Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
If your Steampunk Venus is still cloud covered it'd be the last one to have its' change confirmed.
|
Steampunk planetary romance Venus is presumably much cooler than the current one. That change in temperature would be easily noticeable. (Astronomers were debating how far down in the atmosphere of Venus they were measuring temperatures even back in the 1920s.)
The real variable there is whether anyone was bothering to look. But there are amateur astronomer groups that routinely observe Venus (and other planets) in the UV and IR as well as visible light. For the professionals, ESA's Venus Express is still in orbit and operational (I think; it was last summer), Japan has Atasuki in orbit (after some travails), and it would notice a change in the atmosphere, as that's its main object of study.
I'd also put a from-scratch flyby mission at a couple of years. It could be done faster if there were some obvious urgency. If it's just "hey, the inner planets seem different, lets' build a probe", it's just another space mission, even if it is the one on top of the list. Not just the probe but the rocket is essentially built to order. If, on the other hand, Earth is getting radio transmissions in English from Venus, things will move quicker. (Radio seems post-steampunk to me, but everyone has their own definition. And maybe you can think of another way they'd get attention.)