This article must be a joke, no one is literally that dumb. Like Venus surface is basically hell, just some really small miscalucation and bam your dead, body will just burn to nothing. The crash site may exist or not, but it’s extremely stupid.
Alright so it's a colony NOT on the surface, hence the floating. Now the guy is still an idiot but the idea he's pitching is hypothetically possible.
Oxygen is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere. So hypothetically speaking, one could fill a balloon with an O₂ and N₂ mixture that is slightly oxygen richer than here on Earth and the balloon would float above the vast majority of the Venusian atmosphere where all the acid rain and huge temperatures would be. Much like a Helium or Hydrogen balloon floats here on Earth because the gas is less dense than our atmosphere here.
So the idea is to make a balloon that is large enough to have people inside of it, because they can breath the lifting gas keeping the balloon afloat. The catch is, you aren't above ALL of the atmosphere and there's still a lot of caustic things that the balloon would have to account for, otherwise it'll slowly leak. We don't have a material that would withstand some of the things in the upper atmosphere of Venus. So the guy would literally have to invent a material that would be able to withstand the conditions or be self healing enough to deal with the conditions. Both are highly unlikely, not impossible but I sure as shit wouldn't trust him on being the inventor of such.
So yes, the surface is inhospitable. But floating a colony above the clouds is doable and something that's been investigated. At the 50km altitude of Venus, there's still enough atmosphere to provide protection from harmful sunlight. The atmosphere at 50km is such that a balloon at 1.03 atm pressure would not have explosive decompression in the event of a rip, providing folks enough time to get emergency O₂ and ideally fix the tear. So basically, if a tear in the balloon did happen, it would be a light breeze and not a sudden POP as the oxygen escaped. So if the balloon is really, really big, it could take hours before the CO₂ slowly seeping in offset enough O₂ to start dropping your colony into the clouds of acid. And at 50km altitude, gravity there would be about 0.9g. Additionally, Venus is much closer to Earth than Mars, but since it's closer to the sun, it's actually a bit harder to get to.
So right around 50km above Venus is pretty much the most Earth like we've discovered in the Solar System so far. There's just all this dizzying complexity to having a floating colony on Venus. And we don't have anywhere near the materials or support infrastructure to really support anyone going to Venus, especially untrained people. But yeah you can see some of the renders NASA has done for a Venus colony. Here's a page I found with one of the renders they've pitched.
That is truly stupid, failing to account for, checks list: Radiation, solar reach, mental health, supply convoys that take years, and that’s just at a surface level…
Well they might as well incinerate their clients, this guy refuses to be one upped by his colleague, I mean what’s his option, the other guy diluted his clients at the bottom of the ocean, so this one must go the opposite way, in space, and with fire.
It remains unclear whether the pilot intentionally designed the shape. Insider asked Lufthansa about this, but the airline avoided the question in its response.
Every ‘what if’ question is answered with ‘you die.’
What if there’s a leak in the spacecraft? What if we run out of food? What if we veer off course? What if the thrusters fail? etc.
I highly doubt and I’ll put $100 down that this doesn’t happen in 2050 because the difficulties and infrastructure just aren’t there for 1000 or even 100 people to do this.
Ok, but 2050 is over 25 years away. If he can get people to sign on then he can get some money coming in, and he’ll be a billionaire running away to Brazil long before 2050. It seems to me that his plan is solid.
Sorry, you’ve got to come up with something unique. You can’t just copy Mars One. At least pick a new planet! (It sounds like Venus is taken now as well, you snooze you lose)
Ah sheeit, well if we can’t go up then we must go down! Journey to the centre of the earth where it’s probably going to be colder than up here in 25 years!
Now you’re talking! Where can I sign up? I have more money than sense so I’d be willing to throw a few hundred thousand for a ticket, or even a million if you’ll put me on the first trip!
I mean, not every what if, some at least leave the possibility to address the situation, consider the case of Apollo 13 for example. A great many risks can also be reduced with redundancy, for example, having your maneuvering systems fail is not as bad if your craft has an extra set of maneuvering thrusters. Air travel has similarly high risk of death if major components fail, and yet that has been made safe enough to be made commonplace.
I agree that it won’t happen by 2050 though. We’ve never sent humans on an interplanetary mission before, development of new spacecraft takes many years, especially manned systems, and Venus is an especially tough environment to build for. 2050 is less than three decades away, I’d guess that we might have at most a small research outpost on the moon by then, assuming no major delays or cuts to our current program to return there, and there’s no guarantee of that. I’d be surprised if even one person was sent to Venus by that year.
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