If Venus was habitable...

[Sarevok]

Your optimism does not change the transportation cost to surface of Venus. Even if as you say fueled by propaganda fury a small outpost is setup it achieves nothing. It will not produce anything even as simple a ballpoint pen after a hundred years. All you have is some people conducting the most expensive picnic party ever on another planet. What a waste of citizens money for nothing.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Your optimism does not change the transportation cost to surface of Venus. Even if as you say fueled by propaganda fury a small outpost is setup it achieves nothing. It will not produce anything even as simple a ballpoint pen after a hundred years. All you have is some people conducting the most expensive picnic party ever on another planet. What a waste of citizens money for nothing.

Its adventure and exploration, my friend. We won't know what's worth it till we get there. I'd give everything I own to go.

[Sarevok]

Me too. But my personal achievements exploring another planet do not contribute anything towards permanent and growing human civilization on that world. To do we still need to move an entire country worth of cargo there. It is a capability we do not have yet and just because we have free air to breath on Venus it will not magically materialize.

[eion]

Me too. But my personal achievements exploring another planet do not contribute anything towards permanent and growing human civilization on that world. To do we still need to move an entire country worth of cargo there. It is a capability we do not have yet and just because we have free air to breath on Venus it will not magically materialize.

They do though, for every time someone makes the trip we learn more about how to do it better, faster, and cheaper. Apollo 12 built on the lessons of Apollo 11, etc.

[Kuroji]

You don't have to move an entire country's worth of cargo to Green-Venus, just... maybe a decently sized city would do.

If you want to establish a permanent and self-sustaining colony there, schedule the missions so that they bring over something like a hundred people a year who are willing to settle there long term, and make sure none of them are related if possible. If something happens and they get stuck there permanently without hope of resupply, a population bottleneck is the last thing you want.

On the other hand... assuming nothing does happen and people can come and go as they please, there would be plenty of people who would be willing to sign up to move there permanently from around the world, for various reasons. The screening-out of undesirables aside, I'm sure that if whatever nations building colonies contributed, they could have enough professionals over there to establish a self-sustaining society pretty quickly. Send over doctors, dentists, electricians, engineers, and so on. They can figure out how to adapt our existing technologies to work there, if much adaptation is needed. Send over oilmen and miners and the right equipment, and they can start locating places with the proper ores and hydrocarbons (assuming they are over there, of course) and build an industrial society. And if we assume they're going to use cutting edge technology, because they do not want to spoil what is presently a pristine world, we won't have to worry about them causing a runaway greenhouse effect.

If the nation or nations who sponsored a colonization attempt did so, they could have a sustainable (if mostly primitive) society inside of ten years. In fifty years they've got a new province or state, just with a significant time lag.

[Ryan Thunder]

It will not produce anything even as simple a ballpoint pen after a hundred years.

Based on what?

[Sarevok]

It will not produce anything even as simple a ballpoint pen after a hundred years.

Based on what?

Go look up what it takes to produce a ballpoint pen. Then come back and tell me how will you relocate all these industries to Venus.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Can't we just make pencils?

[Sky Captain]

I think with a habitable planet nearby there would be much more incentive of reducing the space launch costs than it is now. Advances in science gained from studying a planet with biosphere that has evolved independently from Earth alone would make it worth to send people to live and work there. There would be plenty of volunteers who would go even if means of returning people are not yet developed.

[Ariphaos]

Your optimism does not change the transportation cost to surface of Venus. Even if as you say fueled by propaganda fury a small outpost is setup it achieves nothing. It will not produce anything even as simple a ballpoint pen after a hundred years. All you have is some people conducting the most expensive picnic party ever on another planet. What a waste of citizens money for nothing.

Because clearly, our ancestors summoned the first copper and tin with magic spells - the idea of 'picking it up off the ground' is an alien concept beyond our comprehension. Books and radio signals are completely unknown inventions during the 1970's, and the art of making charcoal and tar has been lost to time (this being a completely speculative scenario where we're free to come up with some analog of forests). The zinc-copper-saltwater battery I made when I was eleven was far beyond anything the elitist Phds we would be sending there could hope to come up with, and we would never think of giving them a nuclear reactor to toy with, because you can't trust anyone with only twenty years of education. Despite being a largely silicate world much like Earth, the thought of making use of the abundant sands just isn't going to happen. Who remembers what hematite looks like, anyway? We couldn't possibly make steel. Or build a furnace to crack oil with.

...or maybe making stuff isn't really the mystery you think it is.

Venus is four months away, possibly three if its orbit were shifted up enough. Setting up a single self-sustaining colony would take at least twenty launches with the planned Nova 8L rocket and possibly more. Russia would spend itself into the ground maintaining its military just to start a single one - even giving the United States a decade-long head start. We'd be lucky to have a thousand Americans on Venus by the turn of the century.

The political effect on Earth is not going to be from the colonies on Venus and I don't think anyone here is arguing that it is. Rather, it has the potential to supplant the Vietnam War, and the effects of choosing to colonize Venus rather than commit to the war are pretty significant with regards to the directions the United States and Russia move in. Otherwise, there's no point in discussing it as alternate history in the first place.

[Sarevok]

I dont know what you mean by a "self sustaining colony". Any Earthlike world could support a small band of survivalist living off the land. But whats the use ? Sending a bunch of people to live on Venus is no different than placing them on a deserted Pacific island.

Like I said other than free air Venus offers nothing to superpowers of the day. The superpowers even did not bother creating serious space based weapons. They would put bases on Venus for what ? Launching missiles that take three months to reach their target ? ?

[Sarevok]

Since a lot of people reading this thread seem to be afflicted with wild optimism or perhaps lacking in thinking power I will spell this out in simpler terms.

Objective : Manned settlements around the solar system that can sustain themselves without input from Earth. They can produce and maintain their own equipment. And manufacture interplanetary spacecraft to move around and set up more settlements around the solar system. Even if Earth goes kaput they will not cease to exist but continue to thrive and grow.

Question : How does a money sink at the bottom of Venus's gravity well help achieve that ?

Timeframe : Preferably less than 100 years.

[Ariphaos]

You've repeatedly dodged the question of why the Vietnam War is an oh-so superior waste of money and lives, and then ask the question "Why does a habitable Venus help achieve space colonization?" In a completely and utterly dishonest manner, since asking it straight like that would self-answer the point - our previous attempts at building a self-sustaining environment are such a resounding success. Then engage in shifting goal posts by demanding material returns when everyone posting here knows full well that that's stupid and completely beside the point of the entire thread.

[Simon_Jester]

The political effect on Earth is not going to be from the colonies on Venus and I don't think anyone here is arguing that it is. Rather, it has the potential to supplant the Vietnam War, and the effects of choosing to colonize Venus rather than commit to the war are pretty significant with regards to the directions the United States and Russia move in. Otherwise, there's no point in discussing it as alternate history in the first place.

This is touched on in The Sky People, believe it or not: the enormous expenditure of resources to get manned missions to habitable planets in the 20th century largely preempts the Cold War military buildup... on both sides.

Since a lot of people reading this thread seem to be afflicted with wild optimism or perhaps lacking in thinking power I will spell this out in simpler terms.

Objective : Manned settlements around the solar system that can sustain themselves without input from Earth. They can produce and maintain their own equipment. And manufacture interplanetary spacecraft to move around and set up more settlements around the solar system. Even if Earth goes kaput they will not cease to exist but continue to thrive and grow.

Question : How does a money sink at the bottom of Venus's gravity well help achieve that ?

Timeframe : Preferably less than 100 years.

Will ANYTHING help achieve that? You've set an impossible objective, pulled out of a hat, and you're sneering at people for "thinking" it's possible. When, in fact, they don't.

But despite that, you're missing something critical. The reason we do not have and will not have manned settlements outside Earth in the near future is simple: no one with the power and resources to build such settlements cares. There is nothing up there that any politician values. Therefore, no one bothers to take the first step: the creation of a heavy lift infrastructure for moving large cargoes over interplanetary distances.

That's a precondition for anything: orbital industry, L5 colonies, moon bases, asteroid mining, you name it. And we don't have it, nor will we in the near future (witness Obama and Ares V).

If Venus were an attractive target for a permanent base, it would create a much stronger incentive to build that heavy lift infrastructure in the short term, in the same sense that the ICBM program provided the incentive to build the first generation of orbit-capable rockets. ICBMs didn't put much of anything in space by themselves, but they created an industry that could.

In the same sense, a government drive to build the Venusian equivalent of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station would create an industrial base that could send us to the asteroids or the L5 points. And that would be the value of a habitable Venus to space colonization.

[PeZook]

Sarevok, what makes you think asteroid bases are going to become self-sufficient any faster than Venus? All your arguments so as to why Venus would be unprofittable and impossible to develop also apply to asteroid colonies. What, they won't have to bring their industrial base with them for some reason?

[Sky Captain]

Building a self sufficient colony in asteorid belt would recquire far more resources than self sufficient colony on habitable planet. While in the long term colonization of asteorid belt could pay back in the form of resources that are in short supply on Earth like rare earth metals it would require enormous investments over many decades to get the first self sufficient space colonies running. An outpost and later a colony on habitable planet would be cheaper to set up because first colonists could live off the land like people who first settled America without the need to have expensive high tech infrastructure in place just to keep them alive.

[Crossroads Inc.]

You know, I usually try and stay out of my Own thread, but seeing three pages of Sarevok going on about how evidently the Coldwar era nations will twiddle their thumbs knowing Venus is open land makes my head spin. Where was the "profit" in going to the moon?
How many resources were mined and brought back?
Where was the successful base they made sense they went there?

All of his arguments seem to be centered around the idea that governments think logically... The very idea that they will ignore Venus, keeping in mind in this reality, People will know its habitable as soon as the first probe drops, perhaps sooner; the very idea that the Cold war nations would ignore just because they "won't make money" or theres no profit. Even taking into account any trip there will be one way... at first. The countries of the world will be scrambling to claim parts of it, even if just with unmanned probes at first.

[Isolder74]

A habitable Venus would make setting up a expedition there much easier there then an asteroid. One of the biggest costs of space travel is weight. With a Habitable location as the destination instead of having to ship ready to eat food you can ship SEEDS that they can grow at the landing site. Add a good chef to the mission and you have the food problem licked. Shipping a small manufacturing plant can be managed with sending some machine tools. If there plant life similar to trees add a few woodworking tools and they can build their own housing.

Who says they have to make a pen. They only have to make their own food to start. An asteroid base will be more of a bother to supply as you have to ship them everything food, water, finished goods everything. The most massive thing to have to send is the food and water.

[Ariphaos]

They would probably be rather careful about sending seeds. If they can send 50 tons a shot (assuming little to no benefit from a Lunar base), they can afford to be somewhat prudent about what sort of vegetation they are going to introduce into a mostly alien environment.

[Guardsman Bass]

Since a lot of people reading this thread seem to be afflicted with wild optimism or perhaps lacking in thinking power I will spell this out in simpler terms.

Objective : Manned settlements around the solar system that can sustain themselves without input from Earth. They can produce and maintain their own equipment. And manufacture interplanetary spacecraft to move around and set up more settlements around the solar system. Even if Earth goes kaput they will not cease to exist but continue to thrive and grow.

Question : How does a money sink at the bottom of Venus's gravity well help achieve that ?

Timeframe : Preferably less than 100 years.

Let's break that down into two parts: "manned settlements that can sustain themselves without input from Earth" and "produce and maintain their own equipment". The Venusian colony wouldn't do much for the latter, but is priceless for the former. If you wanted to make sure that the human race was never wiped out because it only exists on one planet, having a habitable settlement that could survive even at a basic level if the technology and industrial base fails is invaluable.

You know, I usually try and stay out of my Own thread, but seeing three pages of Sarevok going on about how evidently the Coldwar era nations will twiddle their thumbs knowing Venus is open land makes my head spin. Where was the "profit" in going to the moon?
How many resources were mined and brought back?
Where was the successful base they made sense they went there?

I agree, and I think he's drastically under-estimating the political and even societal effect that a habitable Venus would have on humanity. Getting the first astronauts there (getting the first colonists) would be an act of enormous prestige to whatever group or country did it.

[madd0ct0r]

Since a lot of people reading this thread seem to be afflicted with wild optimism or perhaps lacking in thinking power I will spell this out in simpler terms.

Objective : Manned settlements around the solar system that can sustain themselves without input from Earth. They can produce and maintain their own equipment. And manufacture interplanetary spacecraft to move around and set up more settlements around the solar system. Even if Earth goes kaput they will not cease to exist but continue to thrive and grow.

Question : How does a money sink at the bottom of Venus's gravity well help achieve that ?

Timeframe : Preferably less than 100 years.

OK.

100 years ago we still had 3 years grace before the Wilbur Brothers got it up at Kitty Hawk.

And look how far we've come now.

Now imagine how far we'd have come if there'd been motivation to keep going beyond the moon, say to get to venus in the first place?

I claim 'competitive politics' as my reason. As has been noted, it got us to the moon.


As for the colony with zero infrastructure. Get a grip.
That's like suggesting we fly 100 people over Antarctica, parachute them in and leave them to see how they get on.
You know, without dropping the hab shelters, the nuke powerplant, the wind turbines / solar cells, without the couple of pallets of sheet metal, the dozen boxes of bolts, a few reels of wire of different resistances and the tools to use them.


Most of the stuff we use nowadays is designed that way to use readily available cheap parts.
Why the fuck would a colonist decide he's desperate for a ball point pen?
A writing implement sure, and no doubt after a request has been made to the 'shop boys they'd come up with something. Probably a fountain pen for starters. Depends what the lab boys could do about ink.

Any fucking engineer worth his salt should at least know the principles of how to start thinking about making pretty much anything.
A chunk of it'd be trial and error, and when any processed metal is valuable a lot of stuff would be made from scrap or re-purposed.

Material efficient? yes. Time and effort efficient? less so.
But when you start off with the precision tooling, spares, the knowledge of how to use them and a big book of other useful things to know a group of people can go a bloody long way.
Don't underestimate people.

[Tritonic]

Question : How does a money sink at the bottom of Venus's gravity well help achieve that ?

Timeframe : Preferably less than 100 years.

You know and I know the potential of space itself. But 99% of the public does not. (Why would they, when all mainstream sci-fi tv shows and movies depict dependence on planets?) However, another habitable planet would capture the public imagination far more than anything did in our timeline. A slight chance of finding underground microbes on Mars is one of the very top motivators for the current space program in the perception of the average person, yet that is nothing compared to finding a whole earthlike world full of unexplored life. In the new timeline, we could see budgets greater than the Apollo era and sustained ones.

That could be the tipping point which made the whole situation turn out differently, because a side effect could be eliminating the launch cost issue that is the #1 barrier to doing anything major in space, from bigger cheaper telecom satellites, to space solar power sats, to retrieval of material from near earth objects to sell in orbit, to eventually the capability to return enough for platinum-group metals sold back on earth, to elderly billionaires retiring in O'Neill cylinders so they didn't have to be wheelchair-bound.

Repeatedly even in our history we came close to developing the capability to launch thousands of tons into space a year, to reach space without it costing thousands of dollars a pound. The SHARP program could have been developed to orbital capability for around a billion dollars funding, from there progressing towards firing many payloads into orbit a week instead of the shuttle flying several times a year, and there have been various related successor concepts (a recent example). The original (10000-ton) ground-launched nuclear Orion concept of the 1950s would have sent more into space on its first launch alone (and it was reusable) than the cumulative amount NASA did over the next half-century since then in our timeline, and it received significant R&D funding (many millions of dollars), very much a serious project that in a slightly different timeline wouldn't have been canceled. The "Saturn by 1970" motto was technically doable. There are more examples.

[Omega18]

Another way Sarovek is wildly ignoring the reality of this scenario is that the implications of one country colonizing most of Venus over the really long run are huge. Sure the short term actual benefits are not that great, but over the long run this changes if sufficient resources are devoted to the situation. From the perspective of a military planner, having a significant population and potentially military assets on Venus changes the calculations of MAD and is therefore quite significant, and obviously there are the implications of a whole planet of resources in the really long run.

Obviously the implications of not having to worry about space radiation or other complications with supplying food and the like have already been covered. While this one is dependent of some exact details of the scenario, if the planet is otherwise habitable for humans, there should be animals that humans determine they can safely hunt and eat. As long as its still a small human population that's a perfectly viable option which simplifies what humans have to worry about growing.

However there is another huge difference in that unlike an asteroid, a Venus which has been inhabited by life for a sufficiently long period of time will have oil, gas, and coal as resources to use for building industry and building up the colony. Along with abundant oxygen, this considerably changes the energy picture from asteroids likely so heavily limited by solar power. This means setting up industry is vastly easier in key respects in this scenario. Another huge detail to keep in mind is that as far as industry goes, the colonists don't have to actually develop most things or even really know how they work, they just have to set up say an assembly line and its procedures exactly the way they are told to do in order to produce something. This also makes it clearly allot easier for one individual to be involved with producing a bunch of different parts or items.

As has been pretty much noted, colonization would basically involve volunteers going one way. A key related point though is that the colony should not have to simply provide population growth through transporting over colonists in the long run. Once things are effectively settled enough for the colony, obviously overpopulation would not be a problem and having children would be encouraged. I would expect the colony to deliberately have its population be split about 50/50 between men and women, and in the long run this can considerably increase the population without even factoring into the additional colonist ships. The reality is a habitable world makes it easier to support a large population and that makes a huge difference in the long run.

One practical way a Venus colony would pay dividends even before industry is potentially significantly developed on the colony is related to the fact its own whole world and ecosystem. While it would certainly provide a bunch of general scientific knowledge, there would be practical benefits beyond this. At least once the world's biosciences and chemistry reach a certain level, a very wide array or unique chemicals and biological compounds should be found on the planet which have uses in medicine or other areas. Generally all the has to happen is the knowledge about these substances has to be transmitted back, and its not even a case of samples necessarily having to be sent if enough analysis is done on site.

One other observation is at least for the US and other capitalist countries involved with the colonization of Venus, the government doesn't have to purely pay for the colonization on its own in the long run. Beyond potentially selling the biological substances found angle, the entertainment industry should be extremely eager to get ahold of footage of what is experience by the settlers of Venus, and this can basically be sold for the highest bidder to be shown on TV or a movie theater. (Video footage being taken is important for advancing science, but some arrangement could be established where scientists on Earth get to see the raw footage, but its mostly only shown to the general public by those who pay to acquire it.)