
Soviet Venus Images - wglb
http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm
======
jamiequint
The details on how they built cameras (in 1980 no less) to capture and
transmit data in an environment of 100atm and 400+ degrees Celsius are really
interesting! <http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm>

~~~
rdtsc
> 100atm and 400+ degrees

Incredible. Looking here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera> noticed that
probes lasted at most 2 hours on the surface.

Also interesting how Mars landers go for years and on Venus we lasted at most
2 hours.

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DividesByZero
These landings have one of my favourite ever engineering failures, regarding
Venera 14. Venera 13 and 14 were twin landers which landed at the same time on
Venus. Both contained a similar science package - including an arm to measure
the compressibility of the soil on the surface of Venus.

Venera 13's arm functioned properly. Venera 14's returned strange data, which
was soon traced to a very simple fault - both Venera landers had a lens cap
protecting their sensitive camera equipment on descent. These popped off on
landing, and then the spring-loaded instrument arm extended to perform its
testing.

Venera 13's arm extended into the soil correctly. Venera 14's arm extended
directly into its discarded lens cap. Poor Venera 14 travelled millions of
kilometers to test the compressibility of a lens cap on the surface of venus.

<http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_Venera_Perspective.jpg> (Venera 14 on right)

Venera 14 did also function for almost twice its design lifetime (~57 minutes)
so it was a good little probe, but I love to use this little example when
talking about reliability engineering.

~~~
DonPMitchell
The more important soil-drill/analysis experiment was fine, that is often
confused with the soil punch experiment. The paper claims that the Venera-14
punch was OK, the arm went over the lens cap, but the punch still penetrated
the soil.

~~~
DividesByZero
Thank you for the clarification. I think it's still a great cautionary tale.

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jschuur
Worth noting that the Venera probes only survived between 23 minutes and 2
hours on the surface of Venus, due to the harsh conditions there:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera>

~~~
anigbrowl
It's astonishing to me that they lasted that long and transmitted data back,
considering the operating temperatures and pressures.

~~~
petercooper
There are data center engineers nowadays who would relish that challenge. 400C
and 100bar? Pschaw, I have a cabinet in Fremont standing up to almost that..
;-)

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nixy
This blew my mind. I had no idea we ever landed anything on Venus, let alone
something that was able to send us pictures from the surface. Fantastic
images!

~~~
enraged_camel
This was in the 80s, during the Cold War. As such, it's not really surprising
that most people (especially Americans) have not heard about it. It is a
Soviet accomplishment after all.

~~~
tjic
Oh, please.

This was covered extensively in the New York Times, not to mention lots of
science magazines.

Find the dozens of NYT articles here:

<http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/venus+probe>

It was so well known that the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" had a
multi-episode plot arc on the topic.

<http://bionic.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Probe>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4st0a0gWp0>

Being born in the very early 1970s isn't good for much, but reminiscing about
300 baud acoustically coupled modems, and talking about the Soviet space
program are two exceptions. ;-)

~~~
enraged_camel
Yeah, but how much was the coverage compared to, say, the Lunar Landing? How
many movies were made about it, books written about it, conspiracy theories
created about it, etc.

~~~
stock_toaster
One involved getting _people on the Moon_. That is a significant difference.

You can bet your skippy that if ever someone steps foot on Mars, there will be
books, conspiracies, movies, etc.

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mladenkovacevic
lots of images and text explaining the process of stitching and processing.
Here is the money shot that made me go :O
<http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_Venera_Perspective.jpg>

Also this shot of Halley's comet fly-by from another Soviet craft (Vega-1)
that only served to deposit a lander on Venus but then went on to fly close to
the famous comet as well: <http://www.mentallandscape.com/CS_Vega02.jpg>

~~~
ash
Here's the color version of that surface image:

[http://mo-www.harvard.edu/microobs/guestobserverportal/Galil...](http://mo-
www.harvard.edu/microobs/guestobserverportal/Galileo/ThenNow/Venus/mObsVenusWeb_files/image007.png)

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pacaro
Don Mitchell has some cool stuff on his site, I'm always tempted to use his
"Palette of Planets"[1] in a project...

[1] [http://donpmitchell.blogspot.com/2006/02/palette-of-
planets....](http://donpmitchell.blogspot.com/2006/02/palette-of-planets.html)

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afterburner
I always loved the look of one of the Venera landers:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venera_11_lander.jpg>

~~~
Zenst
I like it, looks like Robby the Robots great great grandfather in some ways I
suspect.

Also looks like something not totaly out of the reach of home ameteurs
thesedays, prohibited parts and materials aside though.

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abuddy
There is a new mission Venera-D, they plan to launch it in 2016-2017. More
info here:
[http://venera-d.cosmos.ru/index.php?id=658&L=2](http://venera-d.cosmos.ru/index.php?id=658&L=2)

------
tjic
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>

~~~
InclinedPlane
It'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.

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DonPMitchell
Thanks for the comments. I'm working on a book now. Also was invited to write
a paper refuting the claim of living creatures in the Venera photos. Those
features are explained by unusual pulse-position modulation system.

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tsieling
Every few years these photos cross my path and every time I'm just as
captivated as when I saw them as a kid. The further we get from that era, the
more remarkable the accomplishment feels.

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NaOH
I learned about it some time ago in another HN thread, but the BBC series The
Planets gives great, concise looks at much of the interplanetary research
efforts by the US and the USSR. There are some bits of information that are no
longer understood as true, and the series lacks some recent information since
it was produced in the late 90s, but it really is worth watching.

It's an eight-part series (each episode being about 45 minutes), and the first
three episodes were especially remarkable for the descriptions of what
scientists have accomplished, the interviews with some key people, and the
film/images shown. I can watch those over and over, and each time I'm struck
by how amazing it is that people have accomplished things like this. To me,
there's a wonder in it all, from the fact that there have been these
achievements and that I've lived at a time to bear witness.

I know it's listed on Amazon and through Netflix for anyone who is interested.
My thanks go to whomever it was around here who informed me that this series
exists.

~~~
orangethirty
Any links?

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rwhitman
A Russian scientist revisited these recently and became convinced that there
could be life on Venus. A fun read: [http://io9.com/5878554/russian-scientist-
claims-to-have-disc...](http://io9.com/5878554/russian-scientist-claims-to-
have-discovered-life-on-venus)

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zerostar07
And now we need a "space" filter for instagram

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cutie
It's a shame the other terrestrial planets are so uninhabitable.

~~~
jsz0
On the surface at least. If there are indeed frozen over oceans on the moons
of the outer planets this could be one of the best places for habitation
eventually. It won't be very familiar to us but we know how to build things
that can survive under water at intense pressures. A thick layer of ice helps
with the radiation and in the case of a liquid water oceans we know it will be
a fairly comfortable place to live. With the right technology we could
probably live underground on many moons and planets. The tricky part would be
making them self-sustainable which isn't even a deal breaker if you can direct
an icy asteroid to the right spot on the surface and do something useful with
it afterwards. As a species we're even preparing ourselves for living under
the surface. Many of us sit inside buildings the vast majority of our lives.
Psychologically I think it wouldn't be a huge leap. The biggest problem we
can't even speculate much about solving is gravity. Even if it's not too
extreme the effects are pretty rough on the body.

~~~
cutie
I've thought about this, your example and also moon or mars bases. While
theoretically possible, the thought of trying to do major underground
construction (with limited resources) in a space suit seems wildly
impractical.

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adrianwaj
Anyone know where one can find free (as in public domain or permissible for
commercial usage) hi-def photos of outer space? (eg Hubble, other telescopic
photos)

~~~
pcrh
NASA has the "Astronomy picture of the day" archive at
<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html>

Here is a look at the polar vortex on Venus -- it's like looking into hell!

<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100928.html>

