Hi wooky….
I have not been frequenting here of late as I’m occupied at the other place….Anyway you may be interested in a TV show detailed as follows….

Every Wednesday night: Time: 1930hrs: Channel 638 Discovery Science: Name of Show: “Exodus Earth”: Hosted by Dr Basil Singer.

Anyway the gist of the show is based on Astronauts visiting other planets/moons/solar systems and examines the hazards and difficulties of each place with technologies we have available or are researching today.

The shows over the last couple of weeks have included Titan, and Callisto, and next week looks at “ Gliese 581 “

But shows I have missed includes Mercury and a “cloud city” on Venus.

The series will undoubtably be repeated so keep a watch out…I will for the two episodes I have missed.

Just thought you may be interested….

Exodus from earth is possible as our planet is constantly threatened day after day by natural or man-made disasters which could make life on earth impossible. The question is not if, but rather when and how Earth will be destroyed. If the human race is to survive, it must travel to the stars and begin a new way of living. Where will humans go? How will people get there and how will they survive?
Dr Basil Singer, a physicist and the series host eagerly plays the role of human guinea pig to find answers in exodus earth. Dr Basil Singer will analyze if it’s possible for humans to reside on Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn’s moon Titan, Jupiter’s moon Callisto and Gliese 581 in the future.
In his quest, Dr Basil Singer will subject himself to extreme temperatures; test new survival technologies designed to keep humans alive in harsh environment; suffer the rigours of travel in zero gravity and explore ideas for new human habitats in the sky.
Rahul Johri, Senior Vice President & General Manager – South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, said, “Discovery Science explores many questions surrounding future space travel and the survival of the human race in exodus earth. Transporting viewers across cosmos to the most distant planet, exodus earth is a remarkable series.”
Many scientists believe Mars contains the vital elements required for human survival, such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. As soon as 200 to 300 years from now, there could be human habitations on Mars. Perhaps generations of families will live their entire lives in space, travelling millions of kilometres to new planets, aboard huge spaceship-arcs. Or maybe technological breakthroughs will make space travel to the other side of the universe possible.
What was once considered science fiction now becomes a fact, on exodus earth.

http://expressbuzz.com/entertainment/television/future-space-travel-%E2%80%94how-when-and-why/335934.html

and Dr Singer’s credentials….

Dr. Basil Singer — The Scientist
A quantum physicist, science geek, television presenter, skateboarder and kite surfer, Dr. Basil Singer is a man of many talents. Not afraid of a bit of adventure, he is an “extreme scientist” and is equally adept at freezing atoms to the point of absolute zero or catching monumental air with his kite board.
When he’s not filming science shows or explaining the physics behind break dancing, Dr. Singer can be found in the lab at the family business, Singer Instruments Co. Ltd, in Somerset, England. As both manager and senior physicist, it is his job to build and develop robots and scientific instrumentation for institutions worldwide that do research on cancer treatments.
A self-confessed nerd, Dr. Singer has a profound passion for science, particularly physics. While working toward his Ph.D., Dr. Singer froze atoms to three micro Kelvin — that’s three millionth of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest temperature in the universe. This data helped him and other scientists observe the behavior of electrons as they whizzed around the nucleus inside the atoms. The results of these experiments could one day see us develop teleportation devices and supercomputer brains the size of a grain of sand.

All the best!

i’ll see if its up on you tube

i prefer the idea of a cloud city on venus

as you’d know the temp,pressure and gravity are similar to earth, it would be much easier to live there than a planet with no atmospheric pressure, little light, cold or boiling hot outside

i would say that a colony in the venusian atmosphere is much more likely than anywhere else for the practicality of it

low gravity seems to attack the human body in every way possible – we just weren’t meant for it.

if i were nasa looking for a publicity stunt at low cost i’d make a floating platform where people could live on earth to see how viable it was for venus

they could run an experiment on the surface of the planet to simulate living conditions on a small platform

NASA’s Manned Venus Orbital Mission
Posted on June 1, 2012 by asteitel

In the late 1960s, NASA was considering future applications for its Apollo hardware under the aptly named Apollo Applications program. One popular target for an AAP mission was Venus, our cosmic neighbour that was a scientific enigma at the time; admittedly our knowledge of Venus still isn’t complete. The space agency briefly looked at a plan that would see a crew of astronauts sent into orbit around Venus.

In 1962, NASA’s Mariner 2 probe began unraveling the mysteries of Venus. During its flyby missions, the probe returned enough data to tell scientists that Venus lacks a strong magnetic field, has extremely high surface temperatures, and that the radiation levels in interplanetary space are no more dangerous than the radiation anywhere else outside Earth’s protective magnetic field. Mariner 2 also told NASA scientists that there were more secrets locked under Venus’ cloud cover. It was a planet worth further investigation.

An artist’s concept of Mariner 2. Image Credit: NASA

To look at possible future Venusian missions, NASA turned to Bellcomm Inc., a division of AT&T established in 1963 to assist the space agency with research, development, and overall documentation of systems integration. Bellcomm prepared a detailed proposal for a manned flyby of Venus using Apollo hardware and propulsion to guide and control the spacecraft. The Lunar Module was replaced with an Environmental Service Unit, and the Saturn V’s upper SIV-B stage was repurposed during the interplanetary transit by the crew of three astronauts into an additional living and recreational quarters. This mission, of course, never flew.

But even as a study, there’s one big problem with flybys: they give the crew one relatively short chance to observe and study their target planet up close. Mariner 2 surveyed Venus during its interplanetary transit, but it only had 45 minutes of really close observations. The manned flyby offered the crew a similarly fleeting opportunity, hardly enough to make the 400 day mission worth it.

An orbital mission could change that. In 1967, NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio prepared a study for a manned orbital mission of Venus, again using existing Apollo hardware and propulsion systems.

The double vortices at Venus’ south pole. Photo Credit: ESA

The study looked at launch dates between 1975 and 1986 and took 1980 as the sample. It was geometrically a horrible year to fly to Venus; the alignments of the planets made it a very fuel intensive transit. But if the worst case scenario was plausible, a best case scenario was more likely to gain traction.

The crew would launch, park briefly in Earth orbit, then fire their main engine to begin their transit to Venus. One mid-course correction was built into the mission in this earliest planning stage. Once at Venus, the crew would enter a highly elliptical orbit with an eccentricity of 0.9. (By comparison, a 0.0 eccentricity is a perfect circle and the Earth’s orbit around the sun has an eccentricity of only about 0.02.) This orbit was ideal; it was easy to achieve without burning through a substantial amount of fuel making for a lighter payload at launch and took the spacecraft close to the planet at its perigee. At its closest point the spacecraft would come within 3 Venus radii from the planet, giving the crew a great chance to take measurements and make observations. Proximity to the surface would be incredibly important since most of the instruments on board, like radio mapping equipment that gather data by sending signals and receiving the reflection, would only work if they could pierce through Venus’ thick cloud cover.

While the highly elliptical orbit took the spacecraft up close to Venus, it was only marginally better than a flyby. The best case scenario would give the crew just over two days worth of time under the magic 3 Venus radii mark during their time in orbit.

A comparison of Earth and Venus. Aside from being hot, rotating backwards, and having a day that lasts a year, Venus is basically Earth’s cosmic twin! Credit: NASA

The 1980-launch mission the plan focused on only had the crew parked at Venus for 40 days; the full mission would last 565 days. After burning its main engine in Earth orbit, the 197,000 pound spacecraft would take 320 days to get to Venus then another 205 to return to Earth. The crew would reenter the atmosphere traveling 48,000 feet per second, rely on aerodynamic breaking and parachutes before splashing down at the end of the mission.

The limiting factor of the proposed mission to Venus was the launch weight. If the rocket couldn’t lift the necessary propellant for a fast transit and low orbit, there was no way to shorten the mission. Nuclear propellants under development in the mid-1960s had the best potential to lower the launch weight by as much as 50 percent. A cheaper, faster mission would follow.

Spending 320 days getting to Venus for a little over two days worth of up close study might seem insane, but it was better than the same mission to Mars, even using a best-case launch window. Using the same hardware and mission profile, getting to Mars was significantly more fuel intensive making it a more expensive mission to launch.

Venus. Credit: NASA

An orbital mission around Mars would take a total of 451 days. The much heavier spacecraft weighing 394,000 pounds when it launched from Earth orbit would take 252 days to get to Mars. Once it arrived at the red planet, the crew would spend just 20 days in orbit before beginning the 178 day journey back to Earth. The spacecraft returning from Mars would be traveling 52,000 feet per second as it reentered before splashdown.

The best case scenario for a Mars orbital mission was worse than the best case scenario for a Venus orbital mission, but neither was good enough to save the Apollo Applications Program. At least robots have managed much simpler and cheaper missions to return a wealth of information about both our cosmic neighbours.

http://amyshirateitel.com/2012/06/01/nasas-manned-venus-orbital-mission/