/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7940623
Well, there are some major advantages. Instead of having to pull off some precision landing, you just inflate your balloon and bob.

You can get hydrogen from the clouds, so with carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen to work from, you can make a lot of stuff, including balloon material and lifting gas.

Ultimately, to be self-sufficient on Venus, you're going to need to get stuff from the surface.

It's also very hard to leave Venus. The launch to Venus orbit from Venus is as demanding as the launch to Earth orbit from Earth, without the advantage of solid ground to build your fuckhuge rocket on. You'd need a VERY large balloon to launch from, or very small rockets.

Lots of fun robotic exploration things to do, though. You can fly around in your blimp and look at some amazing clouds. Winged aircraft, helicopters, and little multicopters should all also work fine, and the clouds reflect light from all directions, so you can put solar panels on the top and bottom of your venuscraft. Building probes to the surface capable of returning to non-hellish altitude would also be an interesting challenge (we have long since sent probes to the Venus surface -- the Soviet Venera probes).

Hopefully as launch gets cheaper we'll see more robotic Venus exploration.