Quick, after that last post, I desperately need a thorough brain cleanse. Maybe a quick vacation on the paradisial water world of Venus, or Amtor as Edgar Rice Burroughs called it.
OK, maybe 575°C and 90 atmospheres of pressure rule out visiting it for spring break (actually, I’m visiting Des Moines, Iowa at that time, which should be more pleasant), but this is a reminder that Soviet engineering and science actually accomplished great and admirable things. And they were so persistent and creative in their efforts to put a probe on the surface!
As far as I can tell there isn’t a single billionaire there, so it’s not all bad.
575°C – but is it a dry heat?
In terms of ‘places off Earth to live’, about 50 km up in the Venusian atmosphere isn’t half bad. At least, the temperature and pressure are fine and the atmosphere above you provides at least some shielding from cosmic rays even if Venus lacks a magnetosphere. Your air supply is even lighter than the local atmosphere, so adds buoyancy. Sure, it’s dry as a bone and the atmosphere will suffocate you, and it is a very long fall to the ground but you’re probably above the sulfuric acid clouds at least.
(There is a reason why longer-duration exploration of Venus might be best done by putting the probes on balloons. Sure you can’t do the poke-the-rocks-with-your-instruments thing the Mars rovers can do, but it turns out heat and pressure kill robots faster than cold and sand.)
The Soviet probes worked much better on Venus than US probes, because they used vacuum tubes, which tolerate extreme heat much better than semiconductors.
I suggest we send some immediately. Call it Project VenusGate or something.
Re: Becca Stareyes @3.
From the Weinersmiths’ book A City on Mars
* “Cloud Ten” a chapter in Inner Solar System: Prospective Energy and Material Resources (2015, p451–98) by Magnus Larsson and Alex Kaiser
dennyk, so send Beyoncé there? Rihanna?
One should stick to < $999,999,999, lest one become evil is the moral.
So cool. It really feels like not enough scientific effort has been put into Venus compared to Mars. In terms of settlement floating bases on Venus are probably easier than Mars – more sunlight for power, workable atmospheric pressure (at the right elevation) and significantly closer orbit to Earth. Just don’t sink down too far!
I’m sure with several millennia of work it could be habitable. ;P
Snarki, child of Loki @4:
“they used vacuum tubes, which tolerate extreme heat much better than semiconductors.”
While true in the past, relatively recent SiC* (silicon carbide) semiconductors may eclipse that. Operating at higher speeds than silicon, higher voltages and currents and at much higher power densities and temperatures.
Up to 10X the voltage ratings, 4X the thermal conductivity, up to 800C operating temperatures vs 150C for silicon power devices. Lower voltage drops and higher switching speeds. Due to their superior properties, they are working their way into being used in EVs (second link below).
*Single crystal versions of what you would typically find in an average grinding wheel. Which most would not recognize as a transistor material.
https://www.eag.com/blog/silicon-carbide-powerful-semiconductor/
https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1049/pel2.12524
Did anyone say “billionaire”?
Elon Musk has to testify about his role in DOGE about destroying USAID
“Trump PANICS as DEPOSITION HE FEARED is FINALLY ORDERED!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HLkQEW8-6vU
[OT]
Yup. Because it’s a stupidly-applied label here.
Such people as Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, etc. Rich fucking people.
Evil, terrible, horrible, nasty people, because they did not stick to < $999,999,999.
Not just artists; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires
—
Ah yes, the clickbait shit headline. NONE OF IT IS TRUE, Birger.
(I tried to tell you not to just go by those clicbaits, but it pissed Lynna off)
OK.
I have an idea. Instead of building crap monuments, maybe invest in something cool.
Like Kennedy did when he started the Moon program culminating in the Apollo project.
The cancelled Terrestrial Planet Finder would be a good starting point. I loathe the dead red dwarf planets that pop up in articles, let’s look at realistically potential homes for life orbiting at distances unsuited for detection by the current methods.
.
Paris has some cool stuff named after presidents that are bona fide useful.
-And if you want futuristic high tech, build high-speed train tracks mounted on pylons above the ground connecting the inner cities of various metropolitan regions with each other.
-If you have read Neuromancer you will be fsmiliar with The Sprawl aka the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA) made possible by high speed connections.
“I have an idea. Instead of building crap monuments, maybe invest in something cool.”
What, on Venus?
Mate! There’s a reason we don’t have it in Oz or the USAnians don’t have it.
Cost. Simple as.
Not economic. Not a thing you just build and it’s done, like a monument.
(Shallow thinking is shallow)
For you, Birger:
^
😀
:)
Venus:
“First evidence of a subsurface lava tube on Venus”
.https://phys.org/news/2026-02-evidence-subsurface-lava-tube-venus.html
Lava tubes can be found in a lot of places. Maybe we can tempt the techbro billionaires to migrate from Earth with the promise of a volcano-made subsurface lair?
Yeah, the Soviets had a lot more luck with Venus landers and probes in general than they did with Mars, which is somewhat ironic since Venus is much more inhospitable. NASA never seemed to have as much interest in Venus once the Soviet probes discovered that the surface atmosphere was extremely hot and dense.
In recent years, though, I think that NASA has started working on two new spacecraft to go to Venus. They almost got cancelled in the proposed massive cuts to NASA by the Trump administration but have been reinstated, at least for now. I hope that they eventually get launched, although I don’t think either one is going to land on the surface.
It ain;’t quite bespin yet but there’s a goldilocks~ish layer of Cytherean clouds and these – 5 Reasons To Colonize Venus – Not Mars by Hello From Space (not quite 20 mins long) among more..
Plus the alternative better ending Timeline of Venus: From Formation to Finale by Mr Plasma – just over a dozen mins long.
Venus does have the advantage of not having Trump or Trumpists on it..
Then again, so does Pluto & Pluto is a lot cooler! ;-)
Ray Bradbury’s 1950 sci-fi story The Long Rain has astronauts marooned on Venus where it’s always raining. He didn’t know at the time that it was sulfuric acid.
@ ^ weylguy : There are a lot of old SF stories set on Venus before we knew what the cytherean surface was like positing and speculating about very different possible versions of that world back when all we knew was it had clouds that blocked us from knowing what lay beneath them.
Asimov among others had a Venus that was all ocean world, many had a tropical jungle or dry desert world, some even had oceans of hydrocarbons – an oil rich surface and petroleum planet.
They look very dated now but I like to imagine there are worlds like (almost?) all the various models of Venus that we have dreamt of are out there somewhere around other stars – just not applying to Venus as we have it in our solar system.
See also :
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/venus
Maybe. Good imagining, no probs there.
Point being, I’ve noticed you adduce claims about exoplanets that are no less speculative.
(Hint!)
Well Titan seems to be a fan of wildly speculative sci-fi.
The rocks are water? The lakes are ethane and methane?
But in one of the most daring of
humanrobotic adventures we went there and it’s real.@26. John Morales : “Point being, I’ve noticed you adduce claims about exoplanets that are no less speculative.” (Hint!)
I do like speculating and imagining what exoplanets might potentially be like; taking educated, imaginative guesses of what might be the case(s) for them based on what we do know and extrapolating. I find the possibilities fascinating. As long as it is clear and caveated with “we don’t know this but we think it MIGHT be like X because of Y, Z, B et cetera..” then is there a problem and, if so, what?
Ahem: Maybe. Good imagining, no probs there.
(Already said no prob!)