Four days of night

Last December I calculated the Forever Flotilla's energy needs and found that, over Venus, it cannot stay in daylight. My solution was to slow down the 'plane to half wind speed (taking that loss for its lift force) and have it fly on batteries half the time. Sufficient batteries will exist; they almost exist already.

Since Venus' air rotation at cloudtop is four days, at half speed I was looking at four days under the sun and four days in darkness - give or take that couple of twilit stretches in between. As for who could spare four full days in the dark: robot telescopes came to mind; and we could add ground surveys, and communications up Venus' shadow to L2.

I hadn't considered a difference between 'planes. The people doing daylight work would do - what exactly, at night; and vice versa. Hibernate? Also most 'planes prefer sunlight to catch the energy and, who knows, maybe even to farm and do chemistry.

So most frequent fliers will say nuts to four-day nights.

If during twilight the captain just turns off the engine and pops open the safety balloons - presumably hydrogen-filled - the vessel can drift in the wind and be done with the flipside in two days. Also this is the mechies' opportunity to do line maintenance. In the dark, for most folk; but we've already got batteries for whatever needs doing. For the more-involved "A Check", I do recommend that the two-day floatytimes be in sunlight.

Or: turn the darn thing around with the wind, and if at night we'd run the batteries. That's ONE lost day. Maybe even half that: if I'm willing to run the turbine at doubletime, and the turbine will take it. As with batteries I'd be unsurprised if turbine tech gets there.