First, thanks for the many insightful ideas here. I was particularly pleased to find a link to the high-temperature silicon research that NASA is working on. I read a lot but I was totally uninformed about that even existed.
I did not share my thought within the original post because I wanted to hear your thoughts first.
My thoughts are along the line of active cooling of the probe because I believe if we can work out a way to cool the small volume inside a probe, beside making further Venus research easier, many other things can be done with that technology. There is every reason to believe that "air condition" to be workable at 450C. But of course that is a huge engineering challenge.
Flying probes (which is what we used for Jupiter) is an interesting idea and offer many advantages. What it can't do is actual sampling, and one can argue it actually is not ON Venus.
I love the idea of some day human's foot print on Venus. Some proposed mining, but I cannot see a condition that would make Venus raw material back worth the cost of bring it back to earth commercially.
Same reason I dabble in electronics, I like to learn the possible. Hence, the idea of human's foot print on Venus interests me. Mars first... Perhaps even Europa before Venus - wow, the though of what may be swimming below the Europa ice cover just blows my mind.
Thanks for the many mind tingling thoughts presented.
Again, I love thinking about it, but I cannot help seeing actual problems in my own (Dutch) society that might need addressing first.
1. A Dutchman can't see the relevance of looking at a planet that is literally 100% clouds?!
2. Besides the applications to weather research, the idea of a flying (not orbiting or hovering or landing) probe is novel, untested (in space -- mind that solar powered airplanes have been tested on Earth for many years, however!), and sure to yield knock-on technological benefits.
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Tim
I have rather similar thought, except the Dutchman part. I think it is global and certainly not particular to any individual or to Dutch: Far too many on earth doesn't see the need for space research but think we should spend big bucks on global warming.
Either way, earth as we know it will end: global warming, next ice age, sun going red-giant, asteroid strike, gamma ray burst... Us human will need to find ways around many of those events for us human to stay around just a bit longer till the next crisis.
I think Venus offers excellent opportunity for research. I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea of using a whole planet as a lab, but the idea is an attractive one to me. Seeding the atmosphere with something to reflect more light, actually trying to create a nuclear winter... All are very interesting.
Yeah, hunger and disease on earth is a problem. But if we just focus on that, we may well be left with neither the knowledge or resource to deal with say a discovery of an asteroid that will wipe us out in 9 months.