It may or may not occur to the reader that Venus and Mercury have not been early on the list of places to explore. The primary reason for that is the proximity of each to the Sun, and that even before sending a probe there, other remote measurements would show that Venus would be particularly non-useful as a settlement location. After all, the Outbound philosophy is to Live and Work in Space, and surveying the possible places to live come before obviously uninhabitable places. Venus and Mercury have to wait their turn.
That said, of course we’ll want to go to Venus eventually, to better understand the mechanisms of our Solar System, leading to a better overall understanding of why the inhabitable places exist as the do. Mercury doesn’t have the corrosive and high-pressure atmosphere of Venus, but it is relatively harder to get to, is much warmer, and thus more troublesome to explore. Continuing on to other destinations hone our skills in space exploration until we’re ready.
Venus provides a training ground for more demanding space missions, and an insight into yet another set of environmental extremes to study. Thus, this leads us to OPS.13, Outbound Operational Plan for Space Migration: Robots to Venus.