It'd depend on orientation to the horizon. Parallel, you'll skip. Perpendicular, you'll lawn dart.
Dunno... I still thought we were gonna sky-hook in on a set of tethers. Speeds would be slow enough there'd be no appreciable heat build up from friction and aerobreaking. Drop us down, inflate the balloon as the millibars rise, store up reaction mass, use the motors to achieve escape v on the way out.
Good verbal description. Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear. Only the rim of the outer hull rotates for heat dissipation, not the whole saucer. Then just behind that are the counter-rotating rings like a flattened squirrel-cage fan. One reason they are counter-rotating is to control buildup of excess rotational energy. We will want to change direction from time to time.
"Parallel, you'll skip. Perpendicular, you'll lawn dart."
'Xactly. We want to gradually adjust how aggressively we go into the atmosphere.
"I still thought we were gonna sky-hook in on a set of tethers. Speeds would be slow enough there'd be no appreciable heat build up from friction and aerobreaking. Drop us down, inflate the balloon as the millibars rise, store up reaction mass, use the motors to achieve escape v on the way out."
More confusion in my descriptions. We need to be able to do both. Bit of a chicken-and-egg situation on the Venus mission.
Early on, it will be useful to position Venus Celestial Stations without the benefit of the Rotavator. That's because we need some of the atmospheric capabilities to even build the Rotavator. Structurally, we'll do what we can with available steel, aluminum, glass or its equivalent, and carbon fiber and nanotubes.
But we'll need mass for its proper operation, and that will have to come from lunar soil, asteroidal rock, or Venerian atmosphere.
The Venus atmosphere would be closest and easiest to use for building up mass. Even a partially-built Rotavator could handle a shuttle capture or launch, but a full contingent Flying Saucer would be a bit massive initially. Remember, it's configured with seven on-board shuttles for thrust maneuvering.
So we will want to able to enter Venus atmosphere from orbit or near-orbit speed with the Flying Saucers. I have been speaking of only one, but that's just speaking generically. We'll have multiple Venus Stations once the operation is in full swing. I've been working the math for twenty-four.
If this seems ambitious, it's simply part of the ongoing plans dating back nearly five years. We want a presence in space, capable of doing ambitious planetary and system-wide projects, including terraforming and asteroid redirection.
Whether it becomes necessary to have a functional space defense force we will have to evaluate. But we will have the capability.