The Post-Apollo Human Mission to Venus

In the mid-1960s, NASA began planning what audacious goal it could take on after successfully landing on the Moon. One idea that gained a fair amount of traction was a manned mission to Venus, or a manned mission to Venus and Mars with a single launch, depending on the specific launch window. It sounds like science fiction, but studies showed it was a perfectly viable next step for the space agency.

An artist’s concept of the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit before going to the Moon. It would like very similar going to Venus. NASA.

Apollo Applications Program

1965 was an interesting time for NASA. The Agency was just beginning the Gemini program, which was testing some of the most vital technologies the Agency would use on Apollo missions to the Moon, slated to start flying sometime in 1967. Everything looked great for the lunar landing’s completion by the end of the decade, but the Agency was starting to lose support. Funding was waning, and NASA had no guarantees about it’s post-Apollo future.

This uncertainty wasn’t completely surprising. NASA was created in 1958 as a response to the Soviets’ launching Sputnik, and it was never guaranteed to last longer than the time it would take for America to launch a satellite or a human into orbit. But the Soviets’ persistent lead in space compelled President Kennedy to challenge America to a manned lunar landing before the end of the 1960s. This goal gave NASA a raison d’être. Apollo allowed NASA to…