Venus vs. Mars colonization

[K^2]

1 hour ago, Motokid600 said:

You know that if there was a problem you can escape to that ground and it wont kill you ( unless you jumped ).

Tell that to 3,000 people at WTC. Fact is, we already have countless people living in far more dangerous conditions. We have people living in flood areas, sides of volcanoes, tornado alleys, and poorly constructed buildings in seismologically active areas of the planet. Skyscrapers are safe in comparison, even when you consider that it's hard to escape from a 100th floor of a building if something's happening to it.

A cloud colony would be safer yet. Because the atmosphere lacks oxygen, meaning you don't have to worry about fires nearly as much. The structure doesn't have the single point of support, like a foundation, because individual sections have their own flotation support. And if section you're in does happen to start falling, you do actually just walk out. You walk out into an adjacent section. Not by climbing a hundred flights of stairs, but by stepping through a few doors.

All of the arguments you are making, are all of the same arguments people make about airplane flights. And it's still the safest mode of travel we have. Because "landism" is a fallacy. There is nothing inherently safe about being on land.

[Motokid600]

Sounds like a mighty big house of cards. What knowledge do we posses of the wind conditions in the upper atmosphere where a colony would lurk? Conditions particularly at the terminator. If you get hundred mph gusts as the sun sets and rises you can forget such a colony.

I'm not opposed to a Venus colony. No certainly not that'd be wonderful. But we must use Mars as the stepping stone before it. We need that ground. We can dig in that ground, we can live in that ground. As far as sustainability goes. Mars has Venus beat. 

[Motokid600]

1 hour ago, Panel said:

I can see your point, and I agree that a sky colony does depend on systems that, if they fail, will cause you to fall to your death, but you got one thing wrong. The reason that the airlock cannoned in the Martian was the temperature difference. On Venus, the airlock wouldn't have flown outward and thrown him to his death.

My Martian comment was more of a jest, but yea a flawed comparison.

[PB666]

40 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Tell that to 3,000 people at WTC. Fact is, we already have countless people living in far more dangerous conditions. We have people living in flood areas, sides of volcanoes, tornado alleys, and poorly constructed buildings in seismologically active areas of the planet. Skyscrapers are safe in comparison, even when you consider that it's hard to escape from a 100th floor of a building if something's happening to it.

A cloud colony would be safer yet. Because the atmosphere lacks oxygen, meaning you don't have to worry about fires nearly as much. The structure doesn't have the single point of support, like a foundation, because individual sections have their own flotation support. And if section you're in does happen to start falling, you do actually just walk out. You walk out into an adjacent section. Not by climbing a hundred flights of stairs, but by stepping through a few doors.

All of the arguments you are making, are all of the same arguments people make about airplane flights. And it's still the safest mode of travel we have. Because "landism" is a fallacy. There is nothing inherently safe about being on land.

The problem is that all structures are built with nominal densities of 1 or higher, and gases, even the heaviest hardly compress as much, So buy definition you are reliant on a buoyancy component. Venus has no hydrogen or helium to speak of, which means for Venus such items would need to be imported.

There is alot of hydrogen in space, relatively speaking and spread at densities it would take a 100 million years to collect a a kilo accross a square meter at the orbit of mercury,  so space collection of hydrogen is not viable either. This leaves what, hauling hydrogen from far off places, like asteroids. Which to the point, why would you colonize Venus that whose useful atmosphere has sulfur, carbon and oxygen. If you drag a comet and an asteroid together you have basically all the soft and hard resource you need. Everything except solar power.

As far as jumping off a cloud city on Venus, you would be dead before you hit the ground, imagine a 500'C wind blowing up your shorts at 25 km per hour, the word blow torch rings on that one.

The second element, cloud cities are about as easy to defend as the hindenberg, there are no reprocussions like blasting something in space, you pop the bouyant bubble and it just crashes. Terrorist, whatever, they are soft targets.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Tell that to 3,000 people at WTC. Fact is, we already have countless people living in far more dangerous conditions. We have people living in flood areas, sides of volcanoes, tornado alleys, and poorly constructed buildings in seismologically active areas of the planet. Skyscrapers are safe in comparison, even when you consider that it's hard to escape from a 100th floor of a building if something's happening to it.

A cloud colony would be safer yet. Because the atmosphere lacks oxygen, meaning you don't have to worry about fires nearly as much. The structure doesn't have the single point of support, like a foundation, because individual sections have their own flotation support. And if section you're in does happen to start falling, you do actually just walk out. You walk out into an adjacent section. Not by climbing a hundred flights of stairs, but by stepping through a few doors.

All of the arguments you are making, are all of the same arguments people make about airplane flights. And it's still the safest mode of travel we have. Because "landism" is a fallacy. There is nothing inherently safe about being on land.

How much experience do we have with huge floating in air structures? An airship is not single fail eiter and have bad safety records. Note that airships on earth has major benefit, they are pretty slow and will keep some buoyancy even after catastrophic fails so the landings are pretty survivable. 
Any landing on Venus is death. 

Mars is way simpler, an fail in life support is fatal both places but on mars its simple to have two bases in walking distance or connected by an tunnel/ tube, if one base part fails you just evacuate to the other. 
Have fun having two floating structures together. 

Why don't you make an base on Jool in KSP? any mods allowed, however things like high power fusion engines will have downsides

[fredinno]

How about we have a Earth Cloud Base first, then talk about a Venus cloud Colony?

[Spaceception]

This is my idea for a Venusian colony: The first thing you'd want is an orbiting unmanned space station/SSTO fleet that gets water/metal rich asteroids for various resource extraction, then 2 floating platforms on Venus, 1 for construction/repair for the blimps/dirigibles, and another for the SSTO's, finally a blimp system that shuttles colonists between the dirigibles (To prevent overpopulation/inbreeding), of which the dirigibles have 3 levels, 2 for dorms/lavatories/rec/mess hall, and 1 for life support/hydrophonics. It's rough, I know, but it's an idea.

[Panel]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

This is my idea for a Venusian colony: The first thing you'd want is an orbiting unmanned space station/SSTO fleet that gets water/metal rich asteroids for various resource extraction, then 2 floating platforms on Venus, 1 for construction/repair for the blimps/dirigibles, and another for the SSTO's, finally a blimp system that shuttles colonists between the dirigibles (To prevent overpopulation/inbreeding), of which the dirigibles have 3 levels, 2 for dorms/lavatories/rec/mess hall, and 1 for life support/hydrophonics. It's rough, I know, but it's an idea.

I think that just reading through that gives a good argument for Mars. Venus support is complicated, and complicated systems will often fail. In the meantime, Mars would only need a ground base and a fleet of rockets for the exchange of colonists.

[Rakaydos]

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

How about we have a Earth Cloud Base first, then talk about a Venus cloud Colony?

Google "Dark Sky Station"

[Spaceception]

2 hours ago, Panel said:

I think that just reading through that gives a good argument for Mars. Venus support is complicated, and complicated systems will often fail. In the meantime, Mars would only need a ground base and a fleet of rockets for the exchange of colonists.

Still Venus is better than Mars for 4 reasons:

1: .9 gees, which means much lower chance of having bone atrophy than on mars (Which has .4 gees),

2: If you're 50 km or higher, you would have a 1 bar (Or less) atmospheric pressure (Compared to the almost vacuum on Mars),

3; You would get 2x more solar energy compared to Earth, so solar panels would be a great option for power (Compared to getting less than half on Mars),

And 4: The temp. 50 km and higher would be 64 c or lower (Compared to well below freezing on Mars), so you'd only need good air conditioning, Very good sunscreen, summer clothes, and an oxygen mask on Venus, pretty good, huh?

Now, Mars is better, only because it's less complicated to colonize, but in the long term, Venus is better.

Also, there's a chance that there's little to none sulfuric acid 50 km high, we'd need to go there to confirm it, but for now, Venus is pretty good.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Spaceception

[Rakaydos]

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.

[Kaos]

Yes, this experiment would be valuable: For this base and for the scientific results as such.

[AngelLestat]

7 hours ago, Motokid600 said:

You know that if there was a problem you can escape to that ground and it wont kill you ( unless you jumped ). Yes the Martian surface isn't "safe" but should something go wrong with the HAB like in the Martian you have much more time to fix the issue. Because you or the entire colony isn't plummeting. There is no escape. No surface. You are at the mercy of the structure that supports you and the limited surface area it provides.

Ok, lets start with this point.. Some people live in huge cruise ships in conditions that are way more dangerous than Venus due winds, waves and the difference of density between water and air.
A habitat with an envelope of 150 m of radius filled with air, can lift 5000 tons, if is filled with hydrogen 17000 tons at 52,5 km of height.
Now lets imagine we have a leak with an orifice of 3 meters of diameter, at equal pressure the air flow would not be higher than 1m3 of co2 by second, this mean that it would take 40 days to mix 1/4 of the air habitat, this is not enough to sink it, because more altitude you lose, the external venus air density increase so your buoyancy also increase.  You can fix the problem with all the time in the world, at that height, is not possible to hit nothing and there is not turbulence, even if there is, such a big habitat would not feel nothing..  the same as a big ship with waves.

Question.. what happen if you have even a small orifice in a Mars hábitat?   You dont have time to repair it, and being close to the orifice will be extremely dangerous.

6 hours ago, insert_name said:

definetly mars, because theres no sulfuric acid clouds in the upper atmosphere

If our atmosphere has 40% humidity, venus has 1% of acid humidity. This is so low that you can go out with no cloth and a mask, be few minutes there and enter without noticing pain. You also have a lot of materials to choose that are resistant to h2so4.
The acid is your friend, you can get water and sulphuric acid that is the chemical most used in earth.  

4 hours ago, Motokid600 said:

What knowledge do we posses of the wind conditions in the upper atmosphere where a colony would lurk? Conditions particularly at the terminator. If you get hundred mph gusts as the sun sets and rises you can forget such a colony.

I'm not opposed to a Venus colony. No certainly not that'd be wonderful. But we must use Mars as the stepping stone before it. We need that ground. We can dig in that ground, we can live in that ground. As far as sustainability goes. Mars has Venus beat. 

You are traveling with the winds.. so you apparent wind is zero. At that altitude winds are very constant and laminar. Winds rotates venus since millions of years, why they should have fast changes? The terrain below is very far, temperatures are very constant (between day and night no celcius degrees change), there is no humidity in the air that might cause currents or other effects.. All the effects that are responsable for winds or gust in earth are not present in venus at that height.  

4 hours ago, PB666 said:

Venus has no hydrogen or helium to speak of, which means for Venus such items would need to be imported.

Venus has hydrogen.. there is 15000 km3 of water in its atmosphere, but the atmosphere is so thick that is not easy to harvester, but not to the point that it needs to be imported... Using the envelope with a little temperature difference (Cold) + electric charge, you may attract some acid particles to be condensed, then by gravity you harvest them in the bottom. But yeah, this may increase the cost of hydrogen as fuel, no for consumption because water can be recycle.
By the way, is not so easy to get water from mars either due the lack of pressure.

Quote

The second element, cloud cities are about as easy to defend as the hindenberg, there are no reprocussions like blasting something in space, you pop the bouyant bubble and it just crashes. Terrorist, whatever, they are soft targets.

Ok, there is a lot of misinformation there and bad propaganda.  The hindenburg fall because its envelope was flammable, if would not be flammable, you might have a leak and get fire, but that orifice it does not spread, so it might take days to consume a part of the hydrogen inside..  In venus you dont have Oxygen in the atmosphere, so your fire opportunities are reduce.  It is a lot easier to destroy a mars habitat than a floating habitat..   try to think about it.

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

How much experience do we have with huge floating in air structures? An airship is not single fail eiter and have bad safety records. Note that airships on earth has major benefit, they are pretty slow and will keep some buoyancy even after catastrophic fails so the landings are pretty survivable. 
Any landing on Venus is death. 

A lot of experience.. those are the first flying machines we mastered.. 1910 tech.  They don't have bad records, in their time they traveler a lot of km carrying thousands of people without problem, they had very bad fame for few cases, even with the highest accident hindenburg, only 1/3 of the passengers die. 
They crashed just because they had something against which to collide (land), you don't have that problem in venus, neither winds. (old zeppelins did not have weather predictions).

[fredinno]

38 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Still Venus is better than Mars for 4 reasons:

1: .9 gees, which means much lower chance of having bone atrophy than on mars (Which has .4 gees),

2: If you're 50 km or higher, you would have a 1 bar (Or less) atmospheric pressure (Compared to the almost vacuum on Mars),

3; You would get 2x more solar energy compared to Earth, so solar panels would be a great option for power (Compared to getting less than half on Mars),

And 4: The temp. 50 km and higher would be 64 c or lower (Compared to well below freezing on Mars), so you'd only need good air conditioning, Very good sunscreen, summer clothes, and an oxygen mask on Venus, pretty good, huh?

Now, Mars is better, only because it's less complicated to colonize, but in the long term, Venus is better.

Also, there's a chance that there's little to none sulfuric acid 50 km high, we'd need to go there to confirm it, but for now, Venus is pretty good.

Actually, you would need firefighting clothes, or the acids and heat would get to you.

[K^2]

6 hours ago, Motokid600 said:

Sounds like a mighty big house of cards. What knowledge do we posses of the wind conditions in the upper atmosphere where a colony would lurk? Conditions particularly at the terminator. If you get hundred mph gusts as the sun sets and rises you can forget such a colony.

Terminator winds are strongest on planets with rare atmosphere, and much weaker on planets with thick atmosphere. There are certainly high winds at altitudes we are talking about, but they have relatively low shear. This is evidenced by the cloud observation data. You wouldn't be able to hold the colony anchored in one place, but it will drift in relative calm. Furthermore, relatively minor steering will be necessary to keep it circulating around constant latitude. Which is all you really care about.

6 hours ago, PB666 said:

The problem is that all structures are built with nominal densities of 1 or higher, and gases, even the heaviest hardly compress as much, So buy definition you are reliant on a buoyancy component. Venus has no hydrogen or helium to speak of, which means for Venus such items would need to be imported.

Water vapor content in Venusian atmosphere is quite significant. More than enough to extract hydrogen for the support structures. And since, as I've pointed out, Venusian atmosphere contains no oxygen, or anything else for hydrogen gas to react with violently, hydrogen will be as safe as helium, so long as habitat modules and buoyancy modules are well separated.

 

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

How much experience do we have with huge floating in air structures? An airship is not single fail eiter and have bad safety records. Note that airships on earth has major benefit, they are pretty slow and will keep some buoyancy even after catastrophic fails so the landings are pretty survivable. 
Any landing on Venus is death.

With exception of flammability, airship have fantastic safety record on Earth. Additionally, we have a lot of experience with huge floating structures in sea, including their ability to withstand weather. It's not quite the same thing, but in terms of being able to resist stress due to variations in buoyancy, a lot of this knowledge would carry over.

 

4 hours ago, fredinno said:

How about we have a Earth Cloud Base first, then talk about a Venus cloud Colony?

That would be a good first step, yes. But the only reason we'd build one on Earth is to prepare for a mission to Venus, which I'm trying to convince you lot is a good idea. By no means do I suggest we go in half-cocked and just go directly for a build on Venus with no testing or preparation.

Unfortunately, Earth's weather would prevent us from building a true full-size implementation at low altitude, and we don't have enough air to support something so massive at high altitude. But we can certainly build and test individual modules, floating them above oceans or some other large, open areas. It might even be a good idea to run a few mock landings to make sure we can land people and cargo on it safely from orbit. I'm picturing lifting body entry capsule landing on short carrier-style deck with arresting cables. But that's just off the top of my head.

[fredinno]

4 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Terminator winds are strongest on planets with rare atmosphere, and much weaker on planets with thick atmosphere. There are certainly high winds at altitudes we are talking about, but they have relatively low shear. This is evidenced by the cloud observation data. You wouldn't be able to hold the colony anchored in one place, but it will drift in relative calm. Furthermore, relatively minor steering will be necessary to keep it circulating around constant latitude. Which is all you really care about.

Water vapor content in Venusian atmosphere is quite significant. More than enough to extract hydrogen for the support structures. And since, as I've pointed out, Venusian atmosphere contains no oxygen, or anything else for hydrogen gas to react with violently, hydrogen will be as safe as helium, so long as habitat modules and buoyancy modules are well separated.

 

With exception of flammability, airship have fantastic safety record on Earth. Additionally, we have a lot of experience with huge floating structures in sea, including their ability to withstand weather. It's not quite the same thing, but in terms of being able to resist stress due to variations in buoyancy, a lot of this knowledge would carry over.

 

That would be a good first step, yes. But the only reason we'd build one on Earth is to prepare for a mission to Venus, which I'm trying to convince you lot is a good idea. By no means do I suggest we go in half-cocked and just go directly for a build on Venus with no testing or preparation.

Unfortunately, Earth's weather would prevent us from building a true full-size implementation at low altitude, and we don't have enough air to support something so massive at high altitude. But we can certainly build and test individual modules, floating them above oceans or some other large, open areas. It might even be a good idea to run a few mock landings to make sure we can land people and cargo on it safely from orbit. I'm picturing lifting body entry capsule landing on short carrier-style deck with arresting cables. But that's just off the top of my head.

Also, put the airship base in a few hurricanes. Venus' upper atmos has constant category 5-level hurricanes. I'm also worried about hydrogen and/or helium (and possibly other airship gasses) escaping via boiloff, leaks, or simply through the airship ballon (like a IRL balloon, but not sure if this is a problem in airships), or launching a 7-8T rocket via airlaunch (assuming the ascent capsule is the same size as Soyuz, but you might be able to squeeze a 6T Crew Transfer module that can't survive reentry.)

Edited January 11, 2016 by fredinno

[Rakaydos]

8 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Also, put the airship base in a few hurrairship Venus' upper atmos has constant category 5-level hurricanes. I'm also worried about hydrogen and/or helium (and possibly other airship gasses) escaping via boiloff, leaks, or simply through the airship ballon (like a IRL balloon, but not sure if this is a problem in airships), or launching a 7-8T rocket via airlaunch (assuming the ascent capsule is the same size as Soyuz, but you might be able to squeeze a 6T Crew Transfer module that can't survive reentry.)

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.

[Matuchkin]

If we somehow found a way to step and work on Venus, then it would be preferable to Mars because:

1. I'm interested

2. We actually planned that at some point. The main proposal is to use a hydrogen filled balloon to hover a small colony somewhere 50km above Venus's surface, conducting research on the atmosphere (very plausible, if we find a way to stabilize the colony in the air because of the hurricane winds at that altitude). Another proposal is to terraform Venus and change its day/night cycle (downright idiotic). I guess we can get some good research on Venus like that.

3 (MAIN REASON). "We're heading for Venus (Venus)"
                                "And still we stand tall
                                "'Cause maybe they've seen us (seen us)"
                                "And welcome us all, yeah."
                                "With so many light years to go"
                                "And things to be found (to be found)"
                                "I'm sure that we'll all miss her so."
                                "It's the final countdown..."

Edited January 11, 2016 by 073198681

[Motokid600]

... Whats the point? Why send humans to Venus? You walk outside and do what? Trips sure, but for the first off-world colony? No it wont happen. Not at first. Or hey, who knows. Maybe both will naturally occur at the same time. We should defiantly send some sort of balloon probe for a long term mission in the clouds at some point. But a flag on Mars will come first I have no doubt.

 

[K^2]

24 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Also, put the airship base in a few hurricanes. Venus' upper atmos has constant category 5-level hurricanes. I'm also worried about hydrogen and/or helium (and possibly other airship gasses) escaping via boiloff, leaks, or simply through the airship ballon (like a IRL balloon, but not sure if this is a problem in airships), or launching a 7-8T rocket via airlaunch (assuming the ascent capsule is the same size as Soyuz, but you might be able to squeeze a 6T Crew Transfer module that can't survive reentry.)

Rakaydos addressed winds adequately. Leaks aren't a problem, since hydrogen leaking from the buoyancy modules would simply rise even higher. I am not picturing any hab modules, with oxygenated environment, located above any buoyancy modules. There would be a need for all sorts of serviceable systems up top, like the landing decks, solar farms, etc, but it would be far safer just to send people in hazmats with air tanks up there than actually filling any of these walkways with breathable air. Fire is the last thing you want in a place like this.

As for the ascent crew capsule, I see two options. Once we have heavy traffic between LVO and cloud city or cities, a reusable entry vehicle might be desirable. In that case, that would have to be the crew capsule for ascent ride as well. In orbit, it'd dock with an orbital station, where crew would transfer on, with fresh crews using the same vehicle for reentry.

On the other hand, for early operation, this is a lot of extra weight and resources. Instead, the entry vehicle would be brought from Earth, it would land at the city, and have its aerodynamic and heat shielding parts stripped and recycled, leaving just the bare crew capsule. That crew capsule would be mated to the ascent rocket, saving dramatically on weight, while still reusing the life support, avionics, and docking components.

In either case, yes, this is a pretty large rocket to air-launch. It might be a good idea to deploy it on its own balloons first, letting it drift away from the station before firing the engines. Won't be cheap. But that's just more reason to try and keep the city as self-sufficient as possible, to require minimum rotation.

[fredinno]

How would an incoming crew rendezvous and dock their crew capsules to a cloud base?

[Rakaydos]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

How would an incoming crew rendezFantasys and dock their crew capsules to a cloud  csase?

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.

[Kaos]

3 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

...

A lot of experience.. those are the first flying machines we mastered.. 1910 tech.  They don't have bad records, in their time they traveler a lot of km carrying thousands of people without problem, they had very bad fame for few cases, even with the highest accident hindenburg, only 1/3 of the passengers die. 
They crashed just because they had something against which to collide (land), you don't have that problem in venus, neither winds. (old zeppelins did not have weather predictions).

No, we had rockets over 1000 years ago and balloons in 1783.

Another note: We do not need helium or hydrogen as lifting gas. Breathing air is totally fine as lifting gas on Venus and can be produced in-situ.

[SomeGuy123]

Sigh.  Dumb.

I'm going to raise you one.  A colony should be a controlled station with a centrifuge wheel and shielding.  None of these "planet" crap, that's obsolete thinking.  All that peering through telescopes hoping to find a planet at another star that could even in theory be habitable with centuries of work - why?  (well, sure, find out how unique Earth is - but we'll never need to colonize those planets)

So actually, a "colony" should be orbiting stations around a resource source.  Miners and mining robots mine for the ores the station needs.  They purify them to fairly pure solid ingot grade form at the surface, then launch them into orbit with electromagnetic accelerators.  Factories at the hub of the stations make them into the needed products and the inhabitants live in big centrifuge wheels, with 30 meters of rock or water or solid metal between the inner track the wheels ride in and the outside.  (to protect from radiation)

From this criteria, the answer is :

The best place to colonize is the Moon.  It's right there.  Second best is asteroid belt.  Mercury is probably ahead of Mars because lighter gravity field, more solar power there.  Mars is next.  Saturn and Neptune system are somewhere tied - those moons have nice low gravity wells and there isn't excessive radiation there.  Moons of Jupiter after that - have to carefully place the stations in orbits that are protected from radiation and use robots for the mining.  Almost dead last (mining a gas giant is even harder) is Venus!!

How on earth are you planning to get any raw materials to make anything at venus?  Surface is 462 celsius!!!  That's real hard on the mining equipment!  I suppose it's just barely doable - some kind of simplistic robot you send down on a balloon that grabs a chunk and then a simple mechanism inflates the balloon with lift gas before it melts.  

[Kaos]

Why should a colony be in orbit? That way you are only further away from the resources and have to deal more with radiation. There should also be a part of the colony in orbit, sure, but only a small part. This way you have a refuel station for interplanetary travel.

For Venus: A lot of useful stuff can be extracted directly out of the atmosphere. Surface mining will be needed if the colony should be completely independent. But in mass, most of the resources are probably directly from atmosphere. And for the argument of barely doable: Reaching space is barely doable. Colonizing space is barely doable, as well. I know some people here do not belief colonizing any space location is possible at all.