An artist's impression of what NASA'S HAVOC would look like floating over the cloudtops of Venus.
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Imagine a blimp city floating 30 miles above the scorching surface of Venus -- a home for a team of astronauts studying one of the solar system's most inhospitable planets.
NASA is currently doing just that; floating a concept that could one day see a 30-day manned mission to Earth's closest planetary neighbor.
[Venus, with] a mean temperature of 462 degrees Celsius (863 degrees Fahrenheit), an atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than Earth's and a cloud layer of sulphuric acid, even probes to Venus have lasted little more than two hours. Its surface is hot enough to melt lead and its atmospheric pressure is the equivalent of diving a mile underwater.
But above this cauldron of carbon dioxide at an altitude of 50km (30 miles) scientists say the conditions are as close to Earth's as you'll find anywhere in the solar system.
Known at NASA as HAVOC - High Altitude Venus Operational Concept - engineers and scientists at the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have been working on a preliminary feasibility study on how robots and humans could make a Venus mission a reality.
"One concept is a lighter-than-air vehicle that could carry either a host of instruments and probes, or a habitat and ascent vehicle for a crew of two astronauts to explore Venus for up to a month."
Suspended in a gondola beneath the airships, astronauts would not have to contend with the physical challenges of zero gravity, where weightlessness causes muscles to wither and bones to demineralize.
And at a mere 167 degrees Fahrenheit (75 degrees Celsius) -- just 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth -- even current technology has the ability to contend with everything that Venus could throw at the mission.
Who would have thought Venus, one of the most catastrophic terrestrial planets know, could be habitable. What kind of stellar (hehe) plot twist. The idea is fascinating and I hope to hear heaps more about it. Mars, some of Saturn's moons, Earth's moon and now Venus are our top candidates for hosting human life. Wait roughly a decade for this to actually occur, hunties. Just imagine being on an entirely different planet, just ****ing imagine it.... the ultimate experience. NASA pick me.
"'And the Lord saw the wickedness of Man was great. And He repented He had made Man on the Earth.' Rain! Forty days and forty nights of the stuff. And He left not a thing that walked alive. You see, my friends, even God is entitled to a do-over. And what is Columbia if not another Ark, for another time?" -- Zachary Hale Comstock
