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Now HERE is what I consider really cool: in the US we were seriously thinking about taking some Apollo components, building what amounts to a Skylab with thrust
by tjic 14y ago
Now HERE is what I consider really cool: in the US we were seriously thinking about taking some Apollo components, building what amounts to a Skylab with thrusters, and doing a MANNED Venus flyby in 1973.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby
- InclinedPlane 14y agoIt's a cool idea, but it probably would have killed the crew due to radiation exposure. Edit: Some additional info. The Apollo crews had very little radiation protection, basically just the hulls of their spacecraft. This was thick enough to give them protection against the van allen belts as they zipped through them (not coincidentally where the ships were going near their highest speeds) but it wasn't enough to protect against an errant solar flare. Fortunately, the missions were short duration and we just plain got lucky. Venturing into the inner Solar System near Venus would have exposed crews to higher levels of radiation (due to proximity to the Sun) and combined with the longer duration trip would have virtually guaranteed being exposed to high doses from a CME or solar flare.
- vbtemp 14y agoNo, no one was really considering it. It was commissioned by NASA to a small contractor team just as a thought experiment and as a theoretical demonstration of Saturn V capabilities, with no intention of going through with it.
- ljf 14y agoThe Soviet TMK was even more interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMK - a planned 3 year mission. There is also info about this on the site linked to in the parent.