What Actually Happens If You Try To Land On Venus — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00You are falling toward Venus at roughly
2. 0:0211 km per second and from up here the
3. 0:04planet looks calm. That is the first
4. 0:07lie. There is no surface to see, just a
5. 0:09smooth cream yellow shell, soft and
6. 0:12unbroken, like something poured rather
7. 0:14than built. No coastlines, no mountain
8. 0:17ranges.
9. 0:18No storm you can point at and name. It
10. 0:21looks frosted. It looks honestly quite
11. 0:23pleasant. You are about to find out what
12. 0:26is under the frosting. The trouble
13. 0:28starts before you touch anything. Your
14. 0:30capsule meets the top of the atmosphere
15. 0:31and instantly stops behaving like a
16. 0:33spacecraft. It becomes a meteor. The air
17. 0:36out there is thin, but you are moving so
18. 0:38fast that thin does not help. It piles
19. 0:40up in front of your heat shield,
20. 0:41compresses, and turns white hot. The
21. 0:44Soviet landers that did this survived
22. 0:46deceleration forces that would turn a
23. 0:48person into a smear on the back wall.
24. 0:50You cannot take that ride, so your entry
25. 0:52has to be shallower and slower, which
26. 0:55sounds like a mercy and absolutely is
27. 0:56not because Venus punishes anyone who
28. 0:59lingers. A gentler entry means a longer
29. 1:01entry. A longer entry means more minutes
30. 1:04spent inside the thing you are trying to
31. 1:05cross. Your shield glows. The capsule
32. 1:08shakes hard enough that the instrument
33. 1:10panel blurs and then, sooner than you
34. 1:12expect, the roar fades. That is because
35. 1:15the atmosphere here is thick, absurdly
36. 1:18thick. It slows you down so efficiently
37. 1:20that you go from meteor to falling
38. 1:22object in a couple of minutes. The
39. 1:24parachute opens somewhere above 60 km
40. 1:27and for a short while Venus is
41. 1:28beautiful. You are hanging in a pale
42. 1:30golden sky. The light is soft and
43. 1:33sourceless. Below you is an ocean of
44. 1:35cloud that goes on forever in every
45. 1:37direction and it is genuinely lovely
46. 1:39right up until you remember what the
47. 1:41clouds are made of.
48. 1:42You drop into them. It is not water
49. 1:44vapor out there. It is sulfuric acid
50. 1:47suspended in droplets thick enough to
51. 1:49swallow the view completely. The window
52. 1:51goes yellow, then dim. Streaks crawl
53. 1:54across the glass and stay there. This is
54. 1:56a substance that eats metal for a living
55. 1:59and treats human skin as a formality.
56. 2:01Your parachute is not made of normal
57. 2:03fabric because normal fabric would be
58. 2:05gone by now.
59. 2:06And then, somewhere around 55 km up,
60. 2:09something genuinely strange happens.
61. 2:12The pressure gauge settles at about one
62. 2:13Earth atmosphere.
63. 2:15The thermometer reads something like a
64. 2:16warm summer afternoon. You are at this
65. 2:19exact altitude, sitting in the most
66. 2:21Earth-like conditions anywhere in the
67. 2:22solar system outside Earth itself. Same
68. 2:25squeeze on the hull, same temperature
69. 2:27you would complain about at a bus stop.
70. 2:29If you could somehow strain out the acid
71. 2:31and the carbon dioxide, a person could
72. 2:33stand here in ordinary clothes.
73. 2:36You cannot stay. You are on a parachute
74. 2:38and parachutes go down. So, you keep
75. 2:41falling and the gauges begin to move in
76. 2:43the wrong direction. Not suddenly. That
77. 2:45is the unnerving part.
78. 2:47There is no alarm, no dramatic breach.
79. 2:50The temperature just climbs steadily,
80. 2:53kilometer after kilometer. The way a
81. 2:55number climbs when nothing is going to
82. 2:56stop it. 50 km, warm. 40, uncomfortably
83. 3:01hot. 30, hot enough to bake bread and
84. 3:04still falling.
85. 3:06At this point, you do something that
86. 3:07feels insane. You cut your parachute
87. 3:09away on purpose. The reason is simple
88. 3:12and grim. The air below you is so dense
89. 3:14that you will drift down slowly whether
90. 3:15you want to or not and every extra
91. 3:17minute spent descending is another
92. 3:19minute of heat creeping through the
93. 3:20hull. Hanging around under a canopy is
94. 3:23not caution here. It is suicide by
95. 3:25delay. So, you release the chute, drop
96. 3:28onto a small drag ring, and let the
97. 3:30atmosphere itself hold you up while you
98. 3:32sink toward the floor of the world. The
99. 3:35air stops behaving like air. Down here,
100. 3:37it acts more like a fluid, something
101. 3:39between gas and liquid, and it starts
102. 3:41bending light. The horizon curls upward
103. 3:44at the edges. Distant ground appears to
104. 3:46lift toward you as though you are
105. 3:48descending into an enormous shallow
106. 3:50bowl. Nothing out there is where your
107. 3:52eyes say it is.
108. 3:54You are not really falling anymore. You
109. 3:56are sinking. The last stretch of the
110. 3:58descent takes close to an hour, and it
111. 4:00feels less like a drop than like
112. 4:02settling through deep water. Because
113. 4:04down here the carbon dioxide has been
114. 4:05squeezed into something that is not
115. 4:07properly a gas and not properly a liquid
116. 4:10either. It has weight. It has current.
117. 4:12It shoves slowly against the hull, and
118. 4:14you can feel the capsule shift as it
119. 4:16pushes through.
120. 4:18If you are enjoying this video, please
121. 4:20hit the subscribe button. It genuinely
122. 4:22helps keep the channel alive. And then
123. 4:24the drop ends.
124. 4:25There is a thud, a small shove into your
125. 4:28seat, and a puff of fine dust that does
126. 4:30not billow the way dust does at home. It
127. 4:32slumps. It sinks back down almost
128. 4:35immediately because the air is too heavy
129. 4:37to keep anything floating for long.
130. 4:39You have landed on Venus.
131. 4:41Congratulations. The clock has started,
132. 4:43and it is not a long clock.
133. 4:45The capsule is not sitting level. It
134. 4:47came down on a broken slab and settled
135. 4:49at an angle, and there is nothing to be
136. 4:51done about that. No wheels, no legs that
137. 4:54adjust, nowhere to drive to.
138. 4:57Wherever this thing stopped is where it
139. 4:58stays for the rest of its very short
140. 5:00life.
141. 5:01Look out of the window.
142. 5:03This is the part almost nobody expects.
143. 5:05It is not dark. The surface of Venus is
144. 5:08lit in a dim orange glow, like the last
145. 5:1020 minutes of a very overcast sunset,
146. 5:13and you can see for a surprising
147. 5:14distance. The ground is flat and cracked
148. 5:17into broad dark slabs,
149. 5:19dull plates of volcanic rock stretching
150. 5:21off toward that warped uplifted horizon.
151. 5:24There are no plants, no water, no ice,
152. 5:26no shadows worth the name because the
153. 5:29light has been scattered so many times
154. 5:30on its way down that it arrives from
155. 5:32everywhere at once.
156. 5:34The landscape is not dramatic. It is
157. 5:36worse than that. It is boring in the way
158. 5:39a furnace floor is boring. There is wind
159. 5:41out there, but only a gentle one, a slow
160. 5:44shuffle of a meter or two per second. On
161. 5:46Earth you would barely notice it. Here,
162. 5:48that breeze is moving air about 50 times
163. 5:50denser than the air in your lungs, which
164. 5:53means it carries real force, like a lazy
165. 5:55current in a river. The dust it pushes
166. 5:57around does not blow, it creeps. And if
167. 6:00you could somehow open the hatch and
168. 6:02speak, your voice would come out wrong.
169. 6:04Deep, buzzing, oddly loud, then
170. 6:07swallowed fast. The atmosphere is so
171. 6:09thick that sound moves differently
172. 6:10through it. Even the acoustics of this
173. 6:13place are off.
174. 6:14Now, the actual killer gets to work, and
175. 6:16it is not the acid, and it is not the
176. 6:18pressure. It is the heat and the fact
177. 6:21that you have nowhere to put it. The
178. 6:22surface temperature here sits at roughly
179. 6:24460° C.
180. 6:26That is hot enough to melt lead and tin
181. 6:28outright. Hot enough that anything
182. 6:30organic simply stops being organic. Your
183. 6:32capsule is a thermos, packed with
184. 6:34insulation and a block of material
185. 6:36designed to absorb heat rather than
186. 6:38fight it, because fighting is not an
187. 6:40option.
188. 6:41On any spacecraft near Earth, you dump
189. 6:43excess heat by radiating it into cold
190. 6:45space. Here, there is no cold anything.
191. 6:48The outside is hotter than the inside.
192. 6:51There is no direction to push the heat
193. 6:53toward. Every cooling system you know
194. 6:55how to build works on the assumption
195. 6:56that somewhere nearby is colder than
196. 6:58you, and on the floor of Venus, that
197. 7:00assumption is simply false.
198. 7:02So, you are not cooling, you are
199. 7:03counting.
200. 7:04You try the obvious thing first. You
201. 7:06turn the cabin fan up, and all it
202. 7:08achieves is moving hot air around
203. 7:10faster, while adding its own small
204. 7:12contribution to the heat. You check the
205. 7:14insulation readings, and they are doing
206. 7:16exactly what they were built to do,
207. 7:17which is nothing except buy minutes.
208. 7:20There is no switch in here that makes
209. 7:21Venus colder.
210. 7:23Heat pushes in through every seam and
211. 7:24every bolt, degree by degree, and all
212. 7:26your insulation can do is slow the
213. 7:28arithmetic.
214. 7:29The Soviet landers that survived this
215. 7:31the longest managed a little over 2
216. 7:33hours before the readings went silent.
217. 7:35That was the record, and it was
218. 7:37considered a triumph.
219. 7:38Most did far less.
220. 7:40Your instruments go first. Electronics
221. 7:42hate heat long before metal does. So,
222. 7:45the failures arrive in a sequence. A
223. 7:47sensor drops out, a display flickers and
224. 7:49stays dark, a fan starts making a sound
225. 7:52it has never made before. Air inside the
226. 7:54cabin turns thick and oven dry. Every
227. 7:57surface you touch is warmer than the
228. 7:58last time you touched it. Metal buckles
229. 8:01get hot enough to mark you. The seat
230. 8:03warms through the padding. And then, if
231. 8:05a seal finally gives, the ending is
232. 8:07quick. 92 times Earth's atmospheric
233. 8:10pressure is standing outside that hole,
234. 8:12and it is not gentle air.
235. 8:14Your body does not crush like a tin can
236. 8:17because you are mostly water and water
237. 8:18does not compress.
238. 8:20What arrives instead is a flood of
239. 8:21searing dense carbon dioxide at a
240. 8:23pressure your lungs were never designed
241. 8:25to face, and it takes the inside of you
242. 8:27apart faster than you can register what
243. 8:29happened.
244. 8:30Nobody is coming. The nearest help is
245. 8:33millions of kilometers away, and a radio
246. 8:35call from here takes minutes to arrive,
247. 8:37then minutes more for the answer.
248. 8:40By the time anyone on Earth hears you,
249. 8:42the situation they are hearing about is
250. 8:44already history. No rescue vehicle can
251. 8:46descend to a place that destroys
252. 8:48machines in under 2 hours. And here is
253. 8:50the strangest part of the whole trip.
254. 8:52You will still be there.
255. 8:54Venus does not decompose things. There
256. 8:56is no liquid water, no bacteria, no
257. 8:59weather that erodes the way rain does.
258. 9:01Acid rain falls from those beautiful
259. 9:03clouds, but it evaporates in the heat
260. 9:05long before it reaches the ground. So,
261. 9:07your capsule stays where it settled,
262. 9:09slowly corroding, slowly sagging,
263. 9:12sitting on a plane of volcanic rock that
264. 9:14was resurfaced by something planet-wide
265. 9:16hundreds of millions of years ago, and
266. 9:18has essentially been waiting ever since.
267. 9:20There's a small piece of Venus history
268. 9:22that says everything about this place.
269. 9:24One of the Soviet landers popped off its
270. 9:26camera lens cap after touchdown, and the
271. 9:28cap landed on exactly the one patch of
272. 9:31ground the probe's soil tester was about
273. 9:32to poke. So, the first ever measurement
274. 9:35of the Venusian soil strength was, in
275. 9:37fact, a measurement of a camera lid. The
276. 9:39probe had roughly an hour to live and
277. 9:41spent part of it studying its own
278. 9:42rubbish. That is the tone of the entire
279. 9:45planet. It does not rage at you. It just
280. 9:47quietly ruins everything, then keeps
281. 9:49going.
282. 9:50Which leaves one obvious question, and
283. 9:52it deserves an answer.
284. 9:54If 55 km above the surface is mild and
285. 9:56calm, why land at all? Why not simply
286. 9:59stay up there?
287. 10:00And the honest answer is that you could.
288. 10:02Breathable air is a lifting gas in an
289. 10:04atmosphere that heavy. So, a sealed
290. 10:06habitat full of ordinary oxygen and
291. 10:08nitrogen would float in the Venusian sky
292. 10:10like a balloon, drifting through acid
293. 10:12clouds at shirt sleeve temperature.
294. 10:14People have designed exactly that.
295. 10:16But, floating is not landing. The moment
296. 10:19you go looking for solid ground, you are
297. 10:21trading the one hospitable layer of this
298. 10:23planet for the least hospitable surface
299. 10:25anyone has ever reached. So, that is
300. 10:27what actually happens if you try to land
301. 10:29on Venus. You survive the fall. You
302. 10:32touch down softly. You get a clear view
303. 10:34of an orange, silent, slab-covered plain
304. 10:37that no human eye was built to see.
305. 10:40And then you sit in a cooling metal ball
306. 10:42that is not cooling, watching the
307. 10:43numbers go up on the only world we know
308. 10:46of where the sky is kinder than the
309. 10:47ground.