> It’s not just about the cost, but about what science could be done I'd argue that's not the issue either. We can keep a probe on Mars or in any orbit for yea

> It’s not just about the cost, but about what science could be done I'd argue that's not the issue either. We can keep a probe on Mars or in any orbit for years and gather data over that time. Anything that we land on Venus can only ever operate for a few minutes. Maybe there's stuff we could learn on Venus if we could stay there long term, but we can't. Any other target (Mars, Mercury, gas giant satellites, asteroids, dwarf planets ...) will have a better ROI, by several orders of magnitude.