Winter is here

...over Venus. The ecliptic-north, I assume; we tend to go with Earth, since north is where most of our land is. Keeping in mind that defining "north" is problematic on a retrograde planet.

Whilst we're at it, ProjectRho links Pekka Janhunen's Shielded dumbbell [TL]L5 settlement (him again) which I wish I'd had April 2020 when it came out. I scanned it; haven't read it, will concentrate on its Venus-relevant material here.

[UPDATE 7/9: Finally - read it. I note Janhunen doesn't worry about solar radiation at 1 AU, about which Venus and Mercury and all our Earth-crossing asteroids must worry.]

Venus' insolation is 1.91 times Earth's. That might, however, be good - because this keeps out Galactic Cosmic Rays better (pdf). Mind, then you must deal with the Sun's occasional flares.

One comment: although SVL2 is (much) better sheltered than most of what we're discussing here (which this blog compares to Vesta), we will need to get all that material over there. Earth/Venus Hohmann takes 0.4 of a year. Assuming 20 mSv/year at a solar minimum at Earth, this is a 8 mSv ceiling, truly "not great, not terrible". CT scans allow it, and nuclear workers and NASA allow up to 50 mSv/year.

So - detachable shields, I expect. The shields can be the heavy solar-panels which we'll put in orbit around the main SVL2 station. This, to balance the expected stationkeeping.