The first couple of probes that got sent to Venus had to use heavy shielding against the environment, and even then they only survived long enough to send back some telemetry.
Now how about erecting a human habitat under such adverse and challenging conditions?
Our technology is not there yet, plus having to get all the materials, tools, supplies (water, food, electricity etc)there is going to be a major challenge.
LOL, hit Venus before MarsâŠ
As far as grandiose plans go, a functioning asteroid base would be a better pie in the sky goal.
On the surface of Venus, no way. Orbital stations could work, but I wouldnât trust these yahoos to do it. And said stations would need be heavily shielded from solar radiation due to the closer proximity.
Also, Venus rotates retrograde. So if you did manage to survive on the surface and the clouds cleared for a bit, youâd see the sun rise in the west and set in the east which would be trippy.
Speaking of retrograde spinning, what other things may also be affected by retrograde spinning?
You can just tell yourself that North is now South, and South is North, thatâll fix the trippy sunrises and sunsetsâŠ
Why? Just re-orient north.
Thatâs no fun. 
âJust change the universal constant of the universe.â
-Q
First, Guillermo Söhnlein started working on Humans2Venus before the implosion of the sub in June. His first (and so far, only) blog on the Humans2Venus.org site was dated February 27. What I read there is worrying. Iâll get to that a little later.
The stats I listed back in August were the conditions a ground-based colony would have to endure on Venus. Another article I found on the Firstpost site says itâs going to be a floating colony. The Humans2Venus website says the colony will be positioned 50km (~30 miles) above the surface.
It appears a little misleading when it lists these facts in the âParadise in the Clouds?â section of the main page:
Other than the first one, those conditions should be achieved by the space station they park at that point, just like anything we have currently parked in orbit around the Earth. But they clarify those points on another page.
If you click on the âFind out moreâ link, you go to their âWhy Venus?â page. It presents this venture as kind of âbeen there, done thatâ for low-Earth space stations, and since weâre trying to get established on Mars, why not do the same on Venus?
Those four conditions are explained more and now the stats start to make sense. If you park something at that height, itâs a Goldilocks spot in Venusâ atmosphere thatâs similar to what we have on Earth.
But what about the atmosphere thatâs almost all carbon dioxide and the sulfuric acid clouds? Easy! Weâve already got breathing apparatus and acid-resistant materials. Can we do it? Yes, we can!
Guillermoâs blog talks about his childhood dream, the concerns about <1G gravity on the human body and whether human reproduction be viable under those conditions.
He reads a report about the data collected by Russiaâs Venera missions to Venus and realizes Venus has the solution of having a spot with almost exactly 1G of gravity. Then he reads NASAâs article about the HAVOC concept they came up with of floating space stations (High Altitude Venus Operational Concept). Bingo! Humans2Venus Are Go!
The NASA article also addresses the highly corrosive sulfuric acid clouds problem. They brought in people to âbrainstorm and test materials that could resist the acidic environment while enabling solar power for the HAVOC airships.â
This is where it gets worrying, or maybe a point of âYou really just havenât thought this through, despite you thinking you haveâ.
Acid-resistant is not acid-proof. That means each material that comprises the HAVOC airship or whatever Guillermoâs team comes up with will have to be replaced at some point as itâs eaten away by Venusâ atmosphere unless the plan is to have disposable habitats. In that case, your plan is to put a large amount of space junk in orbit around Venus that increases over time until you come up with some other design that is acid-proof or has Star Trek-like shield generators. Maybe put booster rockets on them that can move them towards the sun for disposal.
Until you can create HAVOC 2.0 that wonât get eaten by sulfuric acid or has shields, you have to maintain HAVOC 1.0. Where are you going to do the maintenance and replacement of exterior surfaces? If itâs on site in orbit, then several of your HAVOC 1.0 airships will have to be dedicated to storing replacement components and enclosures that can be put in place around the work site so that sulfuric acid doesnât get inside the airship. Enclosures that can pump out all of the Venus atmosphere thatâs now inside it when itâs put in place and ensure no stray sulfuric acid floats around and gets in the cracks.
Donât forget the people that will be required to perform maintenance. The people that go to this âParadise in the Cloudsâ will have to be trained how to do this. Itâs not going to be a vacation on a cruise ship. When it takes four months for the service technician to arrive from Earth, you either better have people on site that can do it or you better be real good at predicting when maintenance will be needed and get them en route way ahead of time.
Force10 asked in the âMocking the scammers threadâ, âSo what would they actually do there without leaving the habitat?â Ook asked âI would prefer something that are quadruple redundant⊠Plus escape pods. Just in case.â
The answers are: they would be doing scientific research solely within the habitat, and escape pods would be little more than fancy coffins unless you could be immediately rescued and taken to one of the other HAVOC 1.0 airships. (Presuming they canât scale it up to be city-sized or at least neighborhood-sized, theyâd have to have a group of these and some way of getting between them.)
But, if you had a catastrophic emergency that took down one airship, like, say, a sulfuric atmosphere continually eating away at the surface of where you live, it might not be long before the next oneâs turn comes up.
Escape pods would only be viable for immediate rescue. Unless you can outfit them with Star Trek shields and impulse engines, they have to be designed and provisioned to support a human being for a minimum of two months. Iâm ruling out any kind of mothership positioned nearby because if 50km above the surface of Venus is the sweet spot for survivability and protection in the area, then any kind of mothership needs even more survivability and protection to withstand what the sun pumps out.
That two months assumes the rescue pod gets aimed at where Earth will be at the time and Earth can launch an immediate rescue mission and meet them halfway.
If youâre thinking about putting up buildings on the surface of Venus that could be used as an evacuation center as needed, Iâll just refer you back to what I said on August 5th about the conditions on the ground.
All of this doesnât address where weâre going to get the materials to make Guillermoâs dream a reality. Venus isnât another destination we can aspire to go to at the same time we aspire to go to Mars. Itâs a destination to look at after we get established on Mars.
We need a place with resources we can mine and harvest to create the materials that will allow us to survive the conditions above and on the surface of Venus. Earth isnât a good candidate, whether youâre going for disposable habitats that you have to periodically replace or whether you have ongoing maintenance of long-term habitats.
The concerns about depleting Earthâs resources arenât going away. Weâre getting better at being more efficient with it, but we havenât solved those concerns. One Iâve had for a while is when water is included in making materials that wonât degrade back into water for a long time, if ever. Drinkable water is one of the most valuable resources we have. Desalinating ocean water to replace unavailable drinking water has its own problems.
Mars can provide a lot of iron, nickel, sulfur, magnesium, aluminum, calcium and potassium. Weâll have to supplement it with materials from Earth, but we have the advantage of once we get them to Mars, its gravity is 0.38G compared to Earth, meaning getting them onto and off of the surface takes less energy. We have the initial cost of getting out of Earthâs atmosphere, then a significantly less cost for the rest of the journey, including a second destination of Venus.
Thereâs benefits to be had in going to Venus that may lend themselves to being able to colonize elsewhere. For now, it looks too problematic and impractical when there are other needs and benefits we have that need to come first.
I think everything starts with asteroids.