Also while life on the surface of Venus is extremely hostile, it's possible to build floating stations in the atmosphere because it's so much more dense than earth's. High enough in the atmosphere the pressures, temperatures, and solar radiation would be reasonable. It's harder than floating a ship on water, but easier than doing airships on earth.
I'm not sure what that gains us over just having a habitat in orbit though.
Colonizing other planets doesn't make much sense to begin with yet. We don't even colonize Antarctica, and it's a paradise compared to mars.
I'm more interested in setting up industry and habitats in earth orbit. Close enough for low latency internet, and trips measured in hours, but far enough to allow asteroid mining, 24/7 solar, manufacturing and refueling largely outside of earth's gravity well. Plus if something goes wrong you can have escape pods that return to earth. Having a strong space industry like that is also the best protection from potential asteroid impacts.
> Colonizing other planets doesn't make much sense to begin with yet. We don't even colonize Antarctica, and it's a paradise compared to mars.
The unique characteristic of a colony on Mars, Venus or another planet would be that it is not on planet Earth. Antarctica on the other hand has to compete with all the places on Earth that are a lot nicer.
I think what people don't get is that once you establish a human colony outside of earth ... why would you do that at the bottom of a gravity well ? Why dive into another big gravity well?
There are abundant resources in free space, from hydrogen gas to metals, carbon, oxygen that can be mined from passing asteroids (you could easily live in those asteroids while mining them) ... Energy is plentiful, the more complained about problem really is that energy is far too plentiful.
Maybe you'd want a base on the moon, but free-floating in space would work even better.
Living inside an asteroid is a common scifi trope but very impracticle. They arent rocks. Most are more like sand dunes or rubble piles. You couldnt just dig a hole, slap a door on it and pump in air. You might bury your hab undrground to protect it against radiation but you would never have walls made of rock, not if you want air to breath.
There is a concept by NASA for such a mission, it is called "High Altitude Venus Operational Concept" or "HAVOC" [0].
They also made a demo video for it [1].
That doesn't seem like a great resource. If you value CO2 so highly there is plenty right here on earth that nobody wants and people will actually pay you to remove from the atmosphere. No need to go all the way to Venus.
Even on the surface of Venus, inhospitality notwithstanding, the resources are at the bottom of a gravity well equal to earth's. It is way more viable to mine asteroids than mine a planet, especially a planet like Venus.
Mining other planets is only interesting if the market for the resource is on that same planet, or we've exhausted the supply of asteroids with that resource.
I'm not sure what that gains us over just having a habitat in orbit though.
Colonizing other planets doesn't make much sense to begin with yet. We don't even colonize Antarctica, and it's a paradise compared to mars.
I'm more interested in setting up industry and habitats in earth orbit. Close enough for low latency internet, and trips measured in hours, but far enough to allow asteroid mining, 24/7 solar, manufacturing and refueling largely outside of earth's gravity well. Plus if something goes wrong you can have escape pods that return to earth. Having a strong space industry like that is also the best protection from potential asteroid impacts.