In "The Challenge of Exploring Venus", the author writes about a great number problems that come along with trying to get information on the our planetary neighbor, Venus. We, the readers, learn in detail about the specific challenges that come along with studying Venus, even with its close proximity to us. Despite the author describing all of the struggles that come along with studying our sister planet, the passage still supports the idea that studying Venus is a worthwile pursuit, through giving us strong examples of useful information we could learn, and describing safer and easier ways that we could study it that would make it far more simple to get the desired data.

While there are certainly many difficulties that the passage describes about getting information from Venus, the author thoroughly explains all of the great scientific benefits that we could get out of a Venus mission. As the author describes in paragraph four, "Astronomers are fascinated by Venus because it may well have once been the most Earth-like planet in our solar system." Not only will information about Venus teach us more about the universe around us, it might just be useful in order to study our own planet. Being able to learn so much from what a previous Earth could have been like would be a massive benefit to fields like history, and the earth sciences. The author goes into even more detail about this just afterward, describing how "Venus was probably covered largely with oceans and could have supported various forms of life, just like Earth." Not only are they similar from a geological perspective, it could provide vital information to the studies of biology, and possibly even support details about where we came from to begin with. There are hundreds, if not thousands of scientists specifically studying the cosmos trying to find planets with water that even have a small chance of supporting any form of life. The potential for further discovery here only a short distance away is extrodinary, and the author wisely emphasizes this through the passage.

Not only is the possibility for fascinating exploration and gaining crucial information about the Earth from Venus supported, the author also makes the important point that we are coming closer and closer by the day to this becoming a reality. In the seventh paragraph the author discusses this idea. "For example, some simplified electronics made of silicon carbide have been tested in a chamber simulating the chaos of Venus's surface and have lasted for three weeks in such conditions." When they put some of the brightest engineers in the world to a specific task of making electronics that could survive in Venus, the results were successful, as they made them able to survive for almost a month. While a month doesn't sound like a long time for the equipment to last, the author mentions later on in the passage that "Modern computers are enormously powerful, flexible, and quick, but tend to be more delicate when it comes to extreme phyisical conditions." The most delicate part any device that would land on Venus would be the electronics inside any rover or measuring equipment. The great advances in the durability of these electronics points toward an optimistic future in devices designed for Venus, as we are already seeing incredible progess being made. However, what would happen if they couldn't find a way around the delicacy of modern computers? The author proves that wouldn't be the end of our Venus hopes, that mechanical computers can be utilized in order to avoid easily broken hardware. Even in the worst case scenerio, our scientists are still devising ways to land a probe on Venus.

Though the author presents some great challenges in getting samples and other data from Venus, he strongly supports the idea that studying Venus is a worthy pursuit through the development of new and better ways to survive the harsh atmosphere, and information that could be gained from it that is useful to studying scientific and historical fields back here on Earth that he mentions in the passage. The human race, throughout history, has always remained curious and are willing to sacrifice and go through long periods of experimentation to acheieve knowledge. We have faced these struggles as humans before, and this will not be the struggle that stops us.