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Given a choice of death by fire and death by cold, death by cold is easier to mitigate against, and is the default problem in space. To survive Venus, you have to first survive the freezing trip to Venus. So you need heating and air conditioning. A lot. Of both.

On Mars, you only need the heating systems that got you to Mars.

Similar problem for radiation: going to Mars leads to less radiation. Going to Venus increases radiation. So in Venus orbit, you need more shielding than you need at low Earth orbit. On Mars, you need less.

There's another commentor suggesting floating in steel balloons. Um, weather is going to be rough. Really, really rough. The mass of building materials necessary to survive the storms strikes me as likely deal-breaker. Never mind the complete lack of light.

I don't know if everything is harder on Venus, but most of the first-order issues are substantially harder.



> death by cold is [...] the default problem in space

well, actually... you need lower-energy atoms for higher-energy ones to rub against to carry away the excess. there's not many atoms in vacuum, so the default problem in space is overheating. see eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_cooling_and_ventilation...

> you have to first survive the freezing trip to Venus. So you need heating and air conditioning. A lot. Of both.

the heating part is very, very wrong. the AC would be Atmospheric Control, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Sy....


> you need lower-energy atoms for higher-energy ones to rub against to carry away the excess.

Wat? Conductive and convective heat loss are certainly things, but heat radiates away too, and that is exactly how the systems you describe perform. The fact that the hull doesn't radiate much heat away itself isn't suprising, but all things being equal, the system still dies cold. Put the other way: if heat was truly the problem, is there any outcome where ISS melts, short of re-entry?


> s there any outcome where ISS melts, short of re-entry?

i don't think so. should the cooling system fail, the sources of heat (mechanical work, biological processes) would cease way before that.




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