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[mainiac]

Venus is earthlike?  Well that's a letdown.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Venus would be pretty nice without the runaway greenhouse. And it probably is pretty nice...50 km above the surface.

[Amperzand]

Similarly, Mars would be very comfortable with an actual geomagnetic field and a full atmosphere.

[Dorsidwarf]

Venus would be pretty nice without the runaway greenhouse. And it probably is pretty nice...50 km above the surface.

At that sort of height, air pressure is about Earth sea level, so floating Venusian bases could be viable. If you can solve the slight issues of constant gale-force winds and the fact that the air is full of sulfuric acid. Venus is a terrible place.

[Starver]

If you can solve the slight issues of constant gale-force winds and the fact that the air is full of sulfuric acid. Venus is a terrible place.

If they're constant gale-force winds, then its probably managable, a bit like the ground beneath my feet is moving sideways at around 600mph without my having to worry about it (or the additional roughly 67,000mph variable-direction, etc).

Far from the undulating surface, could it be relatively (doubly so!) calm?

The not inconsiderable smattering of acid in the mostly CO₂ atmosphere (already requiring breathing apparatus outside of the Earth-atmosphere inner) probably requires some protection. But not insurmountable, and a slightly enhanced neoprene diving 'drysuit' could perhaps suffice for EVAs if necessary/safe-enough to do so.

[redwallzyl]

theres till the crushing pressures and the incredible heat. their is absolutely no way you could ever build anything on Venus and also no reason to.

[Dorsidwarf]

theres till the crushing pressures and the incredible heat. their is absolutely no way you could ever build anything on Venus and also no reason to.

Like I said, the upper atmosphere is quite nice in comparison. It has a whopping 2/5ths of the things that will horribly kill you as the surface does.

[martinuzz]

no reason to.

C'mon think a bit bigger. We need it's precious carbon to produce more humans. If we can't even consume a planet in our own solar system, how will we ever conquer the multiverse?

[mainiac]

no reason to.

C'mon think a bit bigger. We need it's precious carbon to produce more humans. If we can't even consume a planet in our own solar system, how will we ever conquer the multiverse?

Why not just siphon it off into orbital habitats?  Orbits are very free of wind and poison.

[Culise]

no reason to.

C'mon think a bit bigger. We need it's precious carbon to produce more humans. If we can't even consume a planet in our own solar system, how will we ever conquer the multiverse?

Why not just siphon it off into orbital habitats?  Orbits are very free of wind and poison.

It's nice not having to haul carbon dioxide up and down hundreds of kilometers at a minimum (that being just through the atmosphere, not even including the additional delta-v needed to actually depart and return to your orbital installation), each time going through the same areas of the Venerean atmosphere; it seems a bit more convenient to build and process down there, then just send up the end products.  Also, building in the atmosphere allows you to take advantage of maintaining a neutral pressure differential.  If you float orbital habitats at 1 atm outside and 1 atm inside (an oxygen-nitrogen breathable mix will float on Venus), you don't have to build your outer structure as strong to keep the air inside, and you don't need to panic nearly as quickly if you get a leak since there's no pressure differential to drive your air out (or the outside air in).  You also can take advantage of the local gravity without having to build it into your orbital habitat or deal with the significant long-term health effects of microgravity.  (EDIT It also occurs to me that having an atmospheric shield equivalent to Earth's above you also is nice for avoiding solar radiation, micrometeorites, and other issues that would have to be dealt with for permanent space settlements to become a reality.)

It is actually quite nice at about 50-55 km up, as far as we have been able to determine so far, just to join in on the general subject of the discussion thus far.  Temperatures drop to 75-25°C, sitting on the tropopause means that most (but certainly not all, judging by Earth, where particularly severe thunderstorms can overshoot into the stratosphere and wobble back and forth) of the really erratic winds should be below you, and the worst you have to deal with is the ubiquitous sulfuric acid haze and clouds.  Certainly, there's plenty of uses for sulfuric acid, too. 

[Reelya]

theres till the crushing pressures and the incredible heat. their is absolutely no way you could ever build anything on Venus and also no reason to.

The point was balloons. Yes, there are crushing pressures at the surface. But clearly there's a point of zero pressure outside the atmosphere, and every possible gradation of pressure in between. You can float things in other words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At least as early as 1971[5] Soviet scientists have suggested different approaches, however, claiming that rather than attempting to colonize Venus' hostile surface, humans might attempt to colonize the Venerian atmosphere. Geoffrey A. Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center has summarized the perceived difficulties in colonizing Venus as being merely from the assumption that a colony would need to be based on the surface of a planet:

    “However, viewed in a different way, the problem with Venus is merely that the ground level is too far below the one atmosphere level. At cloud-top level, Venus is the paradise planet.”

Landis has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities, based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 oxygen/nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth.[6] In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above Venerian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System – a pressure of approximately 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 °C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 °F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.[7]

At the top of the clouds the wind speed on Venus reaches up to 95 m/s (340 km/h; 210 mph), circling the planet approximately every four Earth days in a phenomenon known as "super-rotation".[8] Colonies floating in this region could therefore have a much shorter day length by remaining untethered to the ground and moving with the atmosphere, compared to the usual 243 Earth days it takes for the planet to rotate. Allowing a colony to move freely would also reduce structural stress from the wind.

Basically if you float a balloon with "Earth Air" pressure 50km above Venus, then the temperature is within normal Earth ranges, and the wind blows you around the planet once every 4 days, so you have a day/night cycle which isn't hella different to Earth, instead of the Venus-surface "day" of 243 Earth days. Not trying to "fight the wind" and just flowing along with it also reduces the structural issues.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's also much more doable than the other plan: Create a massive gamma ray emitter and blast a hole in the atmosphere to thin it out.

[Reelya]

That sulfuric acid might be a godsend actually. Sulfuric acid contains hydrogen (and oxygen), which is otherwise lacking in the atmosphere. And acids react with alkalines and make water + salts.

[Dorsidwarf]

Except for, you know, the fact that you need to make a facility which can survive constant acid spray, 24/7, at high speed, for years. And all the joints and connectors need to be protected. So do any instruments and any moving parts, and the airlocks, and the innards of the airlocks. Salt spray is bad enough for sensitive, lightweight (lest we forget that all this has to be launched from earth, then inserted into an atmosphere which is a perpetual jet-stream, and presumably somehow assembled mid-air because a heat-shield won't work for an entire industrial facility) equipment, let alone perpetual acid, with concentrated acid building up in every nook and cranny.

I'll say it again: Venus is a terrible place. Stick to Mars.

[Starver]

I'll say it again: Venus is a terrible place. Stick to Mars.

Mars, with its invidious dust being sandblasted at you by ultra-high-speed winds in the still far-thinner-than-useful atmosphere. You have a Sun that is a mere pinprick, but is irradiating everything out of all proportion, and whilst you can 'bake' to room temperature at high noon, you need to deal with negative hundred or more (whether you prefer C or F, but its around +140 for those who prefer K) at the other extreme, stressing structures and membranes.on a cyclc nature. Again, thanks to the thin atmosphere.

Mind you, there's that other planet I could mention. 2/3rds covered with a universal solvent, rampant oxidising of unprotected metals, organic soups ready to clog up filters, uncontrollable weather systems, active techtonics and volcanism...