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The atmosphere of Venus is notoriously harsh, with an average temp of 870F/465C on the surface, and pressure comparable to being a kilometer deep in the ocean. And that atmosphere is almost entirely CO2, with a little nitrogen. Oh, and sulfuric acid clouds. 2/8

But when you get to an altitude where the pressure is comparable to the Earth's you get to a temperature range that's much closer to Earth's. And there's one huge bonus: a nitrogen/oxygen gas mix like Earth is a lifting gas. 3/8

That completely changes the game from anywhere else in the solar system. Rather than fighting pressure, it's not really an issue. And huge open spaces are needed to keep your habitable spaces aloft. So what will you use all that sunlit space for? Farming. 4/8

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And this presents an opportunity. Plants are about 90% carbon and oxygen by mass, and nitrogen is 4th most common by mass. The same elements whose overabundance prevent terraforming, are exactly what you'd export in food grown close to the sun. 5/8

We can turn the extraction of resources into an actively beneficial activity for terraforming. The outer solar system would need to send water and the elements plants need from the soil, and to manufacturer the cloud farms. Venus would export food and sulfuric acid. 6/8

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You could even use the volumes of space to do less productive grasslands, and ranch cattle among the clouds of Venus. 7/8

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So let's eventually make Venus the breadbasket of the solar system. Because one planet's problem can be the entire solar system's opportunity. 8/8

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I was boring the wife about this t'other day. Mars is a red herring, we should be floating stuff above venus. downside is that the delta-V to get to the inner solar system is weirdly a lot more than needed to go outwards!

That's actually a great thing about the trade mass imbalance for Venus: it would be exporting far more mass than it would be importing.

6.7K

UAE/Climate

@UAEClimate

Our future depends on clean energy. The UAE is accelerating the global transition to renewable energy. As home to the world’s largest single-site solar power plant, the Al Dhafra Solar PV, the UAE’s achievement highlights its dedication to securing a sustainable future for

This was a interesting thread, I always thought colonising Venus was a bad idea for the fact that there's no resources you can practically extract when you're floating 50km above everything, of all things I never considered the idea of farming

Space Koala

@culpable_mink

I watched the Kurzgesagt video on terraforming Venus and thought treating CO2 and nitrogen as just stuff to be awkwardly launched and disposed of was kinda wasteful.

Jason Burtt

@shundai79

Notable titles in Solar Technology and Solar Energy

I'm a fan of anything 1G that looks and feels like Earth. I'm a space nerd but I am now convinced you won't get any normie to ever go to space unless it A) feels nearly exactly like home, and B) isn't killing you by radiation.

Fun fact: an almost 3 year trip to Mars with relatively minor radiation mitigation and current technology is estimated to increase the astronaut's lifetime risk of cancer less than the average American lifestyle.

You forgot to beat him up for using helium balloons in a non-O2 atmosphere ;)

I mean, it's fine for initial attempts to figure out the floating and living there parts of colonizing Venus. Less mass you have to bring from elsewhere.

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World Scientific

@worldscientific

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Interesting yet it diminishes exploration and glorifies greed.

Every expedition of pure exploration launches from a place that had to pay the bills.

This is interesting! I bet the fact that Venus spins clockwise would WRECK human physiology though

You'd probably want to set up a giant system of orbital shades and mirrors to get a more manageable day-night cycle.

By growing biomass and then dumping it overboard, could you sequester Venus’s CO2 into coal (plus oxygen) and eventually terraform Venus’s atmosphere this way? I guess the only question is where you get the nitrogen…

Venus already has more nitrogen in its atmosphere than the Earth has in its atmosphere. The limiting factor will be hydrogen in the form of water.

Radiation levels?

Comparable to Earth. The radiation shielding on Earth is actually tied to having the atmosphere above us, so a similar pressure (and this atmosphere above you) is pretty similar protection. It's why missions to lower elevations o. Mars are better too.

I would think the lack of a magnetic field due to a very slow rotation and internal dynamo would make us much more exposed to solar energetic particle radiation

Nope! It's mainly the thickness of the atmosphere that protects you from solar radiation. The magnetic field is what protects the atmosphere, and is part of the reason Venus has so little water.

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Vijay Jyotish

@vijayjyotishusa

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WECSOG vintage operator (convicted felon)

@Flatt0pH8r

>pressure I'm pretty sure the record for lander durability on Venus is just over two hours before getting wrecked

Well if you read the thread or the quote tweet you'd see that we're not talking about the surface of Venus.

It’s like Larry Niven’s Plateau, just with balloons instead of a single giant mountain. And here’s a nifty “water map” I came across on X

Imagine a real life “Cloud City”

Even regular Earth atmosphere is buoyant on Venus. You could live inside the gas bag / dome.

Great thread. Always thought Venus colonization to be far down the road due to it's extreme weather. Never considered floating cities to be practical, but this seems idea seems to have merit. Curious what is the gravity at that height?

Going closer to the sun doesn’t seem very bright. As the sun begins to die it will expand. Last time I looked Venus will fry a long time before earth. We should be heading to Mars and beyond.

Unanswered question in manned exploration of Venus: how do you launch a multi-stage rocket from the venusian stratosphere?

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Zafar Mirzo | Quotes

@ZafarMirzoQuote

"A human being, a flower that miraculously sprouted in the cosmic desert, and having the potential to become a blossoming universal tree — but only if we see meaning in it" - Zafar Mirzo

giant floating blimp-fields is the future i want to see however challenge may be distance from where that food is actually needed: it takes years of transport time to Earth, Moon, Mars, and beyond in which time food can spoil even with great preservation techniques

Marburg Habitat!!

So cool

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how do you rate rocket access and colonization in the Venus atmosphere compared to surface/underground on Mars? Both, and, not either or.

Let's go!

Yea thanks but no thanks

NotATimeTraveler

@ChroNomad2352

i'd be really nervous about living there

venus is our twin

We need to build basic space infrastructure first. Without it any colonisation plans are doomed.

I've been waiting for a good venus colonization thread to kick off. The potential for humanity there is actually way better than mars. And oh, need a crazy amount of fuel to sustain this endeavor? no problem, the atmosphere is(after a few steps) made of methalox.

Bonus point , you can live in bubbles filled with air, which will have positive buoyancy in CO2 atmosphere.

175

this one is so relaxing

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What would happen to the atmosphere of Venus if you created a solar shade large enough to significantly reduce the amount of heat from the sun?

Plus, on Venus capital punishment is a piece of cake! Just push 'em off the ledge

I never was big fan of cloud cities on Venus, and I have strong suspicion it will turn out much more difficult than people imagine, but you make compelling argument.

AgentOrange

@LarfleezeTakes

Roaring Astro (astro/acc)

All I get is an image of the miserable mining town in Alien: Romulus where ordinary people are forever contractually stuck mining planetary resources for greedy conglomerates when I think of the potential of any planet colonization.

@AtlasGemini

"astrostrategically" speaking, control of Venus would be helpful for eventual dominance of outer planets for its frequent slingshot (~19months) gravity assist.

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AnWe (mostly brainfarts)

@AnWe79

So we'd have to *ship* all the required construction elements to Venus right? That sounds like a gargantuan undertaking. Dyson sphere-esque almost.

Bobby

@Bobby_Bobsson

Dan Ryder - primedefi.com

I generally score very high on open-mindedness, and I love crazy ideas. But this must be the most ridiculous suggestion I've ever heard. Mountaintop farming on venus. Fall down and your skin melts from your bones.

bit far fetched... but just exporting CO2 would be huge: you can make rocket fuel (Hydrogen, Oxygen and Methane) and water from it!

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@WeArePrimeDeFi

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The only thing that gets me is, what happens when one of those floating farms or even cities fails, and how easily can it happen. On mars if things go wrong it's not as disastrous as an entire city plummeting to the ground

You can use the carbon to build space habitats Bishop ring size

I want to see giant airships cruising the Venusian stratosphere

We’d have to be trucking all our mass from Earth. Super melt lead tough to go down to the surface and attempt to find and mine needed ores. At least Mars seems to have all the raw ingredients for an industrial society, and we can actually have facilities on the ground.

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Serial experiments Luna

@chan_lambda

If only we could dump 90% of the CO2 on airless worlds.

Curtis S Ferrington

@PerpetualPuns

I was expecting cloud cities. But I got huge tracts of land for cloud farming. I am not disappointed.

Claudio Berni

@Baueda_Wargames

CO2 farming would already be great! Using drone shuttles on a highly elliptical orbit plunging into the deeper atmosphere at speed, filling up storage tanks at (already high) ambient pressure and delivering them to orbit, then picking up empty tanks on the way back in... repeat!

Vorch

@thevorch

Venus TBH makes a lot more sense than Mars which is no different from the Moon in terms of environmental hazards and terraforming potential.

The amount of CO2 is way beyond being easily reduced by farming unless we start interstellar exports. And the cloud cover is near-permanent at 50km, so you need a way to clear them or power lamps. And the thick atmosphere generates the magnetosphere.

I asked Claude how to do it, it’s simple: Deploy solar shield + iron catalysts in atmosphere → triggers CO2 breakdown chain reaction → planet cools + forms clouds → habitable in ~25 years.

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My most out there science fantasy is that we terraform Venus & Mars simultaneously by sucking up tons of CO2 from Venus and dumping it on Mars and managing to normalize both of their atmospheres.

Just thinking about the supply chain needed to keep something like that operational gives me a headache.

If playing video games for 40 years has taught me anything, it is that this is destined to crash into the dirt below. On Venus the dirt below is almost literally hell.

I hope life extension works out so I can see the cloud cities of Venus. Probably going to be one of the seven wonders of the solar system someday

Would there be any way to neutralize the acid on Venus?

YourManJimbo (ARARc)

@JimboYour

they should make a floating palace in the clouds there, possibly make it the seat of a empress

I hope to see a venus colony in my lifetime

Mr. Mack

@MrMack303

I'm unclear as to the type of. Are you thinking something along the lines of Buckminster Fuller's Cloud 9? Just live in a big sphere full of oxygen that floats there?

I always said Venus seems like the more apt choice.

I’m old enough to remember HAVOC. If only NASA had had the funding!

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this one is a journey

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R u insane

Still trying to figure out how we'd logically get into and out of Venus's gravity well when all of our infrastructure would have to be floating.

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And if the balloons burst or tear? I guess that'll be a pretty horrible death. Why don't we spend money on preventing our home planet from becoming a wasteland before we colonize other planets?

Commandante Pangolin Hugger

@FriedrichFiles

The most pointless marina ever built

Guidance is Internal

@Weneedamoonbase

Orbital MEMs sun shields at the Venus LaGrange point that allows less sunlight through would allow Venus to cool. Then import water from Jupiter’s icy moons. Piece of cake right?

How does the potential meteorite threat look like on Venus? Because any floating structure would be naturally vulnerable to those?

Wesley Theobald

@dr_wez

Great thread, better idea! Can Elon spare some Starship payloads to assist..?

lol

Hanging in a balloon over a sea of sulfuric acid seems a bit precarious.

Classic Style

@1738sjiom

Will Elon Musk and SpaceX Ever Reach Mars?

Venus is an supercritical ocean planet, it has been needlessly slandered by BigMars and Big Earth. Venus colonization is more attractive to me than Mars colonization.

I'd hate for anything to go wrong with the balloon. We know helium is the smallest of the gases and the balloon would need constant topping up with helium due to leaks.

UserInterface

@SeketAanru

Will Elon Musk and SpaceX Ever Reach Mars? #mars #elonmusk #science

userinterface.us

I have no idea of SpaceX's chances of reaching Mars and what it is like to be able to take a trip into space. I do not know much about SpaceX or the process of landing on Mars but I will try my best...

Sign me up bro

Shades of Cloud City

Whenever I read serious science about sci-fi "trade" it's always argued that it's just a trope based on our shared nautical culture, and from an economic point of view no goods will actually be worth transporting in space ships. Is this not correct?

DigitalDonuts

@TrentNordhagen

How are you going to get building materials though?

Aragorn

@aragorn1327

Interesting, the question is how to make it commercially viable. 100 billion people on earth to feed, maybe? 200 billion?

Sythdark8

@synthdark8

should just figure out a lot of the shit needed for this by building eitiher underwater, underground, or even just freestanding-boat-civilizations

qwe304

@qwe_304

Certainly would decrease the ∆V needed too

This is retarded

What kind of timeframe are we talking about on the trips there and back? Doesn't sound like fresh produce would be viable. Would we just be exporting biosludge or nutrient bricks from Venus?

A Cynic 4 life

@AO156

Really don't want to imagine having my engines crap out after the de-orbit burn but now I can't land on one of those float platforms ... please wave to me as I pass by on the way to being cooked at +400ºC and squished!

AceOfSpadesGuy

@TAceOfSpadesGuy

So what you’re saying is we build Cloud City for real

ste.respect

@sterespect

Can’t we just nuke it?

Phillip A. Leavenworth

@thephil1

Let's keep our focus on the Moon, the Lagrange Points, and Venus. Mars is a mirage.

Space Koala

@culpable_mink

Nah, Mars is the best place to start figuring out how to build cities off of Earth. More water, gravity, and radiation protection than the moon. Actual materials for building more buildings, unlike Venus. And Lagrange points will take quite a bit to make useful.

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