There's a school of thought which views Venus as a better colonization candidate than Mars, and as early as the 70's scientists envisioned floating cities. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus:
In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above the Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System beyond Earth itself – a pressure of approximately 1 atm or 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 °C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 °F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.
Being able to wear a simple breathing mask while working outside instead of a full pressure suit is a boon. Of course high windspeeds and the constant bombardment of acid rain would be a problem.
I could imagine Venus one day being an exotic, cloud-top paradise for the rich (reminiscent of BioShock Infinity) that's expensive to maintain, and Mars a brute workhorse that eventually displaces it as a more resilient habitat over the very long term (eg. after terraforming).
"In this stifling landscape, there is not likely to be anything alive, even creatures very different from us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let us imagine that intelligent life once evolved on such a planet. Would it then invent science? The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But Venus is completely cloud-covered. The night is pleasingly long - about 59 Earth days long but nothing of the astronomical universe would be visible if you looked up into the night sky of Venus. Even the Sun would be invisible in the daytime; its light would be scattered and diffused over the whole sky - just as scuba divers see only a uniform enveloping radiance beneath the sea. If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could eventually be deduced from the principles of physics, but they would be theoretical constructs only. I sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars."
. . .
Carl Sagan is an amazing author, and I've shared the famous excerpt from his book Pale Blue Dot multiple times before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565381
A few mentions of his books in my blog post here - https://www.rxjourney.net/30-things-i-know
like when in matrix revolutions they climb up above the clouds and see the sun for the first time :')
Not really scientific books at all. He is popular because he was hyped in the media for being accessible.
Those people dumb down science for the masses - it harms society on the long run imo
Your view is just a snobbish and rigid one, Sagan made science topics interesting for more people, from those people very likely many got inspired enough to pursue deeper science training.
Dumbing down is necessary to make it interesting for people who feel it's unapproachable, it breaks a barrier, I have no idea how you look at this and think "this is harming society"...
Even though I think you are wrong on this, you seem to be saying it like it's a bad thing ? Why ?
What, exactly, is wrong about inspiring high-schoolers ?
Carl Sagan significantly influenced Neil deGrasse Tyson (another popular science writer), for example. But I'm not sure if Tyson would have pursued science regardless of Sagan's influence.
Many physicists have written popular articles and books for the general population. Eg Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox. Improving accessibility of advanced concepts is nothing to scoff at.
When explaining something to people outside of science, I was ok with 60% accuracy. Even 50% and some technical lies was fine if this would encourage them to learn more. Some came back to say "you lied!!" and these were one of my most cherished victories.
In lectures for 1st year students, I would have here and there an asterisk with "almost true", to which we would come back a semesters or two later.
Dumbing down science to dumb up people is wonderful.
Because the nitrox atmosphere we're used to is a lifting gas in the Venusian atmosphere, you could theoretically just fill a big balloon with our atmosphere and live inside it, with lots of Teflon on the outside and suits made of Teflon to work outside the habitat. I also (kind of?) remember reading about using metal nets to capture and condense H2SO4 from the clouds and process it into water, oxygen, and hydrolox rocket fuel.
[0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006329/downloads/20...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
Lets also not forget the 872F surface temp that will spontaneously ignite anything primarily composed of carbon or the dense sulfuric acid clouds that will destroy most metals in as little as 45 minutes.
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Imagine living on an airship high above the Earth, with the hard rule that you can never land. You must be entirely self-sufficient save for a tiny amount of material delivered infrequently. Now imagine trying to land on that airship from orbit or get back into orbit (and beyond) from that airship. None of this is easy here on Earth.
A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars. Trying to get closer to the surface than orbit would make things a lot harder.
I think that's exactly what the article is arguing for. The part about manned airships is just a whimsical aside to the much safer, entirely feasible, and nearly as scientifically valuable prospect of using unmanned balloons.
Also, if anything goes wrong on Earth and you're in the atmosphere, there's still a chance you might soar to lower altitudes, eject, parachute, and get rescued. On Venus it's a death sentence.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...
"So that’s the bad part. But once you move past it, you start to notice that everything gets easier on Venus."
If wishes were fishes ...
The advantage of Mars is that it is ( hypothetically ) acceptably compatible with persistent surface-based habitation. Not an easy life, certainly not compared to Earth, but more sustainable than balloons floating in sulphuric clouds.
Venus doesn't offer an 'alternative cradle' option unless we invent anti-gravity. Until then the emphasis will be on finding a way to improve human civilisation's resilience.
why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back? seems much easier than going with humans around the moon
"The probe's cargo vessel has a really awesome ablative heat shield on it, as well as some extremely reliable parachutes, and Mission Control is projecting a very soft touchdown in the Utah desert within the next 12 hours. If anyone in the Western United States sees a huge fireball going slower than most meteors, it is probably the Venus Sample Return vessel full of dangerous chemicals! Go VSRM!"
I thought it was resolved as SO2, not phosphine
We will find life almost everywhere there is an energy gradient, a sufficiently rich substrate, and phase transition boundaries. Life is just a thing that forms in such places.
In our solar system that is Venus, Earth (of course), Mars, Titan (I predict slow methane cryogenic life), and subsurface oceans like Europa if they have a heat source that creates phase boundaries and energy gradients.
It will be mostly simple life though. What we won’t find everywhere is complex life. That took billions of years on Earth. It probably takes a very stable very rich large scale ecosystem to produce it, and there are reasons to believe Earth is a rare sort of environment.
Being completely tidally locked would be better because near the transition zones the permanent sun would make solar power and plants quite productive.
But an ecosystem where the planet spends most of the year in darkness or dim light?
Basically it's relatively easy to redirect comets to provide gas and liquids for the surface of Mars: that's technically demonstrated technology now.
There's almost no plausible way we could add momentum to Venus to give it a more reasonable day night cycle (I have seen some suggestion that shearing asteroids into it might be possible, but just the magnitude of momentum you're trying to add is staggering).
If you're floating you don't have to track the ground.
The difference is in air pressure and gravity.
Gravity means comfort for astronauts. It also makes, I suspect, science and industry a bit easier.
I don’t know what air pressure means. Spacewalks probably get easier. But now your structures have to deal with aerodynamic forces, which is annoying. Making up for that, you’re suspended in a soup of precursors and reagents—that opens up ISRU possibilities. And you should be getting less radiation in atmosphere.
On the whole, if you’re doing planetary science, I think being in the atmosphere is hard to beat. If you’re doing any industry, being near raw materials beats shipping anything unprocessed out of a gravity well. So if you’re staying for a while, you dip in. If, on the other hand, you’re just visiting for a few days, yeah, take a lander and then get back out again.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_super-rotation
How would that work? Averaged over the planet, you get half the year in darkness and half the year in light. There's no other option.
We have that same ecosystem on Earth.
The atmosphere of Venus in particular is very resource rich, and so it would be incredible to mine it for heavy use by a space economy. This mining is supposed to use free solar power. All of this is a job for robots, not humans.
Sure, why not?