Ironically, between Venus' earth-like gravity and high atmospheric density, it might actually be easier to build cloud colonies on Venus than ground colonies on Mars.
Yep, yet it's my understanding that it'd be easier to colonize Venus than Mars. Venus is closer, Venus' gravity is similar to Earth's, the air is extremely dense which means balloons would be very effective, iirc Venus has more opportunities for inter-planetary transit, high-altitude temperatures (where the balloons would float) are more similar to Earth's, etc.
I think the theory is that it proves that ones favorite -ism that starts with c- is objectively superior to ones least favorite -ism that starts with c-.
The hard part would things like water and raw building materials, one of the benefits of ground is that it’s mostly iron, oxygen, and other metals, while basically everything on Venus would need to be shipped in from off world.
In the long term, it's also possible to alter the atmosphere on Venus until it's approximately the same as Earth. It would be a massive undertaking, but a hell of a lot easier than getting Mars to a comfortably habitable state. And you could potentially get an entire habitable planet out of the deal, which would be nice.
Obviously it would take a significant investment of resources that would benefit some future generation, but not our own. So, back to being impossible, at least for now.
They've come up with a way they could do it. I dunno why you're mad about that, I was just wanting to share an interesting tidbit I'd learned.
My understanding is that the reason why scientists like playing with the idea is that it's more feasible than it immediately seems, and it'd solve some of the issues that a Mars colony would have (increased solar radiation due to low atmospheric density and weak electromagnetic field as well at very low gravity).
Would it be expensive? Yeah. We're talking about colonizing another planet though. It already is going to cost hundreds of billions if not trillions to do.
Also this is a mission, not a viable, full-time living situation. Its like sending people to mars, I'll believe it when i see it. We have sooo many problems such as ecosystem collapse that a colony getting supplies non-locally is a full fledged sci-fi concept that will never occur for our current society
Yeah, lot of "Alien from venus!!" stuff. Too bad all the planets and moons are FAR from hospitable, we'd be better off fixing our own planet than trying to build a new one from scratch