[HN Gopher] Soviet Venus Images (2004)
___________________________________________________________________
Soviet Venus Images (2004)
Author : areoform
Score : 318 points
Date : 2021-07-04 06:41 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mentallandscape.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mentallandscape.com)
| dang wrote:
| One past thread plus a couple bits:
|
| _Photos of the Surface of Venus (1975)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26188247 - Feb 2021 (2
| comments)
|
| _Soviet Venus Images_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22016529 - Jan 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Soviet Venus Images_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360763 - Aug 2012 (51
| comments)
| divbzero wrote:
| TIL: Vega-1 and Vega-2 did ~10,000 km and ~8,000 km flybys of
| Halley's Comet. Vega-2's photo of the potato-shaped nucleus is
| stunning.
| enriquto wrote:
| Halley looks eerily similar to Churimov-Gerasimenko [0] in that
| image! I wonder if this dumbbell shape is common in comets and
| why should that be.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasime...
| miej wrote:
| specifically with regard to your question, you may find this
| research interesting:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07660
|
| also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektite
| pmlnr wrote:
| offtopic: websites like this are the ones people missing when
| they are referring to "the old web" - see the bottom of it, C
| 2003-2004. It's 15 years old.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Not a Soviet mission, but Magellan, built by Hughes Space &
| Communications Group in the 1980s, did an extensive survey of the
| surface of Venus using RADAR.
|
| https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/magellan/in-depth/
|
| Edit: The Wikipedia page says; "The spacecraft was designed and
| built by the Martin Marietta Company,[5] and the Jet Propulsion
| Laboratory (JPL) managed the mission for NASA." It has no mention
| of Hughes other than partial credit under "Manufacturer".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_(spacecraft)
|
| Hughes built the Synthetic Aperture RADAR payload.
| sanmartin65 wrote:
| Are you working for startups or make startups here I curate deals
| from 25+ platforms on software, saas and many more must check
| https://waybelow.omkarbirje.com
| amelius wrote:
| What is that ladder doing in the images?
| boulos wrote:
| I assume you're talking about the "leg" in the left. The
| "rungs" would have been for reinforcement.
| boulos wrote:
| As I said a few months ago [1], it's mostly too bad Don has moved
| to Twitter. Maybe someone posted this from his recent thread at
| [2]?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26206335
|
| [2]
| https://mobile.twitter.com/DonaldM38768041/status/1410710988...
| boulos wrote:
| Ooh, and another interesting update on his book from a week ago
| or so:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/DonaldM38768041/status/1406751034...
| noduerme wrote:
| This is a pretty awesome use of manual image processing.
|
| It's amazing that so much of the exposed surface rock looks like
| slate. It's strange when you consider there's no continental
| uplift to expose metamorphic rock.
| areoform wrote:
| You have an amazing eye! This is actually a research question
| that the DAVINCI+ mission aims to explore, are there/were there
| active volcanoes on Venus up until the recent past?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessera_(Venus)
| noduerme wrote:
| Wow. This is a fascinating set of models. And they're about
| why these rocks are on the surface! Impact events make sense,
| but the atmosphere is so thick, burning up meteors, it seems
| like the chances of landing right by an exposed set of rock
| like that from a recent enough impact would be fairly slim.
| The downwelling/convection model makes a little more sense.
| That was what I was trying to figure out. Not an astro-
| geologist here, just a garden variety HN dropout
| designer/coder. But I always secretly wanted to work for
| NASA. I appreciate the kind word. This definitely sparked my
| curiosity ;)
| areoform wrote:
| You always can! There are tons of outreach communities, and
| good design + programming skillsets are always needed.
|
| If you're on ClubHouse, I'm happy to invite you to Small
| Steps & Giant Leaps, we have regular "rooms" with folks at
| NASA, ESA, the private space industry and (soon) JAXA.
|
| https://twitter.com/StepsLeaps
| noduerme wrote:
| Aw man that sounds so great. I'm _not_ on any of those
| platforms. But I wanted to share this with you. When I
| was about 7-8 years old, my best friend 's dad worked at
| JPL. He gave me this folder with a thick stack of 8x10
| color glossy photos, explanations on the back, from the
| Voyager missions. I keep it on my bookshelf. I just
| scanned a few for you. This is the stuff I grew up with.
| You can contact me @ the owner of said website. [edit]
| I've been crawled 45 times by Baidu in the last 15
| minutes so . uh. I'm taking that link down. I really
| would love to continue this conversation and just add my
| brain to the mix if there's some cool way to do that.
| mietek wrote:
| Please upload the scans to the Internet Archive.
|
| https://www.archive.org/
| astroflask wrote:
| Tried to follow the inpainting algorithm link in the page but
| it's dead. Looks like this[0] would be the paper.
|
| [0]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220720382_Image_inp...
| audiometry wrote:
| Why did USSR pursue Venus? Surely a far harder target for success
| than Mars. (At least given the nasty planetary conditions).
| Imagine how cool it would be to have worked on something that
| landed on Venus. Whew.
| pvg wrote:
| _Surely a far harder target for success than Mars._
|
| It's a bit of a mixed bag and if you pop a level up on the
| linked site and go through the various probe pages, you'll find
| discussion of many of the issues. One mildly counter-intuitive
| difference is that the atmosphere on Venus is so thick you can
| parachute/freefall probes onto the surface, landings on Mars
| are 'harder' in a very literal sense that's waylaid many Mars
| missions.
| m4rtink wrote:
| AFAIK mainly probe lifetime - at least early on the Soviets had
| a lot of issues with that.
|
| For Venus you only have to keep the probe working for a month
| or tu max, for Mars it needs two survive for almost a year at
| the minimum.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The _successful_ Venus landers had operational lives on the
| ground ranging from 23 minutes to 2 hours. Months would have
| been phenomenal successes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
| m4rtink wrote:
| I should have been more precise - I should have said probe
| _flight_ times. The few early Soviet Mars probes that
| survived launch died on the way before they could reach the
| planet. For Venus transit the whole thing needs to keep
| working for much shorter time before descent module lands
| and the mission is over in minutes, as you mention.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the clarification.
|
| It doesn't seem that transit-phase failure was a
| _primary_ cause of incomplete Soviet Mars missions,
| though several did fail after systems (mostly
| electronics) malfunctioned during coast phase. Several
| failed in boost phase, or in leaving Earth orbit. Two of
| seven missues suffered from electronics degradation which
| either resulted in a total or partial failure to reach
| the Martian surface. Mars 2 & 3, both soft landers,
| failed for other reasons (navigation, and perhaps Martian
| meterological conditions), though both arrived at the
| surface. Mars 2 perhaps rather faster than desired.
|
| Mars 4 & 6 both seem to have suffered transit-stage
| electronics failures.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_program
| cletus wrote:
| It's wild we have any images of the surface of Venus at all given
| how hostile Venus is. Given how hostile it is, it seems unlikely
| we'll go back anytime soon. These images were really a product of
| the Cold War where the US focused on Mars.
|
| It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better
| terraforming target than Mars [1]. This romantic notion of Mars
| has rooted itself deeply at this point (eg with Elon Musk) but
| Mars is basically a more distant and inconvenient Moon. Almost no
| atmosphere (in fact, just enough because dust storms will
| occasionally just coat all your equipment), the Sun is weaker and
| gravity is still very low.
|
| Venus's atmosphere is about 3% nitrogen and 97% CO2. It has about
| 100x the atmosphere of Earth, which means there's actually more
| atmospheric nitrogen than on Earth. And abundant CO2 means oxygen
| is abundant.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I
| generalizations wrote:
| > It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better
| terraforming target than Mars [1]. This romantic notion of Mars
| has rooted itself deeply at this point (eg with Elon Musk) but
| Mars is basically a more distant and inconvenient Moon.
|
| There's a distinction there worth pointing out. We can actually
| land on Mars, and if something goes wrong there are options
| (Apollo 13 style). If something goes wrong on Venus, you're
| falling through acid clouds and getting cooked. The vacuum of
| space is less perilous than the atmosphere of Venus.
|
| On the other hand, as you mentioned, Venus has the raw
| materials and the magnetosphere for terraforming. Might be
| worth just dropping some hardy lichen on Venus to get the
| process started, because no one is going to go there as-is.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Venetian gravity is much closer to earth's too
| at_compile_time wrote:
| > Might be worth just dropping some hardy lichen on Venus to
| get the process started, because no one is going to go there
| as-is.
|
| Hardy is an understatement. Life would need an entirely
| different chemistry to function at 730K.
| DuskStar wrote:
| Presumsbly, you'd start in the upper atmosphere and work
| down. Airborne equivalents to algae?
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _And abundant CO2 means oxygen is abundant._
|
| Oxygen combined with other atoms is not rare. From
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_Mars
|
| > _Based on these data sources, scientists think that the most
| abundant chemical elements in the Martian crust are silicon,
| oxygen, iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium._
|
| The problem is separating the Oxygen from the other materials
| to get Oxygen molecules that you can breath, and that requires
| a lot of energy.
|
| Last year some team made a project to produce Oxygen molecules
| in Mars using the soil and energy, with some method similar to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9...
| (Here the process use Carbon rods as cathodes, that get
| "burned", but IIRC their idea was to avoid the Carbon rods and
| collect the Oxygen molecules.) I'm not sure if this early
| prototype is viable, anyway.
|
| Also, extracting the Oxygen molecules from CO2 requires also a
| lot of energy. Plants need a lot of sunlight to do that and the
| artificial methods also need a lot of energy.
| cherryturnover wrote:
| What is stopping us from launching seed payloads to these
| planets with some way to continually water them? Wouldn't
| that be a way to theoretically test the survivability of the
| planet without sending people?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| We already know that plants will not survive in martian
| soil regardless of watering them. For the amount of
| effort/energy/consumables needed to turn martian soil into
| something that can grow plants, it would be easier to just
| send some soil. Or, skip all that and go totally
| hydroponic. Hydroponics makes economic sense here on earth
| already. On mars, hydroponics is exponentially easier than
| traditional farming methods.
|
| The first habitats will probably not use any martian
| resources. First uses will probably be as construction
| materials. Then possibly as a fuel source. Those are the
| high-mass uses. Things like growing food/oxygen don't
| require much mass and so are far down the list.
| retrac wrote:
| It's possible there are some forms of Earth life that
| might, just maybe, survive on the Martian surface in the
| summer season. But probably not. There are a few issues
| with the idea.
|
| First, whether lichen can survive in full sun with a
| watering robot to tend it, doesn't really tell us anything
| about whether _humans_ can survive on Mars. (Lichen is also
| growing inside the Chernobyl reactor.)
|
| Second, hopefully we haven't contaminated Mars with Earth
| life yet. If we have, it would make it much harder to find
| Martian life buried somewhere, or trace evidence of
| previous life on Mars in the deep past. It's official
| policy, and has been since the start of the space era, of
| all the space agencies (which they follow with varying
| degrees of actual commitment in practice, I assume) to
| avoid contamination of any planet with Earth life. Until we
| can conclusively rule out life or past history of life on a
| particular world, we should probably keep to this policy.
| belter wrote:
| We should not have ignored Venus. Its easier to get to than
| Mars and the top of the atmosphere has reasonable temperatures.
| Why would a certain type of life would not be possible under
| 400 C or acid sulfuric environments ?
|
| It might be very different from what we have on Earth, but is
| there anything specific to Venus current environment that makes
| us believe it is not possible, with the exception it would be
| very, very, different from what we have on Earth ?
|
| I find the Venus images more interesting than Mars. Even more
| surprising, 30 years ago the Russians were flying balloons for
| days on Venus atmosphere !
|
| "Soviet Balloon Probes May Have Seen Rain on Venus"
|
| https://www.wired.com/2013/04/vega-venus-rain/
|
| "The two 3.5-m-diameter balloons floated for nearly two days in
| the Venusian atmosphere around 55 km above the surface. Unlike
| the hostile terrain below, the cloud layers at this height are
| a veritable wonderland. Temperature and pressure are comparable
| to Earth's average and there is ample sunlight streaming in
| from above. If not for the sulfuric acid clouds and hurricane-
| force winds, the atmosphere of Venus would be a comfortable
| living space."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program
| canadianfella wrote:
| Why do you put spaces before punctuation?
| _Microft wrote:
| This is off-topic but I think I can help.
|
| Some languages, like (European) French, put spaces before
| question marks[0] and exclamation marks[1] and people might
| be so used to doing it that they even do it when writing in
| a different language.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark#Stylistic_v
| arian...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#French
| belter wrote:
| Indeed. Thanks _Microft :-) As you you might have guessed
| English is not my native language.
| _Microft wrote:
| If it had not been for these clues, I actually would not
| have noticed.
| wnscooke wrote:
| The answer was good, but just to clarify a touch more...
| The software inserts the space, not the French speaker. I
| teach in a university in France and repeatedly instructed
| students to stop typing that space until a few told me
| they literally can't unless they switch languages in
| Word.
| [deleted]
| belter wrote:
| The Grammaire Francaise recommends:
|
| "Toujours un espace avant et apres: le point-virgule, le
| point d'interrogation, le point d'exclamation et les deux
| points."
|
| https://grammaire.reverso.net/les-espaces-et-la-
| ponctuation/
|
| But for French Canadian variations the indication is just
| a "smaller" space.
| belter wrote:
| The Planetary Society has these with post processing for
| better quality:
|
| "Every Picture From Venus' Surface, Ever"
|
| https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-
| venus-...
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Actually venus is probably not worth it. It's runaway green
| house gasses definitely prevent a habitable environment. I
| think all life needs a stability point. Doubt the clouds
| could provide that. I think it would relatively easy to
| terraform than Mars though. You just need to start some sort
| of global cooling by blocking out the sun.
| _Microft wrote:
| It is Venus that needs cooling. Mars needs global warming
| instead.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Cooling
| _...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Given how hostile it is, it seems unlikely we 'll go back
| anytime soon_
|
| NASA heard your July 4th plea, and sees you Discovery Mission
| 15 (VERITAS) and 16 (DAVINCI+). Targeted to launch in 2028 and
| 2029/30 respectively.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Program
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERITAS_(spacecraft)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAVINCI%2B
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Mars is closer than the moon, at least in terms of fuel. It
| takes less velocity/delta-V (aka space gas) to get to the
| surface of mars than it does the surface of the moon. We can
| use parachutes/aerobraking at Mars whereas at the moon we have
| to burn rockets all the way down. So mars is the easier and
| more dramatic stage for anyone wanting to demonstrate thier
| rocket tech. Venus is even closer still, but as a hell planet
| Venus doesn't lend itself to dramatic imagery and storytelling.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| It takes a lot more to get back, though--Mars is a deeper
| gravity well (5 km/s escape velocity versus 2.4 km/s for the
| Moon). Then you are spending hundreds of days on the return
| journey, versus a week or less from the Moon. And humans are
| definitely going to want to come back, because to stay on
| Mars is to be doomed to radiation poisoning, and not on long
| timescales.
|
| "Recent data from ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter showed that on a
| six-month journey to the Red Planet an astronaut could be
| exposed to at least 60% of the total radiation dose limit
| recommended for their entire career."[0]
|
| Maybe for robots, but I think human colonization of Mars
| without first mastering the Moon is very unlikely.
|
| [0] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic
| _Ex...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Making a cloud city on Venus is totally doable but it should be
| noted that the surface of Venus only rotates once per year (the
| actual orbit around the sun makes it two days per year).
| However there is a point in the clouds where you have earth
| level pressures and temperatures, and the clouds encircle Venus
| on a time scale much closer to Earth days.
| [deleted]
| eloff wrote:
| Also while life on the surface of Venus is extremely hostile,
| it's possible to build floating stations in the atmosphere
| because it's so much more dense than earth's. High enough in
| the atmosphere the pressures, temperatures, and solar radiation
| would be reasonable. It's harder than floating a ship on water,
| but easier than doing airships on earth.
|
| I'm not sure what that gains us over just having a habitat in
| orbit though.
|
| Colonizing other planets doesn't make much sense to begin with
| yet. We don't even colonize Antarctica, and it's a paradise
| compared to mars.
|
| I'm more interested in setting up industry and habitats in
| earth orbit. Close enough for low latency internet, and trips
| measured in hours, but far enough to allow asteroid mining,
| 24/7 solar, manufacturing and refueling largely outside of
| earth's gravity well. Plus if something goes wrong you can have
| escape pods that return to earth. Having a strong space
| industry like that is also the best protection from potential
| asteroid impacts.
| dougmwne wrote:
| > I'm not sure what that gains us over just having a habitat
| in orbit though.
|
| Critically, it gains us raw materials. Space is empty. The
| upper atmosphere of Venus is full of elements we can use to
| sustain life.
| eloff wrote:
| You mean CO2 and small amounts of nitrogen?
|
| That doesn't seem like a great resource. If you value CO2
| so highly there is plenty right here on earth that nobody
| wants and people will actually pay you to remove from the
| atmosphere. No need to go all the way to Venus.
|
| Even on the surface of Venus, inhospitality
| notwithstanding, the resources are at the bottom of a
| gravity well equal to earth's. It is way more viable to
| mine asteroids than mine a planet, especially a planet like
| Venus.
|
| Mining other planets is only interesting if the market for
| the resource is on that same planet, or we've exhausted the
| supply of asteroids with that resource.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Who said anything about mining?
| _Microft wrote:
| There is a concept by NASA for such a mission, it is called
| "High Altitude Venus Operational Concept" or "HAVOC" [0].
| They also made a demo video for it [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Venus_Operati
| ona...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0az7DEwG68A
| eloff wrote:
| As a platform to learn about Venus it could make sense.
| _Microft wrote:
| _> Colonizing other planets doesn 't make much sense to begin
| with yet. We don't even colonize Antarctica, and it's a
| paradise compared to mars._
|
| The unique characteristic of a colony on Mars, Venus or
| another planet would be that it is not on planet Earth.
| Antarctica on the other hand has to compete with all the
| places on Earth that are a lot nicer.
| candiodari wrote:
| I think what people don't get is that once you establish a
| human colony outside of earth ... why would you do that at
| the bottom of a gravity well ? Why dive into another big
| gravity well?
|
| There are abundant resources in free space, from hydrogen
| gas to metals, carbon, oxygen that can be mined from
| passing asteroids (you could easily live in those asteroids
| while mining them) ... Energy is plentiful, the more
| complained about problem really is that energy is far _too_
| plentiful.
|
| Maybe you'd want a base on the moon, but free-floating in
| space would work even better.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Living inside an asteroid is a common scifi trope but
| very impracticle. They arent rocks. Most are more like
| sand dunes or rubble piles. You couldnt just dig a hole,
| slap a door on it and pump in air. You might bury your
| hab undrground to protect it against radiation but you
| would never have walls made of rock, not if you want air
| to breath.
| areoform wrote:
| > Given how hostile it is, it seems unlikely we'll go back
| anytime soon
|
| You're going to be really happy about this then.
|
| We're going back to Venus!
|
| NASA just chose VERITAS and DAVINCI+ as a one-two-punch combo
| for Venus.
|
| Just in case you aren't familiar with the missions,
|
| One is a descent probe + communications relay (DAVINCI+) that
| is supposed to last 63 minutes from the top of the atmosphere
| to the bottom, and bring modern spectroscopy + imaging to bear
| on the atmosphere. They particularly want to investigate trace
| gas elements and the presence of organic compounds in the
| atmosphere. As it descends, the probe will also be taking high
| resolution snap shots of the tessera with a modern-ish
| (emphasis on the ish) camera right up until it is destroyed.
|
| The other one is an orbiter with the goal of making the highest
| resolution map of Venus possible. And acting as the basis for
| future missions. They'd also like to monitor the atmosphere to
| characterize any variations such as the surface emitting water
| (could there be underground water on Venus? Probably not, but
| who knows?)
|
| Based on overheard watercooler chatter, it appears that one of
| the concerns that drove NASA to give both Discovery slots to
| Venus missions is because of the potential loss of
| institutional knowledge. The people who helped build and run
| Magellan are retiring, and we haven't sent anything there
| since. It's important to capture their information and train
| the next generation on Venus so that we don't lose hard earned
| lessons.
|
| IMO, Venus is a really important planet to study because it
| helped us to understand global warming and planetary dynamics.
| A better understanding of Venus means refinements to our
| atmospheric models for climate change.
|
| It's more important than Mars, potential for life or not.
| cletus wrote:
| Yeah, I'd heard about these missions. One has a descent probe
| but I believe it's atmospheric, not surface like the Venera
| missions, right? Still cool though.
|
| What I personally want to see in my lifetime is a return to
| Neptune and Uranus. I don't believe we've been to either
| since Voyager. Given such a mission takes the right planetary
| alignment, a decade of prep and still a decade to get there
| this will take awhile.
|
| The Venus missions actually make either icy giant missions
| less likely, sadly. Outer planet missions are super expensive
| and the next launch window is in the early 2030s so time is
| actually running out.
| areoform wrote:
| Yes, it's an atmospheric probe as opposed to a lander.
| However, their pitch is simple - "we want to bring modern
| spectroscopic equipment to Venus". The data it generates
| should give us a lot of insight into its planetary
| evolution, https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20170002022
|
| They're both about ~$500M, and are intended as foundational
| missions for more intensive exploration.
|
| > The Venus missions actually make either icy giant
| missions less likely, sadly
|
| So one thing that's good about the new administration is
| that they've indicated interest in expanding funding for
| planetary science + exploration. Especially with
| international partners.
|
| This interest is likely to be a hedge against China.
|
| > Outer planet missions are super expensive and the next
| launch window is in the early 2030s so time is actually
| running out.
|
| There is some good news here; JUICE, Europa Clipper and
| another mission that's slipping my mind. The Europa mission
| in particular is a prestige mission and has been actively
| lobbied for a while. So it's going to be interesting how
| that turns out.
|
| On the whole, not sure how deeply you follow the politics
| of this, it all depends on what the focus of the next
| decadal is, https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-
| work/planetary-science...
|
| I'm hoping that Neptune is on the list.
|
| > a return to Neptune
|
| I've got a whole rant on Neptune. Mostly because I think
| its temperature anomaly _might_ be one of the most
| significant scientific questions of our time.
|
| https://twitter.com/_areoform/status/1373376028861734918
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Temperatures on the surface of Venus are around 500 deg C, the
| pressure is around 90 Gs and the atmosphere is actively
| corrosive with superheated sulphur dioxide etc. While you may
| indeed be right about terraforming, settling on Mars seems like
| a cakewalk by comparison.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I had a fictional concept of gas mining in the atmosphere of
| Venus (like Bespin's Cloud City) but I couldn't think of a
| way to mitigate corrosion of the materials you'd use to build
| it by the sulphur dioxide...
|
| (On Venus at 50 miles up, the atmospheric pressure is
| approximately the same as Earth, whereas on the surface it's
| the equivalent pressure of Earth's Mariana trench.)
| cletus wrote:
| If we're talking about what humanity's future off Earth
| might look like, it's actually highly unlikely that it's on
| planets at all, given how hostile such places are, the huge
| energy costs of entering and leaving gravity wells and how
| inefficient planets are at creating living area per unit
| mass. Orbital habitats using spin gravity seem way more
| likely with places like the Moon and Mercury being the
| source for the required raw materials.
| pengaru wrote:
| Planets are protective, you're going to have a tough time
| dealing with radiation poisoning spending a lifetime in
| space without them.
| technologia wrote:
| Suddenly not so much Star Wars as much as it is Gundam :p
| datameta wrote:
| Or Culture series :)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| The people who remain on Earth do nothing but pollute it,
| because their souls are weighed down by gravity!
| u801e wrote:
| > whereas on the surface it's the equivalent pressure of
| Earth's Mariana trench.
|
| The surface pressure on Venus is around 90 atm which is
| equivalent to the pressure one km below the ocean surface.
| The Mariana trench is a little over 11 km deep.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Cheers, I kinda dredged the numbers up from my memory.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better
| terraforming target than Mars
|
| This has always been my sentiment as well. Mars is a dead
| planet with no magnetic belts for shielding, and is just too
| far on the edge of the goldilocks zone. Also, if we can figure
| out how to terraform Venus' atmosphere, then maybe we can "fix"
| Earth's.
| swatkat wrote:
| Indian space agency, ISRO, is planning for a Venus mission in
| 2026: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shukrayaan-1
| api wrote:
| Isn't Venus too hydrogen poor to be terraformed? Where are you
| going to get trillions of tons of hydrogen?
| mickhead23 wrote:
| Amazing little detail about one of the lander camera lens cap
| sticking due to the high pressure atmosphere.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| More spectacularly we have audio from venus
| https://youtu.be/P3Ife6iBdsU It's unfortunate we only have the
| audio from one landing, the other one is in the archives and is
| in a weird encoding that needs engineering to be reconstructed
| (like for a phonautograph)
| codeulike wrote:
| The design of the Venera landers is fascinating, wikipedia has
| some good pictures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
|
| _The probes were optimized for surface operations with an
| unusual looking design that included a spherical compartment to
| protect the electronics from atmospheric pressure and heat for as
| long as possible. Beneath this was a shock absorbing "crush ring"
| for landing. Above the pressure sphere was a cylindrical antenna
| structure and a wide dish shaped structure that resembled an
| antenna but was actually an aerobrake. They were designed to
| operate on the surface for a minimum of 30 minutes. Instruments
| varied on different missions, but included cameras and
| atmospheric and soil analysis equipment. All four landers had
| problems with some or all of their camera lens caps not
| releasing._
| 42droids wrote:
| Absolutely fascinating. The technology that already existed in
| the 60's and 70's is mind boggling. Also, there is something
| really exciting about looking at pictures of an alien planet. :)
| sixothree wrote:
| I might be wrong (I hope I am), but these are the only pictures
| I know of the surface of Venus. They really are incredible.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You are not wrong. Only two Venera probes landed and
| transmitted pictures during a limited time window before
| succumbing to the harsh conditions. (Other probes did land
| and send data but it was scientific measurements, not
| pictures).
| melling wrote:
| Technology developed fast. Sputnik was in 1957. 20 years later
| we had:
|
| The United States landed probes on Mars in 1976.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program
|
| The Voyager program:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
|
| The Space Shuttle was developed in the 1970's
|
| Supersonic commercial flight... bullet trains in Japan and
| France...
|
| As a kid in the 1970's, I imagined 2021 would be much more
| futuristic.
| u801e wrote:
| > As a kid in the 1970's, I imagined 2021 would be much more
| futuristic.
|
| In the 1970s, we had calculator watches. Now we have
| smartphones. So that's one way to look at it :)
| melling wrote:
| If we are thinking in half a century, the Wright Brothers
| first flew in 1903 and Chuck Yeager went faster than sound
| in 1947.
|
| Sure, some things have greatly improved in the last 50
| years.
|
| Color television was a big thing in the late 60's. Now
| we've gone from analog to digital at 4K on huge flat
| panels.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Major advances have been killed because of death aversion e.g
| The space shuttle. There was a human error and had they
| double/triple checked it would have been avoided. Anyway the
| human life cost is hypocrisy, with the budget they have and
| considering the gigantic number of avoidable deaths on earth
| through money they could have gotten a net life ratio by
| divesting e.g 0.1% of their budget, it's all inept media
| politics. In consequence, many things that were possible are
| no longer. About supersonic airflight, the Concorde was
| sabotaged, it was again much more safe than e.g driving a car
| and it was sabotaged economically by making illegal all air
| route except the transatlantic one. I'm unconvinced the bang
| from going beyond the speed of sound is that much of an
| issue, and they could done it higher in the air if needed?
| Anyway there are many technologies nowadays that reduce this
| noise, unfortunately the time to market and legal inept
| inertia will make us wait for another number of decades until
| this majorly useful technology come back. About maglevs and
| void tunnels trains I don't know why it doesn't pan out, must
| be too expensive, probably.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| I'm imagining talking to a person in 1971 and saying one of
| these things about the future is true and one is a lie:
|
| In 50 years, even people in the worlds poorest countries will
| have be able to send a letter that arrives instantly to any
| place in the world, have a color camera and video camera that
| can take almost unlimited photos and that you can view
| immediately and send to your friends instantly, a TV that can
| watch any TV program or movie ever filmed, a record player
| with all of the music in the world, a library with every
| book, a clock that is never wrong, a TV phone that can call
| anyone on the planet for free, a computer more powerful than
| every computer currently on the planet added together, a map
| of the entire world that knows where you are and can tell you
| how to get to anywhere you want to go to, in one candy bar
| sized piece of glass, that they all carry around in their
| pocket.
|
| or
|
| In 50 years, the US and Soviets will have colonized the
| entire solar system, and traveling to space will be as
| mundane to people then as riding the bus is now.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > a TV that can watch any TV program or movie ever filmed
|
| > a library with every book
|
| LOL. Reality wants a word with it's licenses and DMCA-s.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Hey, who said anything about paying?
| pmlnr wrote:
| It's not just the question of paying. There are _so many_
| movies, series, etc, especially dubbed ones, that only
| exist in closed, offline archives, and licensing prevents
| them from being digitalised at all.
| nomdep wrote:
| Even blockbuster movies. Does anyone remember the movie
| "Cocoon"? Is impossible to watch it now unless you can
| find it in an old VHS tape
| folmar wrote:
| It has 20 different encodings on Pirate Bay alone, quite
| far from impossible to watch.
| jl6 wrote:
| Amazon have it on blu-ray, in stock, next day delivery.
| harph wrote:
| You mean the one from 1985 about those oldtimers bathing
| with lifegiving alien artifacts? Such memories! Also ofc
| I found it in one google search.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Duncan Makenzie had a new minisec, and he was not quite
| sure how parts of it worked._
|
| _The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units,
| determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand.
| At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of
| the small electronic calculators that had started coming
| into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It
| was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could
| not imagine what life would be like without it._
|
| _Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it
| had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three
| hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs;
| each, however, had an unlimited number of functions,
| according to the mode of operation - for the character
| visible on each stud changed according to the mode._
|
| -- Arthur C. Clarke, _Imperial Earth_ , 1976
|
| http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267
|
| That itself was nearly a decade after the newspad of 2001:
| A Space Odyssey (1968):
|
| http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529
|
| https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=-3949GAIokg
|
| See also "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush, 1945.
| http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-
| ma... (Numerous HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dat
| eRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). You'll find similar
| notions proposed by H.G. Wells (1930s), Paul Otlet (1930s),
| and arguably Denis Diderot (18th century).
|
| The notion of universal access to media is hardly novel or
| original. The technology to make it happen did take some
| time, but the outlines were clear by the 1960s and before.
| It is indeed the property and rights aspects which have
| principally held us back. It's interesting to note that for
| any _printed_ materials, with SciHub and LibGen, the battle
| is very nearly completely won.
| ansgri wrote:
| You'd better add more details to the second option to make
| it fair, there's a cognitive bias that leads to a more
| detailed option being more believable.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| The first option while more detailed focused entirely on
| advances in computing and digital signal processing; this
| was mostly unknown to laypeople in the seventies. So
| despite the level of detail, it's likely that random
| people on the street would have considered the second
| option more likely / true, since the space race and Cold
| War were front-page news every day.
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(page generated 2021-07-04 23:01 UTC)