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[Dorsidwarf]

At least with Mars you can build as heavy as you like, and have a static base to land on. The temperature is basically a non-issue compared to all the other issues with our other planets because managing gigantic temperature swings is something space agencies are very good at. The dust is more of a problem, but you can redirect dust-blast  away from sensitive areas and use windbreaks and such. When you're 50km up, there is no cover, no resources, and you can't go underground.

[Catmeat]

Mmmm organic soup.. with fried garlic bread and thickened chive cream. Oh stop it

[Max™]

Mars is worse, you require radiation shielding due to the lack of magnetic protection, you need damn near spacesuits anywhere but the bottom of the Valles Marineris due to the functional lack of atmosphere, and the dust. Mars is a wasteland, and a waste of effort.

Making things withstand acid isn't hard, we don't do it as much because our atmosphere just burns a layer of oxidation onto everything, and acids are less common. If getting stuff to survive ph extremes were a problem, batteries wouldn't be a thing, I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable putting them on (or in!) my body at the rate we have and do.

Assuming you had a breathing filter and an umbrella you could stand on the porch of an aerostat floating in the soup we call Venusian air. We could use current technology and have habitats on Venus right now, tons of them, upper atmospheres are big places, especially when you have way too much atmosphere like Venus has.

We will never, in our lifetime, see a point where you could be anywhere near unprotected and survive on Mars, barring anti-aging, full conversion cyborgs, and the like. There are exactly three regions in the solar system with some combination of solid ground and 1 bar of pressure: Venus @49 km, Earth @0 km, and Titan @~0 km.

Titan is far too cold, but fascinating nonetheless, Venus has annoying rain and we don't breathe pure CO2, but oxygen is a lifting gas there, and we're in the last region as we speak. Living on Mars is BARELY easier than living on the Moon, except you have to descend much further into a gravity well, and travel much further, for no benefits beyond "we went there", which has value, but not much compared to "we are living on another world and can remain there indefinitely" like Venus air-colonies would offer.

Though, making humans out of all that carbon is silly, what you want to do is make diamond processors and upload into them.

Re: Dorsidwarf, You have the same amount of atmospheric protection 50km above Venus as you do here, how often do you go underground for solar storms? Never? Ok then. I will repeat my earlier point though: oxygen is a lifting gas on Venus, if you filled a balloon by exhaling into it and let it go outside your aerostat, it would float away.

[Max™]

Some, not nearly as much, and it does have some magnetic shielding apparently. The ESO orbiter found that as I recall, which makes sense, having such a massive atmosphere persist with none is problematic.

http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/50246-a-magnetic-surprise-for-venus-express/

[Catmeat]

Earth is perfect.

[Max™]

Except all the people, oxidation, and the annoying tendency to undergo glaciation events.

[Starver]

Coruscant

[Starver]

Coruscant

How the fuck's that planet going to stay breathable? The oxygen'll get used up eventually!

*hand wave*You don't need to know how the air remains breathable...

[LordBaal]

I think they import air/food and export waste/heat everyday by the thousands of tons or something.

I remember reading when I was a child about covering atmosphere Venus with bacteria/algae or something that would eat the dioxide and sulfur and crap oxygen. Sadly later I read it was not viable to do so.

Forget Mars and Venus. We need an outpost in the moon first. Then Mars. In Mars we could build an space elevator with current materials and engineering.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Need radiation protection on Venus, too. Venus also lacks a magnetosphere, though the atmosphere would absorb SOME of the radiation at least.

Magnetospheres don't protect planets from radiation, they protect atmospheres from being ablated away. The atmosphere is what inhibits the radiation.

You can see this even with LEO operations, where you are still inside Earth's magnetosphere but will definitely die of radiation poisoning if you don't have protection, because you're outside the atmosphere.

[martinuzz]

Magnetosphere does deflect (bend away) charged particles like those ejected during solar flares, but not radiation.

[Akura]

Living on Mars is BARELY easier than living on the Moon, except you have to descend much further into a gravity well, and travel much further, for no benefits beyond "we went there", which has value, but not much compared to "we are living on another world and can remain there indefinitely" like Venus air-colonies would offer.

Doesn't Mars have a hell of a lot of iron? Particularly a hell of a lot of small nodules of iron easily harvested on the surface and readily usable in a foundry?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I mean, it's red because of the iron. Not sure if that's usable or not, though.

[Amperzand]

Mars and the moon both have lots of iron. Not really worth the trouble of going there though.

[mainiac]

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.

I'm still not seeing why you dont just send a ship to dip in, grab the hydrogen and then bugger back out into orbit where humans belong.  It's nice that you can freefloat in the atmosphere but you can float even freer outside the atmosphere.

Or just skip Venus entirely and snag an asteroid with a high water content and bring it to earth orbit.

Mars and the moon both have lots of iron. Not really worth the trouble of going there though.

The moon has iron in a low enough gravity well that you can launch from it without rockets.  That's more handy then iron at the bottom of a deeper gravity well.