NASA Planned Manned Venus Flyby

Back in the late 1960s NASA had put together a formal plan to send a manned mission to Venus for a flyby using Apollo hardware. They had done several studies and were serious about doing this mission. I had never heard of this planned mission until today. That would have been an amazing mission. The trip would have taken about one year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby

Why?

Thats about all I think of. Maybe flyby on the way back from Mars or something, but a dedicated flyby?

Why not? Venus is closer to Earth than Mars is. According to the info the Venus flyby was part of the Apollo Applications Program. It was one of several proposed projects including a manned lunar base, a space station ans several other ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_App ... ns_Program

Just to go all that way and not even land on something. That just seems wrong. Its like camping out in the ISS for the heck of it.

Land on Mars or on somethings Moon.

Hello, idiom,

did you read the link to Wikipedia? there they say that the flight would have approached Mercury within 0.3 AU = 45 mio km.

This would have made the few hours-fly-by of Venus a bit more worthy.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

There was no technology then and no technology now, really, that would allow for a manned surface landing on Venus. The surface of Venus is almost literally "hell". The surface pressure is 93 atmospheres and the surface terperature is 467 degees Celcius (875 degees F). No robotic lander has lasted more than 90 minutes on the surface.

So I am seeing huge Opportunity Cost in such a mission.

I am all for flying tin cans through radiation fields, but there are more exciting radiation fields to fly through.

A Venus flyby could study the upper atmoshpere. At around 65 km, the Venus atmosphere is very Earth like in pressure and temperature. This part of the atmosphere would hold much scientific curiosity.

I am curious why the mission was scrubbed. I haven't found out to many details to the cancellation of this mission.

I would prefer a Blimp be sent

If someone can build a big enough booster to launch a manned blimp then that would be even better.

All Apollo Applications Program missions were cancelled very early except one: Skylab (which was cut down significantly).

The Apollo Applications Program (started as the Apollo Extension System) regarding the space station would have seen 22 Saturn IB launches (3 of them with S-IVB stages used as "wet" space stations), 15 Saturn V (again 3 "wet" space stations, this time using the huge S-II stage with 10x25 meters), another 2 Saturn V outfitted space stations flights (like Skylab) and finally 4 LM/ATM flights (unmanned Lunar Module Apollo Telescope Mount).

One of the major reasons were that the Congress refused NASA the required budget (because of the escalating costs of the Vietnam war).

Even after these cuts, NASA still was budgeted for 2 Skylab stations with 7 Saturn IB crew flights. (the second Skylab was planned to be the core of a 100-man space station)

Hello, Idiom,

regarding the blimp something similar is under development already - think of JPAerospace's vehicles. In the General JP Aerospace Forum jpowell already said that his ATO's can go to Venus as well as to Mars. The ATO's are very proper for them because of their atmospheres.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

A company called Global Aerospace developed a balloon that can potentially be used to study Venus' upper atmosphere about five years ago.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... 21113.html

http://www.gaerospace.com/projects/ULBD ... ctory.html

So in other words, the Vietnam war is to blame for us not having a permanent moonbase yet? War sucks.

War does suck. Yet war gave us the rockets for space travel. War is often a cause for technological breakthroughs.

The Iraq/Iran war will be the end of the VSE if it keeps up.