Hi Tom
Getting the damned thing to inflate before it cooks will be quite a trick - I imagine a sacrificial helium filled drogue to slow down the upper atmospheric descent and give time for the main lifting volumes to fill.
Alternatively there are suggestions that solar-powered planes would work even better on Venus, but a solar powered airship might be even less likely to sink into hell. One of JP Aerospace's V-ship high altitude airships would be a good starting place for the design.
Or, if feasible, how about using a ballute for re-entry filled with a lifting gas? The Russion inflatable re-entry skirt worked in its test flight (or am I getting ahead of the news?) so perhaps it could be used then inflated even further?
Eventually someone will have to work out how to float the first manufacturing base in the atmosphere. By then, hopefully, they will know how to make nanotube sheeting straight from the atmosphere's CO2 - then the colony will start looking like a doable work of engineering. Harvesting enough water from the clouds for a biosphere will be a challenge. At least they won't be short of sulphur.
A breathable mix of N2/O2 is a lifting gas, so that at least won't be an issue.
Adam
Space/Science » in reply to More realistically in the short term...
Obviously its an airship
The whole thread (34 posts)
- There is a place in the solar system away from Earth (not artificial) where conditions are much more similar to our world than what we find on Mars....Where is it? (n/t)