Venus is much closer. How about exploring it?
Venus is slightly smaller than Earth.
Imagine being on the ground exploring a new, giant world like that.
The caves, The valleys, The HUGE mountains....
Unfortunately to walk the surface of Venus is like walking the surface of the Mariana trench with a tee-shirt on.
kinda tight on the skin....
Venus is no good for “boots on the ground”, it’s far too hostile an environment to land people there—acidic atmosphere, high heat and high pressures.
It would be useful for a fly-by or orbital manned mission to prepare for missions deeper in space (like Mars.) Several proposals were developed for such flights back in the Apollo days. Here’s one on the “Beyond Apollo” blog which also features some of the other Venus proposals:
http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/2010/05/piloted-single-launch-venus-flyby-1967.html
A mission doesn’t have to be about planting flags to make it worth doing with people. In fact, Venus is a useful waypoint to other places in the outer solar system, in addition to being a deep space target for checking our systems out before embarking on longer flights.
I’m in favor of Moon, Venus, then Mars, myself.
We can’t even send a man one mile down in the ocean to repair a leaking well.