Could humans live in the clouds of Venus?

Daniel and Kelly talk to Guillermo Sohnlein about life in the Venutian clouds

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, am I remembering correctly that your kids are
almost in college?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right, they're in high school, so college is just
around the corner.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Oh my gosh, it goes so fast.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Do they want to stay close to home or are
they needing a little distance from their parents?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, the oldest wants to be far enough away that
we can't pop into surprising.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
So how far is that?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Are we talking like a long car drive one stayed
over a whole country.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
This is the loophole my wife is relying on because
she's willing to travel a long way to just pop
in on somebody.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Ah right, So maybe they need to consider like universities
in Australia.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm wondering if Elon Musk is going to build a
university on Mars, they might be able to attend.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
You know, he's got enough kids to fill the first
class of students by himself.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
And if your dad, nowhere in the Solar system, is
far enough away.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Hi, I'm Daniel.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,
and I was definitely ready to leave home when it
was time to go to college.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
I'm Kelly Wiener Smith.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'm adjunct at Rice University, and I also was ready
to go when I started college. California was not far
enough from Ohio, but I stuck with that.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
And Welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe,
in which we take your mind to new locations to
explore new ideas and think about living in other places,
where we download the entire workings of the universe into
your little brain. My friend and co host Jorge isn't
here today, but I'm very glad to be joined by Kelly. Hi, Kelly,
thanks again for joining us.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
And you know, I think that maybe we should change
the introduction to my friend and co host Toorge isn't
available today, but my friend and co host Kelly is.
I want to be upgraded to friend and co host status.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
You're definitely a friend and a co host, an a
fellow scientist, and a colleague, absolutely all those things.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Oh what a great day for me.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
You were in all the prizes.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
And you're also a great person to be talking to
about today's topic about casting not just our minds, but
maybe our bodies and our lives and our families out
of the little envelope of the Earth and into the
Solar System and maybe even the rest of the universe, and.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Not just the places that you usually think of.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
We're talking about settling places that I think of as
maybe some of the worst places in space. But there
are people who disagree with me. So the question today
is could humans live on Venus?

Speaker 4 (02:57):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
You might be wondering why anybody ever lives anywhere other
than the best place on Earth, otherwise known as southern California.
But for some reason, humans do live in the northern
reaches of Norway and the hottest deserts on Earth, and
so humans do seem to have this appetite for living
in crazy places, maybe even on Venus. So we went

(03:18):
out there to ask our audience if they thought it
was possible for humans to live on Venus. If you
would like to participate in this audience answer segment for
future episodes, please don't be shy. Write to me two
questions at Danielandthorge dot com and I'll put you on
the list. So think about it for a minute before
you hear these answers. Do you think humans could live

(03:39):
on Venus? Here's what people had to say. It might
be possible for us to live on Venus. But obviously
we've made protection from the extreme pressure, temperature, radiation, and
poisonous gases.

Speaker 5 (03:54):
I guess in the ice caps in the northern region,
but we'd be vaporized before we got there, correct, So
yes and no.

Speaker 6 (04:06):
Well, just today I heard that Venus is a sister
planet to planet Earth. So for that reason, I'd say, PEPs.

Speaker 7 (04:14):
Humans could live on Venus if we could construct a
strong enough structure. Oh look, never say never, that's my motto.

Speaker 8 (04:28):
Okay, So obviously humans could not live on the surface
of Venus. We don't know any life that could manage
that pressure and temperature. But there's definitely a habitable zone
up in the atmosphere kind of best bin like a
cloud city style where we kind of have like balloon
or other floating habitats, and there's possibility there. Is it
worth pursuing. I think everything's worth pursuing. Spend more money

(04:50):
on science.

Speaker 6 (04:51):
There's no way you can live on Venus and be
a human unless you have some insanely good air conditioning
system because it's hundred degrees there absolutely not for three
reasons crushing air pressure, extreme air toxicity, and extreme heat.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Humans could live pretty high up in Venus kind of
like the Jetsons, maybe a balloon city or something like
that on surface, no, further out, no, but somewhere in
the middle of the clouds.

Speaker 4 (05:18):
So what do you think of these answers, Kelly?

Speaker 1 (05:19):
I think that the listeners who said never say never,
which was an interesting, you know, repetition in the answers,
are really going to like the guests that we have
on the show today.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
I think there's a wonderful optimism there, you know, the
sense that problems that seemed impossible ten years ago or
fifty years ago might be solvable now. And the humans
are just so ingenious and always coming up with new solutions,
which means that places that used to be impossible to
imagine living might eventually one day be like cozy and comfortable.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Maybe. Who knows.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Humans like to dream big, and on today's show, we've
got a pretty big dreamer.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
I mean, why do you think humans like to dream big?

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Kelly?

Speaker 2 (06:00):
You wrote a whole book on this where you were
not exactly you know, in favor of space colonization in
the near term. Why do you think it captures the imagination?
What are the motivations for everybody casting their ideas and
maybe even their families and their descendants out past the
comforts of Earth.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
To be honest, I've been asked this question a lot,
and I don't think I will ever have a perfect answer.
But I think it's because we all think different things
are awesome, you know, Like like I have a vodka
bottle filled with tapeworms from a road killed porcupine on
my desk and I think that's awesome and I like
looking at it sometimes. And there are some people who
think it would be awesome to move to space, and like,

(06:39):
I can totally get both of those things.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
I think humans we find our little niches that we
think are awesome and we want to go, and space
is particularly inspirational, you know. I think most of us,
you and I talk on the show all the time
about looking up at the stars and all the big
thoughts that makes us have and how small it makes
us feel. And yeah, I don't think I have a
really good answer, but I think just you know, it's
kind of awesome, and that's a good enough. He's going
to do a lot of things as long as it
doesn't hurt anyone else.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Well, I think it would be awesome.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
If all the tapeworms on Earth were evicted and sent
to space, Daniel, bands are too awesome.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
No, No, I am so glad you don't have any
power over these things, Daniel.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
They have to say here where people like me can
study them.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
All Right, Well, we have a fun expert to talk
to today who knows a lot about what it might
be like to live outside of the Earth's comfort zone,
out in space and maybe even in the atmosphere of Venus.

Speaker 8 (07:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
So, our guest today is Guiermo Sunline. I've had the
pleasure of meeting Guermo in person. We've chatted virtually a
couple times. He's a really fun guy to talk to.
He's got big ideas. He was an officer in the
US Marine Corps. He got an AB in economics from
UC Berkeley and a jd from the UC College of
Law in San Francisco. He's an explorer, an entrepreneur, and

(07:50):
a philanthropist. And today we're going to talk to him
about a space venture studio he's working on called Humans
to Venus, where their goal is to get a thousand
people living in the Venusian atmosphere by twenty fifty and
there's a lot of challenges with that goal, but Ghermo's
the right person to be working on it, so let's
talk to him about why he thinks this is a

(08:11):
good plan for humanity.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
I'm skeptical, but fascinated. Let's do it same.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Welcome to the show, Girmo. We're excited to have you here.

Speaker 6 (08:21):
Hey, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
So you and I have met Irl once and it
was a lot of fun, So I'm excited to be
chatting with you again about all of your awesome Venus stuff.
You are the only person I've ever talked to who
made me think that maybe Venus isn't quite best bad.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
But we'll get there. Okay.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
So we're talking about settling space, and so first let's
talk about why space is so hard to settle. So
humans are like super well adapted to life on Earth.
What are some challenges that space poses to the human body?

Speaker 6 (08:55):
Yeah, geez, where to start with that? I mean you
know this from writing your book, right, I mean, first
of all, we're adapted to our gravity here on Earth,
which I'm sure we'll come back to in a minute
here talking about Venus. Then we've got the protection of
our atmosphere. So we've got both the breathable air that
we take for granted as we take our breaths every day,

(09:17):
plus keeping us nice and cozy and warm from the
cold of space and at the same time keeping us
from getting fried by the sun, which is basically this
big star that we're just living very close to. So yeah, geez,
where to start. I mean, on top of all that,
obviously we have to eat and drink water, which is

(09:40):
easy to get relatively speaking, here on Earth, and it
gets harder as you leave Earth. So one of the
things that I always say is I think people that
work in space or work at trying to get humans
into space are probably some of the biggest environmentalists and
conservation because they have a true appreciation for how important

(10:05):
Earth is for the human body and how well, as
you said, how well adapted we are to Earth, and
how ill adapted we are to basically living anywhere else.
So it is our precious, our precious homeworld. We got
to take care of it.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
I was surprised at how many people in the space
community are environmentalists who are really interested in sustainability, because
I think that when I, as.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
An ecologist, talk to my friends.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
A lot of them would be like, oh, but the
space people, they don't care about Earth. They just want
to dump it and leave it behind and go leave
somewhere else. But that has not at all been my
experience with the community since interacting with you all.

Speaker 6 (10:42):
Yeah, I think I think that's one of the frustrating things,
you know, as you're dealing with the media or the
general public, or even friends and family, right they're like,
you know, why are you trying to leave Earth? We
have so many problems here on Earth. It's like, yeah,
I know, but you know, it's also the best way
to draw attention to those problems on Earth and help
find solutions for them. So at least for some people,

(11:03):
it's the best way for you know, for people like
me and maybe you, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
I think it's really interesting that you comment that humans
are well adapted to Earth but ill adapted anywhere else,
because one of the things I think about for human
adaptation is how amazing it is that we've been able
to live in so many different environments, Like what else
other than you know, bacteria can adapt to like really
cold and really warm and really wet and really dry,
and we've built cities basically everywhere on the Earth except

(11:29):
maybe Antarctica. Is that just because we're considering a pretty
narrow range of habitats compared to like the extraordinary radiation
and dryness and wetness and insanity of space.

Speaker 6 (11:40):
Yeah, that's exactly as you were saying that, That's exactly
what I was going to say. You know, it is
such a narrow band relatively speaking. You know, the temperatures
is a big one, right, you mentioned you know, the
hottest place on Earth and the coldest place on Earth
range wise is nothing compared let's say to the excid
or light side of the Moon, or you know, day

(12:03):
or night on Mars. And so it is a very
narrow range. And again kind of focusing on the core
advantage of Venus, all of that is still within one
G of gravity. So even if you think about even
astronauts in low Earth orbit, they're still experiencing one g
of gravity. The reason they float is because they're constantly

(12:25):
falling off Earth in response to the one G of gravity.
But even that, we're still within one G of gravity.
Or even if you think about pressure, atmospheric pressure. As
you know, I've done work underwater taking humans underwater in
subs and going from the surface of the Earth, let's
say at sea level, where you have one atmosphere of
atmospheric pressure, and go into space to the vacuum of space,

(12:48):
it's a change of only one atmosphere. Going underwater, it's
a change of one atmosphere every thirty three feet roughly
ten meters going down, because you've got the way to
the atmosphere on top of you, plus you have the
weight of the water on top of you. But we
don't live underwater, and right now, we don't live in
the vacuum of space, and so even atmospheric pressure wise,

(13:11):
we're really only in a very narrow range from sea
level to maybe you know, some high altitude and that's
about it.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
So basically Earth is like the southern California of the
Solar system. You know, we say we have seasiness, but
really it's not winter.

Speaker 6 (13:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's always sixty eight in sunny.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
You know, So then why should we ever leave It
seems great here?

Speaker 6 (13:33):
Well, you know, it's funny. I just had that. I've
had that discussion several times, and I just had it
last week with a couple of students that I'm mentoring.
You know about why should we leave? And the short
answer I think is we should never leave, right. I mean,
if you think about it from a survival standpoint, survival
instinct standpoint, if you're somewhere comfortable and it's not dangerous

(13:54):
to you, and it's got water and air and food,
and you know, why would you ever leave? And the
thing is, I kind of look at this like in
nature when you look at an ant colony or a
bee hive. Right, once the queens have a good location
for their hive or their colony, they don't move the colony,
they don't move the hive, but they know that at

(14:15):
some point those circumstances may change and they may need
to move the colony and the hive. And so in
both cases they always have a small subset of the
colony or hive that is always going out and looking
at other places. You know, they're kind of, you know,
to use human terms, they're out exploring, you know, they
send scouts out in different places and they end up

(14:37):
losing a lot of ants and a lot of bees
in the process, but some of them make it back
and they convey information to the queens, and at some
point the queens make a decision that it's time to
move the colony or move the hive, and now they've
got some information, they and they actually do move them
for the survival of the colony or hive. I think,

(14:57):
to a certain extent, I think that's kind of what
driving a little bit of let's say Elon Musk looking
at Mars as a potential second home for humanity, is
that at some point we may decide we need to
move humanity somewhere, or at least a portion of humanity,
and by the time that day comes, it's going to
be too late to think about it, like we have

(15:19):
to have already, you know, taken some steps in that direction.
I think that's I think that's at the core of
what's driving someone like Elon to look at taking humanity
off planet. But I agree with you. I mean, until
something like that happens, like rationally, why would you ever
leave Earth?

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Well, so that's why Elon wants to settle space. Why
do you want to settle space?

Speaker 6 (15:41):
This is where it gets a little bit philosophical. But
going back to the ant and be analogy, I think genetically, psychologically,
I don't know, there's a small subset of Homo sapiens
that are wired the same way those scouts are in
the in the beehive or in the colony, and I
think I'm just wired that way. It's I think that's

(16:03):
also why within the explorer community, forget space for a second, right,
just the general explorer community. Like if you go to
the Explorers Club and talk to anybody there, any of
the members there, about the stuff that they're working on,
and they go some of the places Daniel was just
talking about, you know, the deserts, the polls, you know,
high altitudes. Probably the most common question that an explorer

(16:24):
gets asked is why, right, why are you doing this?
It just doesn't make sense. It seems it's counterintuitive, It
goes against your survival instinct to take a risk climbing
that mountain or doing whatever. And every explorer since you
get asked that question so often you come up with
an answer that you give, but it never feels like
a complete answer, It never feels like a fulfilling answer.

(16:46):
And I think if you talk to explorers, I think
at the core it's because they don't know really why
they're doing it. And I think the reason they don't
know why they're doing it is because they're just wired
that way. You know, they're just being themselves. That's one
question that explorers never ask each other. You never hear
an explorer. I remember at the Explorers Club ask another member, Hey,

(17:06):
why are you doing that? Like they already know that
the answer is, I don't know. It's because I'm being myself,
you know, and that's what I do.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's like asking those ants what you're doing, and they're
just like, we're just anting.

Speaker 6 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, or at least the scouts, Yeah, they're just
doing what they think is right.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
I like it, and I feel like, you know, the
parasitologists that I work with, no one is like, why
are you elbowed deep in.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Fish cuts for a worm? Just because we love the worms.
It's very different.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
But anyway, okay, so where are we going to settle?
So that in my book, the two most commonplaces I
hear about people wanting to settle are rotating space stations,
where they argue that you can control so many different
aspects of your environment it's really great, and mores. So
I'd love to hear your takes on the pros and
cons of those two locations so that we can then

(17:56):
set up the even better option of Venus.

Speaker 6 (18:00):
I'd love to see some sort of free floating, rotating
structure somewhere, kind of Oelian kind of future. I think
the big advantage to that one, obviously that everyone pushes
for it is you've got the artificial gravity, right. The
whole reason it's rotating is so that we we have
this artificial unji of gravity, which I think is a

(18:22):
big advantage obviously because I'm looking at Venus. But for
me as an explorer, what I like about that option
is that you can take that rotating ship and just
point it out on the exit on the off ramp
off the Solar System and just go. You know, it's
a one way trip, just go kind of like you know,
Star Trek, to boldly go where no one's gone before.
And I would love that if we have that built,

(18:44):
I'd sign up for that right now. But obviously the
con to that is just the cost is just enormous, right.
I Mean, the biggest engineering structure we've built as humanity
is the International Space Station, and that costs a huge
amount of money, took a lot of time, and it's
not nearly you know, the size that a big rotating,

(19:07):
kind of free floating station would have to be, or
for free floating community would have to be. So that's
the obvious con on that one.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Are you imagining something that's self sustaining? I mean, if
you're going to point this thing out of the Solar
System and needs to not rely on Earth's infrastructure, right,
are you talking about something at that scale where it's
like making its own food, et cetera.

Speaker 6 (19:27):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, So that's a great point, you know,
because then you've got the structure that's kind of a
free floating, rotating, rotating structure. But then you've got the
question of geography, like where are you going to put it?
And if you put that in orbit around Earth, that's fine.
If you've got it still within the Solar system, you know,
you can kind of still be dependent on Earth for

(19:49):
imports and potentially exports. But if you do what I
just suggested, which is just pointed out and just go yeah,
then you've got to make sure that thing's fully self sustaining.
And if you think about it, you know that's going
to require a lot of infrastructure and a lot of people,
you know, to really get to the point where that
society is as specialized as it needs to be to

(20:12):
put everything together.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
And the letter recycling and redundancies. Yeah, it would be tough,
but awesome.

Speaker 6 (20:19):
Yeah, my favorite. I'll tell you my mind got blown
of about a year ago. I'd heard this before, but
there's a YouTube video out that I watched over and
over again. Now I can never remember which economist it
was that that did this. Maybe as I tell you this,
you'll know which one it is. It's from like the
seventies where he holds up a pencil and he talks
about thinking about what it would take to build a

(20:40):
pencil from scratch, And if you think about it, it
takes like millions of people to build that number two pencil. Right,
If you just think about just the wood for the pencil, right,
requires a whole timber company, and you got to go
cut down the tree. Okay, but to do that you
need saws, So somebody's got to make the saws. And

(21:01):
for the saws, you're going to need metal. So someone's
going to need the metal for the blades for the saws,
and someone's going to have to build all that. And
if you think about that, the saws get made at
a factory, Well, someone's got to build the factory and
you got to power the factory. And now all of
a sudden you realize if you go through every single
nuance of that supply chain for that number two pencil,

(21:21):
it's millions of people that you need to get even
just to that number two pencil. You know, sometimes I'll
hold up I think, actually, Kelly, I may have even
done this when we last saw each other in Slovakia,
I held up a beer bottle and with someone I
was talking with, and I just pointed to the label.
Forget the bottle, forget the beer, just the label, the
printed label that goes on the beer bottle. You know,

(21:44):
if you think you know the paper that goes in that,
the adhesive that goes in that, the paint that goes
on that, the design, putting the label, and just getting
that label ready, and then you think it takes millions
of people just to even make that label. And in
the world on Earth, I guess we just take a
lot for granted because we've got eight billion people, right

(22:04):
and they're spread out everywhere, and we have so many
people that we can specialize in these various areas. But
when you think about trying to replicate that beer bottle
label in space or as Daniel was saying, you know,
in a free floating station that's going out toward outside
the Solar System, you're not going to have millions of
people to create all that. So that's that's where things

(22:27):
get interesting, is when you know, we start going off planet,
but we try making that community as self sustaining as possible.
And I think that's also a big premise of Kelly
of your book, right, that we haven't thought through a
lot of those things yet. We're so focused on, you know,
the technology and the science of getting humans off this planet,
but there's a lot of other stuff that we need

(22:47):
to consider when we talk about doing that at scale.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, and those millions of people on Earth can just
go outside and take a big breath of fresh air,
and so you you know, those million people in space,
you also need to provide them the air they breathe.
Everything down to that, it gets complicated.

Speaker 6 (23:02):
Yeah, it gets complicated in a hurry. So, Daniel, to
one thing you were saying before, you know, a couple
of years ago, I was talking with some friends. We
were talking about just kind of even trying to replicate
a community like that, like an off world community like that,
just trying to replicate that here on earth. Right, if
you just started, let's say you wanted to set up
a thousand people here on Earth to live somewhere remote

(23:25):
and be as self sufficient as possible. We realized, at
least through the thought exercise, that the first people you
had to start with was the medical community, right, because
you've got to make sure that these people don't die, right,
and that can stay healthy and then can reproduce and
have kids and grow them into adulthood and all that.

(23:45):
So you have to start with a medical community. And
all of a sudden, we realized, man, this gets complicated
in a hurry, because let's say you start with a hospital, right,
But that hospital's got to be unlike any hospital you've
ever seen on Earth, because first of all, it has
to have every specialty, right. You got to have dentists,
you got to have oncologists, you got to have obstetricians

(24:06):
like cardio. You got to have everybody all in one hospital.
Number one. Number two, it's got to be a teaching
hospital because you don't have medical schools that you can
rely on, so you're going to have to teach the
next generation of medical professionals that come up. Then it's
also going to have to be its own pharmaceutical company,
because you're not going to be able to just order

(24:27):
drugs from a drug company to have them delivered there
if you really want to be truly self sustaining, right,
So you're going to have to develop your own drugs there.
And you got to be a medical devices company because
if you're a dentist or an orthodonist in your drill breaks,
you can't just order another drill. You got to make one. Now,
all of that can be helped with modern robotics and

(24:49):
AI and all sorts of stuff, but it still means
that you need all that functionality all in that one hospital.
And if you think about that, that all of a sudden,
you're getting i don't know, like three hundred people, four
hundred people, five hundred people at a minimum. And now
all those people have families, right, and all those families
have to live somewhere. Everyone's got to live somewhere, so

(25:10):
you need you know, houses and food and sewage and
water and security and all that stuff. It's hard to
make a fully self sustaining society with only a thousand people.
So it's just crazy. Even just doing the thought exercise,
Even if the numbers are all off, you know, and
everything I just said, the premise still stands that it

(25:31):
gets complicated very quickly.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
All Right, you convinced me I'm never leaving Southern California.
I'm here to stay.

Speaker 6 (25:38):
Let me share an anecdote, and I don't think he'll
mind my my sharing this. So a few years ago,
there's a group that was contemplating what it would take
to set up a permanent presence on the Moon. So
this was like eight years ago, nine years ago, and
at the time, this was the I think the third

(25:58):
organization in about a year that did these like workshops
where they would bring people together and just have them
talk about, you know, what would it take to set
up a you know, a permanent presence on the moon.
And so this organization got twelve of us together in Chanuga,
Tennessee for a weekend and it was pretty good. They

(26:19):
brought people together that kind of understood space but came
from different backgrounds. So you had, you know, a scientist,
an engineer, an entrepreneur, a marketer, a lawyer, like you
had different people. And the facilitators. The first thing they
did on the morning of the first day of this
weekend workshop is They went around and they how did
everyone answer the same question, which is what would have

(26:42):
to be set up on the moon for you to
go visit there? Right, not even to go live there,
just to go visit there. And there were different answers
depending on you know, someone said, you know, I'm willing
to go when they have the first music festival there,
because then that means that they've got enough infrastructure that
people could go and it's safe enough and all that.

(27:04):
One person said, you know, I'll go when they have
the first hotel there. You know, there were twelve people
in the room, the two ends of the spectrum. On
one end was me, I said, I'll be the first
one there, like you send me. I don't care, there's
got to be nothing. That's fine. I'll go and I'll
help set everything up for you guys, you know, to follow.
The other end of the spectrum, interestingly enough, was Andy Aldrin, right,

(27:27):
so his dad was Buzz Aldrin, the second man to
walk on the Moon. And Andy surprised all of us
because he said exactly what Daniel just said. He says,
I'm never going. It doesn't matter what you've got set
up there, I'm never going. And he said, I like
my air, I like my food, I like my water,
I like my gravity, I like my radiation protection. I'm

(27:50):
staying right here. And first of all, it took us
all by surprise that some I don't know why. In
our minds, we just figured, well, the son of the
second Man walk on the Moon. Of course he's going
to want to go. And it surprised us that he
said no. And so we asked him, like, why do
you have that, you know, this feeling, this opinion, And
he said, precisely, because I grew up around astronauts. I

(28:12):
grew up with people who risk their lives leaving this planet.
I know how dangerous it is up there. I know
how rough it is. I know how you know, as
we were talking earlier, how well suited we are for Earth,
and like, why would I want to take that risk?
I'm perfectly happy being here. Now that was a few
years ago. I don't know if his mind's changed, but

(28:33):
the fact remained that, you know, the people that I
think are most aware of the risks of leaving this
planet sometimes they are the ones that, like, you know what,
I'm perfectly happy staying right here.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
On that note, let's all take a break to think
about what it would take to convince us to go
to the Moon, and we'll be right back. So we're back,
and we are talking about settling space. So girmo, let's

(29:09):
quickly talk about Mars and why Mars is less good
in your mind than Venus, and then we're let's move
on to talking about Venus.

Speaker 6 (29:16):
First of all, I'm not entirely convinced that Mars is
less good, because it depends on different parameters and why
you're going to where you're going. But each possible destination
in space has its drawbacks, right, It's got its pros
and cons, just like just like being here on Earth, right,
which is on the side, I was trying to figure
out where to live next, and every city on Earth

(29:38):
that I thought about living had its pros and cons,
and I couldn't make up my mind. So it's a
similar thing, I think. You know, the biggest advantage to Mars, obviously,
is just humans are used to walking on hard surfaces,
and you know, so landing on the Moon and landing
on Mars makes sense, which is the drawback, by the way,

(29:59):
to the free floating stations we were talking about earlier.
That's almost like being on a cruise ship stuck out
in the middle of the ocean, as opposed to actually
be ending up somewhere where you can, you know, walk
on ground. The biggest disadvantage I see to Mars is
the lack of gravity. It's the same as the Moon.

(30:19):
The difference is that the Moon is so close to Earth.
It's only three days away. You can go there and
come back. It's kind of a weekend trip almost going
back and forth. I don't want to minimize the risk
of going to the Moon and back, but you know, geographically,
on a Solar System level, it's basically our backyard, whereas

(30:39):
Mars is a lot further away, and if you've got
problems out there and with the lack of gravity or
anything else, it's tough to get any help. And we
already know from our own history of human spaceflight, even
with limited short duration hops to the Moon and lower
th orbit, that we don't react that well to lack

(31:04):
of gravity. Our bodies are as we keep talking about,
our bodies are well suited for one g of gravity
here on Earth. And so to go to Mars, where
it's so far away, it takes so long to get there,
you're kind of committed to being in zero gravity the
whole way there and the whole way back, and then
when you get there, it's only thirty eight percent diverts gravity.

(31:25):
You know, we're just not sure how the human body
is going to react to that. It could be that
it's fine, but it could be that it's not. And
if you're looking at being there from a Homo sapien
expansion into the cosmos perspective, being there multiple generations and
that's where the problems come up, where we're not sure

(31:47):
if humans can reproduce in less than one g of gravity.
And I know Kelly's heard me say this before, right,
you know, we're not sure if we can conceive, we're
not sure if we can carry a fetus to term,
We're not sure if we can deliver a baby without defect,
and most importantly, we're not sure if that Martian born
Homo sapien baby can grow into adulthood and reproduce themselves.

(32:09):
So it's entirely possible that we could be going to
Mars and then kind of die out within one generation
because we can't reproduce. I think that's the biggest challenge.
I'm hoping that I'm wrong. You know, I'm hoping that
we get there and everything works out or we can
figure out ways around it. But as of right now,
given what we know, that is probably the biggest risk

(32:30):
of going to Mars from a species standpoint, at least
from a long term, permanent, multi generational standpoint. Now, the
pro of Mars, I think is from my standpoint because
I'm one of these explorer as explorer bees is you know,
we're on the third rock from the Sun here and
Mars is the fourth rock from the Sun, So it
feels like we're on our way out of the Solar System.

(32:53):
You know, it's closer to the asteroid belt. We can
get to some of the asteroids, and the asteroid belt,
we can get through that and get to the moon
of Jupiter and move on beyond. It seems like we're
heading in the right direction, either in actuality or psychologically.
It feels like we're going out in that direction. I
think that's the biggest advantage that Mars has.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
So I think most people wouldn't listen to the list
of cons that you said and then think, well, we
should go to Venus instead.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Like so, when we were doing.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
The research for our book, Venus was always compared unfavorably
to Hell. And I remember reading about the you know,
Russian venera probes they like landed and.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
Immediately was squished and then melted.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
So we listed in our book we put Venus is
one of the less good options.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah, why were we wrong?

Speaker 6 (33:45):
Well, so I've told you this before. I think even
the first time we met is until four years ago,
I agreed with you, and I think every time we
have to when we talk about Venus, we've got to
get past the everything you just said. If we land
on the surface of Venus, we're going to get crushed
or we're going to get fried, or both, because the
pressure and the temperature at the surface is just horrendous

(34:08):
for Homo sapiens. Or we have to combat the other
end of the sci fi spectrum, which is terraforming Venus. Right,
can we change it so that we take their big
atmosphere and make it more amenable to us, which, of
course we don't even know if it's possible, and even
if it's possible, it would take centuries, so like it's
total sci fi. So I think what changed for me

(34:33):
four years ago is I was reading a white paper
about those Soviet era ven aera emissions that you were
talking about. And for people who are listening who don't know,
and I didn't know this until four years ago, the
former Soviet Union has more experience learning more about Venus
than anybody else because they've sent I don't know, a
dozen or so probes in orbit and through the atmosphere
and to the surface of Venus. So four years ago

(34:57):
I was reading this white paper about some of the
data collected from these these missions, and there's a chart
in particular that stood out which showed that, yeah, on
the surface of Venus, the pressure is horrendous and the
temperature is horrendous, but about fifty kilometers off the surface,
in the Venusian atmosphere, there's like a ten kilometer wide

(35:21):
swath of the atmosphere where it's basically one atmosphere of pressure,
which is about what is sea level here on Earth,
and where temperatures range from twenty five to fifty degrees centigrade,
which is definitely hot, but it's not fatal. It's gonna
it's not going to burn, you know, melt your suit

(35:41):
or anything.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
I want to see that on the advertising for Venetian homes.
Not fatal.

Speaker 6 (35:46):
That's really yeah, hey, yeah, but you know what, as
we were talking about earlier, that's a claim that you
can't make on Mars or the Moon, right, you know,
you can't make them not fatal on on pressure, on
gravity or on are on temperature. So so that's one

(36:06):
reason where all of a sudden I looked at it
and go, wait a second. And by the way, let's
back up. The whole reason I was looking at that
white paper to begin with was because of the gravity
that we were talking about earlier, right, the problems with
making a Martian community multi generational and not knowing if
we can reproduce. I started thinking, well, it'd be nice
if we found somewhere in their solar system then had
one g of gravity that was not one of these,

(36:30):
you know, human constructed spinning, rotating structures. And since gravity
is related to size and mass of the object, obviously
Venus would be the best choice because it's ninety eight
percent the size of Earth and it has ninety eight
percent of our gravity.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
But we are talking about a human constructed something, right,
because as you say, the surface is way too deep.
The nice region is not on the surface. There's no
surface to walk around fifty kilometers fifty eight kilometers. Also,
that is very, very high. I'm terrified of heights. You
talking about living fifty kilometers above the surface on some
human constructed platform. I'm really going to be having to

(37:09):
trust those engineers.

Speaker 6 (37:11):
Yeah, yeah, Well so you're right now. Backtracking one step though,
I'm talking about human constructed and rotating just so we
can get artificial gravity. I see, right, You know, at
least on Venus, whatever the human constructed structure is, you
don't have to spin it around and rotate it and

(37:32):
hope that it doesn't break apart, because you've got one
g of gravity. Right, And I want to come back
to the rest of what you just said, because I
think that that's very important. But let me just keep
kind of going through the thought process originally from four
years ago, because when I looked at it, I thought, well,
this is perfect. Then we've got one g of gravity

(37:53):
and fifty kilometers off the surface, we're going to have
decent temperature, decent pressure. I dug further. They're into the
white paper, and the data that they collected seem to
suggest that the Venusian atmosphere is still so thick that
even at fifty kilometers, as you said, that's very high up,
but their atmosphere is so thick there, like there's people

(38:13):
living there. I don't know why I just said that,
but you know, Venus' atmosphere is still so thick that
what's left above you at fifty kilometers is still thick
enough to provide adequate protection from the Sun's radiation, even
though Venus is closer to the Sun and it does
not have a magnetic field the way we do. So
I thought, wow, this would be like a perfect place,

(38:37):
you know, as close as it gets off Earth. Digging
a little further, it turns out Venus is also closer
to Earth than Mars is and has a more similar
orbit than Mars. If you've looked at Mars or thought
about Mars, you've seen or even talk listening to elon Talk,
you know that there's a launch window every twenty six

(38:57):
months where we can launch anything toward Mars. And that's
in large part because we have a fairly circular orbit
around the Sun, and Mars has a fairly more elliptical
orbit around the Sun, whereas Venus is a lot more circular,
kind of like ours. So it kind of makes it
easier to get to and from Venus.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Is there a regular launch window though, that's an and
if so, what is the timeframe there?

Speaker 6 (39:18):
Yeah? So I think the transit time is a lot shorter,
but it's also more regular, like it's always three to
four months, whereas Venus can be anywhere from six to
nine months. And in some cases, if you hit it
on the wrong time, you may as well not even
try because you know you're never going to catch it
coming around. But also importantly, you're using less fuel to

(39:40):
catch it, you need less delta V We promise not
to get too technical, but so anyway, I started looking
at all that. But the problem is, as I've said before,
you know, I'm not technical, I'm not an engineer, I'm
not a scientist. So I was looking at this, going okay, this,
I can't be the first person to have seen this, right,
So of course the first thing I did is a
Google search, And it turns out NASA had actually looked

(40:00):
at this already a few years ago. They created a
thing called HAVOC. NASA loves their acronyms, right, so HAVOC
High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, and they had come up
with this concept of having basically floating research stations in
the Venusian atmosphere, and I thought, okay, well, if NASA's

(40:21):
looked at it, then I'm not completely nuts. There's got
to be other people that have looked at it and
kept doing more Google search and poking around, and it
turns out a lot of people around the world have
looked at this, including the Russians, and so it just
kind of became interesting seeing, Okay, there's all these experts
everywhere that have actually looked at this. And I thought
the same thing, Kelly. Did you know when you and
Zach were researching your book, It's like, well, then, how

(40:43):
come we don't know about this?

Speaker 4 (40:44):
You know?

Speaker 6 (40:44):
Why is it such a hidden gem kind of thing?
And I think it's because all these people are kind
of working in isolation around the world, and because the
world is so focused on Moon, Mars and beyond, and because,
as you were saying, you know, the conventional wisdom on
Venus is that it's hell. Everyone's afraid of poking their

(41:04):
head up and being labeled some sort of lunatic on it.
And so I started, before I poked my head up
and started being labeled at lunatic, I started trying to
have private conversations with people that had talked about this
or discussed this or put out videos or blogs or whatever.

(41:25):
And the more I talk to people, the more it
seemed to make sense.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
So you said floating in the Venusian atmosphere.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
So floating to me implies like no work needs to
be done, but like propellant will constantly need to be
used to keep this thing up, so it doesn't, you know,
fall down, so everyone dies.

Speaker 6 (41:43):
Yeah, yeah, no, So that's great. So actually that's a
good segue to come back to what Daniel said earlier
about living on this man made structure, you know, floating
somewhere and trusting it and being afraid of heights and
all that. So the interesting thing in Venus's atmosphere, which
is primarily carbon dioxide, and it's very very dense. It
is so dense that if you take our normal breathable

(42:05):
air and put that in a balloon, it will actually
float in Venus' atmosphere, which means that if you're looking
to build something that's livable, you could essentially take something.
And this is an engineer did this. I didn't do
the calculation. So if it's wrong, someone else can work
around it. If you take let's say a football stadium

(42:28):
that's domed, and you fill it with normal breathable air,
it will create enough lifting force in venus' atmosphere to
keep the whole football stadium afloat?

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Does that check out?

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Particle physicists, Daniel, that's a whole lot of particles to
calculate it all at once. But doesn't that depend a
little bit on the extra mass, Like you know, how
heavy is the football stadium, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (42:53):
But you know it might.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
I mean, you can float like huge battleships that are
basically bubbled of air in the water. That's effectively we're
talking about, right.

Speaker 6 (43:01):
Yeah, yeah, something like that. So cool. Again, not being
an engineer and not being a scientist, I tend to
live my life trusting engineers and scientists and instead of
questioning them, maybe I should question them more. But for
something like that, it seems to me like that's an
engineering problem. Like you put enough engineers on that they'll
figure out how to how to make this thing float.

(43:24):
So two things, Kelly to your point.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
And after the first few disasters crashes, they'll really figure
it out. Yeah, so you don't want to be in
the first wave. But eventually.

Speaker 6 (43:34):
Well, and hopefully, you know, the first few waves are
going to be autonomous and there won't be anyone on
them until they figure it out, right. But you know, Kelly,
to your point, despite the fact that this thing may
kind of float, like you said, with like little or
no effort, there is going to still have to be
you know, maintaining that that equilibrium and keep it floating.

(43:55):
And then there's probably going to need to be some
sort of system to keep it kind of station keeping,
you know, make sure it doesn't dip too far down
or too far up, because if it goes down, it's
going to be subject to the additional pressure and temperature.
Too far up, it's it's going to be cold and
all that stuff. So there's going to have to be
some adjustment there. But Daniel, going back to your earlier

(44:15):
point about having the sphere of heights and all that stuff,
I think it's because when you think about it, you're
kind of thinking of like a small like research station
kind of thing. But imagine an entire building or a
football stadium, right, or a mall right, you could kind of,
or or a cruise ship right where you're you're always
on this big structure and and it's floating, and I

(44:41):
think it's also I guess related to that is one
thing that we don't have a lot of from a
science standpoint. We don't have a lot of photographs or
video of the Venusian atmosphere, so we're not even sure
what the view will look like from up there. It's
very dense atmosphere. There are a lot of clouds there,
and so so it may just be kind of like

(45:01):
when you're in an airplane and you're flying through clouds,
or you're flying right above clouds, you may not even
get a sense for how high up you are.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Anyway, And if I fall off this platform, right, I'm
not just going to be on my own. I'm going
to be in some sort of breathable suit anyway. Say
I'm like working on the outside of it, I fall off,
I'm wondering because the pressure, will I actually fall off
or will I just float next to it? Is it
more like being underwater where if you like lose your grip,
you're floating next to it, as opposed to like actually

(45:31):
plummeting towards the surface.

Speaker 6 (45:33):
You know, that's a great question. I don't think I've
ever been asked that question in the last four years.
You know, I have no idea. So since I'm not
an engineer scientist, I'm going to have to ask somebody
you know, to help out with that, because a part
of me says, well, you've got gravity pulling you down, right,
So it is like being one gee of gravity. It
is going to pull you down. But I guess to
your point, is the atmosphere so dense that it wouldn't

(45:54):
be able to pull you down? Would you float? Like?
You know, that's a great question.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
I don't know the same physics should apply to a
in an air bubble as they do to a football
stadium in an air bubble.

Speaker 6 (46:03):
Right, so ooh, that's a great question.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Oh let's all take a break and see if we
could figure out the answer, and we'll come back in
a second to chat more about Venus. So, I think
that living in Venus would also have some really interesting

(46:28):
material science.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Problems that would need to get solved.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
In particular, I'm thinking about the fact that there are
lots of clouds made of sulphuric acid that you'd be
floating on top.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
Of in the Venutian atmosphere.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
What do we know about how well habitats can survive
stuff like that.

Speaker 6 (46:46):
Yeah, So that's great because there are two things that
I was kind of excited about, because there are two
huge cons to venus, right you asked me earlier, the
cons to Mars. They're two huge cons to venus. One
is that the atmosphere is primarily CO two, so we
can't breathe it. And the other one is what you

(47:07):
just mentioned is the clouds are made of sulphuric acid.
So when I read that, I'm like, oh, well, now
what do we do? But I kind of researched a
little bit more, and so the first thing we'd have
to do on the first one is we'd have to
be able to convert the CO two into breathable air.
And the thing with that is if you're a scuba diver,

(47:28):
you know that scuba divers have been using rebreathers for
a long time now, and so there is a method
of converting CO two into breathable air. And by the way,
a few weeks ago, I was in Boston at a
conference and after one of the sessions, we were at
one of the receptions and I happened to be talking
with a guy and before he even knew what I

(47:49):
was working on with the whole Venus thing. I asked
him what he was working on. It turns out he
was an atmospheric scientist, and I'm like, oh wait, I've
got three questions for you. So question number one, is
it possible to turn CO two into breathable air just
from a atmosphere chemistry standpoint? And he said, yes, it
depends on what scale, but yeah, it can be done.

(48:12):
And it depends on how much money it's going to
take to do it or resources it's going to take
to do it, but yes, from a chemical standpoint, it
can be done.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I think that's the subodia reaction. Didn't Moxie just do
that on Mars? I think they had a box on
Mars that was converting the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere anyway,
So sorry, yeah, that's a problem we've made some progress on.

Speaker 6 (48:33):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, that's my point with this is
that you know, these are not like we don't need
to like invent the warp drive or something, you know
to make this happen. You know, because number two is
can we extract water from sulphuric acid clouds and CO
to atmosphere and he said, yeah, absolutely, that's a no brainer.

(48:54):
I said, okay. And then the third one is what
your question was, right, do we have materials that can
withstand sulfuric acid? And he said yes, and the two
most common ones are glass and the big long scientific
name that I don't know, but the common name is teflon. Right,

(49:17):
so we've got teflon that's resistant to sulphuric acid and glass.
So I asked him, well, given you know CO two
and sulfuric acid, can you make teflon out of it?
It's like, well, you'd need fluorine or something like that,
you'd add it in, but you could, you could create it.
So so the bottom line is it sounds like even

(49:39):
the biggest obstacles to setting up shop in the Venusian
atmosphere are from an engineering perspective and from a scientific perspective,
we can probably overcome even today if we really wanted
wanted to do it. It's not like, like I said,
it's not like we've got to invent warp drive or
artificial gravity or anything else like that.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
So to try to bottom line, so, I think what
you're arguing is that so rotating space stations awesome but
super complicated, and Venus is less complicated because you don't
have to spin, and Mars has a lot of benefits.
But if not living in one G is a game stopper,
then Venus is a better option.

Speaker 6 (50:18):
Yeah, I mean, in some ways you could think about it.
You know, in the US, NASA has been following this Moon,
Mars and Beyond strategy for a couple of decades, and
the rationale behind that is, you know, kind of like
the crawl walk run approach. Right, we start in Leo,
that's crawling, we're getting used to kind of operating in space.
Then we go to the Moon, which is our planetary backyard,

(50:41):
to build up some of the competencies and that develop
some of the technologies, and then we're going to actually
go out to Mars. So it's kind of like this
crawl walk run kind of thing. But if you think
about it, in many ways, Venus may actually be a
better next stepping stone because at least we don't have
to worry about all these weird orbital mechanics, we don't
have to worry about gravity, we don't have to worry

(51:03):
about you know, what's the hardest part you ask anybody
on Mars missions. What's the hardest part about a Mars mission,
and it's the hard landing on the surface, you know,
surviving that hard landing. I don't know what the success
rate is on on the Mars missions, but you know,
most of them failed just during the landing, and you know,

(51:23):
we don't have to worry about that on Venus. We
got to make sure that, you know, we don't fall
through the fifty kilometer mark and implode on the way
down to the surface. But it's a lot of challenges
that we're going to have going to Mars that we're
not going to have going to Venus. And so there's
there's an argument to be made that maybe Venus is
even a good training ground for going to Mars or beyond.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Would it be fair to say that that it's not
necessarily that we don't have the same problems, but they're
just a little easier because, like Venus will still have
some orbital mechanics to worry about, and getting just the
right spot in the Venusian atmosphere is tough, but maybe
not as tough as landing on Mors.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
But space is never easy. Problems never go away.

Speaker 6 (52:04):
Yeah, Yeah, that's why I never say that it's easy,
or even that it's better because it's just different, right,
Because you're right, we've got similar problems, but they may
be easier to solve. But we also have some problems
on Venus that you don't have on Mars, like dealing
with the CO two atmosphere and dealing with the sulphuric
acid clouds and dealing with you know, we haven't even

(52:26):
talked about the mechanics of this, but you know, in
both cases, you're probably orbiting the planet and then you're
going down to where the human community is. On Mars
you're going from orbit down and landing on the surface,
and then in Venus you're going down to the atmosphere.
In both cases you also have to be able to
come back. So from Mars you're launching from the surface
back to the orbit before coming back to Earth or whatever.

(52:47):
And that's something we know how to do, because that's
how we've got there to begin with. Right, We launched
off the surface of Earth into orbit and then beyond,
but launching from an atmospheric platform back to orbit is
something we really haven't done. We've tested, but we don't
have a lot of experience doing that, and certainly not humans. Right,
we haven't launched humans from a hot air balloon or

(53:08):
from a stratospheric balloon into orbit. So those are challenges
that we haven't faced yet and that we won't face
on Mars or the Moon. But on the flip side,
a lot of those things are, like I said, are
challenges that, like I said, I keep kind of tritely saying,

(53:29):
we don't have to invent warp drive or something like
that to do that. It's something that we could even
start testing. That's the other nice thing, by the way,
with Venus is so much of the technologies and the
operational capabilities we're going to need to develop or about
operating in an atmosphere, and so we can actually test
some of those here on Earth. Right. We could test
high altitude balloons and trying to launch rockets into orbit

(53:51):
from there, and people have tried that and have tested it.
But we could develop those capabilities. We could develop some
of these larger floating structures and try The other thing
we haven't tried is point to point transportation within the atmosphere. Right,
if we had two balloons with stations, can we get
from one to the other, you know, floating over there

(54:12):
in some sort of transportation system. So it's things that
we could test here on Earth before we actually go
to Venus. It's tougher to test stuff from Mars because
we can't simulate the gravity and everything else.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
We're coming up on the end of our hour, and
my plan for wrapping things up was to ask if
you would personally go to Venus given the chance.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
But I feel like.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
We've had enough comparisons to the scout Bees that the
answer must be yes.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
So what is the answer?

Speaker 6 (54:40):
I think the advantage to living in Venus because of
the one G of gravity is it'll be relatively straightforward
to go back and forth between Venus and Earth, especially
for anyone born on Venus. Right, any homo sapien born
on Venus is going to be used to one G
of gravity there, and so they can easily come back
and visit here on Earth and go back. Any homo

(55:00):
sapien born on Mars is going to be used to
thirty eight percent of Earth gravity, So coming to visit
here on Earth to them, it will feel like they're
constantly pulling a two and a half g turn in
an airplane, and that's going to be uncomfortable. At a minimum,
it's going to be uncomfortable, you know. At worst, it's

(55:21):
just going to cause all sorts of health problems. So
I don't think very many Martian Homo sapiens, assuming we
can you conceive and be born there and all that,
I don't think very many of them are ever going
to be able to come back to Earth, whereas Venusians
will kind of be more of a society that will
have closer ties with Earth and go back and forth.

(55:42):
Now I'm kind of talking more sci fi futuristic, you know,
one hundred years from now, but I think that's for
that reason. I think I'd rather live on a floating
platform in Venus than on some surface of Mars Station, which,
by the way, probably going to be underground anyway. So
it's going to be just as claustrophobic as staying stranded

(56:06):
on a little floating station in the middle of the
Venusian atmosphere.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Yeah, Daniel's afraid of heights and I'm claustrophobic. So I
suspect that Daniel and I are going to be staying
on Earth and Germo.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
You can visit Us from Venus because it'll.

Speaker 6 (56:18):
Be conunious, So I'll send you pictures.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Okay, was there any more questions you wanted to ask? Daniel?

Speaker 2 (56:24):
You know, I think a lot about where I moved
because it influences not just where my kids live, but
where they're from. You know, I moved to southern California,
and now I have to hear my kids say, like,
I'm from Orange County, which is a bit of a
shock to the system. So how do you feel about
moving to Venus and then having your kids be like,
I'm Venusian.

Speaker 6 (56:43):
I think it would be cool. You know. I was
just thinking about this because I was watching For All
Mankind Love it and you know, not to spoil it
for people who haven't watched it yet, but it's just
interesting the evolution of off world communities when they're on
the Moon or on Mars and versus Venus, which by

(57:05):
the way, is not part of the For All Mankind.
And I think that kind of will evolve over time.
And I think to a certain extent, Kelly and Zach
kind of talked about this, and they're both too. But
if you just kind of look at the history of
human expansion from one piece of land mass on Earth
to another piece of land mass owner you know, initially

(57:25):
First of all, the demographics of whoever's in this new
community change over time. You know, the first ones are
the explorers, and then you've got settlers, and then you've
got natives who were born there, and a lot of
them will always come back because they're originally from wherever
they were from. And eventually you get to a point
where you've got people that were born and raised in

(57:46):
this new community that have never been back to their ancestors,
you know, their parents' homeland or their grandparents' homeland, and
so they start developing their own identity, and eventually they'll
kind of become more independent because they'll have their own lane,
which their own culture, their own belief system and all that.
I think that's going to be more true on Mars

(58:06):
than on Venus. I think over time, I think the
Moon will never have that identity because it's just so
easy to go back and forth. I think it's always
going to be tied to Earth's identity. I think Venus
will have its own identity and people will say, hey,

(58:27):
I'm Venusian, I'm from Venus, but it'll still be fairly
closely tied to Earth because it's relatively easy to go
back and forth, although over time a lot of Venusians
will never come to Earth, just like a lot of
Earthlings will never go to Venus. But Mars is really
going to be where there's going to be I think
an independence movement because of just the physical problems of

(58:49):
Martian Homo sapiens coming back to Earth and vice versa.
So I think, yeah, I'd be perfectly okay with descendants
saying that they're from Venus. In fact, I think it'd
be pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
It does sound pretty cool. Well, thanks very much for
answering all of our questions. Really appreciate your time.

Speaker 6 (59:07):
Yeah, sure, it's great. It's always great talking with Kelly
and Daniel. It's great meeting you all.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Ride super fun to talk to Giermo. So what do
you think in the end, Kelly, what are the chances
that they're going to get a thousand people to live
if floating in the atmosphere or Venus by twenty to fifty.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
I think.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
I think that conversations like this make me realize just
how harsh space is. You know that Venus, that by
listening to someone like Germo at the end, you could
be like, well, maybe Venus isn't quite as inhospitable, as
I thought to me, that just says that everything out
there is just absolute rubbish.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
It's just really bad living out in space. But you
know it does. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
I don't think we're going to be living having space
settlements anywhere.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
In space by twenty fifty. And I think if you ask.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Ghermo, he'd say that they're shooting for twenty fifty.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
But you know, he wouldn't hang his hat on that date.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
It's my not answer answer to your question is what
do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
My answer to my question is that the question is
totally bogus because it's impossible to predict this kind of stuff.
Humanity and human civilization and technology changes so quickly, and
the changes happen faster every year that you know, the
technology required could be invented that what is impossible today
could be totally possible in five years. Somebody could invent
some new kind of material which makes these things really

(01:00:27):
easy or simple. And so it's impossible to predict. And
I like their strategy of like, let's aim for it,
let's push for it, because that's exactly the kind of work.

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
You have to do to make it possible.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
You have to push forward on all these boundaries and
do basic research and trying to crack problems. And you know,
even if they don't figure this out, this kind of
work could lead to new ideas that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Helps solve other problems.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
And so I'm in favor of, like, let's do all
of it, you know, all the science and all the engineering.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Sure, I'm with you, and I can tell you that
it's a lot of fun drinking with Garamo.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Well, thanks very much for bringing him on the show.
And thanks again to Germo for answering all of our questions,
well meaning.

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
And naive as they were.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Thanks very much Kelly for joining us today, and thanks
everybody for taking this mental trip to Venus with us.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Thanks friend and co host Daniel.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Thanks brand and co host Kelly, and thanks to all
the listeners. All right, tune in next time for more
science and curiosity. Come find us on social media where
we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Instant,
and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

(01:01:36):
and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
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