How does one go about landing on and returning from venus?

We would need to be more advanced. however, the surface temperature leads to some interesting fuel options.

Firstly, the heat would kill anything we currently could make. We'd need to build very heat resistant electronics and materials, as well as engines and machinery that can work after having all the parts thermally expand on the surface. We'll wave these problems for now.

Launching from the surface of Venus with a rocket is impossible. Specific impulse, or thrust per unit fuel, is at a maximum in vacuum and decreases as ambient pressure increases. Since the pressure at the surface on Venus is ~90 bar, a rocket would produce almost no thrust and would not even be able to lift itself. For the bottom 50-ish km of atmosphere, the returning vehicle would need to use buoyancy or direct lift to pull itself out of the thick atmosphere up to where rockets can take over. Either a ballute made of some highly temperature resistant yet flexible material, or rotary propellers (think; big quad copter), would be able to lift the vehicle off of the surface and carry it high up before it lit its main engine and launched from the air. A ballute is advantageous because it doesn't require power, a quad copter is advantageous because it's more compact and doesn't get in the way of the rocket as it launches.

Once we figure out how to get the return vehicle to an altitude where launching into orbit can work, we need to think about fuels. Solids are a write off because the high ambient temperature would soak into the solid fuel grain and light it spontaneously. Solid fuel is also not efficient. Most liquid fuels would simply boil at these temperatures, so we'd need to look at more exotic options. Lithium would be a stable liquid on Venus, and KNO3 would only require refrigeration to below 400 degrees C to avoid decomposition. Both liquids would burn when mixed, meaning it should be feasible to store and use them to launch into Venusian orbit.

>Lots of real estate

More real estate to be had by using the carbon in Venus' atmosphere to mass produce graphene and use that to build giant space habitats desu

>Once we figure out how to get the return vehicle to an altitude where launching into orbit can work,

You are looking for a problem here, just keep the return vehicle at altitude

Use a purpose built lander to go down to the surface.

(cont)

On the other hand, if we consider a 'mothership' floating higher up in Venus' atmosphere, we can ignore the need for high temperature liquid propellants and can instead use good old hydrazine and red fuming nitric acid. Both are stable liquids at room temperature, and have been used in rocketry for a long time.

The surface probe would have to use its means of ascending from the surface to meet up with the mothership and dock, then transfer whatever samples it gathered into the return vehicle, which would then launch into orbit. The return vehicle would need to be quite large and have multiple stages in order to reach low Venusian orbit. Once in orbit it would then meet up with a tug module that would take it to Earth.

Essentially, no matter how we look at this, it's going to be complex and difficult and have a lot of points of failure, for little scientific gain.

Why not smash mars into venus then build on the resulting asteroid belt

Could do both, getting thew carbon for your graphene largely solves my atmosphere problem.

see
I was getting to it

>Essentially, no matter how we look at this, it's going to be complex and difficult and have a lot of points of failure, for little scientific gain.

How about showing those communist Russian bastards what Free People (tm) can do?

>the resulting asteroid belt

Good luck getting Mars to move fast enough to deliver enough energy to overcome the gravitational binding energy of the new planet you just formed

>launch from Earth towards Moon
>dock with and extract LEM from empty 3rd stage
>slow into Lunar orbit
>2 guys pilot LEM down to surface and fuck around
>same 2 guys pilot LEM back to Lunar orbit and dock with CSM
>boost away from Moon back to Earth
>reenter and land

There's literally only one way to do it that could be more simple, which is straight launch from Earth to Moon, land, launch from Moon to Earth.

...

>There's literally only one way to do it that could be more simple, which is straight launch from Earth to Moon, land, launch from Moon to Earth.

Not actually simpler, as you need a heavier lander, with a bigger rocket to get back off the moon, and probably a larger booster at the start as well, and have to engineer systems to handle all that added functionality to your lander. Simplest is to take nothing down to land that you do not need for that purpose, and don't take off from the moon with anythig you do not need to get off the moon.

>You will never have a way to strip off Venus' atmosphere and transfer some of it to Mars

It's simpler to just build a bigger rocket in the sense that there are fewer steps to take. The fact that we didn't do direct descent wasn't because it was more complex, it's because funding was allocated for the Saturn V rather than the Nova rocket. sure the Nova would have more engines and thus be ore complicated to build, but it would have been simpler to fly the actual Lunar sorties. Go to Moon, land on moon, come back from Moon.

People were actually against the idea of Lunar orbit rendezvous because it added a huge layer of complexity to the deep space phase of the mission, but it was chosen because there was no time to develop Nova, so direct descent wasn't even an option, and there was no other option except for Earth orbit rendezvous which would have seen at least 2 Satrun V launches per Moon mission, which was not deemed acceptable.

>Essentially, no matter how we look at this, it's going to be complex and difficult and have a lot of points of failure, for little scientific gain.

Well, inflating a hot air balloon to hover at 55~ km altitude is mechanically simpler than landing on the surface.
Venus has double the solar radiation too for ample solar power

It's different challenges, not necessarily harder. Remote propulsive landing is not easy.
Solar powered machines could concentrate N2 to replace the CO2 in the initially inflated balloon, increasing lift, then produce fuel for the return vehicle.

Well NASA looked at the feasibility of a Venus sample return mission, and it appears to be feasible: trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/18501/99-1991.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

So basically, the probe hauls ass to the surface with no parachute, drills into some rocks, and gets the fuck out of there using a balloon. Once it reaches 66 kilometers, it shoots a rocket with a sample to a probe with something like Dawn's ion engines.

>>Will our tech be able to do it now or will we need to be more advanced?
if we waited till we had the tech to do it now, we'd still be living in caves. Every space mission requires new tech.

In terms of new tech, the biggest issue is a need for a ballute for Venus aerocapture, this allows the mission to be carried out economically. The second biggest is guidance of the sample return rocket, the third is developing a material for a balloon. The third we pretty much have, just a bit of materials work needs to be done:
www2.jpl.nasa.gov/adv_tech/ballutes/Blut_ppr/vnusmatl.pdf

These aren't insurmountable and aren't that far off if we actually put money into them.

go fuck yourself
anyway though, yeah. russia landed a probe on venus that refrigerated it's electronics for about 2 hours - just enough time to transmit some images back to earth.

this would be critical for any electronics. if we could find a way to develop computer systems that could withstand that much heat, then a long-term computer/probe could be worth investing in.

>"landing" on Venus

For what purpose?

Sample return

>Free People
L0Lno /pol/itard

>semiconductor
phys.org/news/2016-03-siliconthe-semiconductors.html
some discussion on new semiconductor materials if anyone cares.

is that Venera 14 ?

>venusurface

Triggered

This is better: m.phys.org/news/2017-02-nasa-electronics-longer-venus-surface.html

NASA just tested some SiC integrated circuits in a Venus environment test chamber.

We're pretty close to making venus rovers now with all the sophistication of late 1960s space probes!

Bump

Silicon carbide electronics should be able to handle it if anyone decides to land something on venus again.

it's basically returning from hell

You would come out medium rare because your ship would have melted before you could even try to launch.

I'm unsure of what you mean by "landing on Venus." If by that you mean, putting people on it, then it would not only be useless but immensely difficult seeing as how you have volcano's spewing salt and sulfer into the atmosphere. If you mean put a lander on it, we've already done that and they're melting there on the surface with diamond camera lenses that will remain there forever.

>diamond camera lenses
makes sense.

I wonder what subterranean temps are like.

Wouldn't it have been funny if Venus was the first planet to develop life in our solar system and then complex intelligent life?

Then they would have had arguments about how their is no way that Venus-humans could change the planet with industrial pollution. Fast forward a billion years and this is the picture of all that is left.

or put another way, this is what the surface of the earth might look like in another 500,000 years.

>what is an oxidizer

Regular lenses would not be able to capture any data for their cameras because they would detiorate too quickly in venus' atmosphere.. The Russian vessel venera 7 required diamond lenses because diamonds could refract light in a manner that could be measured almost as accurately as regular lenses.

"Global warming" Will not increase the atmosphere by 100x, nor turn it into 95%+ CO2

Thats how you get to that temperature..

>The fact that we didn't do direct descent wasn't because it was more complex, it's because funding was allocated for the Saturn V rather than the Nova rocket.

My memory is that you may have reversed the sequence there -- I recall that they did not fund Nova after deciding to go with LOR instead of direct ascent. But it has been a few years, my memory may be faulty.

>sure the Nova would have more engines and thus be ore complicated to build, but it would have been simpler to fly the actual Lunar sorties.

Unless, like N-1, those "more engines" created problems as they interacted.

>Go to Moon, land on moon, come back from Moon.

Is harder, with more problems to solve, than LOR with no need to do difficult shit like land all your return fuel on the surface for no reason.

We may be using different concepts of "complex" vs. "simple," maybe?

Why climb the highest mountain? Because it is there, and we are a species that likes to know more things.

Would have to be, or 13, yes?

Also, for a chuckle. " The Venera 14 craft had the misfortune of ejecting the camera lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm, and returned information for the compressibility of the lens cap rather than the surface."

>not 273.15

Wonder if there were any angry feelings in the control center when that happened.
>Damnit Sergei, I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN!

Nuclear pulse propulsion is an only option

Bump

>"Global warming" Will not increase the atmosphere by 100x, nor turn it into 95%+ CO2

what if you gradually kill all the plants on the planet and the animal life on the planet converts all the O2 into CO2 until the last microscopic organisms suffocate/cook to death. Also burn all the fossil fuels in the earths crust where possible.

I could see it happening.

Brainlet here, would covering the lander in a ceramic shielding help protect the internal electronics?

WE NEED TO FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS ON EARTH FIRST YOU DINGUS!!!

so long as by "fix the problems on earth" you meant creating a sustainable equilibrium of planetary resource utilization then I agree.

you don't. you implode and die.

Bump