alt Hacker News> Missions to the clouds of Venus are either going to find life or some kind of brand new chemistry, either of which will be a breakthrough discovery in planetary science. There’s basically a guaranteed Nobel prize waiting in the skies of Venus for whoever wants to collect it.
why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back? seems much easier than going with humans around the moon
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> why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back?
Well, there's the scenario where a Venusian superbug, having evolved in the roughest possible conditions (temp, acidity, etc...) in the upper Venusian atmosphere, will find Earth's conditions warm, balmy, and altogether ideal to reproduce at 1000x the rate it was constrained to back home :D
"Scientists are overjoyed to announce that the Venus Sample Return Mission has successfully scooped out a significant quantity of deadly sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and other mysterious chemicals that have no business being in anyone's atmosphere. Scientists are describing components of the atmosphere as a 'supercritical fluid'.
"The probe's cargo vessel has a really awesome ablative heat shield on it, as well as some extremely reliable parachutes, and Mission Control is projecting a very soft touchdown in the Utah desert within the next 12 hours. If anyone in the Western United States sees a huge fireball going slower than most meteors, it is probably the Venus Sample Return vessel full of dangerous chemicals! Go VSRM!"
> why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back?
Better, why don't they do some sort of "ocean fertilization" experiment on Venus cloud decks. Putative life high on Venus atmosphere must be limited by low levels of minerals. Sending a probe with a few tons of salts to disperse in a cloud patch should be enough to produce a local equivalent to an algal bloom, detectable through imaging from orbit.