Monday, May 14, 2007

Copy of PDF file

Sorry about the formatting, I'll try to make it more readable later, when I have the time. [UPDATE: I fixed the formatting. Hopefully it is much more readable now. Sorry it has taken so long for me to get to it; I have been very busy recently.] If you are wondering what this is about please see the "A Floating City on Venus" article.



Conference on Human Space Exploration, Space Technology & Applications International Forum,
Albuquerque NM, Feb. 2-6 2003.
Colonization of Venus
Geoffrey A. Landis
NASA John Glenn Research Center, mailstop 302-1, 21000 Brook Park Road, Cleveland, OH 44135
216-433-2238 e-mail: geoffrey.landis@grc.nasa.gov

Abstract.

Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.


INTRODUCTION

Since Gerard K. O’Neill (1974, 1976) first did a detailed analysis of the concept of a self-sufficient space colony, the concept of a human colony that is not located on the surface of a planet has been a major topic of discussion in the space community. There are many possible economic justifications for such a space colony, including use as living quarters for a factory producing industrial products (such as solar power satellites) in space, and as a staging point for asteroid mining (Lewis 1997). However, while the concept has focussed on the idea of colonies in free space,
there are several disadvantages in colonizing empty space. Space is short on most of the raw materials needed to sustain human life, and most particularly in the elements oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. Oxygen could be imported from a rocky source, such as the lunar surface, but the volatile materials hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen form primarily volatile materials that are not present in abundance on the lunar surface. Furthermore, for optimum performance, human beings require gravity-- it requires major engineering structures to simulate (via rotation) the
presence of gravity in a free-space colony.
Even for colonizing the asteroids, it is not clear that a free space base is the optimum location: any given asteroid is, on the average, rather distant from all the other ones, both in actual distance and in terms of the propulsion delta-V required to get there.
An alternate possibility is to locate a colony on the surface of another planet. Most recently, the case for colonizing the surface of Mars has been argued by Zubrin (1996). However, at least compared to the benign environment of Earth, the surface of Mars has several disadvantages. It has a low atmospheric pressure, low temperatures, and high exposure to cosmic radiation, and, while it is not a zero-gravity environment, it is not yet known whether the roughly one-third Earth-normal gravity of Mars is sufficient to avoid the bone decalcification and muscle tone loss experienced by astronauts in microgravity.
So let’s colonize Venus.


VENUS EXPLORATION

In many ways Venus is the hell planet. Results of spacecraft investigation of the surface and atmosphere of Venus are summarized by Fimmel, Colin, and Burgess (1983) and by Bougher, Hunten, and Phillips (1997):

· Surface temperature 735K: lead, tin, and zinc melt at surface, with hot spots in excess of 975 K
· Atmospheric pressure 96 Bar (1300 PSI); similar to pressure at a depth of a kilometer under the ocean
· The surface is cloud covered; with little or no solar energy
· Poisonous atmosphere of primarily carbon dioxide, with nitrogen and clouds of sulfuric acid droplets.

FIGURE 1[missing].
Venus, viewed in the ultraviolet by the Pioneer Venus mission (Fimmel, Colin, and Burgess 1983).

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. As shown in figure 2, at an altitude slightly above fifty km above the surface, the atmospheric pressure is equal to the Earth surface atmospheric pressure of 1 Bar. At this level, the environment of Venus is benign.

· above the clouds, there is abundant solar energy
· temperature is in the habitable "liquid water" range of 0-50C
· atmosphere contains the primary volatile elements required for life (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Sulfur)
· Gravity is 90% of the gravity at the surface of Earth.

While the atmosphere contains droplets of sulfuric acid, technology to avoid acid corrosion are well known, and have been used by chemists for centuries.
In short, the atmosphere of Venus is most earthlike environment in the solar system. Although humans cannot breathe the atmosphere, pressure vessels are not required to maintain one atmosphere of habitat pressure, and pressure suits are not required for humans outside the habitat.

It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.

Is Floating Difficult? On Venus, breathable air (i.e., oxygen/nitrogen mixture at roughly 21:78 mixture ratio) is a lifting gas. The lifting power of breathable air in the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Venus is about half kg per cubic meter. Since air is a
lifting gas on Venus: the entire lifting envelope of an aerostat can be breathable gas, allowing the full volume of the aerostat to be habitable volume. For comparison, on Earth, helium lifts about one kg per cubic meter, so a given volume of air on Venus will lift about half as much as the same volume of helium will lift on Earth.).

FIGURE 2 [missing]. Pressure as a function of altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.
Science on Venus

Venus, the "greenhouse planet", is a scientifically fascinating place (Landis 2001, Landis et al. 2002). In many ways it can be considered "Earth's evil twin." A huge number of important scientific questions need to be answered:

· Before the runaway greenhouse effect, was early Venus temperate?
· Did Venus once have an ocean? If so, did it ever have life?
· What causes the geological resurfacing of the planet?
· What is the nature of the atmospheric superrotation?
· What are the aerosol particles in the atmosphere?
· What is the ÒsnowÓ on Venus mountaintops?
· Can we learn about EarthÕs climate from Venus?
· What is the nature of the disequilibrium chemistry in the Venusian atmosphere? Could it indicate atmopsheric life?

At a temperature of 450 Celsius, and with 90 atmospheres of pressure of carbon-dioxide atmosphere, the surface of Venus is far too hostile to land humans upon, but we can put humans in the atmosphere to explore the surface via
rugged telerobot. Venus Telescience Technologies In the telerobotic exploration scenario (Landis 2003), the humans remain in a habitat, and use teleoperation to rove across the surface of Venus and explore. This requires a high-fidelity, high-bandwidth connection to give the humans a fully-detailed virtual presence in the robotic body.

Humans participate in the exploration both by direct operation of the telerobots across a high-fidelity virtual presence link, and also by analyzing samples collected by the teleoperated robots in a fully-equipped on-site laboratory. Because of the high wind velocity in the middle atmosphere of Venus, an atmospheric aerostat habitat
would not stay over the same surface location, but would constantly move. Although this would have some disadvantages, such as requiring a relay station if long exploration of a single spot is required, it would also have some advantages in constantly moving over new ground. A robot to explore the surface of Venus will require new technologies; specifically, it will require electronics, scientific instruments, power supplies, and mechanical linkages designed to operate at a temperature above 450 C hot enough to melt the solder on a standard electronic circuit board. This will require devices made from advanced semiconductor materials, such as silicon carbide, or even new approaches, such as micro-vacuum tube electronics. Such materials are now being developed in the laboratory. In addition, for a fully immersive virtualreality, high-bandwidth virtual-presence technologies will have to be developed, as well as highly capable exploratory robotics.
While the human explorers could live in a habitat/laboratory in orbit around Venus, a better location for exploration is an aerostat habitat. Teleoperation from the atmosphere allows near "real time" operation with minimum time delay, giving a virtual presence on the surface. An atmospheric habitat has an advantage over an orbital habitat of advantages of gravity (90% of Earth surface gravity) and atmospheric protection against cosmic radiation (same equivalent mass as Earth’s atmosphere), and the presence of useful atmospheric gasses, including carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Breathing oxygen for life support can be easily provided by separation of oxygen from atmospheric carbon dioxide, either by zirconia electrolysis or by Sabatier processes. So it should be possible to explore the surface of Venus remotely from an aerostat habitat. An atmospheric location for the habitat has the addition advantage that it will be easy to bring samples up from the surface to be analyzed in the habitat. The atmospheric pressure is high enough that both airplanes (Landis 2001) or balloons could lift samples (assuming, of course, that the vehicles are adapted for high-temperature and pressure operation).


SETTLING VENUS

In the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.
The thick atmosphere provides about one kilogram per square centimeter of mass shielding from galactic cosmic radiation and from solar particle event radiation, eliminating a key difficulty in many other proposed space settlement locations. The gravity, slightly under one Earth gravity, is likely to be sufficient to prevent the adverse affects of microgravity. At roughly one atmosphere of pressure, a habitat in the atmosphere will not require a high strength pressure vessel. Humans would still require provision of oxygen, which is mostly absent from the Venusian atmosphere, but in other respects the environment is perfect for humans (although on the habitat exterior humans would still require sufficient clothing to avoid direct skin exposure to aerosol droplets). Since breathable air is a lifting gas, the entire lifting envelope of an aerostat can be breathable gas, allowing the full volume of the aerostat to be habitable volume. For objects the size of cities, this represents an enormous amount of lifting power. A one-kilometer diameter spherical envelope will lift 700,000 tons (two Empire state buildings). A two-kilometer diameter envelope would lift 6 million tons. So, if the settlement is contained in an envelope containing oxygen and nitrogen the size of a modest city, the amount of mass which can be lifted will be, in fact,
large enough that it could also hold the mass of a modest city. The result would be an environment as spacious as a typical city. The lifting envelope does not need to hold a significant pressure differential. Since at the altitudes of interest the external pressure is nearly one bar, atmospheric pressure inside the envelope would be the same as the pressure outside. The envelope material itself would be a rip-stop material, with high-strength tension elements to carry the load. With zero pressure differential between interior and exterior, even a rather large tear in the envelope would take thousands of hours to leak significant amounts of gas, allowing ample time for repair. (For safety, the envelope would also consist of several individual units).
Solar power is abundant in the atmosphere of Venus, and, in fact, solar arrays can produce nearly as much power pointing downward (toward the reflective clouds) as they produce pointing toward the sun. The Venus solar day, 116.8 terrestrial days, is extremely long; however, the atmospheric winds circle the planet much more rapidly, rotating around the planet in four days. Thus, on the habitat, the effective solar "night" would be roughly fifty hours, and the solar "day" the same. This is longer than an Earth day, but is still comfortable compared to, for example, the six-month night experienced in terrestrial near-polar locations. If the habitat is located at high latitudes, the day and night duration could be shortened toward a 24-hour cycle.

A permanent settlement will need access to the resources required for human life and for greenhouses to provide food and oxygen, and the atmosphere of Venus has these in abundance. Atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrogen are a plentiful resource. Along with hydrogen reaped from condensing atmospheric sulfuric acid droplets, the basic elements needed for human survival can be found in the atmosphere. A settlement will require structural and industrial materials as well. These materials, such as silicon, iron, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium etc. can be mined from the surface material, which is apparently
primarily a basaltic silicate. Access to the surface is relatively simple from an aerostat, since the thick atmosphere allows flight by airplanes (Landis 2001) or balloons (already demonstrated on Venus during the Russian VEGA mission (Bougher, Hunten and Phillips 1997)). In an alternative scenario, an cable in the form of a high-temperature fullerine tether could be used to directly lift ore from the surface to the habitat. Since the habitat will be stationary with respect to the middle-atmosphere wind, the lifting will be done with the habitat in motion with respect to the surface. It may simplify the process if the habitat temporarily lowers its altitude to take it out of the high altitude wind levels; while this will move it toward the higher temperature region of the atmosphere, a habitat of the size
considered would have an enormous heat capacity, and would likely have little difficulty with a temporary dwell at higher temperature levels. Finally, with surface area 3.1 times the land area of Earth, Venus has plenty of room. A billion habitats, each one with a population of hundreds of thousands of humans, could be placed float in the Venus atmosphere. Accessibility of Asteroids from Venus One possible economic objective for space colonization is to serve as habitats from which humans can prospect and mine asteroidal resources. It would be intuitive to think that a base to mine asteroids should be close to the asteroid belt, and hence further from the sun than the Earth, but detailed consideration of astrodynamics brings this conclusion into some question. In terms of flight time, Venus is closer to the asteroid belt than either the Earth or Mars. This is shown in figure 3 [missing]. For example, the minimum-energy trajectory to the largest main-belt asteroid, Ceres, takes 0.95 yeears from Venus, and 1.05 years from Earth. In terms of flight time, the closer you are to the sun, the more accessable the asteroids are. The asteroids are not actually close to each other, and hence if a habitat is to support prospecting and mining more
than one asteroid, the asteroid belt is in some ways the worst location for it. An asteroid is as likely as not to be on the opposite side of the sun, and although the Earth is further from the sun, that does not put it closer, on the average, to any given asteroid. The higher orbital velocity of Venus actually makes transfer orbits somewhat faster, as well as increasing the number of transfer opportunities (that is, decreasing the synodic period).

CONCLUSION

In the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus. The advantages of the Venus atmosphere over other proposed space settlement locations includes an abundance of atmospheric volatiles, sufficient for life support, benign temperature and pressure, shielding from cosmic and solar-flare radiation, plentiful solar energy, and nearby access to the rocky (silicate) surface materials.

Earth to Vesta:
1.08 years
Venus to Vesta:
0.95 years
Earth to Ceres:
1.29 years Venus to Ceres:
1.15 years
Vesta orbit
2.36 AU

FIGURE 3 [missing]. In terms of flight time, Venus is closer to the asteroid belt than either the Earth or Mars. Minimum energy trajectories to the two largest main-belt asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, are shown.

REFERENCES

Bougher, S. W., Hunten, D. M., and Phillips R. J., editors, Venus II, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1997.
Fimmel, R. O., Colin, L., and Burgess, E., Pioneer Venus, NASA SP-461 (1983).
Landis, G. A., "Exploring Venus by Solar Airplane," presented at the STAIF Conference on Space Exploration Technology,
Albuquerque NM, Feb. 11-15, 2001. AIP Conference Proceedings Volume 552, pp. 16-18.
Landis, G. A., LaMarre C. and Colozza, A.: "Atmospheric Flight on Venus," paper AIAA-2002-0819, AIAA 40th Aerospace
Sciences Meeting, Reno NV, January 14-17 2002.
Landis, G. A., "Robots and Humans: Synergy in Planetary Exploration," Conference on Human Space Exploration, Space
Technology & Applications International Forum, Albuquerque, NM, Feb. 2-6 2003 [this proceedings]
Lewis, J. S., Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets, Addison-Wesley (1996).
O’Neill G. K., "The Colonization of Space," Physics Today, 27 (9), pp. 32-40, Sept., 1974.
O’Neill, G. K., The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, William Morrow & Co; 1976; (Third Edition, Apogee Books,
2000)
Zubrin, R., The Case for Mars, The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1996.
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Sunday, May 13, 2007

Absolutely Awesome Images of Space

The technical and theoretical aspects of space and space travel are fascinating to me and most likely many others but, sometimes it's nice to just step back and take a look at why going to space would be awesome for the view alone. I have compiled several of my favorite images of space. Many were taken by Hubble but not all.


Known as the "Pale Blue Dot," this image was taken on February 14th, 1990 by Voyager 1. Four billion miles away from Earth, it is the longest distance away from Earth that a picture of Earth has been taken.

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
-Carl Sagan
The above quote by Carl Sagan is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It really puts things into perspective.

Another "Pale Blue Dot" taken by Cassini that is perhaps even more stunning (though not as far).
Explanation Courtesy NASA.gov:
In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

The Helix Nebula. I like this one because it reminds me of the Eye of Sauron from "The Lord of The Rings" trilogy.



From the Ashes of the First Stars. Above is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen. It is an artist's impression of a primordial quasar surrounded by sheets of gas, dust, stars and early star clusters.

The Jupiter's 4th largest moon IO. The spectacular surface is dotted with volcanoes and as a result of the many volcanoes its appearance is created by the sulfur and silicates released. The bluish cloud seen coming from the surface is known as the Prometheus Plume and is the result of a volcano. It is speculated that the plume has been active for over 18 years (from 1997).



The Vela Supernova Remnant. It is referred to as a remnant because it is left over from a supernova that exploded 10-12 thousand years ago.

The Flame Nebula. The beautiful array of light is caused by excited gas particles (primarily Hydrogen).
The Eta Carinae Nebula (aka the Great Nebula in Carina or simply the Carina Nebula). Breathtaking is the only way to really describe this photo.

I hope you all enjoyed these as much as I did when I first stumbled upon them.

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Friday, May 4, 2007

A Floating City on Venus

Hellish Venusian surface. Courtesy NASA.gov
(Note: this is a part of The Space Colonization Series)
When space colonization is mentioned many things come to mind: Mars, the Moon, the future, terraforming, and even occasionally asteroids. One thing that rarely comes to mind, however, is Venus. And why should it? After all, Venus is Earth's sister planet from hell, registering a spicy 450 degrees C average on the surface or, in other words, hotter than Mercury. As if the temperature wasn't enough incentive to destroy any thoughts of visiting Earth's closest planetary neighbor, reaching the surface is practically impossible to do safely. Atmospheric pressure reaches 90 times that of ours on the surface or equivalent to being under 1 km of water. Venus also has a relatively slow rotation, completing one rotation every 243 earth days. Thus nights would last a very long time--not that you could see the sun during the day anyway. So, if Venus seems so obviously irrelevant to the idea of space colonization why make an article connecting the two? Well, it is Venus' hellish properties that ironically make it so appealing. The common misconception about space colonization is that colonies are built on the surface. The key to a Venusian colony is it's incredibly dense atmosphere. Remember, "...or equivalent to being under 1 km of water?" Well, things float on water; don't they...?

The Idea

The concept is actually based on a rather simple premise--buoyancy. So, we all know lower density materials rise to the top but how could this apply to Venus? Simply put, breathable gas has the equivalent lifting power on Venus as half of Helium's lifting power on Earth (about 1 kg per cubic meter). This property allows for breathable air domes to lift a colony in addition to their own weight. Tweaking the lifting power could also easily be done by storing helium or hydrogen (both extractable from the atmosphere) filled tanks. The Colonies would float at an altitude of roughly 50 km where the air pressure is equal to Earth's. At this altitude the former problems encountered with a surface colony start to disappear. The temperature chills to a much more normal range of 0-50 degrees Celsius or liquid water temperatures. This altitude also happens to sit above the thick clouds providing abundant solar energy. The clouds themselves are so reflective that pointing solar panels downward would provide almost as much energy as they would pointing upward. The solar power available above Venus' cloud top is approximately 1.9 times that of Earth's providing plenty of power for a potential colony. Ah, that sounds great, but the issue of incredibly long dark periods still looms doesn't it? Fortunately, Venus' atmospheric winds bail us out of that situation giving us a manageable 50 hour solar day and likewise, a 50 hour solar night. Increase the latitude of the 'Bubble' and everything could be packaged into an Earth-like 24 hour cycle.

Bespin from the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
Other than the extreme density of Venus' atmosphere providing buoyancy, it also provides many important resources necessary for food and oxygen. Carbon dioxide and Nitrogen are very abundant in the atmosphere and could easily be harvested. Hydrogen can also be extracted from condensed sulfuric acid droplets, thus providing all of the basic elements required for human survival. Industrial minerals, also very important for maintaining an outpost or colony, could be mined from the surface. The hazards of reaching the surface drastically decrease in difficulty when making the attempt from an already established floating colony (or aerostat habitat). Large cables stretching the 50 km distance or less if the city lowers altitude temporarily could lift minerals from the surface directly to the habitat. Such a large habitat would have an incredibly large heat capacitance and thus be able to withstand momentary dips into much higher temperatures. So, it is starting to become clear how a floating city on Venus could theoretically become self-sustaining. That is great, but we are still left with a legitimate question: why should we want to go to Venus?!


The Reason

Obviously research of the planet is one simple and arguably lame reason to visit. That excuse could be made for practically anything. Everyone knows scientific research would take place. The type of research possible, however, could be highly relevant to our own planet. Global warming is currently a great debate across the globe and an in-depth look into Venus' extreme example of the greenhouse effect could open up many doors to explaining our own climate. Some other topics of interest include:

Before the runaway greenhouse effect, was early Venus temperate?
Did Venus once have an ocean? If so, did it ever have life?
What causes the geological resurfacing of the planet?
What is the nature of the atmospheric superrotation?
What are the aerosol particles in the atmosphere?
What is the —snow“ on Venus mountaintops?
What is the nature of the disequilibrium chemistry in the Venusian atmosphere? Could it indicate atmopsheric life?

View rest of paper [pdf]

[NOTE: pdf file is currently down so to view a transcript of the file I have decided to host it here.]
There are many other reasons to colonize Venus. First and foremost, human survival is dependent upon our expansion and colonization of space as Stephen Hawking recently made so clear. Venus is enticing for such a proposal for the three very important reasons: location, location, location. One, it is Earth's closest neighbor (excluding the Moon). Two, the colony is located in the dense atmosphere and thus it blocks harmful solar radiation naturally--problems that would be encountered on the Moon and Mars. The third is Venus' relative position to the coveted asteroid belt. It seems counterintuitive that Venus has a prime location for reaching the asteroid belt considering it is closer to the sun than Earth and the asteroid belt is even further than Earth but astrodynamics says otherwise. Here is more from the previous [pdf] explaining the concept in further detail:

In terms of flight time, Venus is closer to the asteroid belt than either the Earth or
Mars. This is shown in figure 3. For example, the minimum-energy trajectory to the largest main-belt asteroid, Ceres, takes 0.95 yeears from Venus, and 1.05 years from Earth. In terms of flight time, the closer you are to the sun, the more accessable the asteroids are. The asteroids are not actually close to each other, and hence if a habitat is to support prospecting and mining more than one asteroid, the asteroid belt is in some ways the worst location for it. An asteroid is as likely as not to be on the opposite side of the sun, and although the Earth is further from the sun, that does not put it closer, on the average, to any given asteroid. The higher orbital velocity of Venus actually makes transfer orbits somewhat faster, as well as increasing the number of transfer opportunities (that is, decreasing the synodic period).


View rest of paper [pdf]

Clearly, Venus presents a distinct advantage concerning mining asteroids, a potential 'gold mine.'

Establishing a floating city colony also gives humans much more 'practice' with inhabiting alien worlds. Learning to become air and land dwellers could prove to be a valuable asset in the future. Venus gives us a unique opportunity in regards to this because its gravity, at.904 G's, is only slightly less than Earth's. This means that colonists would not need to make frequent trips back to Earth to avoid bone loss or any other negative side effects of low gravity environments.

OK, but there are still problems right?

Of course there are. Many obstacles face a floating colony on Venus, though not as many nor the type that most would expect. The atmosphere is filled with sulfuric acid and other corrosive particles. Ceramics or some other type of layer would be necessary to prevent corrosion. Sulfuric acid fortunately has many industrial uses and could also be harvested for use. Scooping raw materials would also require quite an engineering feet, not to mention the whole project itself being a gargantuan task. The hazards overall are similar to any ambition of colonizing a planet. One big concern would be leaks. Fortunately, since the pressure is approximately equal on the inside and out, leaks of even large proportions would be slow and manageable.

Personally, I wouldn't say that colonizing Mars or the Moon first is a better or worse idea. Clearly those two options get the most attention and seem the most viable options to many. A floating city may not be as easy or as difficult as what has been proposed but the idea deserves merit. I believe the proposal is worthy enough for deeper consideration and more research. Hopefully my spreading of this idea has sparked a few of you with your own ideas. If anyone has any questions feel free to post them and I will try my hardest to address them and find an appropriate answer.

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