Venus, capital of the Solar System

Let’s talk about life on Venus.

There are some pretty-good models in speculative fiction about how life on other planets might work. Mars is best-modeled; Robert Zubrin’s How To Live On Mars is pretty much the foundation for anyone who’d write a story on the Red Planet. The Expanse, meanwhile, has looked at mining-colonies especially in Ceres. Venus has - historically - had the science-fictional disadvantage that nobody knew what was under the clouds until my father's generation. Once Venus was discovered to be a high-pressure hellscape, serious authors (i.e., not Pohl) abandoned that planet until, I think, the late 1990s when was mooted that its cities could float.

Books on travel among our planets have also lagged concerning Venus. The 2007 Traveler’s Guide to the Solar System guide dealt, again, with the planets’ surface, which for Venus nobody sane will be walking on (at least not for long). In 2017 we got a more-reasoned Vacation Guide to the Solar System which did discuss the cloud cities.

As for, why come here: Venus is the most-centrally located Earthlike planet. It is easy, relative to other planets, to send materiel here, or past here. It will host orbital platforms suitable as a hub for visits to the rest of the System. Landis in 2003 argued Venus' case for shifting asteroid ore. (I don't know if Landis' PDF has been lost, but "PAT" made a copy and posted that at The Space Monitor in 2007 - before PAT, too, quit blogging.) In 2015 NASA pointed out that Venus serves as a step toward Mars as well. In terms of central location a stone Rama station at SV-Hilda spinning for high-G is more ideal; even here, we'd supply it from Venus.

If you worry about a place to store water, I will personally host you at the L2 Station to assuage those worries.

One advantage of Venus herself here, is that her own cloudbank is a planetwide refinery for all the ores basic to technological man. And once Venus' mines are running, and have done supplying their own cities and orbitals: Venus can send some Hohmann traffic back to Earth. Also, Venus' nightside coma, blowing away from the Sun, is a free resource for moving craft away from Venus, or decelerating incoming traffic (excepting the fry-by returnees, from sunward).

Venus should be the capital of the System, with Earth as its (initial) breadbasket and holiday destination. [SPECIFICATION 12/4: the Venus orbit holds that capitol.] I have made a directory of Venus' top spots for colonisation.

BACKDATING 11/15

RETHINKING 12/14 9:35 AM MST - relocated the farm floaters to 50s° ecliptic north and south.