Rakaydos

I want to see a map view of the next boostback burn.

If you do compare it, do it an another thread. But for the venus habitat altitude, remeber that when damaged the base will slowly decend- you want a safety margin to allow for repairs before you reach uninhabitable altitudes. So the habiat needs radiation shielding to haandle 56 KM, thermal shielding to handle 50 KM (at least for a short time), and the capability to make external repairs even at 50 KM, while powering itself through the night at 56 KM. The habitat hovers at the half-bar, and if something goes wrong they can fix it (or evacuate to functional sections and cut the broken section loose) before they go below the 50 KM marker.

It worked for Australia...

And my point was that, the point of an offsite backup, is that it's -off site-. Fire, hacking, nuclear war, the data in an offsite backup is safe, because it's NOT THERE when the worst happens. That the worst is unlikely to happen just means you have more time to get ready, but when the consiquences is extinction, some form of insurance is in order.

Last year wasnt an El Nino year. (apparently that's spanish for rainy year)

And yet, shouks youre house be enveloped IN nuclear firestorm or superplague, the himalAyas may still be too close for safty. Being remote IS the point.

What value does an offsight backup service offer in terms of goods and services? Nothing... if you're lucky. If not, it offers EVERYTHING. Everything left, anyway.

Or more dramAtically, a soletta at the sun-venUs l1 could Interrupt the day, turning 48 hours of daylight INto 16 ho urs of morning/ day, 16 hours of night/eclipse, and 16 more hours of evening. Reverse It woth artificial lighting at night.

Ideally, the base will be designed to survive 50km in short streches, during emergency repairs or for extra power at midnight, but intended to fly at 55 for regular operation

Concerning Raptor engine as an upperstage- I recall an Elon post that stated something like "TWR optimization (for the raptor) is settling on a suprisingly low thrust, even with the extra structure for mounting extra engines." If the optimised raptor is small enough, it might actually make sence as an upperstage.

Considering some plans call for sequential asteroid impact to speed up Venus's surface rotation, this idea has the potential to do double duty.

Because the human (and plant) digestive system(s) is far more efficient than our equipment recycling. Blame millions of years of debugging.

Out of curiosity, is it structurally possible to build an orbital rocket entirely out of carbon-base materials? Carbon fiber tanks and RP1 fuel seem natural enough, but can you build a turbopump without metal?

Nice round numbers. The natual internal overpressure from operating at higher altitude with a 1 bar atmo inside also helps keep leaks blowing out and not in.

Keep in mind that a cloud city floating in galeforce winds on venus, is actually moving SLOWER than a "stationary" barge on the surface of earth, because earth is rotating faster than venus' s atmosphere rotates. In essence, a rocket will be landing Iin perfectly calm conditions- the platform will be moving the same speed as the wind.

So, Organic plastics, Carbon fiber, Wood, perhaps Graphine... What use do we have for Flourine and Chlorine? They're dangerous reactants, but we dont want to pollute theminto the atmosphere, or the atmosphereic percentage of florine and chlorine will rise. Unless that's a good thing? will they fall to the lower atmosphere, react with surface material and be kicked up ready for separation again?

I dont think we should worry about the launch vehical. Not to step over my own line abut discussion mars, but... Everyone is already designing hardware to go to Mars, and Venus is easier to get to than mars. Using a Mars-rated launcher for Venus might be slightly overkill, but it means most of the hard parts of the launcher are done and we can focus on the payload. The only concern is the upper limit of staton mass, which I'm ballparking at MCT's intended mars payload rating. If wwe can stay under 100 tons, (and it sounds like we can) our actual llauncher is almost irrelivant. For the "mining" if ground based resources, let me propose an alternative. Build a big ball of sulfer, carbon whatever elements we dont use much of that twe take out of the atmosphere. Launch it at the surface at meteor speeds harvrvest the ejecta when it reaches altitudes that are safe to reach.

"Lying around" ISnt exactLy how ID describe IT. On earth, the materiAl IM talking about collecting IS generally called "pyroclastic missiles".

Venus "surface" mining condists of flying over a volcano and collecting all the free rock you can ftom the airborne ashe.

Heres a silly thought... a really big firemans net held aloft by baloons... the pod lands un the middle, IS caught and made mostly boyant, and IS towed to base by airships practically straight from Final FanTasy. More realistically, it would just do a SpaceX propulsive landing on the base itself.

Without shear, hurricane force winds might as well be a dead calm. An airsgip Is safer LOose IN a gale than tied down and exposed to one.

It seems pretty clear we need more information to see if venus is plausable. Say, a few hunded cubesat-blimps that measure turbulence relative to each other, atmosphere composition and probably a few other things.

They suspected, they knew they couldnt help if thrre was a problem, so thhey crossed their fingers and pretended everything was normal.

Google "Dark Sky Station"

Something that uses resources IIt collects by osmosis, solar powred, to expand and replicate? Im pretty sure trees qualify, coral reefs might as well. Whether we can hack together a crude mechanical equivilant IS anoth Er questiOn.