OceanGate’s cofounder wants to send 1,000 people to a floating colony on Venus by 2050, and says we shouldn’t stop pushing the limits of innovation::Guillermo Söhnleinm told Insider he has wanted to make humanity a multi-planet species since he was 11 years old, and that OceanGate was part of that ambition.
Billionaires first.
Yeah. I mean for a couple million I have can build a rocker that is guaranteed to send billionaires to Venus. Just sign that waiver first please.
1000 of the richest people? Sure, go for it
Err… Venus has one of the most hostile environments in the Solar System. A titanium probe can only survive there a few hours.
Dumb.
Venus has one of the most hostile environments in the Solar System.
It might seem unintuitive, but there’s an area above the clouds that’s actually really very mild as far as conditions go. It’s also closer/easier to get to than Mars and various useful components can be harvested from the atmosphere which is quite dense while Mars doesn’t have much.
Also, breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere so habitats filled with gas humans can breathe would actually be buoyant. You wouldn’t even need a pressurized spacesuit to go outside, just an air supply.
Thank God we perfected “landing somewhere in the upper atmosphere” in the 70s.
Thank God we perfected “landing somewhere in the upper atmosphere” in the 70s.
Am I misunderstanding or are you skeptical about it being possible to stop before reaching the surface? Because if so, that seems kind of weird. One would just need to deploy the balloons or whatever at the appropriate point. As far as technical challenges go, I’d guess this is actually going to be easier than safely getting something safely down to the surface.
In the 80s, not the 70s.
To add to this, one of the potential advantages is that you could use the temperature gradient as you drop further into the atmosphere as an energy source - making it one of the few areas in the solar system where you wouldn’t be reliant soley on solar or nuclear.
That’s a good point, although with sunlight so accessible and abundant and nuclear waste not being an issue (presumably you can just drop it to the surface) I’m not sure what the benefit would be of using that approach.
Isn’t it hard to get to because of it being closer to the Sun and requiring more deltaV?
Based on the Wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Advantages ) it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Optimal launch windows are more frequent and flight time is reduced (although it’s not a massive difference). That section doesn’t specifically mention delta v or fuel requirements but I assume if there was a notable difference aside from the flight time part that there would be something about it.
I’m far from an expert, but I’d guess in a way stuff like fuel requirements don’t really vary that much with distance, just time. This is because the vehicle will accelerate to some set speed and just coast for most of the way before decelerating at the other end. At least with current rocket propellant-based approaches, it’s not feasible to include enough fuel for the thing to be actively thrusting for more than a fraction of the total time.
Well, it does say it would be a floating colony, so it would probably be up where the atmosphere is about as dense as Earth’s, and above the sulfuric acid clouds, which is quite a bit more feasible than on the surface. That’s something actual real scientists and engineers have looked at. Still not overly feasible though, and there surely won’t be a 1000-person colony there by 2050. Even if NASA, SpaceX and the rest of the industry pivoted to Venus rather than Mars, I’d doubt that could happen. And I’d trust pretty much anyone more than this guy to pull it off.
Only if I can drive the spaceship with a Logitech wireless controller.
Is this some kind of insanity plea to get him off the hook for any negligence claims?
