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.'"

Comments

One question

[Tubal-Cain]

And our reason for going to Venus is...?

We can mine the Moon and possibly Mars, but what does Venus offer us? Fuel? I would think it is too hot for mining the surface (robotic miners capable of operating in the heat may not be cost-effective)

Should put something on our moon..

[HomerJ]

I think before we talk about other places, we should probably get the kinks out of everything by putting something on our own moon. A lot of science could be done on a moon base, as well as learning just HOW to put something on another large rock. Lots of reasons why the moon is reasonable:

1) We can already get to the moon. We've been there already. So there's not real jump in tech needed to get there.

2) We can get OFF the moon. The big gotcha with any other landing. Go to Mars? Yeah, could probably get there and land now. Getting off is the hard part. Don't have that problem with the moon.

3) It's speedy to get there. No months of travel. Need to swap people out or something goes horribly wrong--can get there pretty quickly.

Landing on Mars, or floating cities on Venus sound nice. But I'd like to see something a bit more practical in my lifetime of a moon base. It's possible, but there haven't been any major plans to do it.

Re:Modify people, not planets.

[Nicopa]

Don't post Interesting things next to Funny stuff, it confuses the moderators!

Doing things in the wrong order

[TheLink]

But why bother even to colonize Mars or Venus? That's like trying to run or jump before learning to stand.

What we should do is learn to build practical and sustainable space stations with artificial gravity (the classical spinning wheels, or the tethered ones, or whatever that _works_).

It's not as difficult as colonizing another planet since:

1) you don't have to fight yet another gravity well.
2) you can do it just "outside" your planet - much cheaper.

And you're going to have to do it anyway. If you send people to Venus/Mars - it will take months for them to get there, where will they live during those months? My answer is a space station. Not a NASA Suicide Vessel.

Once you've worked out how to build a practical and sustainable space station, you can use such space stations to go elsewhere in the Solar System - Mars, Venus, the asteroid belts and beyond. There is no _rush_ then. And it stops sounding like a "one way" trip.

To me it is a really stupid idea to try to colonize other planets before we figure out how to do space colonies.

Once people work out how to do space colonies, I bet most colonizers would rather live in a space station than live on inhospitable planets in something that is just as restrictive as a space station ( if not more so - it's trapped on the planet and can't move) - it's not like you'd be able to walk outside in Venus without a protective suit. So what's the difference?

If you want to send people on one way trips to other planets, maybe you should start with certain politicians (you could hold a reality show - Vote Them Off The Planet or something), in that case there could be a significant benefit ;).

Anyway, I find it telling that the NASA and other "space" people keep talking about sending humans to Mars without seriously developing and advancing space station technology. So many stupid people making stupid decisions.

Learn to stand first, then walk, then run, then jump. Not the other way round.

Re:Doing things in the wrong order

[IICV]

This is actually my personal theory about why aliens have never visited Earth, the Fermi paradox notwithstanding. Assuming no FTL travel, by the time you've got the technology you need to send ships the dozens of lightyears required to explore new stars, you've already got the technology you need to build colonies in interstellar space. After all, once you can last out there for fifty years, you might as well just set up shop and call it home - nevermind exploring all those distant stars.

Hell yes!

[sckeener]

I'm surprised I haven't seen a copy & paste from a wiki...this is my favorite topic and I frequently refer people to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities

Geoffrey A. Landis has summarized the perceived difficulties in colonizing Venus as being merely from the assumption that a colony would need to be based on the surface of a planet:

"However, viewed in a different way, the problem with Venus is merely that the ground level is too far below the one atmosphere level. At cloud-top level, Venus is the paradise planet."

He has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities, based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 Oxygen-Nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense Venusian atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth.[4] In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 km above Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the solar system - a pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0ÂC-50ÂC range. Because there is not a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric mixing rates, giving time to repair any such damages. In addition, humans would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air to breathe and a protection from the acidic rain. Alternatively two-part domes could contain a lifting gas like hydrogen or helium (extractable from the atmosphere) to allow a higher mass density[5].

Cloud-top colonization also offers a way to avoid the issue of slow Venusian rotation. At the top of the clouds the wind speed on Venus reaches up to 95 m/s, circling the planet approximately every four Earth days in a phenomenon known as "super-rotation".[6] Colonies floating in this region could therefore have a much shorter day length by remaining untethered to the ground and moving with the atmosphere. While a space elevator extending to the surface of Venus is impractical due to the slow rotation, constructing a skyhook that extended into the upper atmosphere and rotated at the wind speed would not be difficult compared to constructing a space elevator on Earth.

Since such colonies would be viable in current Venusian conditions, this allows a dynamic approach to colonization instead of requiring extensive terraforming measures in advance. The main challenge would be using a substance resistant to sulfuric acid to serve as the structure's outer layer; ceramics or metal sulfates could possibly serve in this role.

Landis has suggested that as more floating cities were built, they could form a solar shield around the planet, and could simultaneously be used to process the atmosphere into a more desirable form. If made from carbon nanotubes (recently fabricated into sheet form) or graphene (a sheet-like carbon allotrope), the major structural materials can be produced using carbon dioxide gathered in situ from the atmosphere. The recently synthesised amorphous carbonia might prove a useful structural material if it can be quenched to STP conditions, perhaps in a mixture with regular silica glass. According to Birch's analysis such colonies and materials would provide an immediate economic return from colonizing Venus, funding further terraforming efforts.

Some of the difficulties that /. posters have mentioned have been dealt with in the wiki, but there are some others that have not been mentioned that the wiki deals with.

Personally I think the most difficult aspect would be mining the surface (and that is mentioned in the wiki.) Until we get more data I think this is a pipe dream (that I really want to happen.)

Speaking as someone t