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Lawrence D’Oliveiro
Asianometry
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Comments by "Lawrence D’Oliveiro" (@lawrencedoliveiro9104) on "How the Soviets Landed on Venus" video.
It’s worth remembering the context of the time. In the early 1960s, the surfaces of the other planets were a mystery. We have a lot of science fiction up to that time (e.g. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” and “Amtor” books) which assumed that they were not that different from Earth. NASA’s Mariner Mars fly-by missions in the latter 1960s showed that Mars was quite dry and desolate, and heavily cratered, with no sign of the fabled “canals” or any liquid water. So that put an end to one whole line of sci-fi stories. But Venus, with thick clouds hiding its surface, was another matter. Hence the effort put into finding out whether there was any chance of life on its surface. Before that idea, too, was reluctantly abandoned.
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