https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-venus-mission ("News China Plans to Bring Back Samples of Venusian Clouds / A gauntlet of engineering challenges await a search for evidence of alien life")
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jvl3hb5wle4igkd4qgzk2wrt/po...
And note that you may be able to "fish" for samples from an atmospheric floating platform; there is no specific need to get all the way down to the rocks with your rocket.
IIRC, there's only a thin layer of atmosphere where we think the microbes live, and I'm not sure if VE (or future missions) descended to that layer during aero-breaking, but it's an idea.
COULD live
That never even occurred to me! That's a brilliant idea.
The first from the top of my head would be the required length and sheer weight of the cable attached to that Teflon balloon, to say nothing of the weight of the balloon itself or its contents. Speaking of which, actually keeping the contents in that balloon might also be surprisingly tricky.
You need to drag that all the way to Venus, then decelerate enough to stop all that mass, then accelerate that again to come back to Earth, before decelerating to land here. Even without any extra weight that's actually a huge challenge due to the amount of fuel required. There's a reason none of the Mars rovers have come back.
Not to say it'd be easy, but certainly easier than landing & returning.
> "90x Earth's atmospheric pressure and 450°C" — becomes Earth-like conditions at higher altitude
> "while sulfuric acid clouds would rapidly degrade balloon materials" — Teflon coatings are a solved problem; JPL did coupon tests[0]
> "The energy requirements for escape velocity from Venus are also substantially higher than Mars" — True, but you'd only need to launch a tiny, dumb payload into orbit, to rendezvous with the return craft. Like Apollo, sample returns aren't one monolithic spacecraft that does the full round-trip; think the Apollo Lunar Ascent Module, but, for ants
[0] https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.asr.2007.03.017 ("Prototype design and testing of a Venus long duration, high altitude balloon")
> "Although the expected sulfuric acid concentration at Venus is expected to be in the range of 75–85%, tests were conducted up to 96% to understand our design margin. The material itself was found to be unaffected by prolonged exposure to all concentrations of sulfuric acid up to a temperature of 70 °C. Adhesively taped seam samples did show some discoloration at the tape edges, but there was no evidence of acid penetration into the joint using blotter paper on the inside surface. This test confirmed that the cover tape adhesive was indeed resistant to sulfuric acid as predicted and can support a long duration balloon mission at Venus."
edit: I totally forgot—the Soviets already demonstrated that, in the 70's:
Also been done. Also, in a way, we've been doing it since before space travel, because such material occasionally reaches Earth's surface in form of meteorites. But that's of course using naturally occurring impactors.
It's the closest thing to Hell in the Solar System apart from the Sun.
There is a zone with Earth-like temperature and pressure, but the atmosphere is still poisonous & corrosive, I think. It's someplace we could probably put a human settlement, but it wouldn't be easy and would probably be as fun to maintain as the ISS.
The fact that - as the other comment mentions - life could potentially survive in the atmosphere is incredible too.