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MsPennyP t1_j8grp80 wrote

No. Human life could not exist anywhere in/on Vensus' atmosphere. Venus has a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and it's perpetually shrouded in thick, yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid that trap heat, causing a runaway greenhouse effect. It's the hottest planet in our solar system, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun.

What "life" could possibly exist there would be some bacteria in the uppermost cloud tops. But even then it would need to be hyper acidophilic due to the concentrated sulfuric acid there.

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Cute_Consideration38 t1_j8gv2bs wrote

Replying to MsPennyP (#1,804,359)

Yeah but if you built a house that was on stilts that reached the breathable layer then you would be good. You would need to order pizza a lot because you couldnt really leave.

I'm this smart and I don't even gotta try.

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ali-n t1_j8gvrhl wrote

False. There is a high altitude layer (somewhere around 50 km above the surface) that is cool enough and at the right pressure, but none of it is breathable. The scifi about a floating city likely comes from the proposals that have been made to build a floating laboratory around this depth... but that still doesn't mean the atmosphere would be breathable (think of the Venusian atmosphere as an ocean, and the lab would be a submarine floating in it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus

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Current-Ad6521 t1_j8gvvn7 wrote

This guy has written some articles about this, but doesn't really imply humans are able to survive there. He is an legit doctoral researcher, but not in anything relating about space. He just writes random articles for fun and isn't an actual authority figure on space.

A region of the layer of atmosphere 50-60km above the surface of Venus is thought to be the the most similar atmospheric conditions to Earth in our solar system. The atmospheric pressure and temperature of the air in this region is similar to ours, but the composition of gases is not exactly breathable.

So no, this layer would not be sustainable for human life.

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WimWumRay t1_j8gw3p7 wrote

There is a region in Venus' atmosphere where the pressure and temperature is roughly equivalent to Earth, which some argue make it "the most hospitable place in the soar system".

Unfortunately the makeup of the atmosphere is very different from earth with huge amounts of CO2 and clouds of sulphuric acid.

You wouldn't need a full space suit to live in a Venusian cloud city, but you would need to use a gas mask and a full bodysuit made of Teflon or something similar to keep those acidic clouds from dissolving your skin and/or lungs.

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DreamerOfRain t1_j8h0wff wrote

Replying to WimWumRay (#1,804,643)

Big step up from basically anywhere else in the solar system other than earth though. And Iirc oxygen is buoyant enough in this atmosphere that you can live inside oxygen balloons which solves some logistic problems of building the cloud city.

Overall venus is a serious contender for off world colonisation when we get to that point along with mars and moon

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UnamedStreamNumber9 t1_j8jsy6e wrote

Replying to DreamerOfRain (#1,804,926)

I kind of like the concept in one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels where they build a completely opaque planetary sunshield in front of Venus and freeze all the co2 out of the atmosphere. Then they have some kind of foamed concrete insulation/pavement over the entire surface of the planet to keep it down when they open the sunshield back up. Lastly, they wind a superconducting coil completely around the planet, pole to pole, and use it to create a motor in the sun’s magnetic field to create some rotation

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Redzx3 t1_j8lfz1v wrote

The atmospheric pressure at ground level is 91 times earth pressure. The temp is about 860 Fahrenheit. The air density, even with a low wind speed, would be like being in a slow-moving current that you couldn't resist. The air is mainly CO2 with no appreciable oxygen. So you would be crushed, burned alive, and suffocated all at once. Doesn't sound very hospitable.

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SvenTropics t1_j8qahsn wrote

Replying to DreamerOfRain (#1,804,926)

I guess the hard part is that you can't use any materials there to construct anything. Nothing in the foreseeable future would be able to survive a trip to the surface and back. So everything would have to be extraterrestrial. With Mars or a moon colony, the thought is that you could mine raw materials from the surface and use them to construct things. Venus doesn't even have a moon you could mine.

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DreamerOfRain t1_j8qi4t7 wrote

Replying to SvenTropics (#1,826,869)

Yeah but you can already easily extract a lot of useful things from the dense atmosphere like carbon, nitrogen, sulfur that is useful in agriculture to sustain population.

Also, the surface environment is hellish, but it can be withstand with more robust engineering that are designed to withstand heat and pressure like from deep sea and deep earth environment compare to lightweight probes full of sensitive electronics. For example mechanical tethers and drill could be dropped from baloon high above to anchor and extract resources. It will be a monumental feat of engineering, but nothing that would be impossible to overcome with near future technology.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Venus colonisation is that it might not be viable economically. Compare to the readily available Helium -3 on the moon or the vast amount of ore and other resources on Mars that are easily accessible on the surface, Venus don't have much that is going to excite investors to dump trillions upon trillions on it. Maybe if we were able to discover something really interesting there, like remnant of a civilization or something, then there would be interest. Otherwise it will probably be at most a research base to utilize the venus environment to test technology.

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