I love how Venera 14 had a surface compressibility tester ... and tested the compressibility of a camera lenscap that happened to fall off in exactly the wrong place. The Soviets just had all the problems with lenscaps.
@@dmanww Yeah, funny in retrospect. I actually like those sort of understandable "doh!" problems, at least compared with the "just done fucked up" ones. They are learning experience.
@@travcollier the soviet space program basically didn't give them the time or budget to construct the rigs and do the testing needed to catch these problems
Last time I checked, Eros was still in orbit. On a side note, did anyone else notice that it *had* to be Eros (i.e. not any other asteroid) that hit Venus?
@@thePronto It was for thematic reasons in the book. Eros is named for the romantic type of love in ancient Greek culture, while Venus was named for the Roman goddess of love. Given Miller fell in love with Julie Mao, it makes a degree of sense.
@@jimmyseaver3647 Right. Though I would contend that Eros was more the god of sexuality than romantic love (open to debate amongst classicists...). Thus my risqué joke that Eros 'hit' Venus.
Anton Petrov did a video on how they're designing new electronics and communications for the surface of Venus. I think they're going to use silicon carbide. They literally put the components in a pressure cooker to see which ones survived and which ones didn't.
They've been using pressure cookers for Venus probes since the first Venus probes, the Soviet Venera series. See the 1999 series "The Planets" for that story. A must see series for fans of space exploration!
Venus could be easy to stay as long as you dont touch the ground. A ballon of breathable air would be buoyant and there are some cool ideas for floating cities around that concept.
according to the atmospheric graph presented, at about 50 km, the pressure is 1 atm and the temperature is about 100 C. So we could float a zeppelin at that level, no need for high temp electronics, and lower a camera and the radar. The zeppelin could also drop small probes as the winds move it around. A follow up robotic mission could reload the supply of probes. Way into the future, around the time of "The Expanse", and IFF we ever develop controlled nuclear fusion, the zeppelins will be harvesting deuterium to power the spaceships
I still hope someone at some point makes a Venus Zeppelin. Test whether floating habitats are viable and maybe even see if there are any atmospheric, sulphur tolerant forms of life.
Right! because at about 30 miles up (50 Kilometers) the temperature, air pressure, and gravity are similar to that of Earth. I was thinking cloud cities, like in Star Wars.
So true. Triton has a surface of mostly nitrogen ice, with an ocean underneath. It orbits retrograde which means it was most likely captured by Neptune. It also has geologic activity, which is quite unique.
It would be funny if Nasa trolled us by showing an overhead view of Jurassic Park as the lander images start coming back. Just sneak it in there somewhere for the data miners to find.
As i understand it this discovery mission is still in early days and additional components may still be added before launch, but it seems unlikely that they will include a dirigible to explore the cloud layers about 50km up where temperatures and pressures are very similar to those on Earth) and where phosphine has potentially been detected. This makes me sad. I think this region is the only place that life (if it ever existed on Venus) could retain a toehold. A dirigible (blimp) could explore these regions for longer periods due to the more mild conditions and make seasonal measurements of its changing composition. The search for life is part of the reason we go to these places and we know that on Earth, life once it establishes itself is very tenacious surviving in challenging environments. We shouldn't miss opportunities to look for evidence of its existence anywhere we can imagine that it might exist.
The 'idea' has been tossed around in non-professional circles of "Green" (or "Yellow" though technically "green' is an official color of Venus as red is for Mars) Dragon or using a repurposed Cargo Dragon equipped with a balloon to more heavily explore Venus. Two guess which folks do NOT like the idea, or the fact that NASA is 'wasting' time/money going to Venus :) Randy
@@randycampbell6307 Some of the rocks on Venus look very like those on Mars, especially the flat, paving stone type. What I want to know is: are any of them sedimentary? After all, when Venus was very young it had seas, just like Earth and Mars. There is a possibility that life began there just as it did on Earth, but has long since been annihilated by deteriorating conditions. There were seas on Venus 3.5 billion years ago, about the time that the fossil record begins on Earth.
@@bernardedwards8461 A major issue is that the concept of 'resurfacing' events is looking more and more likely and we also have to consider how 'skewed' those pictures could be given the atmospherics on the surface. Want rocks but also want my balloon probe :)
@@randycampbell6307 I doubt if we'll ever recover rocks from Venus. The best bet is to build a lander which can survive for more than a few hours and have it analyse whatever rocks it finds and radio the results back to Earth. A skilled geologist can tell a hell of a lot just by looking at very good close-ups of the rocks. I expect a dirigible will be sent one day.
It seems to me that it shouldn't be hard if the same pressure is applied to the inside of the cap as to the outside. Just a small vent tube to ambient air would do. You could put a filter over it to keep out any dust kicked up by impact, and then pop the cap off with a tiny actuator once the dust has settled.
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT I really don't like how people like you trivialize everything. If a modern day probe can't last more than a couple hours on the surface, popping off a lens cap under that pressure would be hard...
Actually Mariner 2 really just confirmed what most scientists already suspected that Venus was not very much like Earth. The fact that telescopes had found almost nothing but CO2 in the Venus atmosphere was a big clue and the IR from the 'night' side but high reflectivity of the cloud layer didn't bode well either but the general concept as Venus being an 'early' Earth, (while Mars was supposed to be a "late" Earth) was IIRC a hold over from early planetary formation theory which essentially had the Sun spitting out clouds of matter and gas that coalesced into "planets" as they moved outward from the Sun.
@@1974lionsfan The "key" here is you raise the budget and launch MORE so you don't have to pick and choose. Literally NO mission is a waste as it continually expands out knowledge
Scott Manley.., you're such a brilliant mind that when I listen to you, my brain shrinks a bit. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about SOOO many subjects related to space! You Rock!!
I agree. With all the talk last year (or so), about phosphine being an indicator of possible life in Venus's atmosphere, you would hope these new missions would try and gather more data to answer that question.
Why are no plans being made to use a dirigible balloon type probe that could float in the atmosphere and be carried around in the gas currents at whatever depths they want to sampling the atmosphere and making multiple levels of scientific experiments. The higher altitudes will (or should be) a lot cooler too so the probe can last a lot longer. Small sub probes could be dropped to further investigate any interesting geology too. This could provide many years of detailed scientific investigation. It cannot be beyond the abilities of the clever folk at NASA to do this surely?
@@williamarmstrong7199 One step at a time, with NASA's restricted budget. These probes will provide current data on the composition and pressure profile to inform future designs.
Lots of comments here slagging the Soviet Venera craft, forgetting that until they landed people actually thought Venus was likely to be a tropical paradise. Having said that, the first Venera probes were designed to float, just in case 😊
When I was in the 2nd grade my 4th grade neighbor showed me his science book with a brief chapter on Venus in it along with a drawing of a hypothetical Venusian. From that moment onward I was hooked on science, and especially astronomy. That was around 1960-61.
I am annoyed we aren't going back to the outer planets (I was all about the mission to triton). But it kind of makes sense. A "quick" trip for quick science and a "short" mission time. vs the huge time/resource investment for getting all the way out to the fringes of the sol system.
Any truth to the rumor that you'll be headed into space with Jeff Bezos? We need some communications satellites around Venus, then a probe, or two, floating in the cooler part of Venus's atmosphere.
They get more than enough funding, it just all goes to the wrong departments. SLS and Orion have eaten up $40 billion in the past ten years. That could've given us twenty Mars rovers or forty Juno-style probes to the outer solar system...
I just wanted to thank you Scott. I am really thankfull, that you provide us with information. You are one of the major factors why I am interested in space flight.
Absolutely correct! Personally, I would rather both missions had gone outward, rather than to Venus. But at least ONE of them should have gone “out” rather than to acidic pressure-cooker Venus. Bummer.
Venus is super underrated! It would be one of the most interesting and exotic environments we could explore :) If somehow we had a suit that could survive the heat and pressure. It would be an experience like no other in system! Walking through the air would be like pushing through water(not that dense but pretty dense).
Funny: While Venus is indeed a hell scape all that Deuterium might mean any water found there is sweet. I wonder: It might be educational for the mission to carry a bunch of 'mini-landers' along with the main one to take pictures in several locations.
Deuterium is a realistic export product for any future Venus colony. It can be isolated just by the act of storing and using power through a reversible fuel cell stack if the fuel cells are plumbed in a cascade. And it's an export worth ~$1000/kg at low levels of enrichment, or well more at high levels of enrichment (albeit with a smaller buyers market on Earth). It's important to strip the deuterium anyway - long-term consumption of deuterium-enriched water seems to have health consequences (short-term is usually fine).
@@ennnafnlaus2904 Modern deuterium enrichment isn't done with electrolysis but with metal-organic frameworks which preferentially soak up the heavy water like a sponge and then release it when heated.
@@hammerth1421 I'm well aware of this. But the issue is that on Venus you need to store power overnight, and one is storing energy via reversible fuel cells (the most logical energy store), you can enrich deuterium *for free*, because it's something you need to do anyway. Electrolysis (and fuel cells) have superb enrichment factors, but they're not widely done on Earth because the market for electrolytic hydrogen is far too small, and if you're burning the energy for electrolysis, you need to be able to get something more out of the end product than just a lossy conversion back to water. Also, on Earth, the mass of your enrichment facility is irrelevant. Not so offworld. You want a light, high-enrichment factor system. Reversible fuel cells fit the bill.
Robert Heinlein wrote a classic sci fi story about swamps and plantations on a colonized Venus. It's called Logic of Empire and it's about a guy who gets drunk and accidentally signs up as an indentured servant to a colony company, who ships him to Venus and puts him to work in miserable circumstances. Obviously written before the facts of Venus were known, but a great story. It's in the book Green Hills of Earth IIRC.
I’d love to hear your opinion on the idea that we should really be focusing more robotic mission to Mars and the moon way before human flight. Seems like putting the cart before the horse. While humans are decent for research, seems like we could send many more research bots with the same budget.
Postponing human exploration is not the way to go. We can absolutely send robots, but we'll learn the most once there are human boots there, robots are extremely useful but extremely limited in their capabilities, they should be prioritized for places where sending people is completely unfeasible in the mid-future.
@@ENCHANTMEN_ but what’s the goal? If it’s just research, then robots can work 24/7 and our autonomous software is getting better and better. Input lag is not really an issue in terms of the things we would want to do anyway. Perhaps for larger scale things, but a robotic setup should be priority number 1.
Question: Does it not follow that the sheer intensity of the atmospheric pressure is such that any rock surface under it cannot remain constant and therefore tectonic activity, no matter how small, is likely?
I think they're probably looking for something similar to continental drift or mountains growing taller. Atmospheric effects would be more likely to cause oscillations, rather than steady motion.
Actually it did blown part of the atmosphere, and is still doing so. As mention in the video some normal water was blown away, thus the heavy water high concentration. But Venus have gravitation almost as strong as Earth's, so it counteracts the solar wind.
Can you do a video on what is it that makes survival on Venus is so difficult. 39 atmospheres is nothing compared to deep sea pressures and there are a lot of materials that do not interact with acids. Is it a matter of the weight required for suitable materials for a craft to be able to survive...more than the environment itself? Thanks.
This is so cool!! I've always been amazed with Venus. It's so easy to spot in the sky, and when I see pictures of Earth from like the ISS, I somtimes think to myself, Venus would look pretty much the same size, only it's a true hell hole there. It's so crazy to think about how harsh of an environment it is there. Anyway, thank you for making this video. Fly safe!!!!
The thought of searching for gravity anomalies in Venus makes my Inner Geologist very excited. We really stand to learn a lot here, not just about Venus, but about Earth and Earth-size silicate planets in general.
Me too!!! Damn disappointed that NASA agreed to send both new missions to acidic, pressure-cooker Venus rather than looking outward to the many moons that could eventually be explored, in person, by humans. I know it would be 100+ years before humans could ever explore the surface of any of those outer planet moons, but we will “never” explore the surface of Venus. Damn, we should have at least sent ONE of those missions outward. Triton should have received at least one mission. Disappointed!
If only we could we could terraform Venus... It would've been such a great world to live on. It would take an order of magnitude more water than Mars though, and about the same order of magnitude of metals to capture co2 into different carbonates...
Well, something has been there on Venus for a long time...I wonder in what condition it is. Would be great to see it again. Especially the russian one...which took pictures.
@@millimetreperfect wormholes, dude. wormholes. Once we get wormhole technology everything is a piece of cake. Can you imagine your iphone with a wormhole that connects it to a solar panel in orbit around the sun?
While I believe that any space exploration is a good thing, I was not thrilled by this NASA announcement because there are far more interesting places in the Solar System to explore. Europa and Titan top the list, but there are many more. And while I teach a course wherein we discuss how the history of Venus is important to understanding terrestrial planet evolution especially with regard to habitability and the size and evolution of habitable zones, I still think Venus falls way down the list of places that need exploration.
Word. I think we can be reasonably sure that nothing these missions discover about Venus will have a material impact on climate policy in our lifetimes
Venus has been STARVED for missions for decades and is right next door. If and when we send a mission to Neptune it should be a proper Cassini-Level flagship orbiter, not a cheap Discovery-class mission to one of its moons.. I'm excited for Neptune too, but Venus needs love next. Let's hope for the next Flagship or New Frontiers Mission will be to Neptune. If you're going to be mad a mission for not going to Neptune, blame Mars, not Venus.
Damn straight! Me too. Let our Russian friends explore Venus. I have little interest in sending probes to places that we will “never” be able to explore in person. The outer planet moons are calling us. It might be a couple of hundred years before we can ever explore them in person, but they will eventually be explored with our feet on the ground, away-out-there. Goodness! Io and Triton both are so damn interesting that I am really disappointed that neither mission went outward and that both missions are going inward to acidic, pressure-cooker Venus. Meh... Other than the pictures that the “Lander” takes on its way down to “Impact”, I have little interest in these missions. We really should be looking outward. Such a bummer that at least one mission didn’t go to any outer planet moon.
@@CapinCooke So by that logic we should not have gone to jupiter, saturn, or done the grand tour with the voyager probes, or new Horizons probe to Pluto, or Bepicolumbo probe to Mercury, or Parker Solar (to the Sun) because 'we will never be able to explore in person'. The whole point of robotic probes is that they extend our knowledge and our senses to places we otherwise couldn't go. Just because we can't set foot somewhere doesn't mean its not worthwhile to explore.
@@FredPlanatia Howdy Fred.... Those legacy missions to the outer planets were initial missions of discovery. They were the pathfinder missions that showed us how interesting many of those outer planet moons were. We hadn’t been there before, or hadn’t been there much. There was much new stuff to learn and see! There is still much we haven’t seen out among the outer moons. I feel that we’ve seen enough of Venus. We’ve been there half a dozen times. So have the Soviets / Russians. India, Japan, ESA snd even private company Rocket Labs have all been to Venus or are going. Let them. It’s useless to us practically speaking other than for scientific reasons, which I’ve stated are “interesting” but not as “exciting” as sending probes to places that we might one day visit. I find the outer planets more interesting than the hell hole of Venus. Those outer planets are also the anchors for those most interesting moons. I agree that we humans shouldn’t only send robotic probes to places where we can eventually put boots on the ground, but it is more interesting when we DO. I feel that NASA should have sent at least one of those missions outward rather both of them inward to Venus. One of those two missions should have been “exciting” rather than two “interesting” missions. YMMV Peace. PS: I don’t rule out “boots on the ground” (eventually :-) for Mercury or Pluto. With Mercury the terminator moves slow enough that we could move along within its temperate boundaries. With Pluto (or its moon Charon!!) it’s another COLD location that we can more easily develop exploration gear for than the hell hole of Venus. Let’s pretty-much go anywhere else. Let’s leave Venus exploration to the 5 or 6 other entities that go to Venus to explore because they CAN (more easily or only) go to Venus.
Could you extend the life of a proble by cooling key parts? By water boiling off slowly? Using the high pressure steam created to drive a turbine generator supplying electricity for the instruments on the probe?
I wonder... being that Venus’ atmosphere is so thick, could it be used as a fuelling station to extract “fuels” for exploration or transits to other places?
Venus atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide mixed with sulphuric acid and other nasty things. Very little hydrogen, which is the best rocket fuel. Equally little oxygen.
I mean it’s mostly carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and then some sulfur dioxide. You could refine the carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons and oxygen if you had a source of hydrogen and power that with solar power, but really if you’re that close it might be better to go solar thermal, and maybe use the atmosphere as an inert mass. Idk
Agreed. Very disappointed that NASA is sending both missions to Venus... A place that humans will “never” visit. Triton, and many of the outer planet moons, could possibly be explored by humans in the near (100+ year) future. We really should have gone there with these robotic probes, rather than Venus. Very, very disappointed in NASA’s decision. Other than the one time pictures, from the “Lander”, on its way down to IMPACT, I don’t see the public engaging emotionally in either of these missions. I agree that these two missions are scientifically interesting, but not emotionally engaging since we can “never” go to the surface of Venus ourselves. We can’t picture that, so it will be less engaging to us (at least me). Dang... we should’ve gone outward, not inward to acidic, pressure-cooker Venus. Bummer.
@@CapinCooke It's embarassing how few probes we've sent to our closest neighbor. But the Triton proposal is a once in a lifetime opportunity and therefore the obvious favorite, at least for me. One mission to Venus would have been enough.
@@CapinCooke Defeatist go home 1. Transhumanism = ofc we will walk on Venus 2. ~50km altitude has 1 atm pressure and ~50C temp + CO2 atmosphere = air is a floating gas = cloud cities
I have a set of cuff links and a tie pin from the Magellan mission. My uncle worked at the Cape, several years ago when he passed away my family in Florida sent me his jewelry box full of cuff links and tie pins from the different missions he was involved in, which was all the Mercury, all the Gemini and all the Apollo missions along with one's like Magellan.
@@grizzomble I meant that for a Venus orbiter mission you can use solar, whereas Triton and outer solar system you really need nuclear/RTG. With the scarcity of RTG fuel (last I heard, idk if that has changed in the past year or so) a mission that doesn't require any becomes relatively more attractive. As for the lander, since they only expect it to survive a few hours I'd guess battery powered.
And yet it became hot tempered with a thick noxious crushing atmosphere you really don't want to stay under... Marrying her might not have been such a good idea afterall. At least she's still hot as they come !
@@AllonKirtchik Personally I'd take either Europa or Enceladus. Both have frigid exteriors, but that only adds to their brilliance. Europa has hidden depths and Enceladus is always gushing.
I love how Venera 14 had a surface compressibility tester ... and tested the compressibility of a camera lenscap that happened to fall off in exactly the wrong place. The Soviets just had all the problems with lenscaps.
Also, Venera 13 and 14 do first sound recordings from other planet. I recommend you to listen it.
Really? That's funny.
Yep. Have look at the list of the failures. It's like comedy of errors.
@@dmanww Yeah, funny in retrospect.
I actually like those sort of understandable "doh!" problems, at least compared with the "just done fucked up" ones. They are learning experience.
@@travcollier the soviet space program basically didn't give them the time or budget to construct the rigs and do the testing needed to catch these problems
I watched the Expanse. This doesn't end well for the probes.....
Last time I checked, Eros was still in orbit. On a side note, did anyone else notice that it *had* to be Eros (i.e. not any other asteroid) that hit Venus?
@@thePronto It was for thematic reasons in the book. Eros is named for the romantic type of love in ancient Greek culture, while Venus was named for the Roman goddess of love. Given Miller fell in love with Julie Mao, it makes a degree of sense.
Great comment! 😂😂
It also didn‘t end so well for Adam Savage…
@@jimmyseaver3647 Right. Though I would contend that Eros was more the god of sexuality than romantic love (open to debate amongst classicists...). Thus my risqué joke that Eros 'hit' Venus.
Anton Petrov did a video on how they're designing new electronics and communications for the surface of Venus. I think they're going to use silicon carbide. They literally put the components in a pressure cooker to see which ones survived and which ones didn't.
pog
With great images of cooking PCBs!
They've been using pressure cookers for Venus probes since the first Venus probes, the Soviet Venera series. See the 1999 series "The Planets" for that story. A must see series for fans of space exploration!
I wouldn't mind to see some silly con carne on a probe.
I don't really know why, but there's something kind of hilarious to me about testing something in a pressure cooker to see if it work on Venus...
TL;DR: Landing on Mars is hard, staying on Mars is easy. Landing on Venus is easy, staying on Venus is hard.
I would argue that staying on Venus is easier, the atmosphere even helps you to move in. Permanently.
Venus could be easy to stay as long as you dont touch the ground. A ballon of breathable air would be buoyant and there are some cool ideas for floating cities around that concept.
TL;DR use magnetic amplifier electronic technology, that stuff is SUPER robust!
might be fun instead to just attach a bunch of engines to venus and make it fall into the sun and send a probe to take a video
@@daikaiju466 We could make O2 and Carbon structures from the CO2 atmosphere and capture the N2. We would need to make water from the Sulfuric acid.
Looks like venus is back on the menu boys!
The chicken is relived ;)
This made me laugh too much
Hahhahah Nice
I'm corrently waiting for uranus
Beware of typos with that phrase
Man, I want more blimps on other planets.
Next, send one Saturn.
Could have a metallic blimp on Venus lol
DaVinci+ needs to poop out a balloon on the way down, even if just as a technology demonstrator.
They're naming the probe DaVinci+ and not deploying flying machines? Some of those might actually work on Venus!
@@Tolono maybe the "+" is the blimp?
according to the atmospheric graph presented, at about 50 km, the pressure is 1 atm and the temperature is about 100 C. So we could float a zeppelin at that level, no need for high temp electronics, and lower a camera and the radar. The zeppelin could also drop small probes as the winds move it around. A follow up robotic mission could reload the supply of probes. Way into the future, around the time of "The Expanse", and IFF we ever develop controlled nuclear fusion, the zeppelins will be harvesting deuterium to power the spaceships
I still hope someone at some point makes a Venus Zeppelin. Test whether floating habitats are viable and maybe even see if there are any atmospheric, sulphur tolerant forms of life.
Right! because at about 30 miles up (50 Kilometers) the temperature, air pressure, and gravity are similar to that of Earth. I was thinking cloud cities, like in Star Wars.
Honestly it's good to see Venus getting some love.
... but we need to return to Neptune T.T
Uranus too
But mostly: is moons
So true. Triton has a surface of mostly nitrogen ice, with an ocean underneath. It orbits retrograde which means it was most likely captured by Neptune. It also has geologic activity, which is quite unique.
@@stephenwitwick3926 And geysers if I recall correctly.
@@stephenwitwick3926 and a smoll atmosphere
It would be funny if Nasa trolled us by showing an overhead view of Jurassic Park as the lander images start coming back. Just sneak it in there somewhere for the data miners to find.
Or blue alien girls with three....
That would most likely be done by SpaceX cuz now they know people been peeking at the transmissions of Starlink launches.
@@tomf3150
*Ferb, I know what we're going to do today*
It'd be used as fodder for moon landing truthers
@@gwyn. They should just make more powerful communication system and use it to transmit rickroll
“Observation: I can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.”
Carl Sagan
If you're purely guessing anyway, you might as well guess it interesting....
Besides, if you assumed a earth-ish athmosphere, it wasn't that silly.
I still miss Carl.
"Hot, hellish, unforgiving; a toxic atmosphere; a sweltering surface"
Apparently Venus is just like Twitter then
No sign of intelligent life
At least Venus has fewer pedophiles
Nah. Twitter is worse.
As i understand it this discovery mission is still in early days and additional components may still be added before launch, but it seems unlikely that they will include a dirigible to explore the cloud layers about 50km up where temperatures and pressures are very similar to those on Earth) and where phosphine has potentially been detected. This makes me sad. I think this region is the only place that life (if it ever existed on Venus) could retain a toehold. A dirigible (blimp) could explore these regions for longer periods due to the more mild conditions and make seasonal measurements of its changing composition. The search for life is part of the reason we go to these places and we know that on Earth, life once it establishes itself is very tenacious surviving in challenging environments. We shouldn't miss opportunities to look for evidence of its existence anywhere we can imagine that it might exist.
I share your sadness
The 'idea' has been tossed around in non-professional circles of "Green" (or "Yellow" though technically "green' is an official color of Venus as red is for Mars) Dragon or using a repurposed Cargo Dragon equipped with a balloon to more heavily explore Venus. Two guess which folks do NOT like the idea, or the fact that NASA is 'wasting' time/money going to Venus :)
Randy
@@randycampbell6307 Some of the rocks on Venus look very like those on Mars, especially the flat, paving stone type. What I want to know is: are any of them sedimentary? After all, when Venus was very young it had seas, just like Earth and Mars. There is a possibility that life began there just as it did on Earth, but has long since been annihilated by deteriorating conditions. There were seas on Venus 3.5 billion years ago, about the time that the fossil record begins on Earth.
@@bernardedwards8461 A major issue is that the concept of 'resurfacing' events is looking more and more likely and we also have to consider how 'skewed' those pictures could be given the atmospherics on the surface. Want rocks but also want my balloon probe :)
@@randycampbell6307 I doubt if we'll ever recover rocks from Venus. The best bet is to build a lander which can survive for more than a few hours and have it analyse whatever rocks it finds and radio the results back to Earth. A skilled geologist can tell a hell of a lot just by looking at very good close-ups of the rocks. I expect a dirigible will be sent one day.
Humans: there could be an awe inspiring wonderful world under the clouds we simply can’t see
Also humans: WE SHALL HUNT THE ALIEN DINOS!
Sometimes it looks like while we explore even space, our brains still think that we are in middle of Africa trying to find food
@@ImieNazwiskoOK some things never change 😂
It was really creepy, yup
i bet they'd taste good.
@@iamzid like chicken
Imagine going to Venus to hunt dinosaurs lol
Game: Space 1889
Lol :)
Don't need to. That author already imagined it for me.
Life finds a way
@@nomar5spaulding you would be fun at parties
Been watching Scott for awhile- don’t think I ever told him “thanks”. So- thanks Scott, you’re a great Scott.
I think he's also a great Scot.
I've always heard about the lense cap problems, but I only just realized popping a lense cap off in 93 atm sounds pretty hard.
I just put that together myself. Never really considered it.
It seems to me that it shouldn't be hard if the same pressure is applied to the inside of the cap as to the outside. Just a small vent tube to ambient air would do. You could put a filter over it to keep out any dust kicked up by impact, and then pop the cap off with a tiny actuator once the dust has settled.
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT thermal expansion is an issue as well as vacuum welding of similar metals.
@@10siWhiz True. But those are well-known effects that can be accommodated in the design. (Though maybe they weren't as well-understood back then?)
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT I really don't like how people like you trivialize everything. If a modern day probe can't last more than a couple hours on the surface, popping off a lens cap under that pressure would be hard...
These missions are almost exactly what my geologist sister and I have been wanting! This feels like a dream.
You realize Io is literally the most geologically active place known to mankind.
@@stephenwitwick3926 Absolutely, but Venus just interests us a bit more.
@@stephenwitwick3926 - The most _volcanically_ active, at least. Earth is probably pretty hard to beat for variety of processes.
hopefully SLS is cancelled soon so that money can go to more probes and planetary science
I'd love to hear stories of the people in the room when it first dawned on scientists what kind of hell hole Venus actually is.
Actually Mariner 2 really just confirmed what most scientists already suspected that Venus was not very much like Earth. The fact that telescopes had found almost nothing but CO2 in the Venus atmosphere was a big clue and the IR from the 'night' side but high reflectivity of the cloud layer didn't bode well either but the general concept as Venus being an 'early' Earth, (while Mars was supposed to be a "late" Earth) was IIRC a hold over from early planetary formation theory which essentially had the Sun spitting out clouds of matter and gas that coalesced into "planets" as they moved outward from the Sun.
Or what the guys with actual exciting missions who got shot down for fucking venus were thinking when they lost to such a waste of money like venus
^ cripes, sour grapes much?
@@1974lionsfan The "key" here is you raise the budget and launch MORE so you don't have to pick and choose. Literally NO mission is a waste as it continually expands out knowledge
Venus is a paradise next to the Sun.
Scott Manley.., you're such a brilliant mind that when I listen to you, my brain shrinks a bit. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about SOOO many subjects related to space!
You Rock!!
The lack of an aerostatic balloon probe in this mission makes me sad.
It seems weird to me that they aren't doing some type of balloon. It makes way more sense. Plus you can look for microbes in the clouds
@@adamswenson1093 It would be much harder tho. It would be first mission like this.
@@ImieNazwiskoOK JPL are the absolute masters of taking on missions that no one else would take on. I don't doubt they could pull it off
@@ImieNazwiskoOK The soviets did it back in the 80s so i'm pretty sure that the JPL can do it
The ISRO mission will have balloon, same for Venera D
I hope they send a good phosphine detector.
Why? Are you thinking of stealing it and selling it to the people of Deneb V? How's Stella, BTW?
I agree. With all the talk last year (or so), about phosphine being an indicator of possible life in Venus's atmosphere, you would hope these new missions would try and gather more data to answer that question.
@@daviddennis5789 Phosphine should be visible on an IR or mass spectrometer, which is pretty common on most planetary space probes
Why are no plans being made to use a dirigible balloon type probe that could float in the atmosphere and be carried around in the gas currents at whatever depths they want to sampling the atmosphere and making multiple levels of scientific experiments. The higher altitudes will (or should be) a lot cooler too so the probe can last a lot longer. Small sub probes could be dropped to further investigate any interesting geology too. This could provide many years of detailed scientific investigation. It cannot be beyond the abilities of the clever folk at NASA to do this surely?
@@williamarmstrong7199 One step at a time, with NASA's restricted budget. These probes will provide current data on the composition and pressure profile to inform future designs.
I needed that “Hullo it’s Scott Manley here” today
The "I'm Scott Manley, fly safe" made up for it.
"Venus was very much wet" - Scott Manley 2021
The Greeks called it millenia ago.
Unfortunately today she is dry and toxic
@@darth856 pretty hot though, the hottest around
Glad we're going back to Venus, really gets my spire forming.
Voggers
Exciting times. I worked on DAVINCI development for years at Goddard. Great to see it finally got picked up.
Damn. You got me with the gravimetry measurements by measuring the communication signals :O That is insanely cool!
Lots of comments here slagging the Soviet Venera craft, forgetting that until they landed people actually thought Venus was likely to be a tropical paradise.
Having said that, the first Venera probes were designed to float, just in case 😊
Superb attention to detail and great factoids. I've seen other venus vids that do a lackluster job at relaying information. Thank you
When I was in the 2nd grade my 4th grade neighbor showed me his science book with a brief chapter on Venus in it along with a drawing of a hypothetical Venusian. From that moment onward I was hooked on science, and especially astronomy. That was around 1960-61.
2:41 my last 2 brain cells during a physics test
Mine used to go like this. *56K NOISES*
What if we nuke venus
@@JimbotheGymbro why? lol
@@aksh_x_ For the same reason we should nuke the Moon. To show the Commies
x cuzso cut commie venusians
You know the real answer is "We have no idea" when existing theories involve aliens.
It's never aliens. Until it is.
@@doktormcnasty it's never aliens. Or ghosts. Or the Olympians. Or Thor. Or Baba Yaga. The only monsters we've found are other people.
@@samsonsoturian6013 Even wolves turn out to be nice ... to each other.
I am annoyed we aren't going back to the outer planets (I was all about the mission to triton). But it kind of makes sense. A "quick" trip for quick science and a "short" mission time. vs the huge time/resource investment for getting all the way out to the fringes of the sol system.
Any truth to the rumor that you'll be headed into space with Jeff Bezos? We need some communications satellites around Venus, then a probe, or two, floating in the cooler part of Venus's atmosphere.
How's Jeff going to accomplish that from an altitude of 100km above the Earth? I'd put my money on Rocket Lab making it there first.
@@thePronto Two different subjects
Venus' atmosphere is really cool already
Let's hope Bezos goes to Venus.
Sure bet Scott will be a cooler commication satellite then Jeff on Venus
Considering all the cool concepts for missions to Venus, this does seem kind of tame. Such a shame that NASA gets so little funding these days :/
They get more than enough funding, it just all goes to the wrong departments. SLS and Orion have eaten up $40 billion in the past ten years. That could've given us twenty Mars rovers or forty Juno-style probes to the outer solar system...
I am hyped for more pictures of the surface of Venus!
It's gonna look just like Mars but with a yellow filter.
“The answer is science”
I feel this should be the response to every question in the fan questions answered series.
I will never get over how cool it is that we actually send stuff to other planets.
Another excellent video! Never arrived to a Scott Manley video so quickly before!
I just wanted to thank you Scott.
I am really thankfull, that you provide us with information. You are one of the major factors why I am interested in space flight.
I'm with you on the 2 missions that were passed over. Especially an Io mission. (1 Venus + 1 Other would have been nice 2).
Absolutely correct!
Personally, I would rather both missions had gone outward, rather than to Venus.
But at least ONE of them should have gone “out” rather than to acidic pressure-cooker Venus. Bummer.
Why not all four is what I say...
@@SuperSMT We need more nuclear weapons we can never use. They are the priority-- (Also why the aliens refuse to land.)
Venus is super underrated! It would be one of the most interesting and exotic environments we could explore :)
If somehow we had a suit that could survive the heat and pressure. It would be an experience like no other in system! Walking through the air would be like pushing through water(not that dense but pretty dense).
Magellan spacecraft: exists
Scott Manley: You’re spare parts, bud
$500 million each. that's $1 billion.
You could take Dreamchaser, certify it for manned flight, and have a nice, flexible, reusable taxi to orbit.
5:04 If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Stannis in the background with his favorite F-word
To this day I still mentally correct "less" in Stannis' voice.
The Venus lander should have been shelved pending SiC transistor development. Then a long-duration Venus Rover could have been sent.
So the Magellan probe is basically combining parts like KSP!
With struts.
Plus: Detailed explanation of new Venus missions.
Minus: Motion sickness from visuals.
Solution: Close eyes and listen. 👍
Never have been a "fly safe" so important as on a Venus landing
I feel deprived of my opportunity to kill Venusian dinosaurs.
When life fails to give you Venusian dinosaurs, make Venusian dinosaurs.
Funny:
While Venus is indeed a hell scape all that Deuterium might mean any water found there is sweet.
I wonder:
It might be educational for the mission to carry a bunch of 'mini-landers' along with the main one to take pictures in several locations.
Deuterium is a realistic export product for any future Venus colony. It can be isolated just by the act of storing and using power through a reversible fuel cell stack if the fuel cells are plumbed in a cascade. And it's an export worth ~$1000/kg at low levels of enrichment, or well more at high levels of enrichment (albeit with a smaller buyers market on Earth).
It's important to strip the deuterium anyway - long-term consumption of deuterium-enriched water seems to have health consequences (short-term is usually fine).
@@ennnafnlaus2904 Modern deuterium enrichment isn't done with electrolysis but with metal-organic frameworks which preferentially soak up the heavy water like a sponge and then release it when heated.
@@hammerth1421 I'm well aware of this. But the issue is that on Venus you need to store power overnight, and one is storing energy via reversible fuel cells (the most logical energy store), you can enrich deuterium *for free*, because it's something you need to do anyway.
Electrolysis (and fuel cells) have superb enrichment factors, but they're not widely done on Earth because the market for electrolytic hydrogen is far too small, and if you're burning the energy for electrolysis, you need to be able to get something more out of the end product than just a lossy conversion back to water.
Also, on Earth, the mass of your enrichment facility is irrelevant. Not so offworld. You want a light, high-enrichment factor system. Reversible fuel cells fit the bill.
5:17 In Soviet Russia, parachute might be made from steel.
,,Venus was very much wet” - Scott Manley 2021
Indeed she was
Heyoooo! 😂
There's a book called _Venus Revealed_ that goes over everything learned through the various missions and their instruments.
"Double Barreled" Goood damn we ain't mincing words here !
Robert Heinlein wrote a classic sci fi story about swamps and plantations on a colonized Venus. It's called Logic of Empire and it's about a guy who gets drunk and accidentally signs up as an indentured servant to a colony company, who ships him to Venus and puts him to work in miserable circumstances. Obviously written before the facts of Venus were known, but a great story. It's in the book Green Hills of Earth IIRC.
JPL, doing awesome things since it was a bunch of college students in the 1930s.
I’m so excited for fresh Venus science! 😍
it’s been so long since we were there, and tech has improved so much!
If men are from Mars, and women from Venus, then it only makes sense that Venus is still so mysterious
I am still waiting for my spaceship to bring me back to Mars.
Back to Venus? I like the sound of that! 😃
They're looking for the protomolecule, obviously! 🤣
👀
What is that tho?
@@shlok975 watch 'Expanse' if you like SF.
@@bokiNYC Ok, I'll do as soon as I get a VPN.
Hopefully two hours will be enough time to determine the hardness of the lense cap.
I’d love to hear your opinion on the idea that we should really be focusing more robotic mission to Mars and the moon way before human flight. Seems like putting the cart before the horse. While humans are decent for research, seems like we could send many more research bots with the same budget.
I kinda like the idea of sending humans to a mars station to remotely operate martian robots w/o time lag
Robotic missions won’t stop when we start sending humans, so what’s the point?
We just do it because we can and we want to. Its more philosophical reasons than practical reasons.
Postponing human exploration is not the way to go. We can absolutely send robots, but we'll learn the most once there are human boots there, robots are extremely useful but extremely limited in their capabilities, they should be prioritized for places where sending people is completely unfeasible in the mid-future.
@@ENCHANTMEN_ but what’s the goal? If it’s just research, then robots can work 24/7 and our autonomous software is getting better and better. Input lag is not really an issue in terms of the things we would want to do anyway. Perhaps for larger scale things, but a robotic setup should be priority number 1.
I am super pumped for this. Got a story idea going that involves mountains on Venus, and this will come in VERY handy.
Kind of disappointed they didn't name the Venus mission "Botticelli"...
Maybe they couldn't come up with a good name for B.O.T.T.I.C.E.L.L.I to be an acronym for?
@@simongeard4824 XD
Question: Does it not follow that the sheer intensity of the atmospheric pressure is such that any rock surface under it cannot remain constant and therefore tectonic activity, no matter how small, is likely?
I think they're probably looking for something similar to continental drift or mountains growing taller. Atmospheric effects would be more likely to cause oscillations, rather than steady motion.
Being that Venus has no magnetosphere. Why hasn't the solar wind blown away the atmosphere?
It has about as same strong magnetosphere as Earth.
Actually it did blown part of the atmosphere, and is still doing so. As mention in the video some normal water was blown away, thus the heavy water high concentration. But Venus have gravitation almost as strong as Earth's, so it counteracts the solar wind.
Too heavy
@@bokamannu Venus has a very week magnetosphere because of the planets slow rotation.
Can you do a video on what is it that makes survival on Venus is so difficult. 39 atmospheres is nothing compared to deep sea pressures and there are a lot of materials that do not interact with acids. Is it a matter of the weight required for suitable materials for a craft to be able to survive...more than the environment itself? Thanks.
Heat.
Not a lot of things stay unreactive and compressibly strong at 464 C.
We should create a neutrally-buoyant probe to float around in the atmosphere, sort of like an airship or submarine
The clouds are sulphuric acid and rain the same until it evaporates. A spacecraft would be dissolved.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Well, not exactly. But it'll definitely be a hell of hostile environment anyways.
This is so cool!! I've always been amazed with Venus. It's so easy to spot in the sky, and when I see pictures of Earth from like the ISS, I somtimes think to myself, Venus would look pretty much the same size, only it's a true hell hole there. It's so crazy to think about how harsh of an environment it is there. Anyway, thank you for making this video. Fly safe!!!!
Seems to me that when the sun was younger and cooler it would’ve been pretty nice on Venus for a couple billion years. Maybe I’m wrong
This is considered to be a serious possibility.
The thought of searching for gravity anomalies in Venus makes my Inner Geologist very excited. We really stand to learn a lot here, not just about Venus, but about Earth and Earth-size silicate planets in general.
Sigh. I'm so onboard with a mission to Triton....
Me too!!! Damn disappointed that NASA agreed to send both new missions to acidic, pressure-cooker Venus rather than looking outward to the many moons that could eventually be explored, in person, by humans.
I know it would be 100+ years before humans could ever explore the surface of any of those outer planet moons, but we will “never” explore the surface of Venus.
Damn, we should have at least sent ONE of those missions outward. Triton should have received at least one mission. Disappointed!
@@CapinCooke same
If only we could we could terraform Venus... It would've been such a great world to live on.
It would take an order of magnitude more water than Mars though, and about the same order of magnitude of metals to capture co2 into different carbonates...
Was just watching you, your videos help me relax and make me exited at the same time.
Well, something has been there on Venus for a long time...I wonder in what condition it is.
Would be great to see it again.
Especially the russian one...which took pictures.
I really wanted them to go with the dragonfly mission on Titan ):
One of the advantages over the Triton mission is certainly the flight time.
Umm privacy?
Nope ! :D
That Venera 'parachute' disk blew my mind a little.
we should take the excess of atmosphere in Venus and take it to Mars.
Personally I'd rather not have to deal with a corrosive atmosphere on Mars, thank you 😂
A long pipe?
That would do nothing unless you find a way to increase the magnetic field of Mars.
@@millimetreperfect wormholes, dude. wormholes. Once we get wormhole technology everything is a piece of cake. Can you imagine your iphone with a wormhole that connects it to a solar panel in orbit around the sun?
was hoping for the Io probe but this is still cool
While I believe that any space exploration is a good thing, I was not thrilled by this NASA announcement because there are far more interesting places in the Solar System to explore. Europa and Titan top the list, but there are many more. And while I teach a course wherein we discuss how the history of Venus is important to understanding terrestrial planet evolution especially with regard to habitability and the size and evolution of habitable zones, I still think Venus falls way down the list of places that need exploration.
Word. I think we can be reasonably sure that nothing these missions discover about Venus will have a material impact on climate policy in our lifetimes
>Europa
Europa Clipper
>Titain
Dragonfly
NASA is going to the places you want to go.
It's always a good day when you publish a new great video.
I'm livid that this mission somehow won out over going to Io or Triton! 😡
Glad I’m not the only one!
Venus has been STARVED for missions for decades and is right next door. If and when we send a mission to Neptune it should be a proper Cassini-Level flagship orbiter, not a cheap Discovery-class mission to one of its moons.. I'm excited for Neptune too, but Venus needs love next. Let's hope for the next Flagship or New Frontiers Mission will be to Neptune. If you're going to be mad a mission for not going to Neptune, blame Mars, not Venus.
Damn straight! Me too. Let our Russian friends explore Venus. I have little interest in sending probes to places that we will “never” be able to explore in person.
The outer planet moons are calling us. It might be a couple of hundred years before we can ever explore them in person, but they will eventually be explored with our feet on the ground, away-out-there.
Goodness! Io and Triton both are so damn interesting that I am really disappointed that neither mission went outward and that both missions are going inward to acidic, pressure-cooker Venus. Meh... Other than the pictures that the “Lander” takes on its way down to “Impact”, I have little interest in these missions.
We really should be looking outward. Such a bummer that at least one mission didn’t go to any outer planet moon.
@@CapinCooke So by that logic we should not have gone to jupiter, saturn, or done the grand tour with the voyager probes, or new Horizons probe to Pluto, or Bepicolumbo probe to Mercury, or Parker Solar (to the Sun) because 'we will never be able to explore in person'. The whole point of robotic probes is that they extend our knowledge and our senses to places we otherwise couldn't go. Just because we can't set foot somewhere doesn't mean its not worthwhile to explore.
@@FredPlanatia Howdy Fred.... Those legacy missions to the outer planets were initial missions of discovery. They were the pathfinder missions that showed us how interesting many of those outer planet moons were. We hadn’t been there before, or hadn’t been there much. There was much new stuff to learn and see! There is still much we haven’t seen out among the outer moons.
I feel that we’ve seen enough of Venus. We’ve been there half a dozen times. So have the Soviets / Russians. India, Japan, ESA snd even private company Rocket Labs have all been to Venus or are going.
Let them.
It’s useless to us practically speaking other than for scientific reasons, which I’ve stated are “interesting” but not as “exciting” as sending probes to places that we might one day visit.
I find the outer planets more interesting than the hell hole of Venus. Those outer planets are also the anchors for those most interesting moons.
I agree that we humans shouldn’t only send robotic probes to places where we can eventually put boots on the ground, but it is more interesting when we DO.
I feel that NASA should have sent at least one of those missions outward rather both of them inward to Venus. One of those two missions should have been “exciting” rather than two “interesting” missions.
YMMV
Peace.
PS: I don’t rule out “boots on the ground” (eventually :-) for Mercury or Pluto. With Mercury the terminator moves slow enough that we could move along within its temperate boundaries. With Pluto (or its moon Charon!!) it’s another COLD location that we can more easily develop exploration gear for than the hell hole of Venus.
Let’s pretty-much go anywhere else.
Let’s leave Venus exploration to the 5 or 6 other entities that go to Venus to explore because they CAN (more easily or only) go to Venus.
Could you extend the life of a proble by cooling key parts? By water boiling off slowly? Using the high pressure steam created to drive a turbine generator supplying electricity for the instruments on the probe?
Given the incredibly short lifespan of a probe on Venus I don't think that supplementary power is going to be a consideration on this one.
I just want some better, clearer pictures of Venus's surface.
"Clock work rover" excites the creative juices in my brain.
I wonder... being that Venus’ atmosphere is so thick, could it be used as a fuelling station to extract “fuels” for exploration or transits to other places?
Venus atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide mixed with sulphuric acid and other nasty things. Very little hydrogen, which is the best rocket fuel. Equally little oxygen.
I mean it’s mostly carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and then some sulfur dioxide. You could refine the carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons and oxygen if you had a source of hydrogen and power that with solar power, but really if you’re that close it might be better to go solar thermal, and maybe use the atmosphere as an inert mass.
Idk
@@FrikInCasualMode Venus has billions upon billions of tons of oxygen. It just has to be separated from the carbon.
Venus atmosphere cant really be used to produce fuel, but it is the only with any chance of terraforming
@@FrikInCasualMode
There’s a decent amount of water in the sulphuric clouds, if you’re willing to go get it and extract it.
'The Sky People' by S.M. Sterling was an interesting sci-fi read. What if Venus was inhabited, and the first Russian lander was found by the natives?
Goodbye Triton, we let a unique chance pass
Agreed. Very disappointed that NASA is sending both missions to Venus... A place that humans will “never” visit.
Triton, and many of the outer planet moons, could possibly be explored by humans in the near (100+ year) future. We really should have gone there with these robotic probes, rather than Venus.
Very, very disappointed in NASA’s decision.
Other than the one time pictures, from the “Lander”, on its way down to IMPACT, I don’t see the public engaging emotionally in either of these missions.
I agree that these two missions are scientifically interesting, but not emotionally engaging since we can “never” go to the surface of Venus ourselves. We can’t picture that, so it will be less engaging to us (at least me).
Dang... we should’ve gone outward, not inward to acidic, pressure-cooker Venus. Bummer.
@@CapinCooke It's embarassing how few probes we've sent to our closest neighbor. But the Triton proposal is a once in a lifetime opportunity and therefore the obvious favorite, at least for me. One mission to Venus would have been enough.
@@CapinCooke 50km above the surface of Venus is the most hospitable place in the solar system apart from Earth.
@@CapinCooke
Defeatist go home
1. Transhumanism = ofc we will walk on Venus
2. ~50km altitude has 1 atm pressure and ~50C temp + CO2 atmosphere = air is a floating gas = cloud cities
@@imperialofficer6185 But how do you make an entire city float?
I have a set of cuff links and a tie pin from the Magellan mission.
My uncle worked at the Cape, several years ago when he passed away my family in Florida sent me his jewelry box full of cuff links and tie pins from the different missions he was involved in, which was all the Mercury, all the Gemini and all the Apollo missions along with one's like Magellan.
I expect the dearth of preferred RTG fuel is a contributing factor to a Venus mission selection.
@@grizzomble I meant that for a Venus orbiter mission you can use solar, whereas Triton and outer solar system you really need nuclear/RTG. With the scarcity of RTG fuel (last I heard, idk if that has changed in the past year or so) a mission that doesn't require any becomes relatively more attractive.
As for the lander, since they only expect it to survive a few hours I'd guess battery powered.
Surveying a planet to a precision of 2mm! 😱 Incredible.
"We know that Venus was wet in the distant past"
Kinda like one's wife.
winner
And yet it became hot tempered with a thick noxious crushing atmosphere you really don't want to stay under...
Marrying her might not have been such a good idea afterall. At least she's still hot as they come !
And the surface is really hot, too.
One night with Venus and a lifetime with Mercury?
@@AllonKirtchik Personally I'd take either Europa or Enceladus. Both have frigid exteriors, but that only adds to their brilliance. Europa has hidden depths and Enceladus is always gushing.
I comprehend Almost half of what you're discussing, but you help me understand some concepts. Good on ya - and my name is Scott!
She's a beauty. Don't fall in love
Thank you for that update. You stay in touch.
I would rather have gone to triton.
A flyby of Io has been on my list for so long. It's such a colourful marble, I would love to see some volcanic action!