Score:2)
Talent costs what talent costs. You can't raise money or spend that money effectively if you don't have good leadership and good equipment, on the ground and in the office. You want those executive salaries to come down? Start complaining about C-level salaries in general, not only those at charities. The problem is obscene salaries, not obscene charitable organizations' salaries.
The idea of working with inadequate resources for a pittance is a failure. People burn out. Mistakes get made. Bad mistakes. Mone
Re:you know what this sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
NASA plays a significant factor in keeping the US in the high ranks of technological innovation and development. It's been such a successful source of innovation that nearly every other major player on the planet has adopted similar programs: ESA, ROSCOSMOS, CNSA, ISRO being those that make most news.
So that's the reason we shitcanned their budget and financially starved them for years.
If that's how we treat our friends, I'd hate to see what we do to our enemies...
Re: (Score:3)
I am a registered "space nutter", and along with National Parks find the relative lack of funding to Nasa to be a travesty, especially given the 'bang for buck' involved in the offshoot technologies.
However these 'blockbuster' missions give me pause. IMHO I would think that Nasa would work on more frequent, smaller missions. Work on standardization of chassis and components. Granted each mission has different requirements, getting to Venus requires much more energy than going to Mars. Jupiter has more
Re: (Score:2)
Why? SpaceX has better technology, "chassis" especially. By the time NASA would standardize anything, others would already be using the next step. Tell me, how long and with how much money has it taken NASA to successfully implement reusable launch engines?
Let NASA script missions and then pay others to actualize them. Otherwise, get out of the way.
Re:you know what this sounds like (Score:5, Informative)
I'm puzzled by this statement. SpaceX hasn't ever built a satellite that operates outside of LEO, and Starlink doesn't have anything on it that would lead me to believe it makes a suitable deep space platform.
RocketLab does, though, with their Photon bus. Propulsion and guidance all wrapped up in a package; just bolt your stuff on it.
SpaceX rockets are nice, but they don't have an upper stage that can coast for very long. Kind of limits the mission profiles. They're not rated to carry an RTG either. ULA's the only game in town for that yet.
Re: you know what this sounds like (Score:2)
Well, here's a suggestion: Google for all the technologies that better the life of humanity as a whole which were developed due to space exploration, now imagine humanity, and you yourself, without any of those because the money was used for things that didn't require developing new technologies, then come back and tell us your assessment of that scenario.
Re: (Score:3)
A huge one is water processing tech. Because of the need of the ISS to recycle water, our technology on water processing has advanced considerably, and provided healthy drinking water to billions.
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spino... [nasa.gov]
Re:you know what this sounds like (Score:4, Insightful)
You know we are not shipping all the money to Venus.
The money is used to pay for all the earth based workers which they will pay back the government in taxes, and buy other things from other people who will pay taxes...
Knowledge about Venus and other planets is actually a rather valuable set of data. It helps us improve on our own prediction models. With lack of data, we tend to assume what we know is the average normal data, where what we are looking at might be an exception that is 2 or 3 Standard Deviations away from the mean.
Both Venus and Mars have a large amount of greenhouse gases Mars being a much thinner atmosphere makes it colder, while Venus being close to the size of earth is exceedingly hot. But there is a lot we don't know because of the technology to get probes to work in that environment.
Also we assume causes for a lot of our geology may be from earth like conditions, if we see such geology on different planets with different conditions it may help us better understand what we see on earth, as well if nature provides something unique on those planets, which could lead to us creating new materials and structures.
With a few interesting exceptions... (Score:3)
The 1979 Pioneer probe [hughesscgheritage.com] had a diamond window for its radiometer.
The 13.5 carat gem-quality diamond was purchased from a Holland firm, and had a big import duty fee.
Hughes got the duty back by arguing that the diamond was purchased to be exported - to Venus.
Re: (Score:1)
Buzz Aldrin: How much percentage of discretionary funds would you like to solve all the problems here on Earth? 100%? We want to sit back and watch the Chinese populate Mars? We want to sit back and watch the Russians populate
Re: (Score:2)
Wait--you mean the money is being paid to Venusians? I thought it was paid to Earthlings.
Lauch existing probes before developing new ones (Score:2)
And the James Webb telescope still sits in storage waiting for the money for a launch.
Re: (Score:1)
The ability to walk and chew gum at the same time is an amazing ability. You might want to look into it at some point.
Re: (Score:3)
And the James Webb telescope still sits in storage waiting for the money for a launch.
The delays to the Webb telescope aren't due to the inability to pay for the launch.
Some of the delays are due to the launch vehicle ( https://www.digitaltrends.com/... [digitaltrends.com] ) but not due to waiting for funding.
Press on & Explore! (Score:5, Insightful)
Go NASA! Go for it and it won't be easy, the mission may even crash and burn (literally).
But it is nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And for the "nay sayers" - you know where your place in history is.
Re: Press on & Explore! (Score:2)
NASA copycats China Venus-shot (Score:2)
ONLY reason to go to Venus.
NASA wants to see what China’s Spacetug does.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, to inspect a planet not all that different from Earth with a run-away greenhouse effect, regardless of what China's Spacetug does or doesn't do.
Too bad... (Score:3)
...someone can't think of a way to move some of the atmosphere of Venus to Mars. It would improve the habitability of both planets.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you looked at the fact that Venus has a "day" that lasts about 120 Earth days
There are places on earth that have 120 day "days".
And the problem isn't transferring the cargo. We have the technology to slap a solar sail on a drone, no problem. The problem, as usual, is getting the cargo into orbit.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, how would taking the carbon dioxide from one uninhabitable planet to another uninhabitable planet help either planet become habitable?
The air pressure is too low on Mars and too high on Venus. It makes them both closer to Earth normal.
And what kind of magical sci-fi level of technology would you propose to transfer the atmosphere of one planet to another?
If I knew that I wouldn't have asked the question! But I imagine the carbon dioxide atmosphere would freeze in space, if you could get it up there. Then it's just a matter of pushing it to Mars.
Re: Too bad... (Score:1)
My girlfriend can suck really good...
Re: (Score:3)
...someone can't think of a way to move some of the atmosphere of Venus to Mars.
Way too much delta-V. Much easier to divert a large number of oort-cloud objects to Mars.
They are distant, but slow moving, and only need a small nudge to fall toward the inner solar system.
Re: (Score:2)
How many of those objects have any appreciable amount of atmosphere?
Re: (Score:3)
How many of those objects have any appreciable amount of atmosphere?
No "atmosphere", they are frozen.
"the vast majority of Oort Cloud objects are composed of icy volatiles – such as water, methane, ethane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia."
https://phys.org/news/2015-08-... [phys.org]
Don't expect a nice oxygen/ nitrogen atmosphere in a single generation. I think it took the cyanobacteria a few hundred million years on Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thermal Management (Score:2)
Whatever NASA sends there, I'm curious how long it's expected to survive. Avg surface temps are ~864 F (462 C).
Re: (Score:3)
Whatever NASA sends there, I'm curious how long it's expected to survive. Avg surface temps are ~864 F (462 C).
Well, one mission is an orbiter. The other mission is an atmospheric probe with an orbiter.
But as for surface survival, check:
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/rese... [nasa.gov]
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/rese... [nasa.gov]
Possible replies (Score:2)
1. Really? They're going to ask funding from Hollywood?
2. I'm pretty sure the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, does not have enough cash to help them finance this project.
Phosphine or sulfur dioxide in atmosphere. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They're expected to launch by the decade's end. (Score:2)
Would a probe survive nowadays? (Score:2)
For more than a few minutes/hours?
None have had much longevity once touching down. Have we discovered new materials that can withstand the extreme heat and sulfuric acid atmosphere? Even low orbit probes would, I think, have a tough go of it.
That said... I'd love to see some new data from that planet. It's been forever since that last images have been obtained.
Re: (Score:2)
Habitable zone (Score:2)
"Venus also proves by example that orbiting within a star's "habitable zone" doesn't guarantee a planet is suitable for life." Venus is something like 70% of the distance from the Sun that Earth is, meaning it receives almost twice as much sunlight. Does its temperature have nothing to do with that? Or asking this question differently: What would Venus' surface temperature be if its atmosphere were Earth-like? (And similarly for Mars: if its atmosphere were Earth-like, what would its surface temperature