It was quite cool I thought. It also was rather poingant in the respect that my childhood was filled with dreams like this. Then, technological progress was gauged in terms of solar exploration by space probes, feats of engineering etc.
Nowadays, technological progress is the ability to watch cheesy pap by britney spears on your 3G phone and how many FPS you can get in Doom3 on your gaming rig.
It was kind of dissapointing to see that we can explore the solar system only as a set of rendering and special effects, courtesy of said super fast computers :-/
What the hell went wrong? Of course space exploration is simply too much expense for to little (financial) return at present.
All that said, I have to say I thought the venus landing was pushing it too far :-)
Making a suit to withstand 92 Bar is one thing, making one to withstand 450+ C another, but one that can withstand both and be wearable is quite another still. Of course, it was supposedly only for 2 hours - but that's the point. I doubt anybody would actually sanction a mission that offered so much risk with so little return ;-)
