Colonizing Venus
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as the go-to reference for the idea of living in Venus's atmosphere rather than on the surface.
What it is
Isaac Arthur examines options for colonizing Venus, from vast floating habitats in the temperate upper atmosphere to full terraforming of the planet. It is a long-form speculative futurism episode in his solar system colonization series.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2017 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends jakeogh · 2018-03 · on “Missions could see NASA spacecraft heading to Uranus and Neptune”
Outward Bound: Colonizing Venus: [this video] Caution: don't click unless you have nothing else to do today.
Recommends alistproducer2 · 2020-05 · on “How Long Was Venus Habitable?”
I enjoy Isaac Arthur's YouTube channel where he explores topics like colonizing Venus. Here's the video: [this video]
Cites stcredzero · 2017-11 · on “Closest Temperate World Orbiting Quiet Star Discovered”
Venus is pretty sweet as it is. Go high enough in the atmosphere, and you have about Earth atmospheric pressure and room temperatures. That altitude in the Venus atmosphere is effectively an Earth biosphere sized almost-Earthlike living space. One convenient circumstance: A breathable Earthlike atmosphere will float at that altitude, so it would be easy to live in floating balloon habitats. [LINK] [this video]
Cites cletus · 2020-05 · on “How Long Was Venus Habitable?”
So there a few comments scattered around about this so I'll address those concerns here. Quite a few people are scoffing at the idea of colonizing Venus ("you'll get crushed, dude!") but the idea has had a lot of people put thought into it and it's not as impractical as you may think. Consider: 1. Venus is easier to reach than Mars. The Delta-V is 0.4km/s and 0.7km/s respectively [1]; 2. Mars has practically no atmosphere and really low gravity. It's really not that much better than colonizing the Moon but a whole lot further away [2]. 3. You wouldn't live on surface of Venus, at least not initially. You'd live in the atmosphere [3]. 4. Energy will be plentiful on Venus, far more than on Mar
Cites cletus · 2021-07 · on “Soviet Venus Images (2004)”
It's wild we have any images of the surface of Venus at all given how hostile Venus is. Given how hostile it is, it seems unlikely we'll go back anytime soon. These images were really a product of the Cold War where the US focused on Mars. It's worth noting that Venus is still probably a better terraforming target than Mars [1]. This romantic notion of Mars has rooted itself deeply at this point (eg with Elon Musk) but Mars is basically a more distant and inconvenient Moon. Almost no atmosphere (in fact, just enough because dust storms will occasionally just coat all your equipment), the Sun is weaker and gravity is still very low. Venus's atmosphere is about 3% nitrogen and 97% CO2. It has
Cites jmyeet · 2026-05 · on “Colonization of Venus”
Obligatory Isaac Arthur reference [1]. I still think humanity's far future is in orbitals in space, not on planets and certainly not on planets as hostile as Venus is. I'm not sure how well living at 50km above the surface would work. You still need a lot of buoyance to float large structures. The atmosphere is also a solvable problem. One idea I've heard is using so-called "fusion candles". That is a fusion-powered device in the atmosphere that sends waste gas into space and waste matter to the ground in an equilibrium that keeps them airborne, all powered by fusion. You could extract carbon and/or oxygen this way from the plentiful atmospheric CO2. Still, if you ever got the atmosphere dow