Chanc.ee

26 Dec 2020

"This time, damn it, we’re going to get to the surface"

Series of articles on the Veruna probes sent to Venus in the 70s.

Entering the atmosphere at a steep angle, less than 30° from vertical, these early Venus capsules experienced 350g to 450g overloads as they decelerated from 11 km/sec to sonic speeds. The first centrifuge test of a descent module resulted in almost complete destruction of its internal components, which suggests that earlier spacecrafts' landing capsules probably had no chance of survival.

Love the the mindset of the Soviet engineers whose probes kept melting: they built a 4" titanium sphere with a temperature and pressure sensor to send to the surface. Allowing them to get some viable parameters to build the next probe with - I wanna know what they would have sent if the IndestructoSphere hadn't worked.

https://chanc.ee/20201226-this-time-damn-it-were-going-to-get-to-the-surface.html