Guillermo Söhnlein, the co-founder of OceanGate revealed his plans to send 1000 people to live in floating cities on Venus in the future during a recent interview with Insider. However, Söhnlein left OceanGate in 2013 before the expedition company suffered the recent submersible disaster. He did not just leave OceanGate to retire but to pursue a more futuristic ambition to put humans on the clouds of Venus by 2050.
Söhnlein became popular after five people aboard OceanGate Titan died after an implosion that occurred when the submersible was descending towards the wreck of the Titan. However, his recent idea to colonize Venus has given people a new exploration hope for another planet. How did Söhnlein hope to accomplish his ambition? Continue reading to find out.
Why Söhnlein is planning to build floating cities on Venus by 2050
Söhnlein founded Humans2Venus to colonize Venus by 2050. While every space agency is focusing on colonizing Mars, Söhnlein thinks that colonizing Venus could be a better vision to bring into reality. Scientists previously assume Mars to be the most suitable planet for human colonization after Earth.
This is because the red planet has abundant hydrogen, carbon, and small oxygen. However, recent studies conducted by astronomers on Venus’ clouds are making everyone think differently about the hellish planet. Why identify Venus as a hellish planet if you may ask? NASA revealed that the planet is the second planet from the sun and holds the title of the hottest planet in the solar system with a scorching surface temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius).
Hence, many astronomers strongly believed that Venus remains inhabitable to any form of life known to mankind. However, the planet remains a terrestrial planet with a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Venus is encompassed by crushing air pressure. NASA reveals that this pressure is similar to the amount of pressure found a mile beneath the oceans on Earth.
How Söhnlein plans to build floating cities on Venus by 2050
Despite the numerous dangers of colonizing Venus, Söhnlein still believes that his company came to make the planet’s atmosphere habitable for mankind. Human2Venus published an article on their website explaining the need to colonize Venus as soon as possible. In that blog post, Söhnlein explains the several difficulties humans would have to provide possible solutions to.
These challenges include temperature, food, water, radiation, pressure, breathable air, and many others. Söhnlein emphasizes that humans cannot solve the problem of gravity in space.
“Other than potentially building an O’Neill cylinder or a Stanford torus, it did not look like we would ever be able to offset the long-term effects of less-than-1G gravity on the surface of the Moon (0.17G) or Mars (0.38G),” Söhnlein noted. “Worse, the medical community did not really know whether Humankind would be able to reproduce in these low-gravity environments, from conception to gestation to birth to genetic defects and mutations. For all we knew, our species could potentially get to Mars and then die out within a single generation. To me, it became clear that humanity needed to find a 1G destination if we had any hope of becoming a multi-planet species.”
In the blog post, Söhnlein also described how he studied the research obtained during the Venera missions, a Soviet mission to Venus. These Venera missions visited Venus between 1961 and 1983. The businessman revealed that the gravity above Venus’ surface measured 1G based on the data provided by Venera. Hence, Söhnlein is seeing the future of living on Venus through his company, Humans2Venus.
Could floating cities on Venus be of any advantage to our civilization?
Living on Venus’ cloud is one of the most mysterious ideas anyone could think of. However, our generation is always working on making every impossible in the past become possible in the future. Söhnlein is one of the great minds hoping to do the impossible in space before 2050.
The businessman is seeing the beautiful future of humans living in floating cities on Venus before the end of this century. While this idea may appear impossible to man, keep in mind that some people 100 years ago never believed in the future of human space exploration. Hence, you have every reason to remain hopeful about the future of humans in space, especially living in the clouds of Venus.
“Even better, at that altitude the air pressure measured roughly 1ATM, the temperature was relatively tolerable (30C-50C), and the atmosphere provided sufficient radiation protection (despite Venus being closer to the Sun and not having a magnetic field),” Söhnlein wrote. “Of course, the downsides were the CO2-heavy atmosphere and the clouds made of sulfuric acid. Then again, we already had technologies here on Earth to offset both.”
Conclusion
Building floating cities on Venus is one of the most engineering marvels our generation would accomplish through Söhnlein’s company, Humans2Venus. Hopefully, we should be expecting this futuristic habitat by the mid of this century. What do you think about this futuristic project?
