OceanGate’s cofounder wants to send 1,000 people to a floating colony on Venus by 2050, and says we shouldn’t stop pushing the limits of innovation::Guillermo Söhnleinm told Insider he has wanted to make humanity a multi-planet species since he was 11 years old, and that OceanGate was part of that ambition.
Billionaires first.
I hope the tickets are really expensive! And why wait until 2050?
Yeah. I mean for a couple million I have can build a rocker that is guaranteed to send billionaires to Venus. Just sign that waiver first please.
Do you take cheque?
Of course. For such a noble goal I’ll even take crypto!
let’s offer musk first dibs for 20 billion dollars.
1000 of the richest people? Sure, go for it
This guy might actually be in our best interests!
Sounds like a good start!
Science and innovation can only move forward with heaps of dead bodies!
Err… Venus has one of the most hostile environments in the Solar System. A titanium probe can only survive there a few hours.
Dumb.
Carbon fiber though?
And flex tape and control it with Razer RGB controller.
What could possibility go wrong with using a low compression strength material in a high pressure environment?
Carbon fiber is much better, that would probably be eaten through in a few seconds. Much less waste.
Venus has one of the most hostile environments in the Solar System.
It might seem unintuitive, but there’s an area above the clouds that’s actually really very mild as far as conditions go. It’s also closer/easier to get to than Mars and various useful components can be harvested from the atmosphere which is quite dense while Mars doesn’t have much.
Also, breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere so habitats filled with gas humans can breathe would actually be buoyant. You wouldn’t even need a pressurized spacesuit to go outside, just an air supply.
Thank God we perfected “landing somewhere in the upper atmosphere” in the 70s.
Thank God we perfected “landing somewhere in the upper atmosphere” in the 70s.
Am I misunderstanding or are you skeptical about it being possible to stop before reaching the surface? Because if so, that seems kind of weird. One would just need to deploy the balloons or whatever at the appropriate point. As far as technical challenges go, I’d guess this is actually going to be easier than safely getting something safely down to the surface.
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ezpz just design automatically unfoldable balloon that can survive in clouds of sulfuric acid
Russia managed to land a probe safely on the surface of Venus that survived for almost an hour and sent back pictures… in 1975. The probe was called Venera 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9
By the way, it used an unfoldable parachute to slow its decent, that presumably could not only survive in clouds of sulfuric acid but near the surface where conditions are much more extreme.
Nothing about landing (or floating, in this case) a probe on a different planet is “ezpz” but comparatively speaking, it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine it being possible given what humans have already accomplished with less advanced technology. So why be snarky and contrary for no reason?
Nah you misunderstood. I actually think it’s extremely easy to travel to Venus, drop from orbit and deply several tons of Air just at the right time for the descend to be slowly reversed until you reach the correct height.
I actually think it’s extremely easy to travel to Venus, drop from orbit and deply several tons of Air just at the right time for the descend to be slowly reversed until you reach the correct height.
Not sure why you feel the need to be snarky here.
I never said it was “easy” in the general sense. Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the procedures that were used to land rovers, on Mars for example. They were both quite difficult and complex, requiring precise timing and a bunch of steps to happen exactly as needed or the rover would smash into the surface or burn up on entry.
“Drop from orbit and inflate some balloons at the right time” is comparatively easy compared to the complex procedures that were used for the Mars missions. Obviously, deploying a probe on a different planet is always going to be a difficult and complicated task.
Alright the ocean gate guy can just link up with you then and we’re set
I’m talking about the approach in general. Is OceanGate guy the one to pull it off? Probably not.
If you’re being reasonable here, you have to compare the difficult with trying to create a colony on other planets like Mars. There are major challenges involved there too, like distance, lack of atmosphere, less accessible resources that could be used to maintain the colony, etc. The only thing I’m arguing here is compared to colonizing Mars, for example, there are points in favor of Venus. If you read the Wikipedia article I linked, you’ll also see this isn’t an idea OceanGate guy came up with and it’s also not really all that new either. Reputable organizations like NASA have seriously looked into this previously.
In the 80s, not the 70s.
To add to this, one of the potential advantages is that you could use the temperature gradient as you drop further into the atmosphere as an energy source - making it one of the few areas in the solar system where you wouldn’t be reliant soley on solar or nuclear.
That’s a good point, although with sunlight so accessible and abundant and nuclear waste not being an issue (presumably you can just drop it to the surface) I’m not sure what the benefit would be of using that approach.
The issue with solar power on a planet is what you do during the nights (which are over 100 earth days long on Venus). The issue with nuclear is the danger of a launch failure with a craft full of fissile material - that would change if we could source the fuel from off earth but we’re not at the stage of being able to do that yet
Again, good points. Also, I definitely wasn’t taking the length of days into account!
Isn’t it hard to get to because of it being closer to the Sun and requiring more deltaV?
Based on the Wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Advantages ) it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Optimal launch windows are more frequent and flight time is reduced (although it’s not a massive difference). That section doesn’t specifically mention delta v or fuel requirements but I assume if there was a notable difference aside from the flight time part that there would be something about it.
I’m far from an expert, but I’d guess in a way stuff like fuel requirements don’t really vary that much with distance, just time. This is because the vehicle will accelerate to some set speed and just coast for most of the way before decelerating at the other end. At least with current rocket propellant-based approaches, it’s not feasible to include enough fuel for the thing to be actively thrusting for more than a fraction of the total time.
Well, it does say it would be a floating colony, so it would probably be up where the atmosphere is about as dense as Earth’s, and above the sulfuric acid clouds, which is quite a bit more feasible than on the surface. That’s something actual real scientists and engineers have looked at. Still not overly feasible though, and there surely won’t be a 1000-person colony there by 2050. Even if NASA, SpaceX and the rest of the industry pivoted to Venus rather than Mars, I’d doubt that could happen. And I’d trust pretty much anyone more than this guy to pull it off.
Exactly. I don’t see any flaw with his idea. I’m sure billionaires are litterally dying to get on that trip.
This will be a very expensive journey, so let the billoinaires have a taste first!
Ok, Mercury then?
Only if I can drive the spaceship with a Logitech wireless controller.
Is this some kind of insanity plea to get him off the hook for any negligence claims?
1000 billionaires, sounds like a great plan. They did so well last time.
Getting the flotation is actually not that difficult in terms of engineering since Venus has a crazy thick atmosphere. Not hard to float a balloon at an altitude of a few Earth atmospheres. Problem is your life is dependent on the reliability of the floatation system. It would take a lot of attention to fail safe design. That OceanGate organization would be like “the wrong stuff”.
There’s other engineering challenges in colonizing Venus such as solar radiation. Venus has no magnetosphere to protect against ion radiation from the Sun and being closer it’s much more intense than Mars. Then you’d have to tether the balloon somehow, Venus has some strong vertical winds. That’s going to be like thirty miles of cable to the scalding 900F surface. Venus has clouds of sulfuric acid so that’s going to present a materials challenge. It’s a tough sell, greatly easier to colonize Mars.
It’s like when Elon started blowing smoke about colonizing the moons of Jupiter. If not already aware, Jupiter emits the most radiation of any solar body second only to the Sun. The moons around Jupiter are seriously toxic to human life. They can’t even get a probe to last more than a year around Jupiter due to radiation exposure, let alone a manned spacecraft.
Lets name that deathtrap titan too…
“Titan Too”, that’s perfect
Titan99 or in roman numerals TitanIC
Event horizon would be a good name.
Soo I know I’m not in the slightest the target audience for his shit. But I can say there’s no way in hell I would ever trust a vessel from that company going forward.
But you see, it’ll be rebranded as “VenusGate”, a completely different company that you can trust.
[*] implosion
[] explosion- [x] implosion
- [ ] explosion
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This man can’t even make a safe submarine
Spaceships are probably easier to build. No external pressure in space, no regulations for passenger space ships yet… /s
The irony is that it is probably true. Think about it. The atmosphere is one atmosphere of pressure, obviously. Space is zero. Under the ocean at the Titanic it is 400.
Yes, you only need to break the sound barrier while riding on a few thousand tons of explosive fuel to get there…
They just want to kill rich people…
Isn’t that the company that made that crappy sub that imploded?? This man crazy thinking we would trust him with space travel!
He does not want us to trust him with space travel. He wants us to trust him with our money.
Agreed! A better way to put it.
Yes, please go ahead.
I will even open a bottle of sparkling wine for the occasion!
Edit: btw, does anybody else have Nandor The Relentless‘ voice in their head whenever somebody is named Guillermo?
I do now lmao.
VenusGate: Uh, spaceguard? We lost contact with the Venus colony several weeks ago. They’ve got 2 months of air so they might still be alive. Though we did learn from the last time and didn’t bolt the windows shut in case they made it back to Earth on their own and needed to get out. The CEO did complain about the smell of farts increasing and the last communication said they were able to get a few open to air out the place, so we know they work.
NASA: Spaceguard isn’t a thing. Also the bolts weren’t the problem last time, it was the complete structural failure. Opening some windows probably allowed the pressure to equalize, which caused the vessel to drop into the “everything melts” zone. They are dead.
VenusGate: So you won’t be sending anyone out to look for them?
NASA: No.
