Venus Airships / by Brad Guth

Being a little hot, buoyant and having 10% less gravity is actually a
darn good thing if you were a Venusian airship, even if limited as to
an oven-wrap or KetaSpire PEEK polyetheretherketone and fiber
reinforced balloon. Such fiber reinforced composites do exist,
although an outer skin of something in basic titanium shouldn’t be
excluded for this rigid airship configuration.

For this topic I have an unusual airship to R&D, as intended for a
rather toasty dry and calm environment. Think of this application as
a floating city if you like, or consider this one as merely a small or
as large as need be robotic probe that can remain efficiently aloft
for nearly unlimited time without much energy demand while drifting or
even when cruising along at perhaps an average air-speed of less than
10 m/s, as such wouldn’t demand but a few kw for managing a good sized
airship.

Taking into account the 1.75 kg/m3 by day and perhaps 2.5 kg/m3 of
nighttime buoyancy at 50 km is roughly worth twice that of any
terrestrial airship application, and for the most part it’s actually
fairly calm, kind of inert nice enough and even relatively cool
because it’s at such a good deal of altitude away from that geothermal
radiating planet, and otherwise operating within the nighttime season,
and still situated well enough below the bulk of those otherwise thick
and nasty acidic clouds.

Because the inert infrastructure of this rigid airship doesn’t change
per given altitude means that its hauling capacity or payload is
capable of becoming downright impressive, getting much better as one
operates at lower altitudes, such as below 35 km by season of day and
below 25 km by season of nighttime is where that robust S8/CO2
atmosphere is nearly crystal dry and clear for as far as you can see
(depending on terrain, roughly 500 km in all directions).

Initially, this is a very rigid composite and robust kind of mostly
robotic airship, intended as an extended expedition probe. It’s
somewhat of a conventional blimp like craft, except using a rigid
composite hull with a 6:1 L/W ratio instead of the more common
terrestrial 5:1.

In my way of thinking, it has a rather thick outer composite hull
that’s nicely insulative (critical science instrument/components area
being insulated by R-100 or better) as obviously acidic proof, not to
mention melt proof, not that its failsafe hydrogen gas displacement or
that of its vacuum worth of artificial buoyancy need be all that acid
proof or even having to be excessively cooled, because the bulk of
this airship can be rated for 811 K (1000°F).

There are four rather over-sized longitudinal stabilizer fins, used
for obvious flight stability, but also utilized for their heat-
exchanging functions, and otherwise a pair of midship underbelly
landing skids (just in case).

Its configuration might incorporate one fully ducted set of large
diameter counter-rotating pusher fans, plus four other fully rotatable
thrusters (two on either forward/aft side for a total boost of 10%
main engine thrust), that collectively can also be utilized as forward/
reverse motion thrusters. The maximum velocity potential of 100 m/s
need not be necessary, and certainly not one of those all or nothing
considerations, because 10 m/s is more than good enough unless
striving to migrate though those acidic clouds in order to cruise
essentially above the 75 km nighttime worth of those fast moving
clouds (80~85 km by day) .

This craft is not going to be your average Hindenburg, much less
flammable or otherwise combustible, although intended for efficiently
cruising about Venus where size and mass are of little concern when
having 64+ kg/m3 worth of buoyancy, and only 90.5% gravity to work
with is certainly going to avoid all sorts of inert mass
considerations that would have more than grounded the Hindenburg.

In addition to certain liquid fuels that can be safely incorporated,
there will be a pair of custom RTGs running at more than hot enough to
melt aluminum, and a likely Stirling thermal dynamic process of
utilizing that heat at roughly 25+% efficiency for all of the onboard
systems and main propulsion.

Getting rid of 75% worth of RTG heat shouldn’t be all that
insurmountable, especially with such a thermally conductive flow of
that toasty Venusian atmosphere flowing past, as worthy of roughly
10% the density of water, in that the closer we cruise to the
geothermally active surface the more dense and thermally conductive
becomes the surrounding S8 and CO2 atmosphere.

Once again, on behalf of Usenet/Group diehard naysayers, this topic is
not about our having to terraform Venus, or that of our having to
prance ourselves about in the buff, at least not without our trusty
OveGlove jumpsuit and portable CO2--co/o2 plus heat-exchanging unit.
Instead, we’re talking mostly about a fully robotic craft that really
doesn’t care how hot and nasty it is outside, and may never have to
land for the next hundred years, with a future human flight configured
version that’s clearly scaled in sufficient volume in order to suit
the applications of sustaining human our frail life for extended
periods of time while cruising extensively at or below 25 km.

Even though Geoffrey Landis wisely publishes most everything of his
expertise as science fiction, it’s based entirely upon the regular
laws of physics, and for the most part using the best available
science. This doesn’t mean that I’d worship each and every published
word of Landis or from others of his kind, although it does fully
demonstrate that I’m not the one and only wise enough individual
that’s deductively thinking constructively and thus positively about
accomplishing those Venus expeditions.

Venus exploration papers / Geoffrey A. Landis
http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis/papers.html

Evaluation of Long Duration Flight on Venus / by Anthony J. Colozza
and Geoffrey A. Landis
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/20...006-214452.pdf
This paper was for the most part generated long after my having
insisted that such a mission via aircraft/airship was technically
doable, although this Geoffrey and Anthony version focused mostly on
behalf of solar powered and RTG as necessary, whereas such there’s
nothing much innovative or all that ground breaking to report,
especially since much of their airship application is operated within
a terrestrial like environment by way of keeping good altitude.

This is not saying that my ideas are of the one and only do-or-die
alternatives, as I’m not the least bit opposed to incorporating viable
alternatives, or having to share most of the credits with those having
contributed their honest expertise. In other words, I’m not the bad
guy here, nor am I interested in hearing from those having ulterior
motives or counter intentions of merely topic/author stalking and
bashing for all they can muster.
. – Brad Guth