Venus/Russia Connection

Status
Not open for further replies.
D

dreamer420

Guest
<p>Good day,</p><p>I'm a long time visitor to space.com and posting on here for the first time right now.&nbsp; I had a thought the other day when reading an article on Venus that I would like to share and get others thoughts on.</p><p>Starting in 1961 Russia was lauching probes fast and furiously towards Venus.&nbsp; This continued into the early 80's and while a lot of good scientific data was returned, a lot of probes failed for various reasons too.&nbsp; To me it seems like Russia put all their eggs into one basket with so many probes going to just one body in the Solar System.&nbsp; I know they have explored elsewhere, however there was definitely something drawing them back to Venus so many times.&nbsp; My question is; was Russia looking into a manned mission to Venus until they realized conditions there wouldn't allow it, or where they just that facinated with the planet?&nbsp; Were they sensing that they were going to lose the moon race and decided to try and do the American's one better by venturing to another planet?&nbsp; If anyone has any theories I'd love to hear because I have several; from perfectly normal explainations to geez, whats he been smoking.</p><p>&nbsp;Thanks</p>
 
C

Carrickagh

Guest
<p>I think it was a combination of interest, ability, and ratio of supportable failures to successful landings.</p><p>They did open some windows and provided some very good information. The Pioneer Venus probe arrived when there were Soviet probes on the way or on-orbit, and this provided some nascent combined planetary exploration not seen until recently at mars, where there are many probes and nations exploring the red planet at once.</p><p>I'm not sure if they had an interest in a manned mission. Certainly there were plans as early as 1967 to use Apollo hardware for a potential manned orbital visit or flyby. Here is a site with the concept: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19670017910_1967017910.pdf</p><p>I have a copy of this at home and am scrapping old Saturn kits to build a scale replica.</p><p>Don't know of any Soviet manned Venus mission concepts. They may have had some idea in the works. Seems conceivable.</p><p><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/2/14/624573c2-6f81-4eb8-8e42-16004244fd2d.Medium.jpg" alt="" />schematic of manned venus orbiter craft</p><p><br /><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/10/13/bad71cb0-eea5-44a8-8d6b-41872a063298.Medium.jpg" alt="" />nice concept image of Venus-Apollo orbital burn</p><p>***</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts