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I mean the soviets had a good go at landing big metal probes on there and they melted and failed pretty quickly. I'm not sure we have the technology to make a s

I mean the soviets had a good go at landing big metal probes on there and they melted and failed pretty quickly. I'm not sure we have the technology to make a space suit or a quad bike that can function on the surface of venus. You'd also need to transport over 100 days of water and snacks so your dudebro doesn't starve on the way there

pavel_lishin 1y ago
I remember reading a short story that featured settlements on Venus, and it mentioned the difficulty of running any sort of engine - rocket or combustion - on the surface. After all, your engine and its exhaust must be hotter than the atmosphere surrounding it, otherwise you're not running an engine, you're running a refridgerator.
- the_gipsy 1y ago
  I don't doubt it's extremely challenging. But the initial engine temperature would still match the environment temperature, and it would not get somehow colder. That's not how any of this works.
- voidUpdate 1y ago
  I don't know if a rocket exhaust must absolutely be hotter than the environment, just at a higher pressure. If you open a gas bottle, the jet is going to be very cold, but it will produce thrust. With some quick googling, the surface pressure on venus is 90 bar, and a spacex falcon produces 350 bar in the chamber, so I think a falcon 9 could quite easily take off from the surface (ignoring the fact it would melt and the tanks might crush etc)
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    pV=NRT Pressure and temperature are not independent. "Hotter than the environment" is shorthand for "contains more energy than the output region does".
- kleiba 1y ago
  Run your engine inside said refridgerator?
webdevver 1y ago
damn i thought venus was like the moon but red. still i feel like its hard to get excited about stuff without humans intimately involved. ultimately its all about the meatbag, he needs to be there somehow. maybe in orbit controlling the sat via FPV goggles?
- theoreticalmal 1y ago
  Oh boy this is all mixed up. Mars is red, are you thinking of Mars. Venus is the opposite direction to us from Mars
  - voidUpdate 1y ago
    Sending a dudebro to mars would be much easier I think. It's still cold and you'd need a specialised quadbike (electric?), but seeing as martian travel is on the cards for some point in the future, you might see martian quadbike racing in your lifetime. However there are still the same food/water/oxygen issues, since it's a 9 month trip each way
    - hermitcrab 1y ago
      >Sending a dudebro to mars would be much easier I think. Indeed. The very low pressure on Mars (0.006 Bar) would be much easier to deal with than the absolutely crushing pressure on Venus (92 Bar) - not to mention the 470C surface temperature. Hanggliding or ballooning in the cloud tops of Venus would be more practical than going to the surface.
      - Sanzig 1y ago
        Humans have already survived simulated dives in hyperbaric chambers to around 70 bar with no long term effects, so in theory you may be able to have Venusian astronauts live in a habitat at ambient pressure if 90 bar is similarly tolerable (obviously would still need heroic measures for cooling, an approx. 200 K temperature differential is no joke). Getting enough gas there to pressurize the hab could be difficult, the deep dive experiments used a hydrogen/helium/oxygen mixture and I doubt you can recover helium through in situ resource extraction. And you would need some sort of acclimatization system to get the astronauts from their half-bar or so transit environment down to the surface - maybe a balloon that slowly descends over the period of a few days. So yeah, pretty much science fiction for now!

pavel_lishin 1y ago

I remember reading a short story that featured settlements on Venus, and it mentioned the difficulty of running any sort of engine - rocket or combustion - on the surface. After all, your engine and its exhaust must be hotter than the atmosphere surrounding it, otherwise you're not running an engine, you're running a refridgerator.

the_gipsy 1y ago
I don't doubt it's extremely challenging. But the initial engine temperature would still match the environment temperature, and it would not get somehow colder. That's not how any of this works.
voidUpdate 1y ago
I don't know if a rocket exhaust must absolutely be hotter than the environment, just at a higher pressure. If you open a gas bottle, the jet is going to be very cold, but it will produce thrust. With some quick googling, the surface pressure on venus is 90 bar, and a spacex falcon produces 350 bar in the chamber, so I think a falcon 9 could quite easily take off from the surface (ignoring the fact it would melt and the tanks might crush etc)
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  pV=NRT Pressure and temperature are not independent. "Hotter than the environment" is shorthand for "contains more energy than the output region does".
kleiba 1y ago
Run your engine inside said refridgerator?

webdevver 1y ago

damn i thought venus was like the moon but red. still i feel like its hard to get excited about stuff without humans intimately involved. ultimately its all about the meatbag, he needs to be there somehow. maybe in orbit controlling the sat via FPV goggles?

theoreticalmal 1y ago
Oh boy this is all mixed up. Mars is red, are you thinking of Mars. Venus is the opposite direction to us from Mars
- voidUpdate 1y ago
  Sending a dudebro to mars would be much easier I think. It's still cold and you'd need a specialised quadbike (electric?), but seeing as martian travel is on the cards for some point in the future, you might see martian quadbike racing in your lifetime. However there are still the same food/water/oxygen issues, since it's a 9 month trip each way
  - hermitcrab 1y ago
    >Sending a dudebro to mars would be much easier I think. Indeed. The very low pressure on Mars (0.006 Bar) would be much easier to deal with than the absolutely crushing pressure on Venus (92 Bar) - not to mention the 470C surface temperature. Hanggliding or ballooning in the cloud tops of Venus would be more practical than going to the surface.
    - Sanzig 1y ago
      Humans have already survived simulated dives in hyperbaric chambers to around 70 bar with no long term effects, so in theory you may be able to have Venusian astronauts live in a habitat at ambient pressure if 90 bar is similarly tolerable (obviously would still need heroic measures for cooling, an approx. 200 K temperature differential is no joke). Getting enough gas there to pressurize the hab could be difficult, the deep dive experiments used a hydrogen/helium/oxygen mixture and I doubt you can recover helium through in situ resource extraction. And you would need some sort of acclimatization system to get the astronauts from their half-bar or so transit environment down to the surface - maybe a balloon that slowly descends over the period of a few days. So yeah, pretty much science fiction for now!