• CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    11 months ago

    I mean, not every what if, some at least leave the possibility to address the situation, consider the case of Apollo 13 for example. A great many risks can also be reduced with redundancy, for example, having your maneuvering systems fail is not as bad if your craft has an extra set of maneuvering thrusters. Air travel has similarly high risk of death if major components fail, and yet that has been made safe enough to be made commonplace.

    I agree that it won’t happen by 2050 though. We’ve never sent humans on an interplanetary mission before, development of new spacecraft takes many years, especially manned systems, and Venus is an especially tough environment to build for. 2050 is less than three decades away, I’d guess that we might have at most a small research outpost on the moon by then, assuming no major delays or cuts to our current program to return there, and there’s no guarantee of that. I’d be surprised if even one person was sent to Venus by that year.