Venus, the second planet from the sun, has long been known as a desolate, barren, and hostile environment. Venus is devoid of any potential to support humans for the next several million years. Long story short, both manned and unmanned missions to Venus are expensive, time consuming, and provide no meaningful information that can't already be determined from earth, or a low-orbit probe.

The author presents the feat of missions to Venus as a "challenge", and rightfully so.

Paragraph 3 provides plenty of reasons to keep away from the second planet. The surface of this inhospitable rock is plagued with crushing atmospheric pressure, temperatures of more than 800 degrees, and highly corrosive clouds of sulfuric acid vapor.

"The challenge" isn't much of a reason to toss away millions of dollars of research, no matter how large of a rush it gives humanity. The author also mentioned the value of scientific research conducted on our neighbor planet. Except, in paragraph 6, they outright state, "peering at Venus from a ship orbiting or hovering safely above the ground can provide only limited insight on ground conditions".

Finally, an analysis of paragraph 7 doesn't give us any information that we weren't already aware of. Except, an interesting point was made. Using older, mechanical devices to take the place of electronic ones could negate the issues imposed by fragile silicon chips. Mechanical macines still need power, provided by batteries or solar panels, which are controlled by computers. A mechanical computer has just as many, if not more potential issues than an electronic one.

This article is fun to read, and is an excellent source of information about the planet Venus, but the author struggles to find valid reasons to go there. This article is a fluff piece, a feel-good piece of writing. If I were to create a similar writing, I would include more appeals to logic. "The Challenge of Exploring Venus" would have been far more appealing to me had it included more actual reasons to venture to a mysterious planet. "For Science!" just isn't sufficient in this particular case.