Interesting article about ideas for colonizing Venus... http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/07/the-surprisingly-strong-case-for-colonizing-venus/373560/ I think we've got better chances of colonizing Mars, personally. We know more about Mars and Mars' climate shares more similarities with those of certain places on planet Earth.
A colony could only survive if it could trade something with the Earth. I cannot see what a colony floating on a balloon could export to Earth. Maybe research about Venus? But that could also be done without humans.
Cousteau just surfaced after living one month underwater and it is considered a "big deal". What happens when the balloon becomes more crispy. Let's see them float a people colony over the Pacific ocean. And as always, Moon Base First. Moi r > g No
Yeah, lets start a "colony" where astronauts have a reasonable chance of getting back home if needed. Baby steps.
Interesting article. 'Floating' habitats surrounding Venus. I was thinking what would happen if these floating platforms started getting joined together (as the article suggests) and got the image of a 'shell' or 'crust' surrounding the planet. If we can do that, we could terra-form it by maybe grabbing asteroids and fusing them together to create a habitable surface......Science fiction but interesting.
You might enjoy the intriguing study began by Helen WAmbach Ph. D. that was finished by Dr. Chet Snow on visions of a future that was seen while people were in a hypnotic trance. http://dwij.org/forum/future_link/future7.htm
Either one would be but a temporary option, anyway. The sun will kill us if we stay in this solar system. Best if we find a solution that does not involve staying here, whether it means hanging out around more stable, longer-lived stars or putting together colony/residential ships that can sustain our form of life without planetary aid, perhaps making use of starlight from any given stellar source.
Earth will be incapable of supporting complex life long before our sun dies, we have about 500 million years...
Could be, for all I know. I know that the sun is due to heat up as it ages, according to current theory at least, making earth uninhabitable even before the sun reaches its red giant stage. Anyway, this makes the idea of trying to terraform Venus, a planet even closer to the sun than Earth, seem rather silly. We'd have to move the planet out at some point, which is possible to do with a simple gravity assist from another massive enough body used sufficiently to pull the planet out farther from the sun through successive close orbital passes, but then why do this with Venus when we might just do it with Earth or Mars instead? Actually, it might be fun to collide Venus and Mars.. Given Earth's theoretical past, it just might end up creating another Earth-like planet complete with another Earth-like moon around it.
