/sci/ - Science & Math

Venus is a terrible candidate for terraforming. No reasonable amount of work is going to speed up it's rotation to something decent, so it's weather is always going to be crazy.

It is, however, an excellent candidate for colonization. The conditions 50km up in the air have a pressure, temperature and gravity similar to earth. The carbon dioxide atmosphere means breathable air acts as a lifting gas. The winds push you round in a day around 4 Earth days long. The proximity to the sun means there is abundant solar energy and the high albedo of the clouds means that energy is coming from every direction. The think atmosphere protects you from he worst that the Sun throws at the planet, event at that altitude.

If you could set up some kind of orbital ring for easy access in and out of the planet's gravity well, you could inhabit one of the more pleasant places in our Solar system outside of our own Earth.

>>5066192
>>5066207

Have the right idea. Venus is fine, it's just that the surface is too low. Put an orbital ring around it, drop some cables down and build some floating cities.

Alternatively, stay in space. There's not much going on on Venus beyond gravity and fucktons of carbon dioxide.

Fuck yes floating cities. Screw Mars, we wouldn't do anything there we couldn't do on the Moon instead. Venus is where all the exciting new developments are going to be made.

Of course, any kind of colonization is going to have tow at for us to develop an easy way to get into space. We certainly can't use chemical rockets if we're trying to set up on Venus.

I don't think we will be terraforming planets until we get to a level where we're much like Magrathea and can build planets from scratch. Colonies on planets and huge space habitats would probably be best. My personal favorite is building vast floating colonies on Venus, that float in the dense atmosphere about 50km off the surface, where the pressure and temperature are fairly Earth-like.

I don't like the idea of building a large scale colony on Mars. The lack of gravity could make it difficult for anyone who's lived there for a long time to come back to Earth. Some kind of mining colony or research base perhaps, that swaps it's staff on a regular basis, but not something people will live and raise children on.

My personal preference is a floating city on Venus. Plenty of solar energy, a thick atmosphere to protect us from radiation, and Earth-like pressure, temperature and gravity about 50km up in the air. The only problem is that you'll need to build some kind of orbital ring to get things to and from the surface, as getting things out of a gravity well nearly as deep as Earth's would be a pain.

Floating Venus cities are what I would prefer as well. The main problems I see with them though are that you;re stuck in a gravity well nearly a deep as Earth's making it difficult to get off the planet again, and there's very little water vapor and hydrogen in it's atmosphere, making water a little hard to get hold of.

Fuck terraforming Venus. I want it's atmosphere to stay dense so we can make floating cities in it.