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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
by curtis 13y 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 13y agoThat 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoI 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.
- curtis 13y ago> 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. I totally agree with you there.
- Xenmen 13y agoRelatedly, Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Space as culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNxnCzz5oQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNxnCzz5oQE I'd agree with the both of you on the value of big space exploration projects as driving our culture.
- rdl 13y agoNot requiring a landing means you could basically do it with what, 3 Falcon Heavy launches at most? So O($1-10b)?
- keeperofdakeys 13y agoThere is still a problem we haven't solved - solar radiation. The ISS astronauts may have been up there for long periods of time, but they are protected by the earth's magnetic field. A trip to another planet doesn't have this solution. Even for the Apollo missions, we got lucky that no bad solar activity occurred, and that mission lasted eight days.
- MentalLandscape 13y agoThe Soviets also considered manned fly-by missions to Mars and Venus. http://donpmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/heavy-interplanetary-ship/ http://donpmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/heavy-interplan...