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Comment by shiroiushi | Hacker News Reader

The problem with Venus cloud cities is: what's the purpose? What are people going to do there? Sit around and write software?

At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining. On Venus, you can't do anything really, because you'd have no access to the natural resources there. So what's the point?

The Moon is the only place that really makes any sense at this point. It's close, it probably has lava tubes, it has lots of natural resources for mining, it would be relatively easy to set up habitats and maybe do things like build low-g factories (could be many industrial applications there that we haven't thought of), and aside from being airless, the surface isn't going to kill you like Venus will.

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>At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining.

You can also take that idea further and just do mining in space. One of the most interesting regions is simply cislunar space. Human development there means you can haul asteroids in, you could potentially move polluting industry there, do science in environments that you can't do on earth, and so on. It's much safer than being stranded far away, it's relatively easy to get people back to earth, etc.

The entire idea of going to another planet simply has the huge problem that you need to waste a ton of energy to get things off the damn planet again so really why not just built habitats in space.

This is exactly my position. It would be easier to just build habitats (like O'Neal cylinders) in space that have the exact parameters you want, rather than trying to terraform worlds like Venus to be somewhat-habitable after millennia.

And yes, asteroid mining looks very promising. Facilities on the Moon might be good for this industry, by providing a place with some gravity to do work, and not be worried about environmental issues (or an atmosphere to get in the way of transport). And it's not far from Earth, so you can take all the products of asteroid mining and easily ship them to where they'll be used on Earth, or launch them out into orbit to build space habitats.

> you could potentially move polluting industry there

The reason industry pollutes is that they either DGAF, or it's part of the process. Those industries either won't care to move to space in the first place, or the re-design of the whole process would have been better spent improving the process on earth.

> Sit around and write software?

It'd be a pretty extreme way to make web developers think about latency of their bloated websites, sorry "immersive app experiences", but it might actually be the one that works.

> The problem with Venus cloud cities is: what's the purpose? What are people going to do there? Sit around and write software?

Retirement homes. 90% Earth gravity probably high enough to keep you fit and avoid weightlessness adverse effects, but low enough to help with joint pain, reduced motility and fall risk.

This is actually a pretty good idea I think, aside from the huge cost of course, and possibly the high amount of radiation seniors will experience just traveling to their retirement home in the clouds.

Room is not the resource that retired people take up in homes on Earth

> Room is not the resource that retired people take up in homes on Earth

Proximity to friends and distance from crime has real value. It’s absolutely classist. But every social system we invent contorts to provide it to its elite.

Right but you can just move the poor elderly people to all of the empty space we have on Earth rather than Venus cloud cities

It sounds like the big benefit of Venus cloud cities as a retirement destination is the lower (0.9g) gravity, plus possibly distance from problems on Earth, so it wouldn't be a destination for poor elderly people, but rather rich ones (esp. ones who don't care about visiting with family).

I imagine it would resemble a giant cruise ship, with luxurious surroundings, plenty of stuff for older people to do, etc. Of course, there would be a very large crew/staff aboard to clean and maintain it and provide services, such as medical care. Salaries for the staff would have to be huge, since they wouldn't be able to go home for years, and gigs on this floating city would probably be contracted fixed-length terms, similar to Saudi Aramco workers, so prices to live in this city would be enormous, making it something only very wealthy retirees could afford.

Considering the view would be pretty boring after a while, and the prices astronomical, it's hard to believe that 0.9g gravity would be enough of a draw to make this project economically viable.

Distance from Earth seems like a huge downside, not a benefit. Even if our climate goes to shit it will still be far more livable than Venus.

So, as you say, there's only one benefit, 0.9g, and is that really enough to justify this entire thing?

To be honest it seems like people are clutching at straws to justify space colonisation

Distance from Earth would be a benefit in case of nuclear war, which currently looks highly likely at some point. Even if humans aren't eradicated, it would probably be a civilization-ending event, and not many places would be safe. However, it does seem like some kind of giant submarine might be more feasible and cheaper.

But yeah, 0.9g doesn't seem like enough of a draw to make it economically feasible.

> it would probably be a civilization-ending event, and not many places would be safe

But you need a civilisation on Earth in order to maintain a Venus cloud city anyway

That's absolutely correct I believe. I don't see how such a colony would be self-sustaining without some big advances in technology (at which point you might as well just build a space habitat with low gravity).

Yeah, but sadly anyplace we can send a bunch of humans to, we can figure out how to send a nuke to as well. And if leaders on the homeworld are crazy enough to turn Earth into a wasteland, I'm not sure how confident I'd be they wouldn't point their threat at your colony (which might look like an enticing bargaining chip).

Bargaining chip for what exactly? The colony wouldn't have any kind of resources, except the wealth of its residents, but that wealth would all be tied up in bank accounts back on Earth. If Earth gets turned into a wasteland, the colony will probably die because I don't see how it could possibly survive without regular supply missions from Earth, and that depends on things on Earth not getting too horrible. Also, if Earth became a literal wasteland, all the wealth those rich people on Venus had would be gone: it's just numbers in computers after all.

Bargaining chip as in "We'll raze the last hope for humanity unless you yield concession X".

You're not answering the question. What concession? What do a bunch of old people in the clouds of Venus have to bargain with? What resources do they control?

They aren't bargaining with the colony, they're bargaining with the nation that sent its citizens there (or any nation that views the survival of the colony as important enough to make other concessions).

It's like a criminal that points a gun at your kid and threatens to shoot unless you do X.

> Retirement homes.

Ok I love this as a sci-fi premise. Especially as a spiritual successor to Logan’s Run.

But how does this actually work? Who cares for these people? Are these retirees the opportunity young caregivers will seek?

> Who cares for these people?

Robots. I think we're way closer to having robots care for elderly people than having an independent colony on Venus :-P.

Robots could do some of the care work, but some work will probably still need humans, like repairs and some medical work I would imagine. To do that, the colony would have to hire people to live there, for years at a time or more. Pay would probably need to be very high unless Earth has gotten really, really horrible.

> At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining. On Venus, you can't do anything really, because you'd have no access to the natural resources there. So what's the point?

Depends what you're trying to make. The atmosphere soup on Venus contains more interesting chemicals than the Martian surface, and there's a whole lot more energy going around to power whatever you're doing.

> The Moon is the only place that really makes any sense at this point. It's close, it probably has lava tubes, it has lots of natural resources for mining, it would be relatively easy to set up habitats and maybe do things like build low-g factories (could be many industrial applications there that we haven't thought of), and aside from being airless, the surface isn't going to kill you like Venus will.

IMO Phobos is actually the best option - most of those advantages apply, and being smaller makes it easier for spacecraft to go to or from.

The energy requirements are the least of the problems. We have the tech for that today. It's almost everything else that is the issue.

> The problem with Venus cloud cities is: what's the purpose?

Cloud computing, duh. We need big clouds and big cloud cities for that.

> The problem with Venus cloud cities is: what's the purpose? What are people going to do there? Sit around and write software?

I mean, that sounds freaking awesome tbh.

You can already live in a tiny cabin and never go outside in any major city of your choice (or even outside a city, but you might need to provide your own cabin). You can even choose to pay the vast proportion of your salary to pay for the right to live there.

But you may have to make do with fresh air and water unless you make your own recirculating scrubbers.

Give it a few years and Amazon will do housing and then you can even buy everything from the same entity that provides your living volume.

I wouldn't want to bet that the operators of a space habitat wouldn't take some cues from the company town era, except with even less oversight.

Crazy idea, since O2 is lighter than CO2 couldn’t we just terraform the layer of the atmosphere where the cloud city is? Air is a lifting gas, so theoretically could you float breathable air on top of CO2?

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