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Vice President Pence Vows US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon (engadget.com)
Before astronauts go to Mars, they will return to the Moon, Vice President Mike Pence said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday and in a speech at the National Air and Space Museum today. He touts "humans exploration and discovery" as the new focus of America's space program. This "means establishing a renewed American presence on the moon, a vital strategic goal. And from the foundation of the moon, America will be the first nation to bring mankind to Mars." Engadget reports: There have been two prevailing (and opposing) views when it comes to U.S. endeavors in human spaceflight. One camp maintains that returning to the moon is a mistake. NASA has already been there; it should work hard and set our sights on Mars and beyond. The other feels that Mars is too much of a reach, and that the moon will be easier to achieve in a short time frame. Mars may be a medium-to-long-term goal, but NASA should use the moon as a jumping-off point. It's not surprising that the Trump administration is valuing short-term gains over a longer, more ambitious project. The U.S. will get to Mars eventually, according to Pence, but the moon is where the current focus lies.
Actually check the link that you replying to. Nobody is talking about habitation on the surface.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
There's a sweet spot you have to balance on on Venus - too low and you crash, too high and you burn up. This is due to material constraints - you're pretty much limited to teflon and other plastics as coatings due to the sulfuric acid atmosphere. Metals would corrode. If you go to high the plastics melt (or at least will become soft allowing any stresses in the hull to crack them open. If components of the structure bump into eachother good luck with that because a scratch on the coating will likewise cause corrosion of the inner materials in a matter of days. The plastics themselves will have a lifetime of about 20-30 years at best in those conditions even if nothing goes wrong, so you will have to constant be recoating everything to keep it stable, and as far as I am aware there are no hydrocarbons on venus to make more. All this equates to: if the colony fails for whatever reason there will certainly be political issues lasting upwards of a half-decade preventing another attempt, then you're shit is corroded and destroyed leaving you to start fresh when/if it gets restarted. On Mars it could all go to Hell, politicians could bicker about whether or not to allow it to happen again for another several decades, and if they finally restart it most of the equipment will need at most the dust wiped off and some welding to function again. Every colonization attempt in Human history has had some massive collapse associated with it, it's not a matter of if it happens but when for something as complex as colonizing another planet, therefore that must be built into the plan. Venus is not within our current technological capabilities (Hell, for that matter Mars isn't either given we still crack water for O2 and the plan on Mars is to crack Iron Oxide for O2, but at least that provides building materials as a byproduct and there's a viable pathway to it.) Venus is a much more difficult place than Mars.
It was NOT a Republican proposal, it contained a fragment of an idea put forth by a Conservative think-tank.
Or maybe you're thinking of "Romneycare", where a rather liberal State legislature did the same thing. It still wasn't a Republican idea, it was just signed into law by a Republican governor whose veto would have been overridden.