Life in floating colonies on Venus

Venus is in a sense the most similar planet to ours in the solar system. It has a gravity, size, and internal composition comparable to those of Earth.

The real obstacle would be surviving the dense atmosphere at 460 degrees Celsius, its pressure 90 times greater than that of Earth, its toxic fumes, and the planet’s extremely slow rotation on its axis.

Under such conditions, landing on the surface would be suicide, and colonizing the planet even more so.

But there is a layer of the Venusian atmosphere, above the thick clouds, where the atmosphere is as dense as Earth’s one, gravity is only slightly inferior, and the temperature is about 75 degrees.

An environment in which living becomes much more feasible, with the only problem (besides the height, of course) coming down to the different length of the Venusian day.

It is therefore possible to imagine, in the not-too-distant future, outposts floating 52 km above the planet’s surface, held aloft by helium-filled structures.

And it is even possible, since many terrestrial microbes can thrive in acidic and sulfur rich environments, that some extremophilic microorganisms could evolve to float in the habitable layers of the Venusian atmosphere, and form genuine biological cloud colonies.