Should We Colonize Venus Instead of Mars? · The HAVOC?Project
David Alayón
Chief Executive Officer @ Innuba · Innovation Advisor @ Mindset · Fellow @ Acumen · Professor @ IE & Headspring · Author of UPGRADE · Futures & Foresight enthusiast
Mars is the number one destination outside our planet. It’s the big target to become an interplanetary species, mainly because of the media buzz: Elon Musk with Space X, the National Geographic documentary, the novel and film “The Martian”… Even NASA launched a contest to find ideas on how we could live on Mars! But the big question is: is Mars really the best option?
Elon Musk is very clear on that. If you haven’t seen the video that summarizes his vision of Mars, you have it in The Verge. Closely linked to his vision is the concept “terraforming” which defines the process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet or a moon to make it similar to the Earth’s environment and thus make it habitable by humans. Do you know what is the easiest way to terraform Mars? Using nuclear weapons at their poles. It’s a shame that NASA said the terraform plan won’t work…
What other alternatives we have? On the one hand we have Mercury but it’s not a good idea. On the other hand we have Jupiter, which is not a great option either…. Joe Scott reviews other alternatives like The Moon, Europe, Titan or Venus. The most interesting of all the alternatives is the last one and PBS Space Time have a great video explaining how it would be viable.
On Venus, temperatures are around 450 degrees Celsius, surface air pressure is 295 kilos per centimetre and the clouds surrounding the planet are made of sulphuric acid. But if we go up, 50 kilometers above the surface of Venus, we find something very interesting: the temperature drops to 76 degrees, the atmospheric pressure is similar to the Earth’s and the infernal clouds are left below. With this hypothesis, the HAVOC (High Altitude Venus Operational Concept) project has been proposed by NASA a few years ago, based on a series of floating “houses” that follow a concept similar to the zeppelins.
Interesting, isn’t it? What do you think? If you want to go deeper, here are some more links:
- NASA has a plan to let humans soar above the clouds on Venus
- NASA Scientists Imagine Studying Venus From A Floating Research Colony
#365daysof #futurism #mars #venus #venus #space #day156