Home Sweet (cough, gag) Venus |

Home Sweet (cough, gag) Venus

Humans have been looking into space, and even thinking about living there, for a long time. The Moon has been considered for colonization for decades, but Mars is currently the most popular choice for potential colonization—just ask Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX.

What if we look in a different direction, though? Instead of looking farther away from the sun, let’s turn back toward it. No, don’t look AT the sun!

How about Venus? I know—you’ve learned that Venus is an incredibly inhospitable planet, and that’s true, but putting a colony on Venus has several benefits over one on Mars.

For one thing, Venus is closer to us than Mars is. It would take about six months to get to Mars, but only five to get to Venus. Also, we have more windows of opportunity to launch to Venus than to Mars. Earth and Venus are at their closest every 584 days; this only happens every 780 days with Mars.

In addition, the gravity on Venus is much closer to what we have here on Earth. It might seem like a lot of fun to go bouncing around in Mars’ lower gravity (38% of what we have here), but our bodies weren’t designed for that, and it’s hard on our bones and muscles when we have to deal with that for long periods of time.

Venus is more like Earth than Mars is in other ways, too. Not the surface of Venus – we KNOW that’s a nightmare! The heat and the pressure and the toxic atmosphere would make for a pretty miserable existence, right? You’ve got to stay off that horrible surface, and the only place to go is up – right up into the clouds.

About 50 kilometres above the surface of Venus, above the clouds, the air pressure is about the same as it is as sea level on Earth. The temperatures are generally between 0° and 50° Celsius (32° to 122° Fahrenheit). On Mars, the temperatures range from 20° to -73° Celsius (70° to -100° Fahrenheit), and the air pressure is so low that a puncture in a structure would be a real hazard.

What about those toxic gases on Venus? Above the clouds, is the air as fresh as in an Alpine Valley? Uh, no. No, the atmosphere is just as toxic, and you’d still have to deal with the sulfuric acid rain, same as on the surface. Hey, we never said it was perfect.

Venus would be tough, but still not as tough as Mars in a lot of ways. What do we do once we get there? Well, there’s this thing called terraforming…

So let’s say we’ve got our Venusian colony, floating above the clouds (bonus: the floating bits could be filled with breathable air, since that would be lighter than that carbon dioxide atmosphere). From up there, we can introduce certain chemicals into the atmosphere below, which would gradually transform it to a place were we could survive.

NASA is already on board with the idea. HAVOC, or High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, was proposed in 2015. No, it hasn’t gotten past that proposal stage. Not yet, anyway.

As you can see, the only thing limiting our choices about the next place to colonize is our imaginations. What planet would you colonize? And would you even be willing to move off the Earth to another planet in the first place? Do you think that option will be possible within your lifetime? It’s a lot to consider—no time like the present to start thinking about it!

Source:

https://www.universetoday.com/130482/how-do-we-colonize-venus/

Curriculum Reference LInks

Earth and Space / Building Blocks / 3: Students should be able to interpret data to compare the Earth with other planets and moons in the solar system, with respect to properties including mass, gravity, size, and composition.
Earth and Space / Sustainability / 8: Students should be able to examine some of the current hazards and benefits of space exploration and discuss the future role and implications of space exploration in society.

10 Fun Facts: The Hab

1. Aquarius is the the world’s only permanent undersea research station.

2. Most missions last about two or three weeks.

3. Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, beat his grandfather’s record month-long underwater expedition by spending 31 days on the Aquarius Reef Base in 2014.

4. The lab is used by NASA, the US Navy, and researchers and educators from around the globe for training and research.

5. The internet connection is better in the Hab than at many places above the water.

6. You have to swim underneath the facility in order to enter it.

7. Crew members are called aquanauts (NOT aquaNUTS!)

8. In 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat’s generators caught fire.

9. Aquarius was featured in the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon in 2012.

10. The Hab was originally built in Texas.

10 Fun Facts: Coral

1. Reefs usually grow up on the east shore of land masses.

2. Parts of a coral reef can be harvested to make medications to treat cancers and other illnesses.

3. A coral reef isn’t a single organism; it’s actually a community of life that lives and thrives in one location.

4. Only about one percent of the world’s oceans contain coral reefs. That’s about the size of France.

5. Coral reefs are the largest biological structures on earth.

6. Corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

7. There are over 2,500 species of corals. About 1,000 are the hard corals that build coral reefs.

8. Reefs grow where there are stronger wave patterns and currents to deliver food and nutrients.

9. The Great Barrier Reef is 500,000 years old.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10 Fun Facts: Invasive Species

1. To be considered invasive, a species must adapt to a new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.

2. Some invasive species are introduced accidentally, but others are brought deliberately.

3. Ship ballast water transports between 3,000 and 7,000 foreign species daily around the globe.

4. The total loss to the world economy as a result of invasive non-native species has been estimated at 5% of annual production

5. Invasive species have contributed to 40% of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years.

6. Rodents are some of the worst invasive species.

7. There are an estimated 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets in parks across London and southeast England.

8. Black and Norway rats annually consume stored grains and destroy other property valued over $19 billion.

9. Northern Pacific seastars reproduce very quickly. In one area where they were introduced, their population reached an estimated 12 million seastars in just two years.

10. Starlings were introduced to New York in the late 1800s, as part of an attempt to bring animals that were mentioned in Shakespeare‘s work to America.

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