Hi All

Another link...

Venus Entry Probe

...pretty cool aerostat system with 15 little drop probes for gauging wind and that sort of in situ data. Will float for ~ 14 days at 55 km (310 K and 0.5 bar) but is still in the clouds.

Interestingly I've found an old Carl Sagan piece that speculated on human exploration/colonisation of Venus at that level too. Geoff Landis echoed Sagan's own assessment that Venus was the most earth-like planet in the solar system some ~ 50 km up. If high pressure/temperature machinery can be built then the surface can be mined and explored extensively from the cloud tops via remote-presence systems.

Adam