5 ms·

Personally I think Venus is the more interesting planet to be exploring

seanalltogether 14y ago
I wonder if eating away at the current atmosphere of venus is more or less technically challenging then the task of creating an atmosphere from scratch on Mars. Since Venus also has way more mass, I'm guessing humans would feel more comfortable there then on Mars.
- jakeonthemove 14y ago
  My thoughts exactly - Venus seems like a better place to start interplanetary exploration with - as I understand, if you could cool it down to an acceptable temperature, you could walk on the surface with just a breathing apparatus, right?
  - jws 14y ago
    It has 92 times Earth's atmospheric pressure at the surface. This would be a bad idea. It would be like being 900 meters deep in the ocean on Earth. 150 meters is about the limit for humans before High Pressure Nervous Syndrome stops the fun. But around 50km above the surface of Venus, the temperatures are nice, and the pressure is 1 earth atmosphere. You just have to to stay up there.
    - powerslave12r 14y ago
      Perfect. Given Venus's gravity is 0.904g, we could work something out in a few years.
    - jcarreiro 14y ago
      > around 50km above the surface of Venus, the temperatures > are nice, and the pressure is 1 earth atmosphere. You just > have to to stay up there. Lando Calrissian just called. He wants his Cloud City back. :)
  - jcarreiro 14y ago
    > as I understand, if you could cool it down to an > acceptable temperature, you could walk on the surface > with just a breathing apparatus, right? Sadly, probably not. Cooling it down is already a very tall order, and even then, you would need to find a way to remove most of the atmosphere in order to reduce the pressure (~90 atm at the surface). Mars is a much better bet for human habitation in the short term. Chemically, it has all the ingredients we need to support human life. And it is much easier to build structures that can withstand the thin atmosphere (0.6 kPa) and relatively tame temperature range (-87 C to 63 C, all figures according to Wikipedia) than to build something that can survive the 9 MPa and 450 C on the surface on Venus.
    - ekianjo 14y ago
      Yeah, I remember Venus was sometimes called as the "other blue planet" but it was an actual Hell of a place to live in. Looking like Earth but nothing close to it that would make it inhabitable.
    - Xcelerate 14y ago
      Although what about from a human health perspective? Can humans survive in a gravity that weak for a long time? What about animals?
      - njharman 14y ago
        What's long? a year? twenty? And to answer that question and others is why we(humans) have bothered with Space Lab, Mir, IST. You can Google answer.
        Xcelerate 14y ago
        No, I mean if humans were to colonize Mars -- would gravity make that process difficult?
        wang2bo2 14y ago
        Definitely, with little gravity it could even be impossible for women to bear and give birth to a child
  - biot 14y ago
    ... and an umbrella which is resistant to sulfuric acid, given that a cooler temperature will no longer evaporate the acid before it reaches the ground.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Building an atmosphere on Mars would surely be more of a challenge than on Venus, since Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere to keep solar winds from blowing the gases away.
SudarshanP 14y ago
Geoffrey Landis suggested that: Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earth like environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus. Source: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668_2003025525.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2003002...

I wonder if eating away at the current atmosphere of venus is more or less technically challenging then the task of creating an atmosphere from scratch on Mars. Since Venus also has way more mass, I'm guessing humans would feel more comfortable there then on Mars.

jakeonthemove 14y ago
My thoughts exactly - Venus seems like a better place to start interplanetary exploration with - as I understand, if you could cool it down to an acceptable temperature, you could walk on the surface with just a breathing apparatus, right?
- jws 14y ago
  It has 92 times Earth's atmospheric pressure at the surface. This would be a bad idea. It would be like being 900 meters deep in the ocean on Earth. 150 meters is about the limit for humans before High Pressure Nervous Syndrome stops the fun. But around 50km above the surface of Venus, the temperatures are nice, and the pressure is 1 earth atmosphere. You just have to to stay up there.
  - powerslave12r 14y ago
    Perfect. Given Venus's gravity is 0.904g, we could work something out in a few years.
  - jcarreiro 14y ago
    > around 50km above the surface of Venus, the temperatures > are nice, and the pressure is 1 earth atmosphere. You just > have to to stay up there. Lando Calrissian just called. He wants his Cloud City back. :)
- jcarreiro 14y ago
  > as I understand, if you could cool it down to an > acceptable temperature, you could walk on the surface > with just a breathing apparatus, right? Sadly, probably not. Cooling it down is already a very tall order, and even then, you would need to find a way to remove most of the atmosphere in order to reduce the pressure (~90 atm at the surface). Mars is a much better bet for human habitation in the short term. Chemically, it has all the ingredients we need to support human life. And it is much easier to build structures that can withstand the thin atmosphere (0.6 kPa) and relatively tame temperature range (-87 C to 63 C, all figures according to Wikipedia) than to build something that can survive the 9 MPa and 450 C on the surface on Venus.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    Yeah, I remember Venus was sometimes called as the "other blue planet" but it was an actual Hell of a place to live in. Looking like Earth but nothing close to it that would make it inhabitable.
  - Xcelerate 14y ago
    Although what about from a human health perspective? Can humans survive in a gravity that weak for a long time? What about animals?
    - njharman 14y ago
      What's long? a year? twenty? And to answer that question and others is why we(humans) have bothered with Space Lab, Mir, IST. You can Google answer.
      - Xcelerate 14y ago
        No, I mean if humans were to colonize Mars -- would gravity make that process difficult?
        wang2bo2 14y ago
        Definitely, with little gravity it could even be impossible for women to bear and give birth to a child
- biot 14y ago
  ... and an umbrella which is resistant to sulfuric acid, given that a cooler temperature will no longer evaporate the acid before it reaches the ground.
freehunter 14y ago
Building an atmosphere on Mars would surely be more of a challenge than on Venus, since Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere to keep solar winds from blowing the gases away.

SudarshanP 14y ago

Geoffrey Landis suggested that: Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earth like environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus. Source: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668_2003025525.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2003002...