Colonizing Venus in Through the Curtains of the Waterfall

Here is a long but interesting page about the potential for colonizing Venus. Most people who talk about colonizing other planets focus on Mars, but this article makes a good case for Venus. While the surface of Venus is far too hot and high-pressured for humans to survive, interplanetary space is very cold with zero pressure. It turns out that in between, there’s an area in Venus’ atmosphere that has temperature and atmospheric pressure similar to Earth. Constructing floating colonies here would be easier than ground-based ones in harsher environments on Mars or the moon.

Such colonies are quite far into the future, but I find it interesting to think about. Also, if such an Earth-friendly area exists in Venus’ atmosphere, is the same true of the gas giant planets? The article does not say, but it is exciting to imagine cloud cities filling the Earth-friendly layers of Jupiter and Saturn, potentially supporting hundreds of billions of humans.