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To this day the only country to land anything on Venus is the Soviet Union, And look at the fuckin picture it took
(hexbear.net)
The US didn't win the space race btw.
I've been on a kick reading about old school space exploration and was surprised to find this out. The picture looks comparable to the Mars rover, and had to travel over double the distance to get there.
Knowing what we know now, there could absolutely be new life on places like this, but we'll never know because where's the ~capital~
source!?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Venus
History of the Venus Landers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
I absolutely love this picture btw (the one on the left). It really sells Venus as an alien hellscape. The sky is the color of piss, because it's made of acid. The ground is an endless plane made of hideous cracked black volcanic dirt. When I look at this picture, I see an environment which is completely hostile to me. I already know how hostile Venus is, so hostile that I could not even set foot on the planet because the atmosphere would crush me. But this picture really makes me feel it.
I know what you mean but I almost find the familiarity weird... it's like what you said but in combination with the fact that I can still recognize rocks, dirt, little hills, and a sky. It's so alien but it's still a place in a way that the middle of space or inside the sun isn't.