Teabagging Venus

We're being invited to Calypso (pdf). There's a discussion at Instapundit.

Notion here is to float an island at altitude 50-55km, and dangle a payload below the haze tier at 20ish km where it's still electronic-friendly. They want close mapping of tesserae, to start.

Some Earth companies (unnamed) are capable of tethering the twain. They figure they got acid-resistance sussed.

I think 50km is still in the clouds. Also, there is a pressure differential across these altitudes, so wind shear applies. One reason why they want up to 40 km of rope - which will pull down the balloon.

As for why the tether in the first place: they're planning on teabagging the gondola into altitudes too hot for long term electronics. They pull it all up again to cool the electronics. "Reel" it, they say, with a winch... somewhere. Top or bottom. Or both. Pulling the teabag back up will exert much (more) tension on the rope.

For most materials, including the fabled Kevlar, the rope itself degrades at high temperature. DuPont make that product for which they offer a technical guide. Reeled in, the rope should be no warmer than 420 K. It can reel out to 700 K before degradation. And yes sulfuric acid eats away at it in hours, at 420 K. Unlike heated electronics, physical damage doesn't fix itself. I assume we want to lower the teabag more than once. Does the top balloon have means to fix corroded and stretched-out Kevlar? or Zylon? T1100G . . . ?

Either way, the balloon is being dragged into the cloud layer, so it is not taking full sunlight, and it is subject to acid droplets. Not to mention that it will be in nightside for days on end, depending on latitude. I don't believe they'll want this for the erratic 60+ arctic circles much less either polar maelstrom.

PROSPECTING 9/24: Veins of the earth.