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Floating Cities On Venus
Geoffrey.landis writes "Some of you may have heard me talk about colonizing Venus. Well, for those who haven't, Universe Today is running story about floating cities on Venus. It's a reasonable alternative for space colonies — after all, the atmosphere of Venus (at about 50 km) is the most Earth-like environment in the solar system (other than Earth, of course). '50 km above the surface, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0C-50C range, a quite comfortable environment for humans. Humans wouldn't require pressurized suits when outside, but it wouldn't quite be a shirtsleeves environment. We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.'"
...that turn to goo in a few months!
The game.
It is always this way. I've been saying that we should attempt manned missions to Venus using balloons for years, and now that somebody else suggests it I feel compelled to start poking holes in the idea.
It is quite nice as a there-and-back science mission but for a long term colony it's a terrible environment. The local resources are incredibly difficult to get hold of if you have to send a balloon down to get them, remember that the record for longest lasting machine on the Venusian surface is slightly over an hour.
The only reason to go there and take humans along is if space travel has become cheap and easy enough that you can do it on a whim.
1) Wear suits to protect us from the poisonous atmosphere and lack of oxygen.
2) Stay under cover to protect us from the various radiation (no magnetic field as I understand it).
3) Keep a complex life support system functioning in a complex artificial environment where failure means death.
So how exactly is this different from the moon, mars or even space itself? It actually seems more difficult and worse environment for humans than any of those.
100 years?
There are places that are like that NOW. You just don't hear too much about it on a regular basis.
I have actually been to China, and I can tel you.. I BELIEVE that 16 out of 20 of the worlds most polluted cities are in that country.
We don't need to go to Venus to have to take those kinds of precautions. I think we will need to take similar precautions in 25 years in certain parts of the world. Actually, scratch that. Those parts of the world will have people that cannot AFFORD to take those kinds of precautions.
Considering the cost of colonizing Venus though, I highly doubt that "regular" people will get to go at all.
I think before we talk about other places, we should probably get the kinks out of everything by putting something on our own moon.
How about building cities that float in the oceans on earth first? We can already go there, and even do go there all the time. We can get back to land just as easily as we can get to the ocean. It's very fast to get there, weeks or hours depending on whether your city is large enough to have an airport. Going to the moon sounds nice, but we should make and follow through on plans to do something more practical first.
I wonder how long we should all be huddled up on a single ball of rock, waiting for another ball of rock to kill us all in one swell foop.
Eggs, singleton baskets, etc.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
While possible in theory, I think it is incredibly unlikely that humans will build any kind of colony on other planets. Simply put : the projected technological growth curve suggests that we will have self replicating robots (and possibly artificial intelligence smart enough to control them) within a century.
Why would we go to the hassle of creating compromise habitats on other planets (moon, mars, the rest) when we could simply place linear accelerators (aka railguns) to launch raw materials into orbit? Self-replicating factories on the moon would mine materials and manufacture more robots and parts. The finished bots as well as raw materials would be launched into orbit, to be used to manufacture gigantic rotating habitats.
The habitats would be MUCH posh-er than anything that could be made on a planet, with near perfect control of the internal environment.
Getting off is the hard part.
Actually, getting off could be easier on Mars. (minds out of the gutter, people!)
In situ propellant materials are definitely available on the moon, but in solid form, and even there the best alternatives look like aluminum with oxygen (hard to turn into a solid rocket) or hydrogen with oxygen (but in rare dirty ice form). So until we're ready to create a moon colony (i.e. with mining and manufacturing/refining equipment) rather than just a moon base, the only way to get off the rock is to do like Apollo did and bring all the rocket fuel you need all the way from Earth.
On Mars, on the other hand, carbon dioxide is most of the atmosphere - no need for mining equipment to bake O atoms out of rock, just an air filter to pull them in CO2 molecules out of the sky. We've already tested the sort of compact equipment that would let even a small mission turn that into carbon monoxide and oxygen. You can burn those together directly, or if you want higher performance you can bring your own H2 (which is only a small fraction of your total fuel+oxidizer needs by weight) and burn it directly against local oxygen or bulk it up into methane first using local carbon.
Your other points are all well taken, though. We've made enough flubs in Low Earth Orbit alone that it seems clear that we should practice walking before we run.
I've often thought that more or less self-sustaining colonies in the oceans and on Antarctica would be a good indication that we're ready to start colonizing other planets. After all, both of those two environments are easier to live in than space and you don't have to spend millions to get to either one.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
How about building cities that float in the oceans on earth first?
We have already. They are called Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.
but is the temperature 50 km above the surface of Venus hotter than the temperature 50 km above the surface of Mercury?
Probably. I can't imagine Mercury having much of an atmosphere at all above 50km.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
"Artificial" gravity does have some really weird effects. Coriolis force and all that.
1) you don't have to fight yet another gravity well.
I'd put "not having a gravity well" at the top of the list of disadvantages of space stations. If you have a gravity well, you can have all sorts of amenities known from Earth, such as a _real_ kitchen, plumbing, _real_ toilets, _real_ showers, and once the planetary outpost can support luxury items, maybe even a swimming pool.
If the tether is longer then the Coriolis effect won't be as strong, and the Coriolis effect in the space station is unlikely to kill you (whereas hurricanes and tornados do kill people ;) ).
Build a big enough space station and you can have a swimming pool. Maybe even a 0.5G swimming pool - which could be amusing (if people can avoid killing/crippling themselves), and maybe even a "flying room" - where you can strap on wings and fly about for fun.
Whatever disadvantages space stations have, talking about building planetary outposts without knowing how to build sustainable space stations, is like talking about building space stations without knowing how to get off the Earth.
After all with current tech it is still going to take months to travel to another planet, and if you go down to the planet's surface, how are you going to get back up?