I’m David Knott. I’ve been working in enterprise technology for over forty years and I’m still learning. This blog is based on mistakes, failures, lessons and some things I find interesting:
Test environments are from Mars; production environments are from Venus
If a crewed mission makes it to Mars, it will have lots of problems to overcome. The atmosphere is thin, and mostly made of carbon dioxide. The average temperature is -60 degrees Celsius. And there is no magnetic field to shield inhabitants from cosmic radiation. It’s not surprising that, so far, the planet is occupied by robots rather than people.
What about our other planetary neighbour, Venus? It’s slightly easier to get to, has more atmosphere, and is quite a bit warmer. Unfortunately, it’s warmer by about 700 degrees, with an average temperature of 640 degrees Celsius. And that atmosphere is a bit too thick, imposing a crushing pressure 90 times that of Earth. It’s mostly carbon dioxide too, but punctuated by clouds of sulphuric acid gas. And it doesn’t have a magnetic field – or a robot population. The only probes which have entered the Venusian atmosphere have been swiftly crushed and cooked.