Ishtar Terra is a harsh mistress

On 14 December around 11 AM I started an ecocycle for Venus' colonies. I am bumping this to this morning to include the steps I've added this week.

The whole Maxwell / Lakshmi system at 65° ecliptic-north offers all manner of ores, including phosphates and sodium hydroxide. Wherever we post our mining-base, it also sabatiers water and oxygen from cloud-vitriol, and distills heavy-water. It tethers an escalator to 40 km-ish at the low edge of the clouds. That port refines the phosphates and other ores, and packages these and the heavy-water... into an aeroplane.

That 'plane flies its cargo on to a Uranium City in the same altitude (every four Earth days, being a wind-day). Uranium City at the 50s° does more refining, particularly for Uranium Hexafluoride, and feeds its own reactor - dumping the waste somewhere on the vast basalt wastes of the planet. Above that are floating farms: that city gets energy, and light water, and the fertilising chemicals and minerals.

The city grows food: in "food", I include all organic consumables, like paper and wood and (with the lye) soap. Excess food goes back down to the Uranium City. The Uranium City flies its own excess food over to the tethered port over the mine. The port takes a nibble and slides the rest down to the mine - along with vitriol, and other chemical byproducts it's produced.

55°-65° ecliptic north, spanning the Polar Collar, supports a trade-cycle that keeps everyone in it fed and supplied. From thence, I have found more expensive to get to the equator and up into orbit.

The rest of the System still needs raw material. Last month I allowed the Venus day platform being served more from the southern farms. For mines, it might use the higher points of Aphrodite Terra at the equator. South of Aphrodite I see little that rises about the supercritical-CO₂ "sea level" at 3 km. At first, though, Venus orbit will invest in the 55°-65° north band and exact payments in ores.

I can see the whole Ishtar network becoming comfortably interdependent together, and increasingly independent of the rest of the System. A Terra-Nova, de facto.