
Momentum is building to explore Venus - 6d6b73
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01730-5
======
SaberTail
I'm glad Venus is getting more attention. Mars seems to get the most attention
as a place to visit, but we seem to ignore Venus.

Venus has a few things going for it that I think make it a better choice for
permanent human habitation than Mars.

* Venus has nearly Earth-like gravity (8.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²)

* The atmosphere 50 km above the surface is the right temperature for liquid water, and has a similar atmospheric pressure to Earth at sea level. [1]

* Venus has suffered a runaway greenhouse effect. It's a good place to experiment on how to mitigate or reverse that without risking Earth. And what we do learn may be applicable to Earth in the not-too-distant future.

[1]
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200300...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdf)

~~~
modzu
well you said it: we know exactly how to heat up mars (greenhouse gases) but
its not so clear how to cool down venus. also mars has water.

~~~
hathawsh
We don't need to cool it down. We could float a platform about 49.5 km above
the surface of Venus, where the temperature and pressure nearly match the
earth at sea level. To launch a probe, we could simply drop it from the
platform.

This article about Venus is very enlightening:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus)

~~~
stickydink
How would we float a platform at that height?

~~~
hathawsh
Most methods of flying things through Earth's lower atmosphere should apply
well to Venus at 50 km: balloons, planes, helicopters, etc. To gather energy
for rotors, maybe we could siphon heat from below to power a generator or
other type of converter.

Just playing with ideas. :-)

~~~
stcredzero
Send your mining robot below. It cools itself with phase change liquids, but
also opens high pressure tanks to the 90 bar atmosphere. When you hoist it
back, just plug those pressure tanks in to turbines connected to generators.
That wouldn't be a huge amount of power, but maybe wildcat prospectors could
operate like that in the early days.

~~~
Sophistifunk
Lisa, in this house we respect the laws of thermodynamics!

~~~
stcredzero
Why not use liquid oxygen as the phase change liquid? Then the gas could be
caught in a bladder tethered to the ground. When it comes time to ascend, use
it as a balloon?

There must be some way to exploit the temperature difference between the
surface and 50km up, without mega-engineering.

------
Isamu
Stay tuned for the Venus mechanical maker challenge:

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-
make...](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-maker-
challenge-to-be-announced/)

>With its sulfuric acid clouds, temperatures over 450°C, and 92 times the
surface pressure of Earth, Venus is one of the most hostile planetary
environments in the solar system. Prior missions have only survived hours! But
an automaton (or clockwork mechanical robot) could solve this problem. By
utilizing high-temperature alloys, the clockwork rover would survive for
months, allowing it to collect and return valuable long-term science data from
the surface of Venus.

>Challenge to be announced on July 8, 2019

Question: does NASA have a Venus environmental chamber? They must, right? How
big is it?

~~~
Robotbeat
Yes. NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio has one, I believe. They were building
it when I was an intern ~6 years ago.

Of course, Glenn also has high temperature electronics. Memory is hard to come
by, but simple analog and digital circuits are feasible (enough for data
digitization, multiplexing, some forward error correction, and transmission to
orbital assets).

Here are a couple papers on the idea of all-high-temperature-electronics
designs (which I think are a lot more realistic and effective than a
mechanical automaton, as fun as that sounds) for a long duration lander design
(can be adapted to a rover, etc, as well) related to the work I did:

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201400...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140017762.pdf)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457651...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576515000594)

~~~
scottlocklin
Cool stuff. One of my roomies in collitch got his Ph.D. with Choyke who I
think is still the godfather of high-bandgap semiconductor physics.

Looks like NASA wants to make cpus with Gallium Nitride now:

[https://phys.org/news/2017-12-gallium-nitride-
processornext-...](https://phys.org/news/2017-12-gallium-nitride-
processornext-generation-technology-space.html)

------
wainstead
The Soviets succeeded in returning surface images from a number of their
landers, and the photos are quite tantalizing.

[http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm](http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm)

"Venus Revealed" is a pretty good read:

[https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Revealed-Clouds-Mysteriious-
Pla...](https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Revealed-Clouds-Mysteriious-
Planet/dp/0201406551/ref=sr_1_4)

~~~
ndiscussion
very cool, thanks for sharing

------
curtis
Because of Venus's think atmosphere, landing a probe or rover is really easy.
The downside, also because of Venus's thick atmosphere, is that the surface is
really, really hot. That limits the lifetime of hardware on the surface.

I think it ought to be possible to design a probe that's more like a
submersible than a rover. Technically it would be an airship rather than a
submarine, but given Venus's thick atmosphere it could be quite heavy and
robust. This vehicle could bounce between the surface (for science) and the
upper atmosphere (for recharging). In the upper atmosphere the probe could
make more coolant from the atmosphere using solar power, and then it could
make another dive to the surface.

~~~
ahje
An airship seems like the most survivable option for longer missions.

I wonder if it would be possible to use one as a carrier for smaller drone-
ships. Wind speeds on Venus are quite low, but the force is probably quite
insane considering the atmospheric pressure.

~~~
m4rtink
For the record the soviet Vega probes deployed a couple baloons and they
worked just fine for quite a while.

------
tlb
The enabling technology we need more of is electronics that can work at 500 C.
People have demonstrated small-scale integrated circuits, but nothing like a
microprocessor. [https://science.nasa.gov/technology/technology-
stories/elect...](https://science.nasa.gov/technology/technology-
stories/electronics-demonstrate-operability-in-simulated-venus-conditions)

~~~
cytherean
Not really - we don't have to land on the surface of Venus to explore it.
[https://www.space.com/29140-venus-airship-cloud-cities-
incre...](https://www.space.com/29140-venus-airship-cloud-cities-incredible-
technology.html)

~~~
tlb
The atmosphere is opaque, so you can't see much from high up.

The most interesting science (to me) would be to look for fossils or other
signs of life, for which you have to land and dig.

~~~
labster
Not much evidence would be able to survive those temperatures and acidity
levels. If you really want to dig through the molten earth, bring a titanium
shovel.

------
empath75
So I had two thoughts while reading it:

Is it possible that in the 3 billion years that it had liquid water, Venus
evolved advanced life that managed to trigger runaway greenhouse warming?

Secondly, is Venus’s atmosphere a worst case scenario for global warming here
or is there something that would prevent it happening?

~~~
albemuth
they would have just gone to Earth

~~~
gnulinux
How do you know? Can we go to Mars today? What if earth gets destroyed before
we can emigrate to Mars? (assume that Mars is a clone of earth i.e. the same
conditions we have in Earth)

Also it's possible earth wasn't suitable for Venisian life back then.

~~~
theseadroid
Say if we suddenly realize earth is going to be unsuitable for all life forms
in a year. What would we do? I would fire as many rockets as possible to Mars,
carrying all kind of life forms on earth, and hope a few of them will survive
and possibly evolve to Mars' environment.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Even all-out nuclear war would leave the Earth far more habitable than Mars.
We'd need to come up with quite the feat to extinguish life here, think
steering a Moon-sized asteroid.

------
nickserv
I wonder why there isn't a balloon mission being studied.

The upper atmosphere has temperature and pressure similar to Earth at sea
level.

Maybe the wind is a big problem? Or insertion from orbit?

~~~
CodiePetersen
I think upper atmosphere study would be great. There are some colony designs
that suggest an oxygen filled colony would float at earth pressure. And with
the sulfuric acid and co2 you have everything you need to make water air and
fuel. Not to mention protection from asteroids and deadly rays. It would be a
challenge but all of the planets and other bodies present their own
challenges.

~~~
sandworm101
At the same ambient pressure, an O2 would float, but just barely. It wouldn't
float like a hydrogen/helium balloon does on earth. If the pressure is the
same on either side of the balloon, lift comes from different atomic weights
of the gasses. Helium weights much less than air. But the O2 inside the Venus
habitat doesn't weigh all that much less than the CO2 outside. As a practical
matter, you would probably need lift balloons filled with something other than
breathable air/O2. [1]

Then think about what you want to do in this habitat. A solar/nuke-powered
refinery for producing rocket fuel? It would need lift bags the size of
cities. Not the Goodyear blimp. Think bags filled with cubic kilometers of
lifting gas.

[1] This is why balloons wouldn't work on Jupiter/Saturn etc. No balloon can
float in a sea of hydrogen. We would need a 'balloon' filled with vacuum, or
at least hydrogen under vacuum pressure in comparison to the hydrogen outside.
Soft-sided bags wouldn't work.

~~~
CodiePetersen
Well not everything would need to float at earth pressure. The production of
any fuels or materials that required heavier equipment could be done at lower
atmosphere. You could engineer bacteria to break down sulfuric acid for the
hydrogen based fuels, obviously the CO2 to O2 part would be easy, or bacteria
to produce certain materials. Also I wasn't talking about methane fuel which
would need nuclear I was thinking more basic hydrogen rockets which chemical
reactions could be simple and effective enough to produce. Additionally solar
is already getting thinner and lighter so I don't think that would be much of
a problem. And remember on Venus it's not just CO2 it's very dense and high
pressure as well. So earth atmospheric pressure air could lift quite a bit and
you don't need to be at exactly sea level pressure all the time. Only real
problem I see other than the constant threat of death that all colonies will
face is launching to and from any floating colonies.

As for the large blimp colonies, I see nothing wrong with that. Sure they'll
be big but not any more difficult than building reinforced lava tube colonies
on the moon or going to Mars with building sized 3d printers or excavators
that can be used to make long term shelters. Like I said all of the planets
are going to have tough problems, short of an earth like planet you aren't
going to find an ideal easy scenario. Personaly giant airships housing 50 or
so people doesn't seem too bad. Like I said though it's the landing and taking
off that seems a bit trickier.

------
gnl
Slightly off-topic, but no argument for colonising Venus could possibly be
complete without digging this gem of a comment out of the archives about
cooking a turkey there: [http://www.transterrestrial.com/2013/12/09/venerian-
gas-phas...](http://www.transterrestrial.com/2013/12/09/venerian-gas-phase-
processes/#comment-323482)

------
hsnewman
I've always wondered why we don't seed it with some biology that can eat the
components of the Venusian atmosphere (ie: sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide) to
make a more habitable planet over time.

~~~
thebooktocome
Because we've failed to terraform much closer, less inhospitable environments,
and the risks for getting it wrong are very high.

~~~
ForHackernews
Wait, what are the risks? It's not like you're going to make Venus _more_
inhospitable than it already is.

Worst case scenario is we'd lose some valuable scientific information about
Venus in its natural state.

~~~
darkpuma
The risk that Venus is or was once host to some form of life, and humans
deliberately contaminating Venus with life would obscure any evidence of it.
That is a very serious worse-case scenario because non-earth life would be
truly invaluable to biology.

It seems like a remote risk to me, but not something to shrug off.
Particularly since the usefulness of introducing life to Venus is itself quite
remote.

~~~
jacobush
Life in temperatures that melts lead? Oh... or do you mean in the atmosphere?

~~~
ceejayoz
> Life in temperatures that melts lead?

Why not? It'd have to have different chemistry, sure, but even on Earth life
exists in some pretty extreme temperature and environment ranges.

~~~
tfha
Life really starts to struggle above 100 C. I think the most heat tolerant
organisms we know of top out around 130 C.

Life that could operate at 500 C is probably not water based at all, which
would be very novel and certainly interesting to science.

------
eloff
Why couldn't you vacuum insulate the electronics and place some kind of
radiative cooling on top of them? You'd need the cooler to be able to radiate
all the radiative energy coming into the chamber from outside it, plus what
the electronics generate. You'd want the thermos type chamber to be reflective
to radiation from one side only.

It would depend on how low energy you can get the electronics, plus how
efficient your black body cooler is. I have no idea if the latter could be
done practically.

Might be a lot easier than high temperature electronics or mechanical
alternatives.

~~~
dflock
> Why couldn't you vacuum insulate the electronics and place some kind of
> radiative cooling on top of them?

Radiative cooling only works if you have a hot source and a relatively cooler
sink - on Earth, usually the atmosphere.

On Venus the atmosphere is ~462 °C at the surface, so it's going to be much
hotter than your electronics - so your sink will be hotter than your source,
so the "raditaive cooling" will run in reverse.

Also, the atmospheric pressure on Venus is very high - 92 atmospheres at the
surface - the equivalent of being 1km underwater on Earth. Maintaining a
vacuum chamber with this much outside pressure (not to mention temperature)
would be an incredible feat of materials engineering - and would probably by
extremely heavy.

You would also still need sensors and communications outside your vacuum
chamber, otherwise your expensive probe can't actually do anything useful.

------
fouc
Has anyone considered colonizing asteroids? If you can spin the asteroids you
can generate enough centripetal force to mimic gravity.

Not sure what the chances of asteroids being solid enough to be spun without
flying apart though. Another option would be to build a track around the
asteroid and move a colony along that track.

Need about 1 kilometer of radius from center and 1 rotation per minute to
generate 1 g force.

Interesting.. gravity train:
[https://i.imgur.com/Q2D5i1K.png](https://i.imgur.com/Q2D5i1K.png)

------
artur_makly
“But momentum is building to explore Venus, in part because scientists say it
could hold the secret to understanding what makes a planet habitable. Once
Earth’s twin, today Venus is a hellish abode where surface temperatures reach
more than 400 °C, atmospheric pressures slam down with enough force to crush
heavy machinery and clouds of sulfuric acid blow through the sky. If
researchers could decipher why conditions on Venus turned so deadly, that
would help them to assess whether life might exist on some of the thousand-
plus rocky worlds that astronomers are discovering throughout the Galaxy.”.

life exists here. let’s stop looking for exit strategies and stop wasting
valuable time and money on far away rocks.

we need to put all that time and energy dreaming and solving for a better
EARTH.

~~~
steve_taylor
There’s no reason 7.7 billion people can’t collectively do more than one thing
at the same time.

------
api
I really wonder if we'd be likely to find fossils underground there. Of course
landing long enough without melting to find them would be hard.

------
dekhn
Reading about the Soviet Union's systematic process to finally get some decent
data from a lander was very impressive.

------
taf2
I think this from 2014 looks really cool
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcHkWKp9e4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcHkWKp9e4Y)

------
ValleyOfTheMtns
Yachts on the methane oceans of Titan and dirigibles in the skies of Venus.

I hope I live to see all this.

