• fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Also, nobody’s replicated it because after the soviets revealed Venus is a boiling acid hell there just wasn’t much will or interest to keep landing on it. Like, try selling a billion dollar mission to Venus that’ll melt into sludge 2 hours after landing vs one to Mars that’ll run for a decade minimum.

    And rover landing tech has come crazy far since parachutes attached to cannonballs. We’ve put a helicopter on Mars. But I’m not even sure a sky crane system like we use on Mars would be viable on Venus. Higher gravity, higher pressure, more corrosive atmosphere, higher heat.

    • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      Why would you even want to use the sky crane system on Venus? It has a thick atmosphere. You use a more appropriate landing mechanism. And if your lander that’s gonna be destroyed in a couple hours costs a billion dollars then that’s just an issue with production. Produce several, relatively unsophisticated landers and reserve the billions of dollar missions to like an airship or something.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        23 hours ago

        Can you fly in a carbon dioxide atmosphere? Why do we need to send rover landers? Why don’t we upgrade to quadcopter drones that can get around more? Perhaps with a base station?

        • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          21 hours ago

          It’s density that matters, and Venus has a very dense atmosphere. If you go high enough it becomes Earthlike in some ways. Landers can get certain data that is impossible to obtain from afar. Same reason we land on Mars. I have no idea how you’d begin to make a rover for Venus. It would break down in hours or you’d need to invent computers that can operate at several hundred degrees.