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First Human Colonies Should Be Among Venus' Clouds
StartsWithABang writes: When we talk about humans existing on worlds other than Earth, the first choice of a planet to do so on is usually Mars, a world that may have been extremely Earth-like for the first billion years of our Solar System or so. Perhaps, with enough ingenuity and resources, we could terraform it to be more like Earth is today. But the most Earth-like conditions in the Solar System don't occur on the surface of Mars, but rather in the high altitudes of Venus' atmosphere, some 50-65 km up. Despite its harsh conditions, this may be the best location for the first human colonies, for a myriad of good, scientific reasons. NASA proposed something similar last year and released a report on the subject.
When you think of space colonization, you very likely think of the important things that humans need for life:
water,
sunlight,
the right temperatures,
sources of food,
sources of energy,
and the ability to create or exist in a self-sustaining ecosystem.
Well not having an atmosphere that consists of 900 degree sulfuric acid also comes to mind.
At least with the moon or mars you aren't quite that dependent on active no fail technology to keep you alive.
a lot of weird creatures live in damp and misty swamps of venus...or so I have read
posting at http://leftistconservative.blogspot.com
Aren't there toxins in the atmosphere, such as methane and formaldehyde ( to name just two ) that make it problematic?
Ya moving to the closest planet to the sun being the first planet to get eaten by our sun when it expands and their is no question that will happen, is a great idea..Not. . Might make a great Movie plot though.
Jack of all trades,master of none
From TFA:
build a 1" thick hull out of steel in our desired shape,
fill it with the same gases at the same temperatures and pressures in Earth's atmosphere,
and let that baby loose on Venus.
I'm no aerodynamicist, but common sense tells me that the volume of your balloon city will have to be very large and the amount of 1" thick steel you need to bring from Earth will be so massive, most Mars colony proposals will seem lightweight in comparison. Might as well just go to Mars.
.. creating floating habitats is a great way to start a fledgling colony with our current level of tech (or anything close to our current level).
Mars is still, by far, the best bet.
I always get a kick out of the fact that some of the same people who think solar energy will never be viable will embrace the idea of human colonies in the clouds over Venus or on Mars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Its name is "Senator" Ted ( a.k.a. Wacko ) Cruz.
Thanks In Advance,
K. Trout
Meet George Jetson!
Say, people are beginning to pay attention. High enough, the climate is nice. Possibly not as nice as Jamaica. But nicer than, say, the moon:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...
or
http://www.universetoday.com/1...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It would be interesting to see how human beings from different colonies on different planets evolve to adapt to their new environments, and I don't think it would take long at all for changes to happen. I believe nature moves quicker than we realize.
Venus? A floating colony in Venus's atmosphere is the very definition of "fail deadly". Anything goes wrong you are dead, whether dead quickly or dead slowly. Plus, given the conditions on Venus, if there ever was an ecology, it has long been reduced to ash. It is also not likely we could terraform Venus (reduce the atmosphere and spin it up) given the resources of the entire solar system to do so.
If I were planning humanity's journey to the stars, I'd go with the moon first, followed by Ceres. Resource rich, low gravity, and far enough out of the Earth's (in the moon's case) and the Sun's (in Ceres' case) gravity well to make exploring other places much easier.
There's an interesting Wikipedia article about John Gray's book on this topic that says:
"men [are] from Mars and women from Venusâ"and that each gender is acclimated to its own planet[...]"
Someone clearly needs to conduct some gender research on this (re-)colonization thing... Only having two small balls hanging around shouldn't disqualify me from living in a warm place with long days.
A lot of the brainstorming and preliminary engineering requirements have already been rigorously tested.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
It always struck me as kind of crazy that anybody talks about building colonies on Mars, the moon, Venus, or anywhere off-world. I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but the fact of the matter is that we already have a planet with suitable gravity, and breathable air.
We're not even close to using up all of the available space on this planet. Why would we build on Mars when we have Antarctica? Why build on Venus when we have giant empty deserts in Nevada?
On Earth, a cracked window doesn't mean that everybody will suffocate or be pulled apart by a vacuum. Plus, it comes with plenty of raw materials and suitable gravity.
No matter how bad Earth gets pollution-wise, I just can't see off-world colonies as realistic until we use up the land we already have.
leak in your bio-dome doesn't
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Volcano tubes on the moon. A lot cheaper and easier to get there.
The Soviet landers lasted more than a half hour. But they did require massive cooling systems.
Table-ized A.I.
We can finally visit our "cloud servers" while there
Table-ized A.I.
we need to building kind of a water bubble around Venus, to start cooling it down for terraforming.
And I never realized why they live in the sky, it was because of climate change!
If you can make it to Mars, land and build a self-sufficient colony there you probably have developed the technology to build ships that can serve as the same thing, permanently in space. i.e. You have solved fusion power, space radiation deflection and the atomic level reconstitution of matter, nano deconstruction and manufacturing. We are not there yet, but the technology will exist within the next 50 years if technological progress continues to accelerate. So why would you want to deal with all the problems a big gravity well (massive object like a planet) causes? Why mess with planets when there is an entire asteroid belt to convert in to materials?
"Red Star" Alexander Bogdánov's 1908 science fiction novel forsees this reality when martians debate to colonise Venus or Earth.
I will come back with the answer to the question if Venu's clouds are also the choice of 1908 martians.
How cool would it be if we renamed Venus 'Bespin'? Cloud city for the win!
Eventual colonization and terraforming of Venus isn't super far fetched. You'd probably start by capturing a few asteroids and pushing them into orbit around Venus. This would give you a resource base to construct the first floating cities from. Ideally you'd them start extracting cardon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce carbon fiber and carbon nanotube materials. You'd then want to build some floating, automated factories that would begin churning out massive amounts of balloons that would be released all over the planet. If possible, you'd want the balloons to be as close to white in color as the materials on hand allowed for. As you saturated the atmosphere with balloons, you'd begin to cool the surface both from shade and from the high albedo of the white balloons. Once you cool the atmosphere enough, a whole range of possibilities open up. It's definitely more involved than setting up a self sufficient colony on Mars, but in the long run, Venus would likely provide a much better second home for humans. It's surface gravity, at 8.87 m/s2 is way closer to earth's gravy than the 3.7 m/s2 that Mars has. Venus has a magnetic field. And Venus has an atmosphere and the ability to keep it. If you could cool the surface of Venus to where machinery could function, it would likely be much, much cheaper to slowly sequester and thin out Venus's atmosphere than it would be to bring an atmosphere to Mars. I think it's likely that the first off-world colony that humans build will be on Mars, but I also think there's a good chance that the first colony where humans will be able to walk around in the open without a space suit or habitat will be on Venus. Simply because if we have the technology and infrastructure to terraform Mars, then we most likely also have the technology and infrastructure necessary to terraform Venus, and the dividends that Venus would pay potentially far outweigh what Mars would offer.
meh
Don't kid yourselves. This proposal has everything to do with Venus being closer and nothing to do with what is a better choice.
The whole reason to send people to mars is to build, expand, and expand the human population. On the surface there are a lot of things that robts just can't do yet.
On Venus, you are stuck in the clouds and so are very dependent on equipment for everything. I can't think of a single thing in the Venutian atmosphere that humans would need to do that couldn't be done by robots. Therefor, it's just a promotional stunt.
I do think it's a good idea to send robots back to Venus. But humans need to go back to the Moon, and then to Mars, and both cases after extensive robotics have gone and set things up first, for permanant colonization.
Why? Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere. Until this is remediated, any atmosphere will be whisked away by the solar winds.
Venus has a magnetosphere. We could and should start not terraforming Venus, but "atmosphere-ing" Venus so that it can then be terraformed. Develop bacteria that live in the Venusian extremes, eat sulfuric acid and output fixed sulfur and H2O. Let the process run. We can then handle the rest.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Venus does indeed have a magnetosphere but ultraviolet light is going to be a bitch. Also when the sun degrades into a Red Giant mercury and venus would be the first planets to burn up. I think we need to be better stewards at resource management, learn to colonize the moon.. jump to mars.. then jump to one of jupiters moons .. then one of saturn's moons.. Mars will be a bitch since the magnetosphere is weak. If the recycled oxygen doesn't kill you then the Cosmic Rays that penetrate the mars habitat will. We know that living in low/zero gravity environment cause serious issues with the human body, you can also almost guarantee dealing with glaucoma as time goes on. We need to build a sustainable habitat on the ocean floor and then bring that technology to Death Valley and test. If all goes well next will be on top of Mt. Everest. .. then the moon.... then mars..
I'm sure we are at least 50 years away of building a habitat on mars.
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---
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APK
P.S.=> Gonna go "cry in your cereal" now, boy?
(You ought to for being STUPID enough to use OR SUGGEST a blatantly INFERIOR solution! See above - it's fact & truth via reputable sources)... apk
Yes a Colony on Venus would have water and sunlight but they would still be at the bottom of a gravity well(same for Mars). It would make more sense to establish a colony in space where you could find water and minerals in asteroids. Supply ships would not need to overcome gravity and return flights could take back precious minerals that would help fund the expense.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Sure, you could float your colony in the atmosphere of Venus. But since you're basically creating a fully sealed, self contained system, why not just put it in space? Why bother with Venus at all?
Ok, it does have a few advantages over that. You get gravity for free (91% of Earth gravity). You get radiation shielding. You have access to some raw materials - but only what you can get from the upper atmosphere. You're not heading down to the surface to mine anything there! But all of those things are easily achieved in space. Rotate the colony to get gravity. Mine raw materials from asteroids or the moon. Use a physical barrier or a magnetic field to block radiation. And you have two huge advantages:
1. You don't have to worry about the outside of your colony frequently being exposed to clouds of sulfuric acid.
2. Venus is a really long way away! Having your colony much closer to Earth will make building it much cheaper and easier, and also make transportation a lot easier once it's built.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Isn't Earth the most earth-like planet of all? Adapting it to the ideal conditions would be the easiest path, even if the population explodes considerably high. But human kind is stupid enough to prefer destroying Earth and feeling capable of transforming a different environment in its favor.
I'm surprised that Bespin hadn't crossed anyone's mind. It would seem like that's what a "futuristic" colony would be if we were to colonize Venus in this manner.
Terraforming Venus may be no easier than terraforming Mars. Both are probably practically impossible, given that adapting human technologies to subsist on either planet will probably involve less tech than allowing humans to live on either planet. We'd still get the large majority of our living area from the asteriods.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Opportunity Cost.
You can't do everything. Not enough time or resources. Deciding what actions are most likely to generate results (short, medium and long term) and focusing on those is rational and the only way to maximize the odds of survival (individual and species.)
See subject: "Eat your words" http://it.slashdot.org/comment... in a 244++:1 ratio from your /. peers against your quoted bs there & statements now dimwit!
Funniest part's that THAT's DOUBLED in my favor since then too!
* LMAO...
(You really ought to CHANGE YOUR DIET: "eating your words" != GOOD nutrition Sardaukar86...)
APK
P.S.=> Tell us: How does "eating your words" in a 244++:1 ratio against you taste? Can't be TOO good, spiced w/ the 'bitter taste of SELF-DEFEAT', & rammed down your throat since your FOOT'S IN YOUR MOUTH too, lmao... apk
LMAO - see subject: Do you have a formal examination of myself given in a professional psychiatric environs & are you a licensed, degreed, & practicing psychiatric professional?
HELL NO!
* CLUE/New NEWS/NewsFlash: You're libeling myself & YOU HAVE DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR thinking you're Sigmund SLASHDOT the "SiDeWaLk ShRiNk" (lol)...
APK
P.S.=> Libelous unidentifiable ac trolls with delusions of grandeur are just (& you KNOW I've just GOTTA say it, as per my usual "inimitiable style" don't you? Of course you do!) "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'" to dispatch with SUPERIOR LOGIC I possess & facts... everytime! apk
"Oh, here we go again, 'anonymous people' that pop up out of the woodwork who definitely surely completely aren't Sardaukar86" - by Sardaukar86 (850333) on Friday July 03, 2015 @07:45PM (#50041659)
LMAO - Now go "eat your words" FOOL -> http://it.slashdot.org/comment... & tell us:
* HOW DOES EATING YOUR WORDS TASTE?
APK
P.S.=> Especially considering they're a result of your "illogic logic" ad hominem attacks - lol, talk about SELF-DEFEAT & it's "bitter taste", topping it off with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH "ramming them down" your throat too?
LMAO - perfect!
See - Only YOU, Sardaukar86, could BLUNDER so perfectly & EVERY SINGLE TIME you do it, lol... apk
See subject: Sardaukar86 @ his finest in "logic" http://slashdot.org/comments.p... complete with profanities + illogical ad hominem attacks. It always makes us laugh when you attempt your brand of "illogic logic". That's a prime example of it in that link.
What the hell would be the point of an orbiting colony? The expense is astronomical (er, sorry...), the logistics are mind-boggling, and the huge technological barriers to colonizing another planet are flippantly brushed away with as-yet nonexistent sci-fi solutions. There's nothing to be gained by having humans living in orbit of another planet. None of the hinted-at scientific discoveries, no miraculous breakthroughs in materials science have occurred, nothing. The great advances made in astronomy and space exploration since the moon landing have been achieved with unmanned probes: this is the future of space exploration. Sending people up there is not beneficial in relation to its extremely high cost: hell, if huge amounts of gold were as close as orbiting the earth, there's no possible way it could even be cost-effective to retrieve it.
See subject: Keep "eating your words" Sardaukar86 by ac post http://it.slashdot.org/comment... - you'll DIE of MALNUTRITION, R O T F L M A O!
* :)
APK
P.S.=> You're ridiculously easy to outwit, did you know that? Well, now you do... apk