Floating cities on Venus

Despite being regarded as a hellish environment, it is quite possible to colonise Venus, namely by having large floating cities in its atmosphere.

The atmospheric pressure on Venus is about 92 times than that on Earth and has an average surface temperature of about 462°C. It is quite literally what humans imagine hell to be. So, because of these conditions and several other factors, it is impossible for humans to settle on Venus' surface. However, it's atmosphere surprisingly consists of Earth-like conditions and the existence of microbes there has been proposed.

A real colour image of Venus

Why colonise Venus?

There are several reasons to colonise Venus including :
- Making humans an interplanetary species
- Optimal way of ensuring survival of the human race
- Long term scientific research is better carried out by humans rather than probes and rovers

Floating colonies in Venus' atmosphere

Advantages

-Gravity : It has a similar gravity compared to Earth, 0.904 g. This would mean the chance of bone decalcification is much lower when compared to other planets such as Mars.
-Location : Venus' aphelion is 40,000,000 km compared to Mars' 55,000,000 km. Additionally, due to their orbits, launch windows to Venus are shorter as well, with 584 days for Venus compared to 780 days for Mars.
-Atmosphere : Venus' atmosphere is roughly 96% CO2 which can be filtered from sulphuric acid to grow food.

Disadvantages

-Water and other metals would be difficult to obtain from the surface due to the extreme conditions and expensive to bring from Earth and asteroids. However, water can be collected from the sulphuric acid in the clouds.
-Colonies would have to be made from substances such as Teflon that are resistant to corrosion from the acid present in it's atmosphere

Artist's depiction of a terraformed Venus