Ideas for Colonies that Float over Venus: Habitats Filled with Earth Air Float In Venus' dense atmosphere Like Helium Balloons (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

The scientific literature on it is tiny, just one recent paper and an old 1971 article in Russian as far as I know. But is an interesting proposal, which highlights how difficult the surface of Mars is to colonize when you compare Venus and Mars. The idea is, that in some ways it would be far easier to colonize Venus than Mars. This might sound crazy at first, with its atmosphere so dense, surface so hot - but it turns out that there is a reasonably pleasant layer on Venus in the upper atmosphere. There is no oxygen, and it has sulfuric acid so you have to protect the outside of your habitat from that -, but the pressure is just right which is a major bonus for engineering a habitat. What's more because the atmosphere is made of the heavy gas CO2, then lightweight structures filled with normal breathable Earth atmosphere at normal pressures, with its mix of nitrogen and oxygen, would float in the Venusian atmosphere in the same way that helium or hydrogen balloons float on Earth. You could use hydrogen as a lifting gas, of course, and would be a much stronger lifting gas than on Earth, but it is not necessary. The habitat would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere outside of it, at the same pressure. Just fill with an Earth normal mix of oxygen and nitrogen and it would naturally float at about the right level to maintain an Earth normal atmospheric pressure inside (just as a weather balloon full of helium naturally floats at a high level in our atmosphere). If the city is heavy you could add extra helium or hydrogen chambers for extra lifting power., which would have much more lifting power on Venus than here. Also unlike Mars, the Venusian atmosphere does have nitrogen in it, 3.5%. It also has water at 20 ppm. But better, it has sulfuric acid droplets in the clouds, and you can make water from H2SO4. The atmosphere is also thick enough to give adequate cosmic radiation shielding even at cloud top levels, the level of shielding is similar to that for Earth. It would also protect from the smaller meteorites, up to the megaton level, as for Earth. And it has 90% of Earth normal gravity as well, no need for spinning habitats to give a sensation of Earth normal gravity (if that is needed). As Landis said, in his Colonization of Venus. "However, viewed in a different way, the problem with Venus is merely that the ground level is too far below the one atmosphere level. At cloud-top level, Venus is the paradise planet." Or as he says in his talk to the Mars society about Venus, "If you define sea level as the level at which the atmospheric density is the same as the Earth sea level density, the problem with Venus is not that it is too hot on the surface, the problem is that the surface is too far below sea level. " Temperatures at the cloud top levels are in the habitable range of 0 to 50 C. The habitats would float naturally at the right level so long as you keep the levels of oxygen and nitrogen inside the habitat at Earth normal levels - just as a hydrogen balloon naturally floats at a high level in the Earth's atmosphere. Then at the cloud top levels, the air moves around the planet with a period of about 4 days, a phenomenon known as super-rotation, giving a much shorter day length than the planetary surface. This "Floating habitats in the Venus Atmosphere " idea is one of those ideas that seems completely crazy to start with, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.