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I don't think I am. I can imagine high-tech settlers having a strong enough desire to move to orbit, or Mars, or the asteroids. I can imagine it becoming possib

by mrec 12y ago

I don't think I am. I can imagine high-tech settlers having a strong enough desire to move to orbit, or Mars, or the asteroids. I can imagine it becoming possible to survive on Venus, although the extreme shortage of water (it's what, 20ppm atmospheric?) would be a major issue. I just can't imagine Venus specifically ever making it the top of anyone's list. Where's the plus to compensate for the many many minuses? It's certainly not the view.

stcredzero 12y ago
the extreme shortage of water (it's what, 20ppm atmospheric?) would be a major issue. Given enough energy, you can get water from the Venusian atmosphere. Granted, you basically can't have Venusian civilization without exploitation of space resources and having solved transportation costs to and from orbit, but water is not a hard barrier for a technological civilization. Where's the plus to compensate for the many many minuses? It may well become the cheapest place in the solar system to build human-habitable volumes. If you posit that there will be a solar system-spanning civilization in the first place, then physics and chemistry seems to suggest Venus has a lot of plusses in that particular context. Granted, the only way that such a thing can come about could be properly termed sheer insanity. However, human history is practically made out of sheer insanity, chief of which can be called "nationalism". My money is on some power or powers at the scale of an industrialized nation-state eventually solving the problem of cheaply getting to and from orbit, motivated by the same sort of geopolitical insanity that motivated the Cold War. Given that, such a solar-system wide context of civilization will inevitably exist. All you need is one faction that makes it look like they might eventually establish such a civilization in their own image. Then competition will drive the rest. Look at it the other way: basically all such programs must 1) fail then acquire the aura of impossibility or insurmountability 2) forever remain out of the reach of private entities. It's entirely possible civilization may fall or some other circumstance would bring about those two conditions, but it's far from a certainty. Viewed in this way, completely earthbound humanity doesn't look like a stable configuration.

by mrec 12y ago

stcredzero 12y ago

the extreme shortage of water (it's what, 20ppm atmospheric?) would be a major issue. Given enough energy, you can get water from the Venusian atmosphere. Granted, you basically can't have Venusian civilization without exploitation of space resources and having solved transportation costs to and from orbit, but water is not a hard barrier for a technological civilization. Where's the plus to compensate for the many many minuses? It may well become the cheapest place in the solar system to build human-habitable volumes. If you posit that there will be a solar system-spanning civilization in the first place, then physics and chemistry seems to suggest Venus has a lot of plusses in that particular context. Granted, the only way that such a thing can come about could be properly termed sheer insanity. However, human history is practically made out of sheer insanity, chief of which can be called "nationalism". My money is on some power or powers at the scale of an industrialized nation-state eventually solving the problem of cheaply getting to and from orbit, motivated by the same sort of geopolitical insanity that motivated the Cold War. Given that, such a solar-system wide context of civilization will inevitably exist. All you need is one faction that makes it look like they might eventually establish such a civilization in their own image. Then competition will drive the rest. Look at it the other way: basically all such programs must 1) fail then acquire the aura of impossibility or insurmountability 2) forever remain out of the reach of private entities. It's entirely possible civilization may fall or some other circumstance would bring about those two conditions, but it's far from a certainty. Viewed in this way, completely earthbound humanity doesn't look like a stable configuration.