Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And Hey Rob, it has been a while since we
Speaker 1: checked in on the air Frier Planet. So what do
Speaker 1: you say we talked about Venus today? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it is high time that we return to Venus, uh
Speaker 1: for for a few different reasons. First of all, even
Speaker 1: though we have covered Venus in the past, there's just
Speaker 1: so much weird and wonderful stuff to discuss about the
Speaker 1: planet that we had to return. Also, in the past year,
Speaker 1: we've had some developments concerning Venus, and also there's a
Speaker 1: particular plan of a project in the in the works
Speaker 1: that I'd like to discuss in more detail. Really, just
Speaker 1: like Venus is just such a wild and wonderful plan
Speaker 1: it and our attempts to understand how we might might
Speaker 1: be able to further explore it, and also our history
Speaker 1: of exploring it is just fascinating. So we just had
Speaker 1: to return. Well, you know what we always say here
Speaker 1: with reference to Venus, I am the doorway. We are
Speaker 1: both the doorway. So let's open ourselves and and walk
Speaker 1: through into some thoughts about the second planet. Yeah, nice
Speaker 1: Stephen King reference there. All right. So, I guess one
Speaker 1: of the things with with Venus, you know, that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about recently is like the idea of of
Speaker 1: terra firma, you know, of the solid ground beneath our feet.
Speaker 1: And when I think about this, i'ten find it a
Speaker 1: bit weird because, on one hand, the idea of firm
Speaker 1: earth beneath us is truly reassuring, and knowing that the
Speaker 1: Earth is round only makes it more so, at least
Speaker 1: to my mind, because in some respects it means that
Speaker 1: it's Earth all the way down underneath this, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Earth might not be the center of the
Speaker 1: universe or even the Solar System, but the center of
Speaker 1: the Earth is still a center, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can't. The Earth can't like collapse and fall throw
Speaker 1: into a space beneath itself, because being a sphere, there
Speaker 1: is no space beneath it. You just you go down
Speaker 1: until you hit the center. Yeah. Now the sky, of course,
Speaker 1: and if you're in the sky, that that's not terra firma.
Speaker 1: And the same goes for the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that the ocean reminds us that terra
Speaker 1: firma isn't all it's cracked up to be. Much of
Speaker 1: of of Earth is crushed beneath an ocean, hidden in darkness,
Speaker 1: and other proportions are covered in ice or propelled so
Speaker 1: far up into the atmosphere by mountain peaks that it
Speaker 1: pushes beyond what is a reasonable environment for humans. Sure,
Speaker 1: and then when we think of other worlds, it gets
Speaker 1: even weirder. Right that gas giants uh boast no terra
Speaker 1: firma at all. And then there's Venus on Venus Terra
Speaker 1: firma or Venus firma more accurately would be a high pressure,
Speaker 1: high temperature hellscape, but higher up in its atmosphere or
Speaker 1: you know, in or above the clouds of Venus. This
Speaker 1: is the region, ironically, that we might find metaphorical terra
Speaker 1: firma on the planet that is Terra's strange sibling. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: interesting thought. Okay, so we're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Venus today. Uh. Now, this is this is
Speaker 1: a subject that's not entirely new to us. We've visited
Speaker 1: this in uh some explorations before we did one episode
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago about the possibility of life
Speaker 1: on Venus, where we discussed the pros and cons and
Speaker 1: various scientific speculation about what form that could take if
Speaker 1: it were to exist. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: kept coming up there was about the difference between the
Speaker 1: surface of Venus and the atmosphere of Venus um and so, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should just do a brief refresher on on
Speaker 1: Venus itself. Tell me about the planet, like, I'm going
Speaker 1: on a blind date with Venus? What what? What have
Speaker 1: you got to sell me on this? Alright, So, Venus
Speaker 1: is the second planet from the Sun, and it's just
Speaker 1: slightly smaller than Earth size and surface area is quite
Speaker 1: similar to our own world, and in any ways it
Speaker 1: can be seen as an alternative Earth. The two planets
Speaker 1: may have had very similar origins, but they parted ways
Speaker 1: on ago. Venus may have once had oceans, and may
Speaker 1: have once or even still we'll get into this supported
Speaker 1: life forms. But today it's this dully lit, high pressure
Speaker 1: world with volcanic mountains and ashen planes are runaway. Greenhouse
Speaker 1: effect boiled away the oceans long ago and they were
Speaker 1: lost to space. There are no plate tectonics that we
Speaker 1: know of on Venus, and it's volcanoes to spring up
Speaker 1: wherever instead of emerging along plate borders as they do
Speaker 1: on Earth. The high pressure, high temperature atmosphere is more
Speaker 1: than nine carbon dioxide and three point five percent molecular nitrogen,
Speaker 1: with trace amounts of other gases. If you're standing on
Speaker 1: the surface of Venus, it would be roughly ninety times
Speaker 1: the pressure of sea level on Earth. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's going to vary depending on altitude, but that's sort
Speaker 1: of the ballpark. The clouds are often described as being
Speaker 1: concentrated sulfuric acid, or more specifically sulfur dioxide with drops
Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid within it. Yes, that that is what
Speaker 1: the mist is, so it's a carbon dioxide atmosphere, but
Speaker 1: the droplets that are suspended to make the clouds sulfuric
Speaker 1: acid have fun Batman. So when we we think about Venus,
Speaker 1: one of the cool things that we've touched on this
Speaker 1: before is that when we think about life on Venus,
Speaker 1: either life that could still reside there now, native life,
Speaker 1: or the possibility, which we'll get into later in the
Speaker 1: episode of of its sustaining our life in one way
Speaker 1: or another. We end up not looking to that hell
Speaker 1: hellish surface to the actual Venus firma. No, Instead we
Speaker 1: look to the clouds above, or even the space a
Speaker 1: little above the clouds. Yes, And this brings us to
Speaker 1: one of the main things that we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about today, which was that there was what looks like
Speaker 1: some really major news on the subject of possible life
Speaker 1: on Venus just a couple of months ago. So the
Speaker 1: story turned out to be one of those cases of
Speaker 1: possible scientific whiplash. But we'll get into the complications as
Speaker 1: we move on. But but let's just take a look.
Speaker 1: If you're ready, let's do it. Okay, So, for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: the reasons we've just been talking about, the surface of
Speaker 1: Venus is just clearly sterile. There is no way you
Speaker 1: would expect to find any kind of organized life form
Speaker 1: living at I was gonna say sea level, not sea level.
Speaker 1: The surface level of Venus. You know, again, temperatures over
Speaker 1: nine degrees fahrenheits somewhere between like four hundred and five
Speaker 1: hundred degrees celsius. Extreme pressure like you just had something
Speaker 1: like ninety or hundred times the atmospheric pressure at sea
Speaker 1: level on Earth. It's sort of equivalent to going like,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of meters down under the water, very
Speaker 1: very high pressure um. It is difficult to imagine under
Speaker 1: these conditions that any sort of organized, self replicating structures
Speaker 1: would be able to survive, and there are a few
Speaker 1: reasons for that. One thing is that you know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: information containing molecules tend to be pretty fragile and they
Speaker 1: would be probably disrupted by heat of that kind. Also,
Speaker 1: you can't have water there, and it's hard for us
Speaker 1: to imagine what a life form that did not incorporate
Speaker 1: water would look like, because water is a very Water
Speaker 1: is the necessary solvent that makes the existence of cells possible,
Speaker 1: allows it allows the transportation of different types of nutrients
Speaker 1: and molecules across membranes and stuff like that. Like, you
Speaker 1: can't have life as we know it without water, and
Speaker 1: you can't have water on the surface of Venus. But
Speaker 1: as we've discussed on the show before, it is not
Speaker 1: impossible to imagine that life could exist higher up in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of Venus. So this would be micro organisms
Speaker 1: floating in the clouds where at higher altitudes the climate
Speaker 1: is relatively temperate, and this would not even be without
Speaker 1: precedent and known biology. We're not talking about some kind
Speaker 1: of organism that is unimaginable from from the perspective of
Speaker 1: Earth life, because here on Earth there are bacteria such
Speaker 1: as a Pseudomonas syringy that are thought to be present
Speaker 1: at higher altitudes floating within cloud I've even read about
Speaker 1: interesting speculation that these bacteria floating in the clouds could
Speaker 1: affect weather patterns by serving as ice nucleation points that
Speaker 1: lead to precipitation. To think about that, like, what if
Speaker 1: the weather is being affected by germs up in the sky,
Speaker 1: and the idea of microbes floating in the clouds of
Speaker 1: Venus would even explain if it were true some observed
Speaker 1: features of Venus that that we don't fully know how
Speaker 1: to explain otherwise. Uh. David Grinspoon has written about this,
Speaker 1: and he's a former show guest. We we've talked to
Speaker 1: him a little bit about the signs of life on
Speaker 1: Venus that that pre date the paper that was published
Speaker 1: this year, things like recurring patterns of darkening observed in
Speaker 1: the clouds. Do you remember any of the other specifics
Speaker 1: he gets into about that. I mean that that's one
Speaker 1: of the big one that's one of the ones we
Speaker 1: ended up focusing on. Yeah, this is this idea that
Speaker 1: it it almost thinks makes you think about all some
Speaker 1: sort of u you know, plankton type life form thriving
Speaker 1: in the in the atmosp here. They're like atmospheric algal
Speaker 1: blooms or something. Yeah. Um. But the other thing is
Speaker 1: that there is evidence that Venus was quite possibly once
Speaker 1: more hospitable than it is now. You mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 1: the possibility of surface water. Now there is definitely not
Speaker 1: surface water on Venus right now would instantly boil, But
Speaker 1: the evidence makes it look highly plausible that Venus once
Speaker 1: had liquid water at its surface, even oceans, maybe as
Speaker 1: recently as a billion years ago or so. That's not ah,
Speaker 1: I believe that's not a known fact, but it seems
Speaker 1: highly plausible. So if there once was a full biosphere
Speaker 1: on Venus that was eventually wiped out at the surface
Speaker 1: level by the runaway greenhouse effect, it's possible that the
Speaker 1: last remnant of that archaic biological world is microorganisms that
Speaker 1: can live their whole lives floating in the clouds. Though
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that these clouds again consist primarily of
Speaker 1: suspended droplets of sulfuric acid. So these would need to
Speaker 1: be special kinds of extremophile type organisms. Now, while these
Speaker 1: possibilities are very cool, this has always been totally speculative
Speaker 1: right there. There has never been any actual, direct, strong
Speaker 1: evidence for the presence of life on Venus. There has.
Speaker 1: It's just been that we've observed things that could be
Speaker 1: consistent with the presence of life in interesting and surprising ways.
Speaker 1: That is their space for life as we know it,
Speaker 1: within what we know of Venus. Yeah, and the answer is, well,
Speaker 1: maybe more space than you might think. That we didn't
Speaker 1: have direct evidence that would say it looks like there
Speaker 1: is life. That picture got a little bit more complicated
Speaker 1: in September of this year. Uh Now, there's going to
Speaker 1: be a very big caveat coming with this paper. But
Speaker 1: first I just want to present the evidence that we
Speaker 1: that emerged back in September. And so there is a
Speaker 1: paper published in Nature Astronomy in September by Jane Grieves,
Speaker 1: Anita Ms Richards, William Baines, Paul by Rimmer, Hideosagawa, David L. Clemens,
Speaker 1: and Sarah Seeger at All called Phosphine Gas in the
Speaker 1: Cloud Decks of Venus. Now, this paper deals with UH
Speaker 1: analysis of spectral data collected through a couple of telescopes.
Speaker 1: So the lead author, Jane Grieves of Cardiff University and
Speaker 1: colleagues collected data through two major telescopes, the James Clark
Speaker 1: Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array
Speaker 1: in Chile. And what the study reported was that they
Speaker 1: had used spectral analysis of venus to find something really
Speaker 1: intriguing about the gas is present in the atmosphere. And
Speaker 1: what they found was at an altitude of roughly fifty
Speaker 1: kilometers above the surface. I think it was like fifty
Speaker 1: five kilometers in a concentration of about twenty parts per
Speaker 1: billion a gas called phosphene or pH three. That's one
Speaker 1: phosphorus them with three hydrogen atoms. Now the chemistry nerds
Speaker 1: out there, or the breaking bad nerds out there will alike, no,
Speaker 1: that phosphine is just nasty, highly flammable, extremely toxic gas. UH.
Speaker 1: It's often found in conjunction with traces of die phosphine
Speaker 1: or P to H four, which makes it pyrophoric, so
Speaker 1: fond of automatically catching fire upon exposure to air at
Speaker 1: room temperature. Lovely UM. It is sometimes a product of
Speaker 1: human industry, for example, in the manufacture of semiconductors, or
Speaker 1: also in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Now no one is
Speaker 1: alleging that there are meth labs on Venus, but whatever
Speaker 1: the cause, this was a much higher level of phosphine
Speaker 1: gas than you would expect to find. At about twenty
Speaker 1: parts per billion, this is something like three orders of
Speaker 1: magnitude more phosphine than you would find in Earth's atmosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: why is it interesting to find phosphine at that concentration.
Speaker 1: You know, different planets have gases in their atmosphere at
Speaker 1: different levels. You know, Venus has much more carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and its atmosphere than Earth does. So so what what's
Speaker 1: the deal with phosphine? Why would that catch our attention? Well,
Speaker 1: in short, the presence of high levels of phosphine gas
Speaker 1: represent a dis equilibrium. Phosphine gas is something that's kind
Speaker 1: of inherently unstable and digestible by physical processes, you know,
Speaker 1: exposure to ultra violet light and chemical reactions with other things.
Speaker 1: Phosphine gas should just naturally sort of get eliminated from atmospheres.
Speaker 1: And this ties in with something we talked about in
Speaker 1: one of our recent anthology of Horror episodes, when we
Speaker 1: were talking about looking for signatures of a shadow biosphere
Speaker 1: on Earth. Some of the researchers there, for example, I
Speaker 1: think the planetary scientist or I can't remember she's a
Speaker 1: planetary scientist or an astronomer, but the scientist Caroline Porko.
Speaker 1: I was talking about how if you were looking for
Speaker 1: signs of a shadow biosphere, you would want to find
Speaker 1: and environments that are at a disequilibrium, things that are
Speaker 1: out of whack with like quantities of chemicals that don't
Speaker 1: seem like they would just naturally settle at that level.
Speaker 1: And I was trying to come up with a good
Speaker 1: analogy to explain why it's weird to find phosphene like
Speaker 1: this on on Venus. And so here's what I came
Speaker 1: up with. I hope this is somewhat appropriate. Imagine you
Speaker 1: live in Florida and you go out for a walk
Speaker 1: on a hot summer day in July. It's degrees out,
Speaker 1: a hundred percent humidity, and you're walking your dog along
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, and you notice that every twenty feet or
Speaker 1: so down the sidewalk there's just a big old hunk
Speaker 1: of ice sitting on the pavement. All right, Well, that
Speaker 1: that would be suspect. I think, Yeah, something weird exactly
Speaker 1: Florida weird but weird. Right, Yeah, the ice could be
Speaker 1: the result of a Florida man. That that would explain it.
Speaker 1: It would not make a lot of sense, even though
Speaker 1: not ice does form naturally in the environment on Earth,
Speaker 1: it would not makes sense, given the conditions outside in
Speaker 1: this Florida neighborhood to assume, oh, this is a chunk
Speaker 1: of polar ice that happens to be left over from
Speaker 1: the last glacial maximum period, right, because like the the
Speaker 1: environmental conditions would have already like digested and recycled that ice.
Speaker 1: The ice is unstable enough given the surrounding conditions that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect it to just be there from a
Speaker 1: previous freeze over right. It Also, it wouldn't even make
Speaker 1: sense to say, well, it hailed one time last winter,
Speaker 1: so the ice is just sitting here left over from that. No,
Speaker 1: it would mean somebody he's going around spilling ice all
Speaker 1: over the place, or or leaving ice on purpose on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk. Yeah, there's something that there's got to be
Speaker 1: some kind of anomalous process that's putting the ice there,
Speaker 1: and so back to Venus. If phosphine gas were truly
Speaker 1: present at something like twenty parts per billion, you would
Speaker 1: have to assume that something was continuously putting that phosphine there.
Speaker 1: And while it's possible the explanation was some geochemical or
Speaker 1: photochemical process that we don't understand yet, a very interesting
Speaker 1: candidate explanation was microbial life, because here on Earth, phosphene
Speaker 1: is when it's not made by humans, it is almost
Speaker 1: always the byproduct of microbial life, especially anaerobic microbial life.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you go way back to you know,
Speaker 1: I don't remember how many years ago, this is now
Speaker 1: like five or six years ago, we did some Halloween
Speaker 1: episodes on the Will of the Whisp. Remember that there
Speaker 1: would be you know, the legend of there's a light
Speaker 1: in the bog that leads a traveler off the path,
Speaker 1: and it's often attributed to a spirit or a devil.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a visual leshy. It's fairy fire, it's
Speaker 1: the the elf fire, the Hinky Puck or Hinky Punk.
Speaker 1: Is it Punker Puck. I don't remember. I can't remember
Speaker 1: if it's Punker Puck. Yeah, I remember the Will of
Speaker 1: the whisp. Basically, the idea of the will of the
Speaker 1: wisp has so many strange and curious names. It's that
Speaker 1: it's been given over the years in different caled That
Speaker 1: episode was a lot of fun, by the way, and
Speaker 1: you have to go back and revisit that sometime. But
Speaker 1: so people have tried to offer plausible physical explanations for
Speaker 1: sightings of the willow the whisp. Why is it that
Speaker 1: so many people reports seeing a you know, a blue
Speaker 1: or green light in the swamp that's dancing around as
Speaker 1: if it's a lantern carried by a ghost, And a
Speaker 1: lot of these physical explanations for that phenomena involve phosphine gas.
Speaker 1: Often the explanation is some variation on well, there's the
Speaker 1: bog or a bunch of mud, and there's rotting vegetation,
Speaker 1: and and maybe bones from animals down there that are
Speaker 1: being consumed and metabolized by anaerobic bacteria, which produced phosphine
Speaker 1: gas is a byproduct, and then this phosphine gas, in
Speaker 1: the presence of die phosphine or p to H four
Speaker 1: is sort of burping up out of the earth and
Speaker 1: is sometimes spontaneously ignited on contact with the air, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just producing a sort of cool blue or
Speaker 1: green glow without necessarily catching on fire. But it's in
Speaker 1: the presence of some of some of the pyrophoric gas,
Speaker 1: and whatever is going on here, this glowing or chemoluminescent
Speaker 1: luminescent cloud or this flame becomes the will of the wisp.
Speaker 1: But whether or not that is the the actual explanation
Speaker 1: for will of the whisp sightings, It is absolutely true
Speaker 1: that anaerobic bacteria decomposing organic matter down in the bog
Speaker 1: will produce phosphine gas. That's just something that's known that
Speaker 1: they're known to do. Another interesting coincidence, the authors proposed
Speaker 1: that the phosphine gas detected in Venus's atmosphere was that
Speaker 1: altitudes of around fifty kilometers or like fifty kilometers. This
Speaker 1: also happens to be an altitude where environmental conditions are
Speaker 1: much more tolerable on Venus, around thirty degrees celsius or
Speaker 1: something like eighty something degrees fahrenheit and a pressure similar
Speaker 1: to Earth's atmosphere. Yeah, this is one of the key
Speaker 1: layers on Venus that we're often looking at when we're
Speaker 1: actually sending some sort of a probe there or planning
Speaker 1: for possible missions to Venus in the future, right, and
Speaker 1: so if this phosphine gas was a byproduct of the
Speaker 1: metabolism of some type of microbe, one possibility that was discussed,
Speaker 1: and this was quoted in an m I. T. Tech
Speaker 1: Review article I was reading. This is from Jane Grieves,
Speaker 1: the lead author on the study. She said, quote that
Speaker 1: suggests it's part of the global circulation pattern of the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: where gas sinks before it travels as far as the polls.
Speaker 1: So I guess a question would be, well, could something
Speaker 1: else be putting the phosphine gas there? Like with the
Speaker 1: Florida example, Uh, is there something else that could account
Speaker 1: for chunks of ice being found along the sidewalk? And
Speaker 1: you could come up with explanations. You could say, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, maybe there was some kind of
Speaker 1: upper atmosphere phenomena, some kind of weird anomalous hail storm,
Speaker 1: and these things fell even though it's hot outside. It
Speaker 1: just happened recently. You could come up with things. Uh,
Speaker 1: for example, we know that some amount of phosphine gas
Speaker 1: is generated by a biotic you know, non organic processes
Speaker 1: deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter, but Jupiter is a
Speaker 1: gas giant, and the phosphine there is produced under conditions
Speaker 1: that do not seem to be possible on Venus, at
Speaker 1: least as far as we know. So. Could it be
Speaker 1: produced by lightning or space impacts or volcanoes or some
Speaker 1: other high energy phenomena like that. Well, again, this was
Speaker 1: analyzed by the authors of the paper, and it looks
Speaker 1: like no, not as far as we know nothing. No,
Speaker 1: a biotic process we're aware of seems capable of explaining
Speaker 1: the amounts of phosphine found. So, basically, if if the
Speaker 1: findings in this original study from September are correct, there
Speaker 1: is anomalous gas present in the atmosphere of Venus, and
Speaker 1: we don't know of any photochemical or geochemical process that
Speaker 1: could have put it there in the amount that we
Speaker 1: find it. And on Earth the same gas is often
Speaker 1: the byproduct of microbial life. If so, this is not
Speaker 1: by any means proof of alien life, but it is
Speaker 1: extremely tantalizing from an astrobiological point of view. Again, kind
Speaker 1: of widens the space possible for life to exist. We
Speaker 1: would say more than that, I mean it says, here's
Speaker 1: something we observe and we know it could be explained
Speaker 1: by life and nothing else that we know of would
Speaker 1: seem to explain it very well. Yeah, but to be
Speaker 1: very clear, this is not proof. And I was reading
Speaker 1: an article in Chemical and Engineering News by Arianna Remmel
Speaker 1: who quotes an astro chemist who who had some good
Speaker 1: thoughts here. So I just want to read a quote
Speaker 1: from this article. Anthony Remission, and astro chemist to the
Speaker 1: National Radio Astronomy Observatory who is not involved in the study,
Speaker 1: says the team did a fantastic job presenting their findings,
Speaker 1: but he remains skeptical. Scientists need more spectral data to
Speaker 1: verify that the signal comes from pH three. Remission says quote,
Speaker 1: but it's a first good step in that direction. As
Speaker 1: for what could produce phosphine on venus, he says, we
Speaker 1: need a better understanding of the fundamental chemistry forming these
Speaker 1: types of molecules before calling it a biosignature. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so praise for the study, but you know,
Speaker 1: caution tempering the optimism. It's not like we know there
Speaker 1: are aliens there now. And when this study was first
Speaker 1: published in September, people got really excited. A lot of
Speaker 1: listeners asked us directly to cover this on the show,
Speaker 1: especially since we've done episodes on the possibility of life
Speaker 1: on venus before and it was really cool. But I
Speaker 1: figured we should wait for the experts to chew on
Speaker 1: this a little more before we did an episode about it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad we did wait, because while this finding
Speaker 1: remains very interesting and is by no means totally overturned,
Speaker 1: subsequent research is making the picture look more complicated and
Speaker 1: less clear. So there are reports of at least three studies,
Speaker 1: at least one of which involves one of the same
Speaker 1: authors as the original study, and this they tried to
Speaker 1: confirm the presence of phosphine, and of these three, all
Speaker 1: three failed to confirm it. Now, I don't know if
Speaker 1: all of them are published yet. I think at least
Speaker 1: one of them is. But these are media reports I
Speaker 1: was reading in for example, the M I. T. Tech
Speaker 1: Review and in National Geographic that we're based off of
Speaker 1: reports from preprint versions of these studies, So, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not fully confirmed yet, but there are at least
Speaker 1: some questions that are arising. And the basic issue is
Speaker 1: they're looking to confirm the signs of phosphine in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and they're not necessarily finding it so one tried
Speaker 1: to look for signs of phosphine and older archival observations
Speaker 1: of Venus and didn't find it. A couple of others
Speaker 1: processed the same raw data from the September study, just
Speaker 1: using a different mathematical analysis method, different method for crunching
Speaker 1: the numbers, and they didn't find the same strong indications
Speaker 1: for the presence of phosphine. Now, these differences could be
Speaker 1: as the initial study was mistaken, or there could be
Speaker 1: other reasons. For example, in the one where they look
Speaker 1: at the archival data and don't find the same thing. Well,
Speaker 1: it could be that maybe there are cycles in which
Speaker 1: the presence of phosphine gas spikes at certain times in
Speaker 1: certain places in history on Venus. So from what I've
Speaker 1: been reading now, it's not as simple as yes there
Speaker 1: is phosphine or no there is not. It looks like
Speaker 1: at this point it remains a complicated, unsettled question, and
Speaker 1: we need more research. So what would be really great
Speaker 1: would just be, like, you know, go to Venus and
Speaker 1: settle this whole thing. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and of
Speaker 1: course they're there are two ways of considering that. One
Speaker 1: of course, is send more missions to Venus uh, and
Speaker 1: of course, there are a number of those either planned
Speaker 1: or in sort of aplete pre planning pre approval phase.
Speaker 1: And then, of course there's the the ultimate dream, right,
Speaker 1: the idea of sending human explorers to Venus. Uh, perhaps
Speaker 1: even as a first human venture to another world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's just impossible not to be excited by these
Speaker 1: these ideas. So for the rest of the episode, I
Speaker 1: thought we might talk about some of the more exciting
Speaker 1: concepts out there involving humans visiting or even staying for
Speaker 1: an extended amount of time in the atmosphere of Venus.
Speaker 1: And to kick this off, I want to read a
Speaker 1: quote from David Grinspoon in his book Venus Revealed. This
Speaker 1: is from chapter six, and you can actually read this
Speaker 1: entire chapter, I believe, at his website Funky Science dot
Speaker 1: net um because he's dr what was his his his
Speaker 1: r H. Come on, David, I love your work, but
Speaker 1: that's oh, I think Funky Funky Spoon works. You're done
Speaker 1: with that branding? Okay, yeah, yeah, I hope it works.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, Grinspoon writes the following quote, I have
Speaker 1: a fantasy of cloud cities on Venus, huge and closed
Speaker 1: habitats suspended from giant balloons at a certain altitude where
Speaker 1: the temperature and pressure would be comfortable for us. We
Speaker 1: would mostly just have to keep the air fresh, maybe
Speaker 1: by collecting solar energy to make oxygen from C O two,
Speaker 1: or better yet, growing plants to do the job for us.
Speaker 1: Why should we bother to do such a thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know. These could be research stations, or maybe there
Speaker 1: will be some economic incentive, something rare or beautiful found
Speaker 1: only on Venus, or maybe in the very long run,
Speaker 1: after we have solved all our major problems here on Earth,
Speaker 1: we will go just for the hell of it, because
Speaker 1: it is there. I'm hoping the reason that we set
Speaker 1: up colonies on Venus does not become a phosphene harvesting
Speaker 1: enterprise where we're that's trying to get as much poisoned
Speaker 1: gas as we can. Yeah, I mean maybe the secret
Speaker 1: math reserves, so the reason we go there, I know. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think this is a wonderful quote from from
Speaker 1: Grimsman because he's you know, he's he's he's very much
Speaker 1: a scientist, but he also has this this this just
Speaker 1: raw you know, wonder and sound of science fictional curiosity too,
Speaker 1: you know, just like like imagine what it would be
Speaker 1: like if we were there, and and we've we've had
Speaker 1: various versions of this in our science fiction over the years.
Speaker 1: And you see other spins on this too, right, I
Speaker 1: mean even Star Wars you have the best spin, which
Speaker 1: I believe is a gas giant in the Star Wars universe.
Speaker 1: But you have a cloud city there. You have a
Speaker 1: city floating in the sky. I mean, there's a few
Speaker 1: things more amazing. It seems hard to imagine that you
Speaker 1: could actually have a city floating over a gas giant,
Speaker 1: because I would think a gas giant would tend to
Speaker 1: admit levels of radiation that would kill everybody in the
Speaker 1: cloud city. Blando has it cleaned up rather nicely though
Speaker 1: it looks looks pretty swank. Well. Um, all this made
Speaker 1: me wonder. I was thinking to myself, what is the
Speaker 1: earliest example of science fiction pondering, um, habitats within the
Speaker 1: clouds of Venus or something like that, And I was
Speaker 1: looking around. I didn't I didn't find anybody doing the
Speaker 1: work for me on this, like conclusively, Um, trying to
Speaker 1: answer this question. Maybe I just missed it. Uh, in
Speaker 1: all things, isn't all things? I'm happy to be corrected.
Speaker 1: On this if I'm wrong, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: possible answer comes from astronomer and sci fi author Garrett P. Service,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book in nineteen o nine titled A
Speaker 1: Columbus of Space, Uh, which I think you know in
Speaker 1: n nine would have had nicer connotations for the before
Speaker 1: the historical reassessment of Columbus. Yeah. So basically, this is
Speaker 1: about a human explorer who travels to Venus in an
Speaker 1: atomic spaceship to explore the planet, and there he encounters
Speaker 1: two different psychic species, a sort of morlock species that
Speaker 1: lives on the planet's surface and another species that lives
Speaker 1: in the clouds that are are basically humans or englishmen. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can find this This full book is available on
Speaker 1: Project Gutenberg if you look it up. But I just
Speaker 1: want to read it. Just a quick exchange here between
Speaker 1: two characters. This is after they have arrived in their
Speaker 1: atomic rocket ship on into the atmosphere of Venus, and
Speaker 1: one says to the other, those are airships. Airships, Yes,
Speaker 1: surely an exploring expedition. I shouldn't wonder I anticipated something
Speaker 1: of that kind. You know already how dense the atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Venus is. It follows that balloons and all sorts
Speaker 1: of machines for aerial navigation can float much more easily
Speaker 1: here than over on Earth. I was prepared to find
Speaker 1: the inhabitants of Venus skilled in such things, and I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised by what do we see. So I also
Speaker 1: just love the spirit of that. It's like, yeah, just
Speaker 1: as I imagined, they are flying ships on Venus full
Speaker 1: of englishmen. Um, this is exactly as I thought I
Speaker 1: it would it would This is exactly how I thought
Speaker 1: it would pan out. I like your Venus voice too. Now,
Speaker 1: why is he saying that they can float much more
Speaker 1: easily on Venus than over the Earth. Is that because
Speaker 1: it was understood at the time that the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: Venus was denser than Earth's atmosphere. Yeah, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that's the case here. Like I said, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't hold up too much, um, modern scrutiny. It's
Speaker 1: very you know, it's it's very much old timey science fiction.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing is, you see a lot
Speaker 1: of that. The the Golden Age of science fiction is
Speaker 1: a time where, yes, we were gazing at at Mars
Speaker 1: and and Venus and wondering what was their dreaming of
Speaker 1: canals on Mars and so forth. Um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time it was a period in which we were
Speaker 1: enraptured by the technology of flight, of powered human flight,
Speaker 1: and so even in is it was even as we
Speaker 1: see modern retreatments of of this idea, we see that
Speaker 1: Golden Age enthusiasm, uh kind of creep in. For instance,
Speaker 1: there's a short story that I ran across. I haven't read,
Speaker 1: but it was published in two thousand ten in Asimovs.
Speaker 1: It's fiction by Jeffrey A. Landis, who's not only a
Speaker 1: hard science fiction author but a NASA aerospace engineer, and
Speaker 1: he wrote of what is apparently a kind of like
Speaker 1: Golden Age um flavored sci fi tail about there being
Speaker 1: habitats and ships, uh in the atmosphere of Venus, Like
Speaker 1: I think it has princesses and all. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: a very kind of Edgar Rice Burrows and its presentation.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, cool swashbuckling. Maybe I would hope for swashbuckling. Buckling.
Speaker 1: You know, that's gotta be a sword fights on a
Speaker 1: platform over the atmosphere of Venus. That's bad news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all part of the Golden age zeal
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is piranhas. Now the cool thing about balloons
Speaker 1: on Venus is you don't have to go to science
Speaker 1: fiction to to think about them and to read about them.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is look into space exploration history,
Speaker 1: because we have sent balloons to Venus. So back in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union sent its Vega mission uh to uh
Speaker 1: to Earth's hot uh neighbor here. So in addition to
Speaker 1: a lander, Vega featured two instrumental balloons that traveled roughly
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the way around the planet had an
Speaker 1: altitude of around fifty four kilometers. Sensors in a gondola
Speaker 1: attached to these balloons recorded such stats as pressure, temperature,
Speaker 1: vertical wind velocity like that was apparently one of the
Speaker 1: the interesting findings from that they got within these vertical
Speaker 1: uh you know, wind columns, and then you had clown
Speaker 1: particle back scatter, ambient light level, and lightning frequency. These
Speaker 1: were essentially aerobots uh. Now, they only made it thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the way around because they ran out of batteries,
Speaker 1: but they provided battery power, but they provided some interesting
Speaker 1: data before they went offline. Now, there were other atmospheric
Speaker 1: probes from the U S and the U S S
Speaker 1: are prior to this. But for instance, the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe,
Speaker 1: it didn't even use a parachute. It was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, cutting down through the atmosphere and collecting data
Speaker 1: on the way down. And we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before. One of my favorite collections of images from
Speaker 1: from space exploration is the surfaces of Venus that were
Speaker 1: sent back by the Soviet Venera Lander. Did the Venera
Speaker 1: Lander use a balloon to descend? I was trying. I
Speaker 1: don't believe. So I believe that the Vega was the
Speaker 1: was the first use of balloons on on Venus. Now,
Speaker 1: in looking now, of course, parachutes are kind of an
Speaker 1: additional um category, uh to consider. So I was looking
Speaker 1: around for what are some of the proposed Venus missions
Speaker 1: Venus missions that may be undertaken in the near or
Speaker 1: eventual future that will feature balloons or parachutes. So I
Speaker 1: thought I might mention a few before getting to the
Speaker 1: one that really excites me. So, first of all, there's
Speaker 1: not to say that these are these are these are
Speaker 1: not all exciting because they are exciting any kind of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, future exploration of Venus. Is it just inherently um,
Speaker 1: they is thing, But you have NASA's DA Vinci. This
Speaker 1: is the Deep Atmosphere of Venus Investigation of Noble Gases,
Speaker 1: Chemistry and Imaging UM. And this one is currently shortlisted,
Speaker 1: So it's it seems like it it may well come
Speaker 1: to pass. And and if it does, it will entail
Speaker 1: a parachute probe that descends through the atmosphere and collects
Speaker 1: a data on the way down. Okay, so that that
Speaker 1: one should be a big one. There's also the Venus
Speaker 1: Inset to Explore or Vice. This is a proposed lander
Speaker 1: that would then release a meteor a loot meteorology balloon
Speaker 1: I believe from the surface. So the meteorology balloon would
Speaker 1: be released once the lander has made it down. I
Speaker 1: might be wrong on that, but that's the the basic
Speaker 1: idea that I'm getting from what I was reading about it. UH.
Speaker 1: This has been proposed since two thousand three by the
Speaker 1: Planetary Science UH Decadel Survey. It hasn't made the cut yet,
Speaker 1: but in the future it may. There's also Chuck gray
Speaker 1: In one, a proposed Indian Space Research Organization i s
Speaker 1: r OH mission to Venus that would likely feature a
Speaker 1: Vega esque probe. Shookra, by the way, is the name
Speaker 1: for Venus in Sanskrit, so that's where they get it.
Speaker 1: I think the name like literally means uh Venus craft
Speaker 1: or something to that effect. Interesting. Another really cool one
Speaker 1: is and I think this one may have come up
Speaker 1: on the show before is uh. Northrop Grumman and l
Speaker 1: guards proposed mission and it is the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable
Speaker 1: Platform or VAMP. It looks like a futuristic well I
Speaker 1: would say, actually kind of best spin cloud city type
Speaker 1: airplane with with big wings going out on the sides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's basically. The cool thing is it's kind of
Speaker 1: a an update of an idea that Northrop Grumman has
Speaker 1: been putting out for decades, and that is the flying Wing.
Speaker 1: It is an inflatable The concept is an inflatable flying
Speaker 1: wing aerobot that would also boast solar arrays on the
Speaker 1: top and it would UH and it would use those
Speaker 1: for its power, along with some combination of batteries and
Speaker 1: a generator that I think have maybe not quite been
Speaker 1: developed yet. It would be propeller driven and it would
Speaker 1: be fully controllable, though not in real time uh. And
Speaker 1: this would be during the day. So during the day
Speaker 1: when the sunlight is able to power it up to
Speaker 1: full power. Uh, it would be soaring up to altitudes
Speaker 1: of seventy kilometers above the surface, taking advantage of the
Speaker 1: solar intensity above the clouds. And then at night it
Speaker 1: would power down and dip down to a cruising floating
Speaker 1: altitude of around fifty six kilometers. Oh, that's funny. So
Speaker 1: it's nighttime floating altitude might be right around where the
Speaker 1: phosphene was allegedly found if it wasn't found. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: at that point it would just be cruising or just floating.
Speaker 1: Now also interesting, the vamp would actually uh. The idea
Speaker 1: is that the vamp would probably inflate in space and
Speaker 1: enter the atmosphere without an aero shell, so without this
Speaker 1: kind of sarcophagus to hold it to protect it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Quote large surface area is benign heating loads during entry
Speaker 1: and this would of course, I'll be supported by an
Speaker 1: accompanying satellite and the vamp would last four months to
Speaker 1: possibly a year, eventually losing out to the gradual loss
Speaker 1: of the buoyant gas inside it. Than but wait, I
Speaker 1: think we're about to get to your to your real
Speaker 1: baby here, right. Yeah, this is the one that I
Speaker 1: read a little bit about and then I got excited
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh man, this we had to
Speaker 1: go back to Venus and that is Havoc h A
Speaker 1: V O C. This is what's got you sending your
Speaker 1: your harassing letters to NASA, Like do that do Havoc now?
Speaker 1: Havoc is this? This is one of those proposed missions
Speaker 1: where you read about it and it's is, it's is.
Speaker 1: It's as exciting as any movie or or television show
Speaker 1: or sci fi short story you might come across, because
Speaker 1: it's it's unique and thrilling, and it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: the type of person who would do it, but you
Speaker 1: know they exist. I mean, this is the type of
Speaker 1: of of of human being that goes on on a
Speaker 1: space mission. But yeah, this is the HAVOC high altitude
Speaker 1: venous operational concept. And there are essentially two different versions
Speaker 1: of it. One is the robotic version that would be
Speaker 1: the the necessary precursor to the second variety, which would
Speaker 1: be a crude NASA venous mission. So to be clear,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a mission concept. It's not
Speaker 1: something that's like on track to to actually launch or
Speaker 1: be produced right now, but it's sort of like it's
Speaker 1: on the menu of things that could be selected for
Speaker 1: future missions. Right we would the Havoc project itself, if
Speaker 1: it were to come to pass, there would be like
Speaker 1: two or three. There would be multiple missions which I'll
Speaker 1: get into leading up to humans actually going. But also
Speaker 1: it would not be our next venous mission. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: under any circumstances like this, this is something we might
Speaker 1: be able to do in the future. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: embarrassed to say. I while I was reading about this,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but keep thinking about There was this
Speaker 1: terrible video game. Do you remember the Command and Conquer
Speaker 1: first person shooter? Oh? I don't know that I do.
Speaker 1: What what what system era was this? I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think I played it on PC many many years ago.
Speaker 1: So Commanding Conquered games are like real time strategy games.
Speaker 1: You move all these like little troops around and stuff.
Speaker 1: But they made one game in the series that's set
Speaker 1: in the same universe. But you played this like marine
Speaker 1: guy who it's the first person shooter and the guy
Speaker 1: you play is named Havoc. Very cool, and everybody's like Havoc.
Speaker 1: You you don't go off mission. You do as you're told.
Speaker 1: It's like shoot thing. General. Oh man, were you Were
Speaker 1: you good at the real time strategy games? No? No,
Speaker 1: because I was horrible at him. Like I wanted to
Speaker 1: love them. They put out these these really well put
Speaker 1: together Donald war games based on Fort K stuff, and
Speaker 1: I really wanted to love them, but I was just
Speaker 1: terrible at them. It was just like chaos and loss
Speaker 1: time I tried to play it at any level, just
Speaker 1: weeping and just watching the destruction of your forces and
Speaker 1: your empires. Yeah. I've never been an elite gamer of
Speaker 1: any kind whatsoever, So no, I'm not good at that
Speaker 1: or any other type of game. It just felt like
Speaker 1: too much multitasking. Like I, I like games where I
Speaker 1: can be specific and strategic, where I can pause and think.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why I'm more of a turn based
Speaker 1: strategy versus real time strategy. It's just I'll take the
Speaker 1: turn based anytime. You're a magic the gathering morlock. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not not any whatever real time magic is. That's just
Speaker 1: too too much pressure, all right, So so back to Havoca. Sorry,
Speaker 1: if that was a terrible digression, we can come down. No, no,
Speaker 1: it stays in um so basically, in essence, HAVOC entails
Speaker 1: the use of human exploration in the upper of the
Speaker 1: Nusian atmosphere aboard a helium airship. So this airship would
Speaker 1: be about a hundred or four three ft long thirty
Speaker 1: four meters or a hundred and eleven feet tall. So
Speaker 1: as the as it's as it's presented in one of
Speaker 1: the the PDFs that I came across, uh from, from
Speaker 1: the people putting it together, it would be about half
Speaker 1: the size of the Hindenburg, but twice as long as
Speaker 1: sort of your average goodyear blimp. I love that they're
Speaker 1: just reminding people of the Hindenburg in the proposal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't say a zeppelin, so so very much like
Speaker 1: whatever you're picturing in mind for like a blimp or
Speaker 1: a zeppelin or airship like that's basically the initial look
Speaker 1: of what they've proposed, but they're gonna be some key
Speaker 1: differences as well. So I propel propeller driven gondola on
Speaker 1: the bottom. You know, this is the habited habitable portion
Speaker 1: of it would contain both an atmospheric habitat for two
Speaker 1: crew members over twenty eight days, along with an ascent vehicle.
Speaker 1: Essentially a rocket within a habitat on the front of
Speaker 1: it that would, at the end of its time in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, allow the two crew members to rock it
Speaker 1: back to the transit vehicle in low of the Venusian
Speaker 1: orbit for the return trip. Oh that's interesting because so
Speaker 1: one of the big questions about crude missions to other
Speaker 1: planetary bodies like Mars or something like that is, you know,
Speaker 1: how are you going to leave the planet? How do
Speaker 1: you get back up off? So you would probably need
Speaker 1: to take some kind of rocket with you that would
Speaker 1: need to be able to attain escape velocity. I wonder
Speaker 1: is it easier to leave a planet if you're in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere as opposed on the surface. Of course it
Speaker 1: would be easier, right, You need less force, less thrust
Speaker 1: to escape from there than you would from the surface. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a different just a different scenario than you
Speaker 1: encounter thinking about these other planets or like Mars, or
Speaker 1: thinking about traveling to Earth's moon for example. Because again
Speaker 1: this is one of the crazy things. A trip like
Speaker 1: this to Venus would not entail actually setting foot on
Speaker 1: the planet. You would never go down to the true
Speaker 1: of Venus firma. Uh, you know, you would you would
Speaker 1: only be going into the upper atmosphere, hanging out there
Speaker 1: for like, you know, against something like twenty eight days,
Speaker 1: and then returning to low orbit from there. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: something that's not usually considered. Are we think of visiting
Speaker 1: other planets in a binary? You've got orbit and then
Speaker 1: you've got surface activity, and this would be in between.
Speaker 1: It's like if you were planning a visit to New
Speaker 1: York City but you're but you are, You aren't gonna
Speaker 1: actually travel to Times Square. You can only limit yourself
Speaker 1: to the very outer boroughs, right and then return home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just went on vacation to Queens. No, no disparaging
Speaker 1: Queens by the way, No, No, If anything, we should
Speaker 1: be disparaging Times Square like that. You shouldn't. Land Landing
Speaker 1: in Times Square is light landing on the surface of Venus?
Speaker 1: What were you thinking going in that deep? You need
Speaker 1: a rocket to escape the bubba gum shrimp. So I
Speaker 1: recommend that, you know, everyone look up pictures of the concept,
Speaker 1: the models they've put together for this, because it is great.
Speaker 1: It's like this, the gondola with the propellers. The ascent
Speaker 1: vehicle again looks very much like a cool rocket um
Speaker 1: harnessed behind it. It's very neat we In essence, we'd
Speaker 1: be talking about sending three habitats on the Havoc mission.
Speaker 1: So there'd be the transit habits habitat that the crew
Speaker 1: members would be in on the way to and from
Speaker 1: the planet Venus. This would be the space habitat. There
Speaker 1: would be the and then there would be the atmospheric
Speaker 1: habitat on the gondola. That would be where they'd spend
Speaker 1: in their twenty eight days and then or less depending
Speaker 1: on how it goes. And then the ascent habitat is
Speaker 1: the one on the front of that rocket, just to
Speaker 1: get them back up into orbit so they can get
Speaker 1: back into the transit habitat and return home. Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta say that does sound complicated. I think that you
Speaker 1: have a lot of moving pieces like that you introduce
Speaker 1: increasing difficulty into the mission, right, Yeah, because in all
Speaker 1: the mission would see the ship arrived at Venus, then
Speaker 1: drop an airship from low Venusian orbit on a parachute, okay,
Speaker 1: parachutes in towards the upper atmosphere. It's gonna drop its aeroshell,
Speaker 1: it's protective sarcophagus. It's gonna then unferral and inflate the
Speaker 1: helium blimp. It's going to drop the parachute altogether and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's going to carry out atmospheric activities for up
Speaker 1: to twenty eight days. Then when the time comes to leave,
Speaker 1: the two crew members hopping the ascent vehicle return to
Speaker 1: low Venusian orbit, leaving the airship to continue on for
Speaker 1: the duration of its life. Uh in the Venusian atmosphere.
Speaker 1: They get back in the transit vehicle and they return
Speaker 1: back to Earth. I hope the airship would get to
Speaker 1: send pictures back as it sinks down into the atmosphere
Speaker 1: gradually over time. I assume that would be part of it,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of using every part of the buffalo
Speaker 1: on the mission, you know, like planning out exactly what
Speaker 1: it's gonna do for the rest of its life. Now
Speaker 1: they see this being ultimately they're being five phases to
Speaker 1: this branch of of Venus x ration. So Phase one
Speaker 1: would be a robotic version of the same concept, just
Speaker 1: obviously do it without people and see how feasible it is.
Speaker 1: Phase two would be a thirty day mission to bring
Speaker 1: the crew to orbit around Venus, but then not deal
Speaker 1: with the atmosphere at all. Phase three would be a
Speaker 1: thirty day mission to bring the crew to the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and this would be the model we just discussed. Phase four,
Speaker 1: they touch on, would be a version that entails a
Speaker 1: one year voyage in the atmosphere, So like the next
Speaker 1: this is like the stretch goal for this particular project.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately Phase five would be the Grinspoon Special,
Speaker 1: a permanent human presence in Gondola habitats Um up there
Speaker 1: in the upper atmosphere of Venus, hopefully small enough that
Speaker 1: you don't fall under the jurisdiction of the Empire at all.
Speaker 1: So so advocates of this mission, and just Venus missions
Speaker 1: in general. They point out that the Venus has an
Speaker 1: induced magnetosphere from the interaction of its thick atmosphere with
Speaker 1: solar wind, and it's nearer proximity to the Sun brings
Speaker 1: it further within the Sun's magnetic field, so there's arguably
Speaker 1: less of a cosmic radiation risk compared to Mars. It's
Speaker 1: also easier to get to, making it, by some estimates,
Speaker 1: an ideal first step in reaching Mars Um. Now this
Speaker 1: I don't know. You may be getting into a little
Speaker 1: like team Venus versus Team Marsh competition here, something that
Speaker 1: Grinsman was talking about, you know, the legitimate rivalries there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but the shortest possible distance from Earth
Speaker 1: to Venus is something like thirty eight million kilometers versus
Speaker 1: fifty six million kilometers for Mars, and a year on
Speaker 1: Venus is much shorter, so you know, Christmas comes earlier there. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: we have to do have to stress though havoc as
Speaker 1: well as stuff like VAMP very much just mission concepts
Speaker 1: at this point. It's nothing on the books. Da Vinci
Speaker 1: I think is gonna probably be the project that gets
Speaker 1: the NOD next. We'll see how it goes. But either way,
Speaker 1: Venus missions are only an option every nineteen months. Because
Speaker 1: I mentioned that the closest distance we've touched on this before, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about going to head to another planet,
Speaker 1: it depends on where Earth is in relation to that planet,
Speaker 1: how long of a journey you're talking and you won't,
Speaker 1: of course, uh calculated so that you're making the shortest
Speaker 1: voyage possible to reach that other planet. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: as somebody who feels a lot of sympathy for the
Speaker 1: Venus partisans and the rivalries between the planetary scientists. I uh,
Speaker 1: I hope that the study from September of this year
Speaker 1: and and all the subsequent research, whether it turns out
Speaker 1: that there's good evidence for the presence of the phosphine
Speaker 1: gas or not, I hope this at least spurs more
Speaker 1: attention to Venus, Like it gets more unscrewed emissions there
Speaker 1: at least um to awaken the hunger for Venus knowledge
Speaker 1: among the people generally. Yeah, yeah, just to build public
Speaker 1: interest in Venus, like it's a strange and an exciting
Speaker 1: planet and and missions like I feel like avoc alone
Speaker 1: should be one of these programs that everyone should look at,
Speaker 1: because it makes me more excited about about Venus to
Speaker 1: just even think about people. Can you can you imagine?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the footage much less being there, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's a step too far from me to be
Speaker 1: imagine being aboard this vessel in the within the skies
Speaker 1: or kind of over the clouds of an alien world.
Speaker 1: But just see the footage of that that journey, that
Speaker 1: would be amazing. Totally agree. I can't wait to see
Speaker 1: where we where we go from here? Yeah? Is that
Speaker 1: the end? If we're if we're the doorways. Is it
Speaker 1: time to close ourselves on the way out? I guess
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, obviously we could talk more about Venus
Speaker 1: and and I hope we do talk more about Venus. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe we can we can get get
Speaker 1: Grinspin back on the program to talk about it. I
Speaker 1: know he discussed potentially writing more about Venus. That book
Speaker 1: that he wrote about Venus came out many years ago,
Speaker 1: so he's probably overdue for re exploration totally. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Um, what
Speaker 1: are your thoughts about Venus, Venus exploration or some of
Speaker 1: the missions we've talked about here. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: about the possibility of life in Venus? Do you have
Speaker 1: other examples of of early science fictional visions of balloons
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere of Venus? Uh? Let us know. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Likewise, just space science in
Speaker 1: general and other planets. Uh. Would you like us to
Speaker 1: do more episodes like this in the future. Is there
Speaker 1: a particular planet that we have not journeyed to that
Speaker 1: you would like us to visit? Reach out to us
Speaker 1: and let us know. Uh. In the meantime, just rate, review,
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Speaker 1: or stickers or toe bags or what have you with
Speaker 1: our logo on them, or some cool designs like a
Speaker 1: monster or a basilisk or a you know, Pandora uh
Speaker 1: opening up a box full of all the problems and
Speaker 1: the challenging ideas in the world. It's all there for
Speaker 1: you to consider. Still waiting on our Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: Mad Love Sausage Man T shirt that I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: will happen soon. All right, okay, huge, thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Parses has a farm, back by a