Should We Colonize Venus Instead of Mars?
PBS Space Time4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2016–2022
explainer · general · evergreen · 2016–2022 on HN
A PBS Space Time episode asking whether Venus would be a better colonization target than Mars. It covers Venus's habitable altitudes, floating balloon habitats, and the term surfacism.
HN links it in Mars-colonization threads as a concise case for Venus.
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9 comments from Hacker News
PBS Space Time did a short (7 minute) episode called "Should We Colonize Venus Instead of Mars?" [1] that gives several advantages Venus has as a colonization target compared to Mars (and covers some of the difficulties). [1] ▶ this video
Don't miss the PBS Space Time episode suggesting we should colonize Venus instead of Mars which gives some good arguments and goes through the basics. [1] ▶ this video
This idea is explored in an episode of the excellent PBS Space Time: ▶ this video In short, Venus has many advantages over Mars.
I wish we would focus on Venus. It have similar gravity to Earth's. There is an excellent video about it ▶ this video .
> terraforming Venus, rather than the much more feasible notion of colonizing Mars I've heard from multiple experts now that you may have this backwards. SpaceTime even made a video about it long ago [1] 1. ▶ this video
Venus is pretty sweet as it is. Go high enough in the atmosphere, and you have about Earth atmospheric pressure and room temperatures. That altitude in the Venus atmosphere is effectively an Earth biosphere sized almost-Earthlike living space. One convenient circumstance: A breathable Earthlike atmosphere will float at that altitude, so it would be easy to live in floating balloon habitats. ▶ this video link
>Mars, not easy; Venus, impossible Mars may very well be much easier, but the bias towards Mars may also be largely cultural: ▶ this video
Interestingly, there is actually a case to be made that Venus may be more feasible to colonize than Mars. It has been argued the lack of attention to Venus has more to due culture than science. PBS Spacetime did an episode on this: ▶ this video
Thought about that as well. There's a nice PBS Space Time episode where they invented a word about it : "surfacism". ▶ this video