> humans are more flexible. They can look around and see interesting things and change plans to look at that instead. That's true, but that doesn't matter so m

> humans are more flexible. They can look around and see interesting things and change plans to look at that instead. That's true, but that doesn't matter so much floating in the Venusian clouds. Making a manned blimp has zero advantages over a robot blimp controlled from a space station. The only thing a manned blimp would have over a robot one is the humans could potentially do unplanned maintenance. However, the cost of that is orders of magnitude more complexity and cost over a robot blimp (life support and rockets to get back into orbit) and a hard deadline to end the mission. You could probably send five robot blimps or more for the cost of a manned one, which could potentially remain operational long past their design life. Send them one or two at a time, so ad-hoc modifications can be made. It's really a no-brainer to chose options besides human exploration of the Venusian atmosphere.