Comments on: Cruising the Cloud Tops of Venus With a Solar-Powered Airplane

By: MyPicture and friend

MyPicture and friend — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:55:06 +0000

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By: Sally

Sally — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:30:20 +0000

This was a very good passage to read and was very interesting.THANK YOU

By: alphonso richardson

alphonso richardson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:51:25 +0000

Geoff,

just been to the NASA site – cool. Also read the paper.,
Seems like an awful lot of work, but if it means it's possible to send probes that last more than a few minutes/hours before being crushed/fried/corroded to death, then I'm sure it'll be worth it.

By: Van

Van — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:46:16 +0000

If solar can do this, when will it be economical to recharge electric cars with solar while I work? And it hit 100 degrees F again here in Texas – solar powered A/C would sure cut down on a lot of carbon dioxide!

Nice of Venus to have such a long day – at the equator of my planet, you have to fly over 1000 mph to stay in the sun!

By: Geoffrey A. Landis

Geoffrey A. Landis — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:34:05 +0000

"hmmmâ€¦.unfolding those wings frontally as those illustrations depict while plunging downwards will be almost impossible after gaining certain speed.."
Yep. It's not shown in those images, but there's a parachute to slow us down. This website http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/5000/pep/photo-space/venus-mission-design.htm has a link to an animation of a movie showing some of our work on both the airplane and Venus landers.

By: Silver Thread

Silver Thread — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:13:35 +0000

Ahh Colin you Stole my Thunder!! I was thinking the exact same thing. The programming for an auto pilot on such an aircraft will need to be fairly complex but I see this idea as having incredible merit.

By: Colin

Colin — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:07:47 +0000

Dibs on opening the Tibanna gas mine on Cloud City.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:00:38 +0000

I'm a basic space enthusiast here. The idea of hovering over the terrain of Mars, Europa, Titan is too exciting for words. I love Venus, but assuming we couldn't get under the Venusian cloud tops – a mission like the above would only be to see if we could accomplish it. Some science, but no real fun seeing cloud tops.

By: neoguru

neoguru — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:15:13 +0000

Venus would be tough! Concentrated sulfuric acid is abundant in the atmosphere and would wreak havoc on almost any material the aircraft is made of. A real challenge!

By: Eric Ramos

Eric Ramos — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:14:46 +0000

hmmm….unfolding those wings frontally as those illustrations depict while plunging downwards will be almost impossible after gaining certain speed.. I guess they should deploy edgewise at 180Â° from each other and then with some help of a tail chute or friction slowing gadget maintain low velocity to then allow the wings to twist 90Â°, eject the chute and level off.

By: marcellus

marcellus — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:29:00 +0000

Venus has way too much atmosphere. I've read that the surface pressure on Venus is equal to 90 times the Earth's surface pressure. Essentially equivalent to six tenths of a mile beneath the ocean's surface.

It woud be incredibly cool to have a sustainable solar powered airplane in the atmosphere of Venus. It would be like having a cheaper, closer, long lasting space mission like Cassini around Saturn, or the Mars Rover missions.

Awesome!

By: James

James — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:55:25 +0000

If it works out, yeah, I wonder what other planets we could extend the idea to. We'd get so much information on all the planets we send these things to!
Jupiter seems like it'd never work out for some reason. Just the density of the atmosphere and the strength of the gravity there…but I'm no airplane physicist, so who knows.

Question: Why is the sky blue in those pictures? I thought Venus had no atmosphere, and was instead getting blasted with the solar wind (causing that huge tail that extends almost to Earth's orbit).
Wouldn't the sky be a different color during the day? If so, I wonder what.

By: Qev

Qev — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:09:48 +0000

I wonder if we could work out a Jovian dirigible… wouldn't that be something?

By: alandee

alandee — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:32:17 +0000

I still get a buzz out of flying around our planet !
I love the idea of a dirigible flying around another planet even more though, you have a large stable platform, that, unless it is hit by something will never crash, and can hover over areas of interest, the whole top can be covered in solar panels… the list of things I want to see happen before I die is endless ..

By: Astrofiend

Astrofiend — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:07:39 +0000

I personally can't wait until we're flying around other planets. Awesome.