I'm currently reading (Re-reading actually) Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and in a chapter where he talked about Venus and how hot Venus is (Venus is actually the hottest planet in the solar system despite Mercury being closer to the Sun - although this wasn't mentioned in the book), and how the space probes that were sent there met an ugly fate, he had this interesting footnote which I want to share -
"In this stifling landscape, there is not likely to be anything alive, even creatures very different from us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let us imagine that intelligent life once evolved on such a planet. Would it then invent science? The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But Venus is completely cloud-covered. The night is pleasingly long - about 59 Earth days long but nothing of the astronomical universe would be visible if you looked up into the night sky of Venus. Even the Sun would be invisible in the daytime; its light would be scattered and diffused over the whole sky - just as scuba divers see only a uniform enveloping radiance beneath the sea. If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could eventually be deduced from the principles of physics, but they would be theoretical constructs only. I sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars."
Making information more accessible and approachable never harms society in the long run.
Your view is just a snobbish and rigid one, Sagan made science topics interesting for more people, from those people very likely many got inspired enough to pursue deeper science training.
Dumbing down is necessary to make it interesting for people who feel it's unapproachable, it breaks a barrier, I have no idea how you look at this and think "this is harming society"...
If a science book is too heavy, you'll get less people interested in science than would normally be.
Carl Sagan significantly influenced Neil deGrasse Tyson (another popular science writer), for example. But I'm not sure if Tyson would have pursued science regardless of Sagan's influence.
This is a terrible take, and I say this having a PhD in Physics.
Many physicists have written popular articles and books for the general population. Eg Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox. Improving accessibility of advanced concepts is nothing to scoff at.
This really struck a chord for me. The majority of the people I know - including me - want to be drawn into a topic somehow and that somehow is story telling. People like Sagan and Tyson are amazing story tellers, they will draw you in with their use of language, their voice and pace and will open the doors for everything else. This is how great teachers do it and this is what is missing for most of the people to be interested into a topic, no matter how basic it is.
When explaining something to people outside of science, I was ok with 60% accuracy. Even 50% and some technical lies was fine if this would encourage them to learn more. Some came back to say "you lied!!" and these were one of my most cherished victories.
In lectures for 1st year students, I would have here and there an asterisk with "almost true", to which we would come back a semesters or two later.
Dumbing down science to dumb up people is wonderful.
I'll shamelessly resurface a comment I made a few years back.
There's a school of thought which views Venus as a better colonization candidate than Mars, and as early as the 70's scientists envisioned floating cities. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus:
In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above the Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System beyond Earth itself – a pressure of approximately 1 atm or 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 °C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 °F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.
Being able to wear a simple breathing mask while working outside instead of a full pressure suit is a boon. Of course high windspeeds and the constant bombardment of acid rain would be a problem.
I could imagine Venus one day being an exotic, cloud-top paradise for the rich (reminiscent of BioShock Infinity) that's expensive to maintain, and Mars a brute workhorse that eventually displaces it as a more resilient habitat over the very long term (eg. after terraforming).
There was this project idea that some researchers at Langley developed in the mid-2010s called HAVOC (High Altitude Venus Operational Concept) [0] for a 5-stage mission to send humans to Venus's habitable-ish cloud layers. It never really got anywhere, but there was apparently some media attention around it for some time.
Because the nitrox atmosphere we're used to is a lifting gas in the Venusian atmosphere, you could theoretically just fill a big balloon with our atmosphere and live inside it, with lots of Teflon on the outside and suits made of Teflon to work outside the habitat. I also (kind of?) remember reading about using metal nets to capture and condense H2SO4 from the clouds and process it into water, oxygen, and hydrolox rocket fuel.
"Even the gravity on Venus (0.91g) is homelike, which means that airship habitats, sensors, smoke detectors, toilets, and all the rest can be developed on Earth instead of forcing us to build a space station that can simulate Martian gravity."
-----------
Imagine living on an airship high above the Earth, with the hard rule that you can never land. You must be entirely self-sufficient save for a tiny amount of material delivered infrequently. Now imagine trying to land on that airship from orbit or get back into orbit (and beyond) from that airship. None of this is easy here on Earth.
A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars. Trying to get closer to the surface than orbit would make things a lot harder.
> A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars.
I think that's exactly what the article is arguing. The part about manned airships is just a whimsical aside to the much safer, entirely feasible, and nearly as scientifically valuable prospect of using unmanned balloons.
Yes, but he only looked at Venus from the aspect of research which is missing half, or more, of the point of a Mars mission.
The advantage of Mars is that it is ( hypothetically ) acceptably compatible with persistent surface-based habitation. Not an easy life, certainly not compared to Earth, but more sustainable than balloons floating in sulphuric clouds.
Venus doesn't offer an 'alternative cradle' option unless we invent anti-gravity. Until then the emphasis will be on finding a way to improve human civilisation's resilience.
Because, to be honest, whats the point? We can pretty much determine the composition of the atmosphere with spectroscopy, and we can't land without being crushed, boiled and dissolved at the same time. If we go to Mars, we can potentially find things on the surface (eg interesting geological formations) much faster than a rover could, and potentially run more in-depth scientific tests on what we do find, rather than just what we can send on a single rover
> Missions to the clouds of Venus are either going to find life or some kind of brand new chemistry, either of which will be a breakthrough discovery in planetary science. There’s basically a guaranteed Nobel prize waiting in the skies of Venus for whoever wants to collect it.
why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back? seems much easier than going with humans around the moon
"Scientists are overjoyed to announce that the Venus Sample Return Mission has successfully scooped out a significant quantity of deadly sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and other mysterious chemicals that have no business being in anyone's atmosphere. Scientists are describing components of the atmosphere as a 'supercritical fluid'.
"The probe's cargo vessel has a really awesome ablative heat shield on it, as well as some extremely reliable parachutes, and Mission Control is projecting a very soft touchdown in the Utah desert within the next 12 hours. If anyone in the Western United States sees a huge fireball going slower than most meteors, it is probably the Venus Sample Return vessel full of dangerous chemicals! Go VSRM!"
The biggest problem is it's spin rate: a Venus day is 116 days Earth days or so.
Being completely tidally locked would be better because near the transition zones the permanent sun would make solar power and plants quite productive.
But an ecosystem where the planet spends most of the year in darkness or dim light?
Basically it's relatively easy to redirect comets to provide gas and liquids for the surface of Mars: that's technically demonstrated technology now.
There's almost no plausible way we could add momentum to Venus to give it a more reasonable day night cycle (I have seen some suggestion that shearing asteroids into it might be possible, but just the magnitude of momentum you're trying to add is staggering).
Does the atmosphere itself track the ground? I'd expect the slow rotation to drive persistent winds, potentially keeping weather systems somewhat tidal-locked as well
True but you basically lose the benefits of being on a planet. The point at which you're just floating in atmosphere I would argue you might as well be in orbit for all the resupply complexities, but few of the benefits - I.e. an orbital structure without significant atmosphere around it means high Isp low thrust engines like ion drives are practical to come and go from it and a lot of the energy is free from solar.
> you might as well be in orbit for all the resupply complexities
The difference is in air pressure and gravity.
Gravity means comfort for astronauts. It also makes, I suspect, science and industry a bit easier.
I don’t know what air pressure means. Spacewalks probably get easier. But now your structures have to deal with aerodynamic forces, which is annoying. Making up for that, you’re suspended in a soup of precursors and reagents—that opens up ISRU possibilities.
On the whole, if you’re doing planetary science, I think being in the atmosphere is hard to beat. If you’re doing any industry, being near raw materials beats shipping anything unprocessed out of a gravity well. So if you’re staying for a while, you dip in. If, on the other hand, you’re just visiting for a few days, yeah, take a lander and then get back out again.
There are other advantages versus orbital habitats, not least that your station doesn't have to be a pressure vessel - equal pressure within and without makes big structures a lot simpler.
Venus is in what I call the thermolocks zone, not the goldilocks zone. The thermolocks zone is optimal for solar power and perhaps therefore for computation, although heatsink radiators are essential.
The atmosphere of Venus in particular is very resource rich, and so it would be incredible to mine it for heavy use by a space economy. This mining is supposed to use free solar power. All of this is a job for robots, not humans.
I'm currently reading (Re-reading actually) Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and in a chapter where he talked about Venus and how hot Venus is (Venus is actually the hottest planet in the solar system despite Mercury being closer to the Sun - although this wasn't mentioned in the book), and how the space probes that were sent there met an ugly fate, he had this interesting footnote which I want to share -
"In this stifling landscape, there is not likely to be anything alive, even creatures very different from us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let us imagine that intelligent life once evolved on such a planet. Would it then invent science? The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But Venus is completely cloud-covered. The night is pleasingly long - about 59 Earth days long but nothing of the astronomical universe would be visible if you looked up into the night sky of Venus. Even the Sun would be invisible in the daytime; its light would be scattered and diffused over the whole sky - just as scuba divers see only a uniform enveloping radiance beneath the sea. If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could eventually be deduced from the principles of physics, but they would be theoretical constructs only. I sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars."
. . .
Carl Sagan is an amazing author, and I've shared the famous excerpt from his book Pale Blue Dot multiple times before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565381
A few mentions of his books in my blog post here - https://www.rxjourney.net/30-things-i-know
Sagan is good for high schoolers maybe.
Not really scientific books at all. He is popular because he was hyped in the media for being accessible.
Those people dumb down science for the masses - it harms society on the long run imo
Making information more accessible and approachable never harms society in the long run.
Your view is just a snobbish and rigid one, Sagan made science topics interesting for more people, from those people very likely many got inspired enough to pursue deeper science training.
Dumbing down is necessary to make it interesting for people who feel it's unapproachable, it breaks a barrier, I have no idea how you look at this and think "this is harming society"...
I’ve read a lot of hot takes on HN, but Carl Sagan harming society is on a whole new level.
If a science book is too heavy, you'll get less people interested in science than would normally be.
Carl Sagan significantly influenced Neil deGrasse Tyson (another popular science writer), for example. But I'm not sure if Tyson would have pursued science regardless of Sagan's influence.
This is a terrible take, and I say this having a PhD in Physics.
Many physicists have written popular articles and books for the general population. Eg Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox. Improving accessibility of advanced concepts is nothing to scoff at.
This really struck a chord for me. The majority of the people I know - including me - want to be drawn into a topic somehow and that somehow is story telling. People like Sagan and Tyson are amazing story tellers, they will draw you in with their use of language, their voice and pace and will open the doors for everything else. This is how great teachers do it and this is what is missing for most of the people to be interested into a topic, no matter how basic it is.
https://xkcd.com/397/
As an ex-physicist, I cannot disagree more.
When explaining something to people outside of science, I was ok with 60% accuracy. Even 50% and some technical lies was fine if this would encourage them to learn more. Some came back to say "you lied!!" and these were one of my most cherished victories.
In lectures for 1st year students, I would have here and there an asterisk with "almost true", to which we would come back a semesters or two later.
Dumbing down science to dumb up people is wonderful.
I'll shamelessly resurface a comment I made a few years back.
There's a school of thought which views Venus as a better colonization candidate than Mars, and as early as the 70's scientists envisioned floating cities. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus:
In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above the Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System beyond Earth itself – a pressure of approximately 1 atm or 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 °C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 °F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.
Being able to wear a simple breathing mask while working outside instead of a full pressure suit is a boon. Of course high windspeeds and the constant bombardment of acid rain would be a problem.
I could imagine Venus one day being an exotic, cloud-top paradise for the rich (reminiscent of BioShock Infinity) that's expensive to maintain, and Mars a brute workhorse that eventually displaces it as a more resilient habitat over the very long term (eg. after terraforming).
There was this project idea that some researchers at Langley developed in the mid-2010s called HAVOC (High Altitude Venus Operational Concept) [0] for a 5-stage mission to send humans to Venus's habitable-ish cloud layers. It never really got anywhere, but there was apparently some media attention around it for some time.
Because the nitrox atmosphere we're used to is a lifting gas in the Venusian atmosphere, you could theoretically just fill a big balloon with our atmosphere and live inside it, with lots of Teflon on the outside and suits made of Teflon to work outside the habitat. I also (kind of?) remember reading about using metal nets to capture and condense H2SO4 from the clouds and process it into water, oxygen, and hydrolox rocket fuel.
[0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006329/downloads/20...
"Even the gravity on Venus (0.91g) is homelike, which means that airship habitats, sensors, smoke detectors, toilets, and all the rest can be developed on Earth instead of forcing us to build a space station that can simulate Martian gravity."
-----------
Imagine living on an airship high above the Earth, with the hard rule that you can never land. You must be entirely self-sufficient save for a tiny amount of material delivered infrequently. Now imagine trying to land on that airship from orbit or get back into orbit (and beyond) from that airship. None of this is easy here on Earth.
A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars. Trying to get closer to the surface than orbit would make things a lot harder.
> A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars.
I think that's exactly what the article is arguing. The part about manned airships is just a whimsical aside to the much safer, entirely feasible, and nearly as scientifically valuable prospect of using unmanned balloons.
Colonization of Venus, Geoffrey A. Landis, NASA Glenn Research Center, 2003
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...
The average lifetime of probes landing on Venus counting in minutes might have something to do with that?
"So that’s the bad part. But once you move past it, you start to notice that everything gets easier on Venus."
If wishes were fishes ...
Venera 12 holdes the record I think for 110 minutes.
Did you read the rest of the post? The author acknowledges the lander issues as well
Yes, but he only looked at Venus from the aspect of research which is missing half, or more, of the point of a Mars mission.
The advantage of Mars is that it is ( hypothetically ) acceptably compatible with persistent surface-based habitation. Not an easy life, certainly not compared to Earth, but more sustainable than balloons floating in sulphuric clouds.
Venus doesn't offer an 'alternative cradle' option unless we invent anti-gravity. Until then the emphasis will be on finding a way to improve human civilisation's resilience.
Kurzgesagt's Venus video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI
Because, to be honest, whats the point? We can pretty much determine the composition of the atmosphere with spectroscopy, and we can't land without being crushed, boiled and dissolved at the same time. If we go to Mars, we can potentially find things on the surface (eg interesting geological formations) much faster than a rover could, and potentially run more in-depth scientific tests on what we do find, rather than just what we can send on a single rover
Please read the article.
> Missions to the clouds of Venus are either going to find life or some kind of brand new chemistry, either of which will be a breakthrough discovery in planetary science. There’s basically a guaranteed Nobel prize waiting in the skies of Venus for whoever wants to collect it.
why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back? seems much easier than going with humans around the moon
"Scientists are overjoyed to announce that the Venus Sample Return Mission has successfully scooped out a significant quantity of deadly sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and other mysterious chemicals that have no business being in anyone's atmosphere. Scientists are describing components of the atmosphere as a 'supercritical fluid'.
"The probe's cargo vessel has a really awesome ablative heat shield on it, as well as some extremely reliable parachutes, and Mission Control is projecting a very soft touchdown in the Utah desert within the next 12 hours. If anyone in the Western United States sees a huge fireball going slower than most meteors, it is probably the Venus Sample Return vessel full of dangerous chemicals! Go VSRM!"
> The phosphine detection was controversial when it was first announced in 2022, but it has since been corroborated by multiple measurements.
I thought it was resolved as SO2, not phosphine
Why not the Sun?
Why not Zoidberg?
The biggest problem is it's spin rate: a Venus day is 116 days Earth days or so.
Being completely tidally locked would be better because near the transition zones the permanent sun would make solar power and plants quite productive.
But an ecosystem where the planet spends most of the year in darkness or dim light?
Basically it's relatively easy to redirect comets to provide gas and liquids for the surface of Mars: that's technically demonstrated technology now.
There's almost no plausible way we could add momentum to Venus to give it a more reasonable day night cycle (I have seen some suggestion that shearing asteroids into it might be possible, but just the magnitude of momentum you're trying to add is staggering).
If I remember correctly, the habitable-ish cloud layers have super-fast winds that circle the planet once every 4 days or so. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_super-rotation
> But an ecosystem where the planet spends most of the year in darkness or dim light?
If you're floating you don't have to track the ground.
Does the atmosphere itself track the ground? I'd expect the slow rotation to drive persistent winds, potentially keeping weather systems somewhat tidal-locked as well
True but you basically lose the benefits of being on a planet. The point at which you're just floating in atmosphere I would argue you might as well be in orbit for all the resupply complexities, but few of the benefits - I.e. an orbital structure without significant atmosphere around it means high Isp low thrust engines like ion drives are practical to come and go from it and a lot of the energy is free from solar.
> you might as well be in orbit for all the resupply complexities
The difference is in air pressure and gravity.
Gravity means comfort for astronauts. It also makes, I suspect, science and industry a bit easier.
I don’t know what air pressure means. Spacewalks probably get easier. But now your structures have to deal with aerodynamic forces, which is annoying. Making up for that, you’re suspended in a soup of precursors and reagents—that opens up ISRU possibilities.
On the whole, if you’re doing planetary science, I think being in the atmosphere is hard to beat. If you’re doing any industry, being near raw materials beats shipping anything unprocessed out of a gravity well. So if you’re staying for a while, you dip in. If, on the other hand, you’re just visiting for a few days, yeah, take a lander and then get back out again.
There are other advantages versus orbital habitats, not least that your station doesn't have to be a pressure vessel - equal pressure within and without makes big structures a lot simpler.
Venus is in what I call the thermolocks zone, not the goldilocks zone. The thermolocks zone is optimal for solar power and perhaps therefore for computation, although heatsink radiators are essential.
The atmosphere of Venus in particular is very resource rich, and so it would be incredible to mine it for heavy use by a space economy. This mining is supposed to use free solar power. All of this is a job for robots, not humans.
Fuel for interplanetary rocket barges (coal lined tubes fed from liquid tanks oxygen), produced in the floating factories of Venus.
Sure, why not?