Goals

1. Creation of a detailed plan

The main purpose of this website is the creation and refinement of a plan to colonize (and possibly terraform) Venus. At the time when this website went online (summer 2005) a rough idea is already available, but there are lots of missing pieces and holes in it. Many areas which need specific and exact calculations by experts.

This website is the try to get this rough idea to a wider audience and create a community around it.

The most pressing things are these topics:

1a. Creation of an industry on Venus

The Bosch-reaction and photosynthesis are the basic chemical reacions during Venus colonization. Because of this, Carbon, Glocose (or plant matter in general like Cellulose, etc.) and Oxygen can be produced locally in large quantities. Nitrogen can be taken out of the atmosphere, Hydrogen and Helium can be imported from Jupiter. Sulfur can probably be extracted from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere, Phosphorus possibly from the traces of Phosphin in Jupiter's atmosphere

Plastics and carbon fibres are for the most part made out of these widely available elements (Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen). For biological activity and also for industrial production, other elements will be needed.

Because mining is difficult or even impossible on Venus' hot surface, these elements (especially metals) have to be imported from Earth - or another body in the solar system.

The unanswered questions are:

• Which elements in addition to those available are needed to maintain a biological cycle with for example 100 humans?
• Which elements in what quantities are needed for the creation of plastics, especially graphite-reinforced plastics?
• Would it be possible (and would it make sense) to get the missing elements from a body other than Earth? (for example the Moon, or a moon of Jupiter)

1b. Hydrogen

One of the biggest challenges is the storage and transport of Hydrogen.

The questions for that problem:

• Is it possible to liquefy Hydrogen in (cold) space in an easy, cheap way?
• Is it possible to transport Hydrogen in a capsule that gets very hot during re-entry?

1c. Architecture of the floating factories

I have intuitively chosen a wedge-shaped form with arbitrary dimensions. This form and size is possibly very far from the optimum.

It would be great to either confirm the wedge-shape or create a better alternative.

1d. transfer-orbits between Venus and Jupiter

Essential is also to calculate how much thrust is needed to get from Venus to Jupiter and back - and how long it takes.

1f. Details of the ion-drive

About the ion-drive the question remains how it can be used with Helium and how much energy is needed to use it for interplanitary voyages.

1g. Exact chemical composition of the Venusian atmosphere - chances/risks

Unfortunately Venera 12 was so far the only probe that measured the Venusian atmosphere directly. Because of that there are many unknown variables regarding the Venusian atmosphere. For example we know that the clouds contain lots of Chlorine and Sulfur, but the majority of the cloud-matter is still composed of materials currently unknown.

Without new probes we can only guess what the clouds will contain in addition to the known substances. These unknonw substances could open up opportunities or be hazards. - Although one could argue that it can't get much worse than what already is known to be in the clouds (like sufuric acid)