Mission to Venus

I see the Venus Express, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Space Musical, has launched successfully.

Can't get excited anymore about Venus. When I was younger, we had an SF book in the house with an interesting cover, some monster and a spaceman. That was about some kind of trip to Venus. As soon as you realise that it's basically a pressure cooker with a sulphuric acid atmosphere, you think, feh. I'd like to read that book again though. I wish I could remember what it was called or who it was by.

I love the fact that the flimsy pretext for this mission is to study the so-called Greenhouse Effect in the Venus atmosphere. The fact that it's so much hotter than Earth couldn't possibly be anything to do with the fact that it's 41 million kilometres closer to the sun than us, could it?

How much more interesting life would be if Venus was basically Earth-like but a bit hotter, and the people who lived there included foccy ladies with pointy ears.