As much as we need to colonize the universe, it really seems beyond reason to be sending humans on space missions right now. Rockets and robots can handle the reconnaissance and lay the groundwork for starter societies out there. Humans going along for the ride on these early missions is all about narcissism–it makes the missions vanity projects and sporting events. But billionaires and governments feel differently, so peopled missions will be headed to Mars probably sooner than later.

A CosmosUp post suggests that if we’re sending astronauts to build cities in space, perhaps Venus would be a more preferable venue than Mars, provided we don’t settle on its inhospitable surface. The opening:

We’ve talked a lot about sending people to Mars, mostly because sending people to Mars would be really, really cool. But we also talk so much about it because a lot of people think that Mars is the next place humans will colonize.

After all, with just a little technological help, humans can live on the Martian surface. Sure, we’d need to bring along air and a place to live and we’d need to figure out how to eat, but that’s all pretty doable — at least we think it will be soon.

But we have another neighbor, who tends to get ignored in conversations about space colonies: Venus. Venus is usually the closest planet to Earth, and it’s the easiest other planet to get to, so by those measures it might even be a better target than Mars. Plus, people call Venus “Earth’s sister,” which is just really sweet. But people also call Venus “hellish,” and that fire and brimstone is why we don’t talk a lot about colonizing our dear sister planet.

Landing people on Venus’s surface and having them live to tell the tale would be a big challenge, much bigger than for Mars. But what if we didn’t need to land on the surface? What if we could have a floating city in the Venusian skies?

Well, according to some folks at NASA, the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds.•