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People have speculated on doing that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus says Carl Sagan di

People have speculated on doing that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus says Carl Sagan did in 1961) For an (IMHO highly optimistic. It surely reads like science fiction to me) sketch of a plan from 1990 see https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TerraformingVenusQuickly.pdf https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TerraformingVenusQuickly..... It claims that, if we start in 2030, there can be ten billion people on Venus by 2200, and that the project can break-even by 2045 (after spending 150 billion British pounds)

Jenk 5y ago
> after spending 150 billion British pounds That's .. not a lot. Not as much you might expect terraforming and colonising _another planet_ to cost over 15 years, anyway. The UK's annual budget is £770B.
cortesoft 5y ago
What does “break even” mean in this context?
- Someone 5y ago
  What it always means: getting your investments back (I don’t think that paper corrects for inflation) The paper is light on details to start with, but doesn’t mention that at all. I think they build housing and sell it to people wanting to live there.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    Sorry, my question was whether this meant break even as in “we are extracting resources from Venus and selling them back on earth for more money than it cost to get them” or “Venus is now self sustaining” If it is the first one, that seems hard to calculate, because if you are extracting that many resources you are going to distort the market on earth. You comment makes it seem like they will break even by selling houses on Venus? How can they possibly know the market for Venus housing?
    - Someone 5y ago
      Unless I’m overlooking something, that paper doesn’t go into details, to say it extremely mildly. As far as I can tell, they only say “the first aerial space colony floats free and can be sold and inhabited”. And as I said, the whole paper is highly optimistic. They’re suggesting huge space colonies (“the terraformed Venus is unlikely to be fully occupied until the population of the space colonies reaches ~3×10¹⁰”. That’s about four times the current population of earth) I think I’m not alone in not seeing us put “several small space colonies” in the orbit of Venus and construct “a heavy orbital ring around Venus” ten years after we started planning. I guess they extrapolated exponential growth of everything imaginable.

Jenk 5y ago

> after spending 150 billion British pounds That's .. not a lot. Not as much you might expect terraforming and colonising _another planet_ to cost over 15 years, anyway. The UK's annual budget is £770B.

cortesoft 5y ago

What does “break even” mean in this context?

Someone 5y ago
What it always means: getting your investments back (I don’t think that paper corrects for inflation) The paper is light on details to start with, but doesn’t mention that at all. I think they build housing and sell it to people wanting to live there.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  Sorry, my question was whether this meant break even as in “we are extracting resources from Venus and selling them back on earth for more money than it cost to get them” or “Venus is now self sustaining” If it is the first one, that seems hard to calculate, because if you are extracting that many resources you are going to distort the market on earth. You comment makes it seem like they will break even by selling houses on Venus? How can they possibly know the market for Venus housing?
  - Someone 5y ago
    Unless I’m overlooking something, that paper doesn’t go into details, to say it extremely mildly. As far as I can tell, they only say “the first aerial space colony floats free and can be sold and inhabited”. And as I said, the whole paper is highly optimistic. They’re suggesting huge space colonies (“the terraformed Venus is unlikely to be fully occupied until the population of the space colonies reaches ~3×10¹⁰”. That’s about four times the current population of earth) I think I’m not alone in not seeing us put “several small space colonies” in the orbit of Venus and construct “a heavy orbital ring around Venus” ten years after we started planning. I guess they extrapolated exponential growth of everything imaginable.