The easiest mining camp this side of Proxima

A couple days ago, Sue Smrekar spoke about Venus. She didn't like the idea of landing on the surface - landing pretty much anything. As she noted, our first priority in getting humans here is to get electronics here. Tin melts at 505° K, and lead (the usual Venerean benchmark) at 600°. Zinc at 693°.

So let's look for how we can work around this.

My first notion is that miners will stick to the highlands anyway, where it is likely to be cooler. Solid or liquid, many metals would be experienced as compounds here – but often as sulfur compounds, many of which full-on vapourise in the lowlands (did we mention that CO2 is a solvent here?). Those pyrites recondense up in the highlands, as frosts.

There is a highland-of-highlands on Ishtar Terra: the Maxwell Montes. This range sits at 65° latitude, ecliptic north – underneath the polar collar. We'd call it "Arctic" if Venus had Earth's axial tilt and/or white bears. The Montes’ summits making up its ecliptic east range 10-11 km up.

The conditions on Maxwell are not measured directly. A Seiff et al., “Measurements of thermal structure”, JGR 85 (1980 - pdf) discussed the four Pioneer probes; their temperature-sensors conked out over 12.5 km, at 630 K: p. 7905. Seiff’s crew for 10-11 km had to estimate: 650 K at p. 7914. Given that the lowest Venerean “atmosphere” up to 3 km is a supercritical fluid, it efficiently conducts heat. So the temperature at 3 km is pretty much the same all over this world, whatever is happening up in the clouds. Seiff’s estimates between 3 km and 12.5 km seem reasonable.

Zinc is solid at Maxwell elevation. So, the Maxwell range has that going for it. Which is nice.

Given Venus' g-force and density, both less than Earth's; and if Venus weren't so hot and bothered: 5 km below Ishtar's surface would be feasible. But, you know... Venus.

Now, I have no way of knowing if Maxwell itself has ores worth the mining. [UPDATE 9/25: I'd look for something like Zimbabwe's Dyke.] Farms will want phosphates and those are more likely around volcanoes - like Colette and Sacajawea, some distance west of Maxwell on the Lakshmi plateau. The orbitals might prefer hard metals and those will be found in (probable) crater Cleopatra (to the east) and certainly in Vlata in the Sacajawea region. It may be that prospectors will prefer the Lakshmi volcanoes. Maxwell is simply closest to the sky. And it might be catching phosphate frosts from across the western plain.

Once the minerals are found and shipped up, more investors will fund an expansion of this operation.