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Comment by nynx | Hacker News Reader

A crewed flyby? What is the point of that? Colonizing the clouds of venus is a good idea eventually, but it's certainly not a viable first target.

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Just like the moon, we did not attempt to land there on the first go-around. Neil Armstrong was on Apollo 11. Apollo 4-6 were unmanned launches, 7-9 were testing the hardware with humans, mostly with "free return" orbits where even if the engines didn't start again, they would land back on earth in about a week. Apollo 10 was a wet rehersal that did everything except land on the moon#, including "parking" in lunar orbit, then starting up the engines again and going back to earth; finally Apollo 11-17 actually were "boots on the ground"

A venus flyby would be similar to Apollo 10 where they would go to another body, and then do a free return fly-by, maybe with engine assist, and return back in a year. Regardless of if/when we go to mars, there will be at least one "free return" mission before they attempt future missions that have a "parking orbit" around mars.

Going to Venus would allow us to simulate a mars free return trip, but in only 1 year (which would mean for a mars-class ship, a minimum safety factor of 3 (really, six) for fuel, water, air, food, medical supplies etc), instead of a 3 year mission with only a safety factor of 2.

#Apollo 10 was functionally identical to Apollo 11, to the extent that the only difference was that they did not provide enough fuel on the lander/ascent module to return to lunar orbit, to deter Apollo 10 astronauts from "going rogue" and attempting a landing ahead of schedule

Also, for completeness sake, Apollo 1 crew died during testing in a fire; Gus Grissom, Edward H. White II, Roger B. Chaffee

> Going to Venus would allow us to simulate a mars free return trip, but in only 1 year (which would mean for a mars-class ship, a minimum safety factor of 3 (really, six) for fuel, water, air, food, medical supplies etc), instead of a 3 year mission with only a safety factor of 2.

Simulate what ? Sitting in place ? We can do that on earth orbit. Engines running for long time ? No need for people aboard for that.

I think space is one of those places where you can appeal to unknown unknowns being a major risk factor and everyone agrees. But I personally think that the better option is to just do all of this on the moon. Making a human-habitable base on the moon, to me, still makes the most sense for preparing for habitation on other worlds.

Avoiding the need to wait 26 months between launch windows certainly reduces the degree of difficulty. Going from "oh we wish we had X that we didn't think of" to having it is literally almost 3 years on Mars.

It's not to avoid the difficulty, it's to make iteration safer and easier. Good luck seeing what failed if the craft that failed is flying somewhere between earth and mars

For one, leaving the safety of Earth's magnetosphere. We haven't really ventured far enough for radiation to not be tempered by Earth's magnetic field, from what I understand. It would shorten the duration of radiation and help study the effects on astronauts.

So, go to moon. No real need to go to another planet just to irradiate some astronauts and in case shit hits the fan they have chance of surviving

Precisely the goal of Gateway, of which Artemis/SLS are pieces.

Interplanetary space is significantly different environment, compared to low earth orbit, for spacecraft and crews. The only knowledge we have of humans beyond the Van Allen Belts is from Apollo, for relatively short durations.

> Engines running for long time ?

Not with chemical rockets. Perhaps you meant "engines sitting idle for years in interplanetary space, and then restarting reliably".

Really depends on the mission profile. If you are refilling in space for a "short" burn, it could still be longest in human history.

The whole point of Apollo 10 was to be the dry run for Apollo 11.

Doing all of that with no actual plans to land seems silly.

Anyway, with no plans to dip to cloud level.

Actually landing people on Venus could only be a disastrous mistake.

This guy has clearly never worked on the operations side of a business

>finally Apollo 11-17 actually were "boots on the ground"<

Nitpick: Apollo 11, 12 and 14-17 were boots on the ground. 13 had no boots on the ground.

They had the boots, and meant to put them on the ground. But Fred Haise would have suffered more terribly.

Fully agree. If we're committing to multi-month crewed missions I think we should be planning for boots on the ground and setup of barebones support for long term habitation. In that situation you can send and land several loads of supplies in advance of the crewed mission, significantly improving chances of success. Landing the crew is risky but that's always going to be true, no many flybys you do.

> Colonizing the clouds of venus is a good idea eventually, but it's certainly not a viable first target.

Sure seems a _lot_ more interesting than Mars at least.

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