I did some heatshield work for one proposal that is intended to actually land on the surface of Venus. The decision whether to proceed with that specific proposal has not yet been made.

With Pioneer Venus, we landed an atmospheric probe on the Venusian surface and it continue to work through pure accident (it was not designed to survive landing). It continued to return telemetry for several minutes (I think it was 61 minutes). The gas near the Venusian surface is so hot and dense that it is actually a super critical fluid. One could think of Venus as having an ocean of supercritical carbon dioxide that is about 3 km deep.

Venus is a very nasty place. However the possible science return is significant. Venus did not always have an atmosphere in thermal run away. It is currently believed that Venus once had a water ocean like the Earth's and maybe even some early biology.

Gary