December 04, 2004

The Soviet Exploration of Venus - Which includes Pictures of the actual surface of Venus which have been tidied up & stuff in recent years. You may like it, or you may not. I like it.
posted by Nostrildamus 20 years ago
  • Woweee! That's the greatest! You rock, you fat bastard!
  • Great link! It is amazing to look at those images knowing that the spacecraft was being destroyed. Anyone remember that Six Million Dollar Man episode where a Soviet (?) Venus lander had a short-circuit and came back to Earth? Then it went on a rampage of death and destruction. Gotta watch those Venus landers.
  • Ahhh the six million dollar man. Theres a blast from the past. I dont remember the specifics of any of the episodes though to be honest. Just the opening sequence and the noise he made when he did his bionic sheyit. They should put that shazzit back on the telly.
  • I don't remember much of the shows, but I recall being heavily into the action-figure. I even had an Oscar Goldman with asploding briefcase, & some other character whose face you could change. The only things I remember about the series was that in one season he tried to come on with a pencil moustache, which looked crap, & that he once fought Bigfoot, which scared the bejesus out of me.
  • No shit, we landed stuff on Venus thirty years ago? WTF took so long for us to land on Mars? Venus is a much more hostile environment. I don't get it.
  • Wonderful find, Nostrildamus.
  • The Oscar Goldman doll was perhaps the most ridiculous action figure ever made. Naturally, I had one. Why would anyone think children would want to play with a doll of a middle aged man in a polyester leisure suit? I think I still have the exploding briefcase. Oh, yeah, the venus pictures are cool.
  • Wonderful link. At first I wondered if it was all for real, I have a vague memory of Carl Sagan in one of his books discussing the Russian tendency to exaggerate and just plain lie about their explorations of Venus. But the Wikipedia entry for Venus confirms that the Russians did indeed land multiple craft on its surface: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_(planet)
  • Excellent - thanks Nosey. No shit, we landed stuff on Venus thirty years ago? WTF took so long for us to land on Mars? Venus is a much more hostile environment. I don't get it. Venera 7 landed on Venus in 1970. Two Viking probes landed on Mars in 1976. Venus gets closer to the Earth than Mars does.
  • Did the US ever land any surface probes on Venus? Kinda neat that the Russians have a major achievement that the US didn't come along and duplicate.
  • Pfft. Venus is for commie losers. Uncle Sam went for the RED pla... hang on that doesn't make sense.
  • Exactly, Quid. Uncle Sam had to go to Mars to scour it clean of the filthy, tentacled Commie threat. I love the Soviet patriotic soccer-ball thingies. Their answer to the American flags flying so-smartly in a stiff lunar breeze.
  • Man, the pendants are pretty cool. Wonder if they have any lying around? Yeah, the photos on the surface are cool. It's amazing that they were able to make them last as long as they did, considering it's a planet that essentially rains *battery acid* twenty four hours a dsy... Still though, I'll bet there are some hot venusians there... (pun intended)
  • Looked like the beach at some holiday camp in Scotland I went to as a kid. They could have saved a lot of trouble by just photographing there.
  • Wonderful link, Nostril!