Colonizing Space part 1: Venus

https://science.nasa.gov/

Let’s start this with Venus, as unlikely as that sounds. Venus is our closest neighbour and is sometimes called Earths evil twin. Venus' surface temperature is 450 °C (842 °F), making it the hottest planet in the solar system; to add to this the atmosphere is 92 times that of Earth's. The pressure is equivalent to diving over half a mile under water. This thick atmosphere stops most of the suns heat, hitting the surface and escaping. Along with this, the atmosphere is poisonous at 96% carbon dioxide and the clouds are made up of sulfuric acid.

Most things about Venus would try to crush, dissolve and/or melt humanity and most technology. You’d think these things would rule out Venus but it hasn’t put some scientist off, of coming up with ideas to live on this planet.

We know the surface is just far too hot to live on. So some scientist had to think outside the box. 50 kilometres up, in Venus’ sky the temperature is habitable and gravity would almost be identical to Earth’s surface at 90%. This all leads to one conclusion, aerostat habitation and floating cities.

Scientists have solved a lot of the problems; you’d think would come with this. Breathable air oxygen and nitrogen, would keep the blimps up, as its lifting air in Venus’ atmosphere. Of course the floating cities would need protection, from the sulfuric acid but we’ve already created equipment to avoid acid corrosion. We’d need resources for human life, like food and water. The atmosphere of Venus has plenty of greenhouse gases so it would be capable of growing plant and food. The hostile atmosphere keeps the planets temperature constant and it doesn't change significantly throughout the year. In breathable air blimps we wouldn’t need depressurized suits. If the blimp did get a tear, the gasses would diffuse without causing any explosions and would be able to be fixed.

https://sacd.larc.nasa.gov/smab/havoc/ Artist impression by Advanced Concepts Lab/NASA Langley Research Center

Disadvantages

So the down side to Venus is, it barely has any water that we know of. Any water is contaminated by sulfuric acid. We’d need to either get water from asteroid mining or from Earth. I wrote an article here about Asteroid mining here. Of course both methods would be costly.

Other methods

There have also been ideas to terraform the planet, which means to change the planets environment, temperature, atmosphere etc, to be more earth-like. Which need an article of its own; in short Venus would need its atmosphere removed of most of its carbon dioxide and the temperature would need cooling.

Source
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdf