> is way too thick to even think about sending anything larger than a tiny probe What do you mean? Venus has already received its fair share of probes, the Ve

> is way too thick to even think about sending anything larger than a tiny probe What do you mean? Venus has already received its fair share of probes, the Venera missions, some weighted upwards of five tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera They did many different types of measurements, and lasted from one to two hours before their batteries running out, some atmospheric probes lasted days