Why do we focus so much on Mars?
Shouldn't we be sending robots to Venus and other planetary-mass objects?
>>7722495
Mars is the most likely candidate to sustain life.
Because Mars is the next logical step in the human expansion into space. If something were to happen to the Earth, a colony in space should be able to sustain itself indefinitely. It's much much harder to do this on Venus than it is on Mars. Mars has readily available water and other resources and we can live on or under the surface. Venus has none of that, and even if it does, it's not easily accessible.
Venus is too dangerous. Mars is the most habitable planet for humans in the Solar System after Earth.
>>7722509
not Titan, with a dense atmosphere and surface lakes?
>>7722509
You mean Europa.
It's largely due politics at NASA. Firstly Mars enjoys it's own class of mission and dedicated funding after a failure killed the only Mars mission at the time. The goal was originally to build to a sample return by gradually increasing complexity. The sample return has been kicked down the road each decade due to complexity and cost, the Mars program lacks direction entirely at this point.
Now NASA politics is putting the emphasis on humans on Mars, the robotic program now fills a PR niche alongside diminishing scientific returns.
The InSight lander is the greatest insult as not only is it boring but also took funding from outside the Mars ring fenced funding. It had a weak science case but it was pretty much guaranteed to be on budget.
>>7722583
insight is just a recycled 2008 Phoenix lander. It doesn't even have a colour camera.
>>7722495
>planetary-mass objects
You've already lost the game. Gravity wells of that size are economic killers. The key is to get out of the gravity well you're in, and to never go back down one again. Stay in space, and use asteroids and comets for raw materials to construct O'Neill or Bernal habitats.
It is a shame. With a bit of compression you could fit all of the surface images we've taken outside of Earth, the Moon and Mars onto a floppy disc, but we keep sending things to Mars.
I would love to see a modern Venus lander. The challenges are difficult and interesting while not being insurmountable, and I'm sure the unique conditions on the surface would bring up something interesting.
>>7722495
>Venus
this thread again
right on time with the asteroid mining, too
>>7722645
people won't remember the strength of our stock market in 1000 years.
they will remember when we started colonising Mars.
why are planets other than earth so homogenous?
>>7722663
homogenous how?
>>7722661
>implying we'll make it that long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn_ZRatLl1o
>>7722663
Because we keep landing on the boring ones.
>>7722717
Is this how our eyes would see Pluto in white light?
>>7722741
Not quite. That image is taken in infra red.
>>7722717
>Red, white, and blue
USA! USA! USA!
>>7722495
Venus is so hot it is hard to make electronics that will survive temperature which is so high lead will melt. Add an extremely corrosive atmosphere.
>>7722583
>sample return
Rules regarding sterility makes that very, very hard. You are not allowed to contaminate regions that may have life. Moreover you do not want alien lifeforms brought to earth.
>>7722583
>humans on Mars
That is even harder wrt. contamination issues.
>>7722741
>Is this how our eyes would see Pluto in white light?
No. A BBC article with this image stated that the RGB channels in the image shown were mapped R= infrared, G was roughly red and B was (I think) around green. So it is very much a false colour image.
>>7722842
>Red, white, and blue
>USA
We were hoisting the TRICOLOUR before your faggit country even existed
Protip: literally dozens of flags are red, white and blue
>>7722907
but muh netherlands
>>7722878
>That is even harder wrt. contamination issues.
is it even feasible to be able to sanitise a robotic instrument to the point where it we can be sure it definitely won't contaminate the Martian soil and lead to false positives?
>>7722945
I have my doubts. It would at the very least be excruciatingly hard. Each and every part would have to be sterilized (steam? plasma? strong oxidizers?) before assembled and this might have to be done in space since Earth is simply crawling with bacteria, fungus, spores, virii, prions and more. And many of these are resistant to more than one of the sterilization processes. So you might have to run all processes in a sequence.
Or you could accept that the first landers (Viking et. al) were not properly sterilized and write off Mars as well contaminated at this point in time.
>>7722971
If the Martian life was fundamentally different from that on Earth, or we find more evidence of ancient life (like ALH84001 magnetites) problems of contamination would be moot.
>>7722656
The 80's aren't that old.
Wait...
>>7722495
>venus
god just fuck you OP I don't want to deal with stupidity like yours today
>>7722656
I want more probes or a rover there too. It'd be really hard to design something to operate at those temperatures and pressures for a decent amount of time, though.
>>7722663
Earth has walking chemical factories on it driving transformative processes. All of the life on this planet has a profound effect on it. If it didn't exist then we'd look like a brown mars. In fact we might just look like mars completely.
It's a pity Pluto turned out to be so interesting with its young-looking ice plains. It's so far away.
>>7723211
It's like deep sea diving though. It's interesting and the tech to make such a rover would be useful for prospecting sites to dredge for minerals. But the real action is in the habitable zone 55km up.
>>7723285
>real action
Like what?
