Colonizing Venus With Floating Cities

Seemingly, people in the space community have a tendency to push the boundaries of thought about all the possibilities that await us in the universe. Case in point: Geoffrey Landis. Landis is a scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center who writes science fiction in replica hermes his spare time. Last week Landis shared with us his ideas for using a solar powered airplane to study Venus. This week, Landis goes a step farther (actually, several steps farther) with his ideas about colonizing Venus. Yes, Venus, our hot, greenhouse effect gone mad neighboring planet with a crushing surface pressure that has doomed the few spacecraft that have attempted to reach the planet’s mysterious landscape. Landis knows Venus’ surface itself is pretty much out of the question for human habitation. But up about 50 kilometers above the surface, Landis says the atmosphere of Venus is the replica hermes purse most Earth like environment, other than Earth itself, in the solar system. What Landis proposes is creating floating cities on Venus where people could live and work, as well as study the Hermes replica Picotin Lock planet below.

“There’s been a lot of people who have been proposing space colonies, such as colonies that are in free space, separate from any planet,” said Landis. “And I said, well, if you’re thinking that far into the future why don’t we think of some more groundbreaking, or perhaps we should say atmosphere breaking possibilities.”

50 km above the surface, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0C 50C range, a quite comfortable environment for humans. Humans wouldn’t require pressurized suits when outside, but it wouldn’t quite be a shirtsleeves environment. We’d need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the straight from the source atmosphere.

In looking at Venus, the fact that struck Landis the most is that Earth’s atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen would actually float in Venus’ atmosphere of carbon dioxide. “Because the atmosphere of Venus is CO2, the gases that we live in all the time, nitrogen and oxygen, would be a lifting gas,” he said. “On Earth, we know to get something to lift, you need something lighter than air. Well, on Venus, guess what? Our air is lighter than air, or at least lighter than the Venus atmosphere.”

Hermes Replica Handbags So, create a bubble, fill it with Earth like atmosphere, and it would float on Venus. “If you could just take the room you’re sitting in and replace the walls with something thinner, the room would float on Venus,” said Landis. Hermes Replica Handbags

Replica Hermes Bags The biggest challenge would be using a substance resistant to sulfuric acid to form the outer layer of the bubble; ceramics or metal sulfates could possibly serve in this role, but of course, you’d want to be able to see outside, as well. “Just think of the great pictures you could get,” said Landis. Replica Hermes Bags

Asked if he has ever thought about terraforming her latest blog Venus, Landis said, “Oh, yes, of course! That’s one of the reasons I started thinking about the floating cities on Venus. The more you look at Venus, the more you say, ‘oh my goodness, terraforming would birkin inspired replica handbags be a really hard project.’”

Back in about 1962 when Carl Sagan birkin replica bag hermes first talked about the concept of terraforming Venus, it wasn’t known what a challenge Venus would be. “They didn’t quite know how difficult Venus is, they didn’t know how thick the atmosphere was on Venus and how hot it was,” said Landis. “They knew it had a greenhouse effect, but they didn’t know how bad. But the more we look at the problems, the more we say, goodness, terraforming is a very difficult hermes belt replica proposition.”

fake hermes belt vs real But Landis thinks Venus already has a very nice environment. “What I like to say, the problem with Venus is if you define sea level as the place in the atmosphere where its the same as Earth, the place of “sea level” on Venus is just too far above the ground.” fake hermes belt vs real

While Landis’ plans for a solar powered airplane are a true possibility for an upcoming mission to Venus, his ideas about colonizing that planet are a little more speculative. “This is really just a thought exercise,” said Landis, “an exercise in imagination rather than something we’re likely to do in the near term. I don’t expect people will be building cities on Venus, at least probably not in this century.”

Anyone having visions of Bespin and Lando Calrissian from “The Empire Strikes Back”?

Maybe that should be “Landis” Calrissian.

More information about Geoffrey Landis.

Share this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)MoreClick to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Not everyone dealing with space exploration are involved in the invention of a flying car. That like yelling at McDonalds for Burger King new fries (I just saw Wall E, all I can think of are corporate restaurants. Pardon the metaphor)

Hermes Replica Belt Space exploration will probably be really beneficial to humans once we do start colonizing places or getting resources from other locations etcetc; however, for now we just learning about the final frontier. All these probes we sending out aren preparing the planets for us, they simply gathering information about our solar system. And that a very important step. We don really have any goal like us from the sun! or anything. Plus, the sun has like 6.5 billion years before it takes out the solar system. If humans are still around in 6.5 billion years, I assume we have colonized the greater portion of the universe, and the loss of this solar system won be so bad. Think of how much we done in just the past couple thousand years! We gone from caves to space stations. Hermes Replica Belt

hermes birkin bag replica cheap I think this city be a great idea. replica hermes himalayan bag Like someone said, it could be a tourist attraction and generate revenue, as well as the absolute best way to learn all about Venus. I for any project that teaches us about our solar system! Again, that really our real goal right now. hermes birkin bag replica cheap

Replica Hermes Birkin Of course, like Mr. Landis said, though, this is just food for thought. It won happen for awhile, and neither will any other space colony. Replica Hermes Birkin

We must remember we still having trouble sending robots to Mars, and sending humans on a short trip to the moon is still 10 years off.

they do this crazy project before they get around to me getting my own flying car I am really going to upset. If they did do this project before this is done, they (whoever are) should make it possible for me to have my own personal computer too, and wait.

That part of the future DID happen think it through. Suppose we did get truly practical, affordable flying cars. I suspect thngs would look more like the mess shown in Fifth Element, rather than the neat, orderly flyways of to the Future II or Jetsons. Its gravitational acceleration is almost the same as Earth One of the things that have not been addressed in all the planetary colonization schemes (as far as I know) is what will the affect of living and procreating in a gravity environment that has significantly less acceleration than Earth have on us? Can a child develop properly in an environment where the gravitational acceleration is less than Earth If so what is the minimum gravitational acceleration that will allow this to happen? There needs to be a lot more research into the effects of low acceleration environments on the human body and its development, before we can confidently consider colonizing any world that is significantly smaller than Earth. This is one of the reasons that I would tend to agree with Gerard O that our off Earth colonies should be rotating in free space where we can control the acceleration environment as apposed to planetary surfaces.

I expect that someday there might be a reason to build a floating city on Venus in a hundred or two hundred years, but in the nearer term I can see research stations similar to Antardtic research stations being established, maybe in the second half of this century. The real trick will be the surface material birkin bag replica amazon that will resist the corrosive effects of sulfuric acid. I also thought of a ceramic ballon similar to the Japanese fishing floats, but much bigger with thin walls. I would have used hydrogen as the lifting gas since in a carbon dioxide atmosphere the hydrogen would not be explosive. However the use of a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere, though less boyant, is very elegant.

Like I said I tikled with this idea.

Why wholesale handbags suppliers bother to put it on Venus? If you could build something like that, we probably need it here on Earth at the rate we going. Soon Venus really will be our sister planet if mini birkin bag replica we don get moving on Climate Change.

Then again, that what I think is areally good hermes replica 2424 bag benefit of the space program cranking out tools for living in a hostile environment. So go ahead and plan it for Venus and then we can have it here on Earth ready to go in case a catastrophe requires it.

Larry Niven Ringworld made a remark that I guess in retrospect should have been obvious to me a huge byproduct of human civilization is planetary heat. So while I used to think we should seek warm planets to live on, now that I see how easy it is to heat them and how hard it is to cool them, I more bullish these days on colder worlds than I used to be.