Colonization of Venus
Building floating castles, literally and figuratively.
I came upon this delightfully technical article on the possibilities of a Venus colony, wait for it, not on the surface of the planet but in the atmosphere of Venus! around 50 km above the surface. The rationale is that while the surface is very hostile to human life, the zone 50 km above is the most earth-like in the solar system. I did not know this, and I wonder how they ascertained that. First principles wise, space is hard. There’s the minor issue of oxygen, but we also need carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and basically every element that we have evolved to live in harmony with on earth. Apart from all that, winning the under-appreciation contest, is gravity. We’re going to go all loopy, literally and figuratively, if we don’t have gravity.
Long story short, the surface of Venus sucks. Surface temperature of 737 K (300 K on earth), surface pressure of 9.2 MPa (0.1 MPa on earth) and an atmosphere with 96.5% CO$_2$ which, get this, exists in a supercritical state at the surface because of the pressures. The worst part, there’s no sun, because of all the poisonous1 cloud cover2.
But 50 km above the surface is quite a different story. Apart from the acidic clouds (H$_2$SO$_4$), the conditions are very earthlike. Temperatures around 320 K, pressure of 0.1 MPa, gravity is a little less than what we get on earth but manageable, and we get some sun. We still cannot breathe though, and heat waves would take out the entire population if there was no protection. But this is as good as we have it under the sun. Literally, this is as good as we have it in our solar system.
The proposal is this. We colonize the air of Venus. We build floating cities, much like vimanas or the golden floating city of Tripura. Considerations include breathing (oxygen supply), solar radiation shielding, anti-corrosive measures in the air, pressure differentials and repairs in case of gas leaks, length of the solar day (116.8 times that of earth) and resources (both for maintenance and exploration purposes)
Space is wonderful and it is probably my fear of getting nerd-sniped into eternity that I don’t spend more time on these ideas.
References:
- Venus’ atmosphere:
Composition, clouds and weather on Space
- Constraints on a potential
aerial biosphere on Venus by Dartnell et al, in Icarus
- Colonization of Venus by Geoffrey Landis
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Please note that it is not the poison that blocks out the sun, but the clouds themselves. I would not have needed to add this note if someone hadn’t asked me if there was something about the poison that did it. No. The clouds are not laced with SPF50++. ↩
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Fun fact: The reflective power of the clouds above the surface of Venus is so powerful that one can generate the same power by pointing the solar panels down into the reflective clouds as up into the sun. ↩