Why Not Venus?
mceglowski.substack.com
mceglowski.substack.com
"In this stifling landscape, there is not likely to be anything alive, even creatures very different from us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let us imagine that intelligent life once evolved on such a planet. Would it then invent science? The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But Venus is completely cloud-covered. The night is pleasingly long - about 59 Earth days long but nothing of the astronomical universe would be visible if you looked up into the night sky of Venus. Even the Sun would be invisible in the daytime; its light would be scattered and diffused over the whole sky - just as scuba divers see only a uniform enveloping radiance beneath the sea. If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could eventually be deduced from the principles of physics, but they would be theoretical constructs only. I sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars."
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Carl Sagan is an amazing author, and I've shared the famous excerpt from his book Pale Blue Dot multiple times before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565381
A few mentions of his books in my blog post here - https://www.rxjourney.net/30-things-i-know
Not really scientific books at all. He is popular because he was hyped in the media for being accessible.
Those people dumb down science for the masses - it harms society on the long run imo
Carl Sagan significantly influenced Neil deGrasse Tyson (another popular science writer), for example. But I'm not sure if Tyson would have pursued science regardless of Sagan's influence.
Your view is just a snobbish and rigid one, Sagan made science topics interesting for more people, from those people very likely many got inspired enough to pursue deeper science training.
Dumbing down is necessary to make it interesting for people who feel it's unapproachable, it breaks a barrier, I have no idea how you look at this and think "this is harming society"...
When explaining something to people outside of science, I was ok with 60% accuracy. Even 50% and some technical lies was fine if this would encourage them to learn more. Some came back to say "you lied!!" and these were one of my most cherished victories.
In lectures for 1st year students, I would have here and there an asterisk with "almost true", to which we would come back a semesters or two later.
Dumbing down science to dumb up people is wonderful.
Many physicists have written popular articles and books for the general population. Eg Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox. Improving accessibility of advanced concepts is nothing to scoff at.
Even though I think you are wrong on this, you seem to be saying it like it's a bad thing ? Why ?
What, exactly, is wrong about inspiring high-schoolers ?
It’s only “scientific” because it’s new, not because it’s too difficult to understand.
I met Carl Sagan and he was not a person who dumbed down anything. He had a profound impact on planetary science on top of inspiring many including myself to pursue physics.
I think the fact that we are all still talking about Carl 30 years after his death is strong evidence of his impact.
like when in matrix revolutions they climb up above the clouds and see the sun for the first time :')
Now I want to sit down and watch them all, so thanks for that I guess!
perhaps on Venus, it would be spurred on by the creatures there trying to understand why a gaseous swirl goes in a certain direction, or why a vortex does what it does for as long as it has to
they may be better at fluids and flow than we are :) worth sending a message in a bottle at least
There's a school of thought which views Venus as a better colonization candidate than Mars, and as early as the 70's scientists envisioned floating cities. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus:
In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above the Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System beyond Earth itself – a pressure of approximately 1 atm or 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 °C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 °F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.
Being able to wear a simple breathing mask while working outside instead of a full pressure suit is a boon. Of course high windspeeds and the constant bombardment of acid rain would be a problem.
I could imagine Venus one day being an exotic, cloud-top paradise for the rich (reminiscent of BioShock Infinity) that's expensive to maintain, and Mars a brute workhorse that eventually displaces it as a more resilient habitat over the very long term (eg. after terraforming).
A classic triangle trade ala the sugar, rum, and slave markets in the North Atlantic in the 17-1800s.
Yes, or hanging off the side of it. What's the concern? If you want to launch a rocket from Mars you have to build it either inside your habitat (and then build an airlock big enough to fit a rocket through to take it out) or just outside it (which means working in vacuum the whole time), and I'm not sure being able to build a smaller rocket makes up for that.
On Venus, you need to find a way to not land the rocket, but to make it stop gently next to the balloon, attach it to the balloon somehow, adjust the buoyancy of the balloon when this happens, so the balloon does not suddenly drop by 20 km where the pressure difference, and additional heat, can destroy it. Then you need to manufacture the propellant inside the balloon, then you need to find a way to make the rocket fire its engines and take off, but without destroying the balloon in the process, and you need to adjust the buoyancy of the balloon in reverse. Of all the steps, I'll grant that the manufacturing of fuel might be roughly as easy as on Mars (the Sabatier process and all that). But the rest have no parallel on Mars, and don't seem possible, no matter what technology we come up with.
1. those photos are from Venera 13 and 14, which were taken in color
2. the photos were taken in 1982 (though the probes launched in 1981)
and 3. those aren't the original photos, they're 'enhanced' ones that have been upscaled and extended to show more of the horizon and sky than the originals. The bottom 1/4 or so is the actual original, give or take a few details that have been changed/added in the upscale process, but the rest is artistic interpretation
You can look at the actual photos here: https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-...
The Venera panoramas are spherical projections. They can be remapped to perspective projections and overlayed (using Adobe Photoshop CS2) to produce views that give a better subjective impression of the Venusian surface
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Imagine living on an airship high above the Earth, with the hard rule that you can never land. You must be entirely self-sufficient save for a tiny amount of material delivered infrequently. Now imagine trying to land on that airship from orbit or get back into orbit (and beyond) from that airship. None of this is easy here on Earth.
A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars. Trying to get closer to the surface than orbit would make things a lot harder.
I think that's exactly what the article is arguing for. The part about manned airships is just a whimsical aside to the much safer, entirely feasible, and nearly as scientifically valuable prospect of using unmanned balloons.
Also, if anything goes wrong on Earth and you're in the atmosphere, there's still a chance you might soar to lower altitudes, eject, parachute, and get rescued. On Venus it's a death sentence.
Because the nitrox atmosphere we're used to is a lifting gas in the Venusian atmosphere, you could theoretically just fill a big balloon with our atmosphere and live inside it, with lots of Teflon on the outside and suits made of Teflon to work outside the habitat. I also (kind of?) remember reading about using metal nets to capture and condense H2SO4 from the clouds and process it into water, oxygen, and hydrolox rocket fuel.
[0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006329/downloads/20...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...
Being completely tidally locked would be better because near the transition zones the permanent sun would make solar power and plants quite productive.
But an ecosystem where the planet spends most of the year in darkness or dim light?
Basically it's relatively easy to redirect comets to provide gas and liquids for the surface of Mars: that's technically demonstrated technology now.
There's almost no plausible way we could add momentum to Venus to give it a more reasonable day night cycle (I have seen some suggestion that shearing asteroids into it might be possible, but just the magnitude of momentum you're trying to add is staggering).
If you're floating you don't have to track the ground.
The difference is in air pressure and gravity.
Gravity means comfort for astronauts. It also makes, I suspect, science and industry a bit easier.
I don’t know what air pressure means. Spacewalks probably get easier. But now your structures have to deal with aerodynamic forces, which is annoying. Making up for that, you’re suspended in a soup of precursors and reagents—that opens up ISRU possibilities. And you should be getting less radiation in atmosphere.
On the whole, if you’re doing planetary science, I think being in the atmosphere is hard to beat. If you’re doing any industry, being near raw materials beats shipping anything unprocessed out of a gravity well. So if you’re staying for a while, you dip in. If, on the other hand, you’re just visiting for a few days, yeah, take a lander and then get back out again.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_super-rotation
How would that work? Averaged over the planet, you get half the year in darkness and half the year in light. There's no other option.
We have that same ecosystem on Earth.
As in the mission has been flown and an asteroid deflection has been achieved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
Lets also not forget the 872F surface temp that will spontaneously ignite anything primarily composed of carbon or the dense sulfuric acid clouds that will destroy most metals in as little as 45 minutes.
Melt, but not ignite. There's no free oxygen to allow burning. A nitpick, sure, but probably worth mentioning.
"So that’s the bad part. But once you move past it, you start to notice that everything gets easier on Venus."
If wishes were fishes ...
The advantage of Mars is that it is ( hypothetically ) acceptably compatible with persistent surface-based habitation. Not an easy life, certainly not compared to Earth, but more sustainable than balloons floating in sulphuric clouds.
Venus doesn't offer an 'alternative cradle' option unless we invent anti-gravity. Until then the emphasis will be on finding a way to improve human civilisation's resilience.
But, if our airship in the Venusian atmosphere finds nothing interesting (no life signs), then there’s not much more to do at Venus, because atmosphere is all mixed and all the same. Going to the surface, even for a day or two, is hard and very expensive.
OTOH Mars - that can be explored for many years, on the surface and below the surface. We might still find nothing, but it’ll take hundreds of years to be sure.
why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back? seems much easier than going with humans around the moon
"The probe's cargo vessel has a really awesome ablative heat shield on it, as well as some extremely reliable parachutes, and Mission Control is projecting a very soft touchdown in the Utah desert within the next 12 hours. If anyone in the Western United States sees a huge fireball going slower than most meteors, it is probably the Venus Sample Return vessel full of dangerous chemicals! Go VSRM!"
Well, there's the scenario where a Venusian superbug, having evolved in the roughest possible conditions (temp, acidity, etc...) in the upper Venusian atmosphere, will find Earth's conditions warm, balmy, and altogether ideal to reproduce at 1000x the rate it was constrained to back home :D
Better, why don't they do some sort of "ocean fertilization" experiment on Venus cloud decks. Putative life high on Venus atmosphere must be limited by low levels of minerals. Sending a probe with a few tons of salts to disperse in a cloud patch should be enough to produce a local equivalent to an algal bloom, detectable through imaging from orbit.
We will find life almost everywhere there is an energy gradient, a sufficiently rich substrate, and phase transition boundaries. Life is just a thing that forms in such places.
In our solar system that is Venus, Earth (of course), Mars, Titan (I predict very slow metabolism cryogenic life with a hydrocarbon solvent), and subsurface oceans like Europa if they have a heat source that creates phase boundaries and energy gradients.
It will be mostly simple life though. What we won’t find everywhere is complex life. That took billions of years on Earth. It probably takes a very stable very rich large scale ecosystem with a huge energy flux to cook things like complex multicellularity and cognition, and there are reasons to believe Earth is a rare sort of environment.
-CEO Nwabudike Morgan
"The Centauri Monopoly"
“Organic superlube? Great stuff, great stuff!”
definitely worth the price on GoG
The atmosphere of Venus in particular is very resource rich, and so it would be incredible to mine it for heavy use by a space economy. This mining is supposed to use free solar power. All of this is a job for robots, not humans.
Sure, why not?
I don't believe (could be wrong, not an expert) that spectroscopy is sharp enough to tell you about the structure of complex molecules in Venus's upper atmosphere.
I thought it was resolved as SO2, not phosphine
Venus is the wrong direction, with useless challenges. And thus a waste of resources.
Outwards. Not necessarily Mars, but outwards. No compromises.