OceanGate’s cofounder wants to send 1,000 people to a floating colony on Venus by 2050, and says we shouldn’t stop pushing the limits of innovation::Guillermo Söhnleinm told Insider he has wanted to make humanity a multi-planet species since he was 11 years old, and that OceanGate was part of that ambition.
It might seem unintuitive, but there’s an area above the clouds that’s actually really very mild as far as conditions go. It’s also closer/easier to get to than Mars and various useful components can be harvested from the atmosphere which is quite dense while Mars doesn’t have much.
Also, breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere so habitats filled with gas humans can breathe would actually be buoyant. You wouldn’t even need a pressurized spacesuit to go outside, just an air supply.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus
To add to this, one of the potential advantages is that you could use the temperature gradient as you drop further into the atmosphere as an energy source - making it one of the few areas in the solar system where you wouldn’t be reliant soley on solar or nuclear.
That’s a good point, although with sunlight so accessible and abundant and nuclear waste not being an issue (presumably you can just drop it to the surface) I’m not sure what the benefit would be of using that approach.
The issue with solar power on a planet is what you do during the nights (which are over 100 earth days long on Venus). The issue with nuclear is the danger of a launch failure with a craft full of fissile material - that would change if we could source the fuel from off earth but we’re not at the stage of being able to do that yet
Again, good points. Also, I definitely wasn’t taking the length of days into account!
Isn’t it hard to get to because of it being closer to the Sun and requiring more deltaV?
Based on the Wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Advantages ) it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Optimal launch windows are more frequent and flight time is reduced (although it’s not a massive difference). That section doesn’t specifically mention delta v or fuel requirements but I assume if there was a notable difference aside from the flight time part that there would be something about it.
I’m far from an expert, but I’d guess in a way stuff like fuel requirements don’t really vary that much with distance, just time. This is because the vehicle will accelerate to some set speed and just coast for most of the way before decelerating at the other end. At least with current rocket propellant-based approaches, it’s not feasible to include enough fuel for the thing to be actively thrusting for more than a fraction of the total time.