6 ms·

Venera: The Soviet Exploration of Venus

121 points by djmdjm 12y ago

arethuza 12y ago
I had no idea there had been robotic balloons (aerobots) flying 54km up in the atmosphere of Venus! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon
- Wingman4l7 12y ago
  The only aerobots so far deployed on another planet, no less!
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    To be fair, the air density of Venus is much better for that than, let's say, Mars However, the Atmosphere composition makes it worse.
    - pantalaimon 12y ago
      relevant what-if http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/
      - arethuza 12y ago
        "The upshot is: Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane."
      - BrandonMarc 12y ago
        "A much better bet would be to fly above the clouds. While Venus’s surface is awful, its upper atmosphere is surprisingly Earthlike. 55 kilometers up, a human could survive with an oxygen mask and a protective wetsuit; the air is room temperature and the pressure is similar to that on Earth mountains. You need the wetsuit, though, to protect you from the sulfuric acid. (I’m not selling this well, am I?)"
      - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
        >> But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax Oh brother, can't I vote for him ?
    - Klapaucius 12y ago
      At more than 90 bar, the lower atmosphere of Venus is basically made up of supercritical CO2, making it more or less a question of taste whether to call it an atmosphere or an ocean. Indeed, floating cities have been suggested as a way that man could actually live on the planet. High up in the atmosphere, the pressure and temperature would actually be quite livable.
      - mhurron 12y ago
        And it could operate at the fringes of the Empire.
        mastry0da 12y ago
        just small enough where the empire wouldn't bother...
Roboprog 12y ago
Am I the only one who noticed the "works best with IE" notice at the bottom of the page? There's gotta be a "Soviet Russia" joke in there somewhere... (kudos on the probe history, though, as the US has largely ignored Venus, Magellan not withstanding)
- MentalLandscape 12y ago
  Haha. I just like the Calibri font. Maybe all browsers can use it now. Otherwise, the whole site is just very vanilla HTML typed into wordpad.
nroose 12y ago
That's a very venerable program.
dekhn 12y ago
personally I think the soviet exploration of venus is a great example of top-notch engineering combined with long-term executive support. I eagerly stared at the photos from venera (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps-faculty/space-history/venus http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps-faculty/space-history/venus) when I first saw them. They deployed an amazing amount of technology, continuously improved their designs, and ultimately collected real science data in a very demanding environment.
curtis 12y ago
Back in the 60s NASA considered a plan for a manned flyby of Venus using Apollo-derived hardware. I've wondered if a modern day manned flyby mission might make sense. A rover could be landed on Venus more easily than on Mars, but it would, by necessity, have a very short lifetime on the surface. Once it's out of coolant, the mission is over. So if you were going to land a rover (or rovers) on the surface of Venus, you'd need to maximize their effectiveness. One way to do this would be to teleoperate them in near real-time, which could be done if rover landing were coordinated with a manned flyby. A manned flyby of Venus would be substantially cheaper and less risky than a manned mission to Mars. There's no manned landing component, and the flyby mission itself would take a little over a year, which is pushing the limit for human exposure to micogravity, but within the range that we have actual experience. This kind of mission will, of course, only make sense if you are an advocate of manned space exploration in the first place.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  That has to be the coolest idea I have heard in a very very long time. Absolutely no convincing long term value, but we just have to do it, just because we can. No asteroids to mine, no Mars bases to build, but "what happens if we go over there and look" Gets my vote.
  - curtis 12y ago
    I wouldn't go so far as to say no long term value -- a fly-by would be good preparation for an asteroid mission or a Mars/Phobos orbital mission. In fact it might be possible to do the follow-on mission with the same ship. NASA clearly needs an intermediate step between LEO and putting a man on Mars. Venus flyby plus teleoperated rovers is the easiest mission I can think of that might also be useful.
    - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
      I meant not to imply it would be worthless, merely that it is not part of the traditional narrative of 1. Moon 2. Mars 3. ? 4. FTL to distant stars 5.Profit We are never going to get outside the solar system in any meaningful way unless physics changes a lot, so any exploration of our backyard will be valuable. I just think any attempt beyond the traditional approach will benefit the soul of the human race, as much as it will give us Teflon.
sssilver 12y ago
One day I hope the humanity will credit the Soviet Union for what it really was -- a technocratic meritocracy, where scientific progress and enormous projects of planetary scale mattered more than daily preferences of spoiled individuals. Hopefully one day such a society will emerge again, and this time they will not dismantle themselves over having Coke and Levi's. Having lived in USSR -- no, we seriously didn't break up because of human rights issues. We just simply wanted Coke and Levi's.
- lafar6502 12y ago
  Maybe it deserves credit for R&D and engineering talent, but certainly not for what USSR really was.
  - versale 12y ago
    As born in the USSR I can confirm that the USSR was a much better place to live in than modern Russia from almost any point of view: the best education system, better and affordable healthcare, practically no crime (if to compare with modern Russia), books and movies of much better quality than the flood of post-modern shit we have now, zero unemployment rate etc...
    - pavel_lishin 12y ago
      I was born in Russia in 1984; it was pretty great to me, because a) young kids don't notice as much of society's ills, and b) I'm the grandchild of a well respected academic. Life was pretty good for me and my family; not so good for my friend, who had to share a two bedroom apartment with two other families. (I feel that books, movies, etc. are pretty subjective - I like the flood of post-modern shit we live in. You might have to dig a little harder to find diamonds, but there are more of them.)
    - anateus 12y ago
      As a Jew born in the USSR that soon emigrated, I've thankfully avoided the harrowing experiences my parents and grandparents had to go through. Comparing favorably to a kleptocracy that used Capitalism as a false flag just as much as the old oligarchy used Socialism isn't the sort of glowing recommendation I think you intended.
qwerta 12y ago
There is a lot of interesting stuff in soviet space program. For example the Vostok spacecraft (Gagarin) is still used on orbit 50 years latter for biological experiments.
- _random_ 12y ago
  Simple and reliable, just like T-34 and AK-47.

121 points by djmdjm 12y ago

I had no idea there had been robotic balloons (aerobots) flying 54km up in the atmosphere of Venus! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon

Wingman4l7 12y ago
The only aerobots so far deployed on another planet, no less!
- raverbashing 12y ago
  To be fair, the air density of Venus is much better for that than, let's say, Mars However, the Atmosphere composition makes it worse.
  - pantalaimon 12y ago
    relevant what-if http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/
    - arethuza 12y ago
      "The upshot is: Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane."
    - BrandonMarc 12y ago
      "A much better bet would be to fly above the clouds. While Venus’s surface is awful, its upper atmosphere is surprisingly Earthlike. 55 kilometers up, a human could survive with an oxygen mask and a protective wetsuit; the air is room temperature and the pressure is similar to that on Earth mountains. You need the wetsuit, though, to protect you from the sulfuric acid. (I’m not selling this well, am I?)"
    - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
      >> But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax Oh brother, can't I vote for him ?
  - Klapaucius 12y ago
    At more than 90 bar, the lower atmosphere of Venus is basically made up of supercritical CO2, making it more or less a question of taste whether to call it an atmosphere or an ocean. Indeed, floating cities have been suggested as a way that man could actually live on the planet. High up in the atmosphere, the pressure and temperature would actually be quite livable.
    - mhurron 12y ago
      And it could operate at the fringes of the Empire.
      - mastry0da 12y ago
        just small enough where the empire wouldn't bother...

Roboprog 12y ago

Am I the only one who noticed the "works best with IE" notice at the bottom of the page? There's gotta be a "Soviet Russia" joke in there somewhere... (kudos on the probe history, though, as the US has largely ignored Venus, Magellan not withstanding)

MentalLandscape 12y ago
Haha. I just like the Calibri font. Maybe all browsers can use it now. Otherwise, the whole site is just very vanilla HTML typed into wordpad.

nroose 12y ago

That's a very venerable program.

dekhn 12y ago

personally I think the soviet exploration of venus is a great example of top-notch engineering combined with long-term executive support. I eagerly stared at the photos from venera (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps-faculty/space-history/venus http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps-faculty/space-history/venus) when I first saw them. They deployed an amazing amount of technology, continuously improved their designs, and ultimately collected real science data in a very demanding environment.

curtis 12y ago

Back in the 60s NASA considered a plan for a manned flyby of Venus using Apollo-derived hardware. I've wondered if a modern day manned flyby mission might make sense. A rover could be landed on Venus more easily than on Mars, but it would, by necessity, have a very short lifetime on the surface. Once it's out of coolant, the mission is over. So if you were going to land a rover (or rovers) on the surface of Venus, you'd need to maximize their effectiveness. One way to do this would be to teleoperate them in near real-time, which could be done if rover landing were coordinated with a manned flyby. A manned flyby of Venus would be substantially cheaper and less risky than a manned mission to Mars. There's no manned landing component, and the flyby mission itself would take a little over a year, which is pushing the limit for human exposure to micogravity, but within the range that we have actual experience. This kind of mission will, of course, only make sense if you are an advocate of manned space exploration in the first place.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
That has to be the coolest idea I have heard in a very very long time. Absolutely no convincing long term value, but we just have to do it, just because we can. No asteroids to mine, no Mars bases to build, but "what happens if we go over there and look" Gets my vote.
- curtis 12y ago
  I wouldn't go so far as to say no long term value -- a fly-by would be good preparation for an asteroid mission or a Mars/Phobos orbital mission. In fact it might be possible to do the follow-on mission with the same ship. NASA clearly needs an intermediate step between LEO and putting a man on Mars. Venus flyby plus teleoperated rovers is the easiest mission I can think of that might also be useful.
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    I meant not to imply it would be worthless, merely that it is not part of the traditional narrative of 1. Moon 2. Mars 3. ? 4. FTL to distant stars 5.Profit We are never going to get outside the solar system in any meaningful way unless physics changes a lot, so any exploration of our backyard will be valuable. I just think any attempt beyond the traditional approach will benefit the soul of the human race, as much as it will give us Teflon.

sssilver 12y ago

One day I hope the humanity will credit the Soviet Union for what it really was -- a technocratic meritocracy, where scientific progress and enormous projects of planetary scale mattered more than daily preferences of spoiled individuals. Hopefully one day such a society will emerge again, and this time they will not dismantle themselves over having Coke and Levi's. Having lived in USSR -- no, we seriously didn't break up because of human rights issues. We just simply wanted Coke and Levi's.

lafar6502 12y ago
Maybe it deserves credit for R&D and engineering talent, but certainly not for what USSR really was.
- versale 12y ago
  As born in the USSR I can confirm that the USSR was a much better place to live in than modern Russia from almost any point of view: the best education system, better and affordable healthcare, practically no crime (if to compare with modern Russia), books and movies of much better quality than the flood of post-modern shit we have now, zero unemployment rate etc...
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    I was born in Russia in 1984; it was pretty great to me, because a) young kids don't notice as much of society's ills, and b) I'm the grandchild of a well respected academic. Life was pretty good for me and my family; not so good for my friend, who had to share a two bedroom apartment with two other families. (I feel that books, movies, etc. are pretty subjective - I like the flood of post-modern shit we live in. You might have to dig a little harder to find diamonds, but there are more of them.)
  - anateus 12y ago
    As a Jew born in the USSR that soon emigrated, I've thankfully avoided the harrowing experiences my parents and grandparents had to go through. Comparing favorably to a kleptocracy that used Capitalism as a false flag just as much as the old oligarchy used Socialism isn't the sort of glowing recommendation I think you intended.

qwerta 12y ago

There is a lot of interesting stuff in soviet space program. For example the Vostok spacecraft (Gagarin) is still used on orbit 50 years latter for biological experiments.

_random_ 12y ago
Simple and reliable, just like T-34 and AK-47.