Space Mission

You're granted $1 billion for a science mission to a body in our solar system of your choosing.

Where do you go, and why? Manned or unmanned?

1 billion would not be enough for a manned mission

I'd say Venus. It seems like the most fun.

Unmanned. Go for a multistage entry vehicle with a lander, balloon flier and orbiter.
We won't get much from the surface because things have a tendency to stupidly melt but having something floating around the atmosphere would be top cool.

does it have to be a science mission?
mission to the nearest largest metallic asteroid to mine it, make deals to sell the ore with a company working on getting refining equipment into orbit
use the colossal profits to fund more missions of the same type

now lets see how long it'll take for luddite user to come spamming about how space is pointless and not worth doing

The clouds of Venus are sulfuric acid
you done better coat that shit in protection real nice or it is going to die in record time

Titan. The fact that it has liquid on its surface is more than enough of a reason to go and explore it fully. But drilling into Europa and Enceladus would be nice too.

We will run out of helium fuel for rockets long before space mining ever becomes feasible. Face it, we’re stuck on this planet.

What does helium have to do with it? Most modern space rockets are powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

It's not concentrated at all (not at all like laboratory or industrial acids). The Russians had a balloon in those clouds decades ago with no problem. The battery ran down before anything happened with the balloon.

>responding to shitposters
come on now, it was obvious

I respond to everyone, equal rights.

ah yes and the lander will also sink on the surface because its so hot its magma lol

700K isn't remotely hot enough to melt rocks, it's basically "just" a very hot pizza oven.

Put $1 billion in bank.

Wait a decade or two until reusable rockets are mature.

Enjoy much more bang for the buck.

Las Vegas

Earth. In the ocean. Unmanned. For keks on you astrofags.

lmao if it was possible to do all that for only a billion we'd have quite a few asteroid mining companies. Guess what, we don't.

manned mission to the sun

will you respond to me too?

Yeah sure, if I monitor the thread still.

Back on topic, are we talking manned or unmanned?

This. ^ Titan a best moon

we do have quite a few space mining companies though
there's 2 focusing on the asteroids, and one focusing on the moon
they're just very, very new companies, so they haven't had time to get everything moving
The two asteroid companies plan a prospecting mission in 2020, and the moon mining one is in the google moon lander competition right now

Target body acquired, beginning exploratory mission.

Basically this.
We haven't found everything for stuff deep hidden in the ocean. What lies beneath?
If we explored that, then we should go for Mars, Venus and Mercury for the lulz and asteroids.

Lunar lava tubes. 1 bil will definitely get us to the moon, unlikely to get any further with that. The lava tubes have a stable antarctic temperature and shield from the radiation and dust on the moon. It is literally the best place to start a colony, and how cool would it be to live inside a gigantic 5km-wide tunnel?

If you build it on the dark side you will also get completely uninhibited sky to examine unlike earth or the near side.

>What lies beneath?
Probably rock and then lava. There may be lots left unexplored in the oceans, but that's simply because no one's expecting any great discoveries from it. All the extreme environments for finding life like underwater volcanoes are already known.