How to soar on Venus (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there’s something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it’s fleeting, and it’s temporal.” –Pete Docter

So, you want to colonize another world, do you? Want to send humans to go live somewhere new, on a habitable planet beyond Earth? Well you’re not alone. But which planet will you choose? Will it be Mars, a smaller, colder, farther-out world than our own? Where perhaps you add a magnetic field, a thicker atmosphere, and hope to get the increased pressures and temperatures we need for liquid water and life?

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Daein Ballard.

Or is there not only another option, but a better option? Could we, perhaps, take advantage of the hottest planet in our Solar System — Venus — and its thick, energy-rich atmosphere?

Image credit: Cloud City fan art, via http://ift.tt/1dxa7Xw.

Come find out how this would work, and why Venus just might be the best candidate for our first off-world settlement!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1BY15P5

“I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there’s something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it’s fleeting, and it’s temporal.” –Pete Docter

So, you want to colonize another world, do you? Want to send humans to go live somewhere new, on a habitable planet beyond Earth? Well you’re not alone. But which planet will you choose? Will it be Mars, a smaller, colder, farther-out world than our own? Where perhaps you add a magnetic field, a thicker atmosphere, and hope to get the increased pressures and temperatures we need for liquid water and life?

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Daein Ballard.

Or is there not only another option, but a better option? Could we, perhaps, take advantage of the hottest planet in our Solar System — Venus — and its thick, energy-rich atmosphere?

Image credit: Cloud City fan art, via http://ift.tt/1dxa7Xw.

Come find out how this would work, and why Venus just might be the best candidate for our first off-world settlement!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1BY15P5