The surface of Venus is not anything close to habitable, since its average surface temperature is around 864 degrees Fahrenheit. But what if we never bothered trying to walk on Venus and instead built a floating city in the clouds that would make Lando Calrissian feel right at home? That’s one project that NASA engineers are working on right now and it’s not as crazy as you might think.
Venus might be closer to Earth, but that doesn’t make it easier to explore than Mars. For starters, the surface of Venus has the pressure of 92 of Earth’s atmospheres, to say nothing of the temperatures — which can reach more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees C), heat that can melt lead. But two NASA scientists, Dale Arney and Chris Jones, suggest we skip the surface altogether and stick to Venus’s clouds, according to a report in IEEE Spectrum. To do so would require big policy changes at NASA, which has been promoting crewed Mars missions as part of its Orion program. But these scientists say that the atmosphere of Venus, explored by an airship, may be more hospitable to human missions. Enter the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, or Havoc.
