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IEEE Spectrum has an article on the NASA High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission proposals.
Quoting Chris Jones, from the Space Mission Analysis Branch of NASA’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate:
“The vast majority of people, when they hear the idea of going to Venus and exploring, think of the surface, where it’s hot enough to melt lead and the pressure is the same as if you were almost a mile underneath the ocean,” Jones says. “I think that not many people have gone and looked at the relatively much more hospitable atmosphere and how you might tackle operating there for a while.”
...
Put all of these numbers together and as long as you don’t worry about having something under your feet, Jones points out, the upper atmosphere of Venus is “probably the most Earth-like environment that’s out there.”
The article covers the details of the proposed mission, and links to a YouTube animation of the concept: "A way to explore Venus".
Also covered at Geek.com and Extreme Tech.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 19 2014, @06:52AM
I think the video implied a solar cell covered top on that blimp (or whatever they called it) in the video linked above.
One theory about Venuses rapidly slowing rotation [universetoday.com] is that the atmosphere is imposing a huge drag on the surface, so your idea about a difference in velocity at different levels might actually work.
Also for the exploration mission, the dense atmosphere suggests you would actually need a smaller bag than you would need on earth, no?
For a city, well, that seems a little fanciful to me, so speculation about that is pointless. That same link suggest the atmosphere is mostly sulfuric-acid-laden clouds. Not all that hospitable.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Saturday December 20 2014, @02:35PM
I confess, I did not RTFA/WTFV. But solar cells all over seems like a heavy design, compared with the concentrated solar approach. It does give more freedom in shape -- a blimp-like shape cannot focus to a point -- so may still be a win, depending how much mobility is required.
I've seen the concept discussed several times over the last decade, and I'm sure it was old when I first heard of it. One thing that usually comes up, especially in the context of long-term, large scale presence (whether industrial or colonizing) is leveraging Venus's dense atmosphere by using nitrogen/oxygen breathing air as a lifting gas. If you use Venus's atmospheric density that way, you don't get to use it for reducing envelope volume -- but it's true that a smaller balloon with a more powerful lifting gas may make more sense. (Methane may be a clever choice despite its low weight if one uses it as ascent fuel for the return trip -- a larger fuel tank masses less than a fuel tank + a lifting gas tank. Hydrogen enjoys the same advantage, I guess, though it seems impractical to store it for ascent.)
Full-on cities definitely are quite fanciful, at least for now, but still have a way of inserting themselves in all such discussions regardless. But the argument I was trying (and apparently failing) to make applies equally to any size ground-tethered balloon -- reeling the tether in and out directly affects the balloon's altitude. But with a large-mass balloon attached to a low-mass kite-anchor, reeling the tether in and out moves the anchor, while barely moving the balloon. Thus you can pull the anchor in during high winds, reducing the wind difference to safe levels, or let it out during lower winds, increasing wind difference for more power, without changing altitude (and thus temperature, pressure, etc.).