A few weeks ago, Elon Musk, the tech mogul, unveiled his vision for a human colony on Mars.
In fact, Mars is all the rage. It always has been. For decades, ‘Martians’ was synonymous with aliens. One of the biggest blockbuster movies of 2015? The Martian, based on the best-selling book of the same title.
Discussion of colonizing other worlds always begs the question, why? As humans, it seems it is simply what we do. Once we have gained one summit, we are compelled to reach for the next.
And Mars is the next de-facto choice for human colonization despite all the problems—the distance, the radiation exposure, the cold, not enough atmosphere, the difficulty in extracting resources (water particularly). But what if there was another choice? What if there was a better choice?
Venus does not get even close to the same amount of attention as Mars, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people looking at its potential.
Venus has its own problems, some of which are the opposite of Mars, the heat and too much atmosphere, for example. The advantages, though, are significant. It is closer, the atmosphere would provide protection from radiation and resources may be readily available, or at least relatively easy to obtain.
But the second rock from the Sun has a P.R. problem based, I think, on the fact that we are surface-biased and the surface of Venus is completely inhospitable.
The average surface temperature is 450C, hot enough to melt zinc and lead.
The carbon dioxide atmosphere is 90 times thicker than Earth creating pressures on the surface equivalent to being a kilometre under water. Even one tenth of that is outer limit for the best scuba divers. Probes sent to the love planet by the Soviets in the 1960s and 1970s were literally crushed by the pressure.
In fact, at that pressure, the CO2 atmosphere becomes an ocean of supercritical fluid, a dangerous substance exhibiting the properties of both gas and liquid.
And even if the heat and pressure were not enough, clouds of pure sulphuric acid pour rain that would dissolve the flesh right off our bones.
The upper atmosphere, however, would be surprisingly hospitable to human life, with a little help from technology. Between 50 and 60 kilometres above the planet, atmospheric conditions become very much like the Earth’s surface at approximately one atmosphere and 30C and provides adequate shielding from the radiation.
We just need to live in the sky. And while that may seem insurmountable, it is may actually be surprisingly accomplishable. Massive Teflon balloons filled with Earth air would float on the heavier CO2 air of Venus.
What is really amazing is that a two-kilometre diameter balloon could lift an house a city like Yorkton.
Creating the inner environment of the balloon cities making them suitable for human habitation would require oxygen and water, which can be extracted directly from the Venusian atmosphere. Particularly robust robots could mine the surface for other resources, controlled in real time by citizen of the balloon cities.
It is a very romantic notion, but no more realizable right now than Martian cities because we just do not know enough about Venus.
That is really quite unfortunate. Venus is our closest neighbour and most Earth-like of the other planets and yet it is one of the least studies. Since the early Soviet forays to the second rock, she has been neglected as we reach further and further to the outer reaches.
That could change, though. NASA does have a Venus program and is working on a robotic probe called DaVinci, which is being designed to answer some big questions about the composition and dynamics of the planet’s atmosphere.
Maybe Mars is not the next logical step, but we won’t know until we get back to Venus. Maybe the DaVinci mission is what we need to do to capture the imagination of someone like Musk.
