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

https://archive.is/AyosK

this lends credence to the stealth comrade theory, btw

  • kuna@awful.systems
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    11 months ago

    In all seriousness, I’ve heard this idea before in SF-adjacent circles; the point is that a gas mixture that resembles Earth’s atmosphere is buoyant on Venus at an altitude where the pressure is around 1 Earth’s atmosphere.

    Now, actually living there, suspended over some hot hellscape in a machine built by these guys of all options… lol. Lmao, even.

    • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
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      11 months ago

      @kuna Also note that at that altitude, the temperature in Venus’s stratosphere is a positively freezing 30 ℃ or so.

      The real problem is that Venus is short on hydrogen, so getting back up into orbit from the Venusian stratosphere … well, good luck with that.

      (It’d make a good platform for a crewed research station, but a lousy prospect for colonization.)