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.

Comments

Really ?

[Crashmarik]

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.

Re:Really ?

[MightyMartian]

You also don't have to worry as much about massive storms with 300km/h winds. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I'd want to be hanging out in a large zeppelin when a wind like that nailed me.

Re:Really ?

[tnk1]

The atmosphere does have 900 degree sulfuric acid at the surface and just above. It also has a surface pressure like being a mile underwater. Carbon dioxide is actually a fluid at that pressure, not a gas.

However at the altitude where the atmospheric pressure is like Earth's, it's not actually livable by itself, but it it isn't a hellish, crushing inferno either. It may well offer advantages over Mars. Having gravity be Earth-similar is important for long term habitation. More of an atmosphere to deal with radiation without having to bore into the surface is pretty useful as well.

More to the point, you don't have to have a fragile balloon or something to keep the settlement up there. Venus is made up of a lot more CO2 by far than Earth is. Carbon Dioxide is heavier than either Nitrogen or Oxygen. Your settlement's air supply would literally be your flotation gas. The only "no fail" tech you would need, would be the same no fail tech you'd need to live on Mars. And with significant CO2, you have a much more ready supply of something that can be turned into Oxygen with scrubbers than you would on a comparatively airless Mars.

Knock it off

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Re:Incredibly farfetched

[CanadianMacFan]

The ISS has a mass of approximately 417,000 kg and it's made of comparatively light materials when you are talking about building something out of 1" steel. And that is only made for six people living in a pretty cramped lifestyle. Do you really expect a human colony to exist of just six people and live in basically a large submarine? The population size is going to be a lot larger and they are going to need a lot more space. Every person is going to need their own space. Take a look at what each astronaut has on the ISS, especially when there is gravity they won't be sleeping "standing up". Then you are going to need communal areas, kitchens, medical areas, and so on. Not every space will be dedicated to work. Plus a colony will probably have children at some point so you need that whole infrastructure too. Plus the ISS doesn't even have space for growing food.

Re: Atomospheric toxins.

[Ramze]

I wish there were an easy way to do that. No one seems to have a workable solution.

My proposal would be to build a reflective artificial ring around the planet to divert the sunlight away and help Venus cool off enough to where we can work on the chemistry issue. The ring would be a sort of shield -- one we could even expand and contract to regulate the cooling and stabilize at a comfortable temperature.

Venus's atmosphere has a lot of CO2 and sulfuric acid we'd have to find a way to chemically alter and/or store.

The other thing people forget about Venus is that it rotates retrograde -- a year on Venus is 225 days ( no big deal), but a day on Venus is almost 117 Earth days. Any base would have to take into account the lack of sunlight for months at a time - so, something to augment solar panels and any crops need to adjust to the odd seasonality or be grown indoors. I suppose the same reflective ring could be used to reflect some light to the dark side of the planet to help with that issue.

Eh, it's nice to think about, but we'll never approve the resources to build a planet-wide ring around Venus. We barely support a tiny international space station as it is.

Re:Build colonies on Earth

[Pfhorrest]

By the time off-world colonies are viable, pollution on Earth will be a non-issue, because the exact same technology needed to sustain an offworld colony is the technology that would allow us to clean and recycle absolutely everything here on Earth. Because that's exactly what you need for a self-sustaining offworld colony: recycled everything. On Earth, we're lucky enough to have a natural biosphere that gives us tons of recycling capacity for free: just dump wastewaster and CO2 and feces into the wilderness and, like a miracle, fresh air blows back, clean water falls from the sky, and food grows out of what was once someone's shit. Up to a certain capacity at least. If we can't even manage to recycle the excess of ours that that massive free hand up nature gives us can't handle, then we're nowhere close to being able to settle offworld where we have to do all of that work ourselves.

Like you say, Antarctica or the desert or, hell, the ocean floor, would all be a cakewalk compared to anywhere off Earth.

There is good reason to settle offworld when we can (not keeping all our eggs in one basket), but until we're capable of even settling all of the comparably idyllic places on our own planet that aren't "worth settling" at the current difficulty levels, then we don't stand a chance of settling anywhere offworld.

Re: Atomospheric toxins.

[garyebickford]

I had an idea a while back, that actually relates to TFA. Genetically engineered bacteria or simple organisms that could float and live in the Venusian atmosphere and gradually begin to 'fix' the sulfides and whatever - maybe pooping out metallic sulfur. For the first long while, they would be working at the top of the atmosphere. Their poop would drift down and re-vaporize (absorbing energy and lowering the temperature). When they died, they would drift down into deeper layers and get to the point where their bodies would be heated back up to the point where the materials would be turned back into gas. But as they became more populous, gradually they would reduce the amount of solar energy (especially if their bodies were reflective), and the temperature. Eventually the might be able to reduce the temperature to the point where their poop, or that of their successors, would fall to the surface, permanently eliminating the sulfides from the air.

Re:Incredibly farfetched

[penguinoid]

The ISS has a mass of approximately 417,000 kg and it's made of comparatively light materials when you are talking about building something out of 1" steel.

Just for fun, I calculated what the weight would be for a balloon of the same size of the article (78,000 m^3) but coated with 1 inch of steel. The best you can get is spherical, radius 26.5 m, which would have a surface area of 8,800 m^2 and with 1 inch of steel weigh 1,800,000 kg. And that is just the outer surface -- though to be fair, the weight of air contained within wouldn't be that much. Also, at those numbers you'd need 31 atmospheres of pressure or so worth of (hot) Venusian atmosphere to equal the weight of the outer hull, so I have my doubts about being able to be at 1 atmosphere.

The main problem I see is that you have seconds to live if your air conditioner dies, followed by where will you get raw materials? Seems to me that if your hull weighs this much you're better off building where you can mine metal and just import air, rather than the other way around. Like, say, on Mars, where you can also get as much nitrogen and oxygen as you want from the atmosphere, and metal from the ground, and only need to import some hydrogen.

Re:Build colonies on Earth

[garyebickford]

As someone who is involved (peripherally) in the "New Space" movement, IMHO the first purpose of space development will be the availability of new resources and technologies. An economist a couple of years ago predicted that space development would have the potential to increase the standard of living of everyone on Earth by a factor of 10. That seems optimistic to me, but a reasonable goal. One popular example (see Planetary Resources, Inc.) regards the availability of Platinum, which is a very useful industrial metal, but is unfortunately $1300 per ounce. Platinum mining is expensive, dangerous, and disastrous both ecologically and socially. This greatly restricts is usefulness although it is used in those expensive catalytic converters in your car - that's why they're expensive. The best astronomical physicists believe that some of the Near Earth Asteroids contain single-digit percentages of Platinum. If this is true, then a 100 meter asteroid would contain a dozen times as much Platinum as has ever been mined. Retrieving this material to Earth could drop the price to between $10 and $100 per ounce, and this would still be economically viable for the company to process in space and ship it down to Earth.

There are many other examples. Technologically, the range of industrial processes that are presently either expensive or impossible on Earth due to gravity and air, that could be done in the high vacuum and microgravity of space is broad but it is likely that an order of magnitude more new processes that have not even been envisioned yet will be discovered or invented. Orbital production of high quality integrated circuits might well be one - one of the most expensive aspects of IC manufacturing is the requirement to build a huge facility and maintain a high level clean room environment. In space that could be done with not much more than a bit of Mylar.