(2019 Archived) - An Address to the Pioneering Steps of Today and the Mid-Atmospheric Construction of Cloud-Cities
Having written this in 2019, and originally published in 2021.. when I was 15 and 17, there would be inaccuracies that I would correct here. Having removed it, I'm publishing again, for sake of completion so that the efforts wouldn't have gone to vain:
The
geodesic spheres of the Venusian cloud-cities could grow to become quite large
– some of them would have diameters ranging from 1.2 to 1.6 kilometres (0.8 to
1 miles) [7]!Typically, Buckminster Fuller’s CloudNines
are ideally meant to be constructed on the ground. But, on Venus, there isn’t
any ground to construct on! – The surface is simply too hostile. But then, it
would only leave us with the resort of constructing the Cloud-city in the
middle of the Venusian atmosphere. Is it even possible?
Without
addressing this issue directly at first, we have to consider the fact that the
Cloud-cities and even Cloud Nine are quite ambitious plans for our time;
we’ve never made a full scale Cloud Nine before! Also, without being
disheartened by this fact, we have to accept that every grand plan has its
humble beginnings – the same is true for Venusian colonization. We have to find
a humble way – a pioneering step to initiate Venusian colonization, which is
compatible with present technology, funding and global charisma.
This
would bring us to HAVOC – a series of proposed missions which intend to be that
pioneering step. I was quite reluctant to write about HAVOC in this book, as I
intended to focus on the WHY-aspect of Venusian colonization – I intended it
solely for Exodus to Venus: The Civilization of Cloud Cities, which was
more deeply HOW-eccentric and well-illustrated. But now, I feel that it would
be more appropriate to bring some of that HOW-aspect here – but in a much more
abbreviated form. Though HAVOC is relatively new, it’s concept of using
airships isn’t.
Once
upon a time, in the 1980s, a largely unknown Soviet-Russian named G. Moskalenko
came-up with this remarkable idea of having an airship as a manned laboratory on
Venus [65]. It’s quite a nice idea for the time, but what’s
so special about it? Well, he chose airships mostly because they could stay-up
in the atmosphere for extended periods of time, without requiring much fuel or
energy. Moreover, Airship flight would be quite effective on Venus, as the
thick Venusian atmosphere provides significant buoyancy for generation of lift.
Similarly, and most importantly, it should be noted that mass scaling isn’t a
critical factor as “the high density environment of the Venus atmosphere, the
lift produced by the envelope volume was more than sufficient to lift the
airship and its associated systems” [66]; that is, we can
make the airship as enormous, as impractically humongous, as we want them to
be.
Now we face another problem: What should we power the airship
with? It’s obviously solar energy! “The solar flux at
the orbit of Venus is 2600W/m2, which is much greater than the
1360W/m2 available at [the] Earth[’s] orbit” [66].
It, as a matter of fact, is a ~91.176470588% increase in solar flux, which
could significantly boost the performance of solar-powered vehicles.
Additionally, there is sufficient solar energy, to power a vehicle, within or
even below the cloud-layer: “At the bottom of the cloud layer (45km altitude),
the solar intensity is between 520 and 1300 W/m2 depending on
wavelength of radiation collected” [66]. Simply, it implies
that air-flight using airships are still technically possible within, and even
below the cloud decks.
Now,
we can have solar-powered airships, which could play a role as manned
laboratories of Venus. But, could those airships be used for living in? I mean,
mass scaling isn’t a critical feature in the airships feasibility, which would
give us the ability to make them as large as we want – perhaps, large enough to
house a colony? Dale C. Arney and Christopher A. Jones, from the Space Mission
Analysis and Concepts Directorate at the Langley Research Centre in Virginia,
have been exploring the idea [67]. Eventually, this idea
escorted to theformulation of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept,
which we now know as HAVOC. I still doubt whether HAVOC has any connection with
Moskalenko, Landis or Colozza who have also thought of airships of Venus. Nevertheless,
I believe that HAVOC is our pioneering step of Venusian colonization.
HAVOC
is meticulously planned in five separate phases [39, 67]:
Phase I: Exploratory mission with Robotic Precursor.
Phase II: 30-day manned mission to Venus Orbit.
Phase III: 30-day manned mission to Venus Atmosphere.
Phase IV: 1-year manned mission to Venus Atmosphere.
Phase
V: Permanent residence in Venus Atmosphere.
The first phase of this mission would be an exploratory
mission done by a unmanned-robotic and solar-powered airship. The
airship and its robotic-cargo would de folded up in an aeroshell, and
transported to Venus with a spacecraft, which is obviously launched into space
with the assistance of a rocket. It will rendezvous (meet/ meet at) with Venus
orbit, and later de-orbit in order to enter the atmosphere. It will then
jettison its aeroshell and deploy a parachute, allowing the airship to unfurl
and inflate. Afterwards, the redundant parachute is jettisoned and the airship
will float above the cloud-tops[39, 68]. I suppose the
longer-run reason for this mission would be the scientific study of the
Venusian atmosphere, as the airship would never come back and theoretically
circumnavigate Venus indefinitely (if left unharmed). Nevertheless, I believe
that it would rather be for gaining experience on the ‘inflation’ stage –
presumably for timing.
If this mission were a success, HAVOC could move-on to the
next phase – the 30-day manned mission to Venus Orbit.
Unusually, I couldn’t find much information for this alleged phase. But, based
on logic and comparison of the previous and consequent missions, I could try to
give a reasonably accurate interpretation of it: The crew will be blasted-off
into space in a single vehicle, with the assistance of a single rocket, and head
outwards to Venus in a journey of ~110 days. Afterwards, the crew will
rendezvous with Venus orbit, and orbit Venus for 30 days. Afterwards, the crew
will return to Earth in a journey of ~300 days, rendezvous with Earth orbit,
enter and descend into the Earth’s atmosphere, and finally land (crash) into an
ocean [1]. As we can see, the entry and descent into the
atmosphere is completely omitted. Frankly, I even doubt whether there’s an
airship involved at all! – Perhaps, just only the transit vehicle. I believe
that mission would be done for the purpose of checking whether the crew would
survive the journey.
Afterwards,
HAVOC can finally move to Phase-III, which happens to have the most drama. This
would be the first mission where two humans would be able see 6 Venusian
sunrises and sunsets from the perspective of the Venusian cloud-tops. They
would be the first humans to witness the bluish cloud-top skies of Venus and
the warped constellations, perhaps with a new blue star.
The above illustration is of the airship used in this phase of the mission. You can see the solar array on its envelope, and on its tail-fins. By the way, all HAVOC airships would rely on the buoyancy of Helium in order to float above the cloud-tops. There’s a gondola slung under the airship, which is permanently attached to the envelope. An atmospheric habitat, where the crew would stay for the entire 30-day atmospheric stay, and two propellers are firmly attached onto the gondola [39, 67] – in fact, I believe that they’re actually part of it. Other than that, there’s the main cargo of the airship, which is a detachable rocket known as the ‘ascent vehicle’, which could detach-itself and boost-up to Venus orbit at the end of the atmospheric stay. But, we cannot simply send an airship through interplanetary space! Then, how does the airship get there?
Figure
3:A diagram of the ascent vehicle, which is
divided into the rocket stages and ascent habitat[39].
Well,
similar to any space mission, the crew and material are first launched into
space, with the assistance of a rocket. It should be known that, the crew and
the airship will undergo the interplanetary voyage separately; the airship
folded in the spacecraft, and the crew will follow in a transit vehicle. After the perilous journey to Venus, both the
airship and crew will rendezvous in Venus orbit, where the transit vehicle will
link-up with the airship, with the crew proceeding in entering the un-inflated
airship [67].
Afterwards,
the airship will enter the Venusian atmosphere in an aeroshell, and descend in
a ‘Venus Atmosphere Rendezvous (VAR)’ [39]. It would then
deploy a parachute, and the aeroshell will drop away. The exposed airship will
then proceed with unfurling and inflating. The parachute, which becomes
redundant, will be jettisoned [67]. The inflated airship will
gently float at an altitude of 52km, at the Venusian equator, where the
atmosphere is most stable; and proceed with atmospheric operations [67,
39].
The
crew will spend their 30-day atmospheric stay, in the atmospheric habitat, and
move into the ascent vehicle when it ends. The ascent vehicle is a two-stage
rocket with a tiny capsule known as the ‘ascent habitat’, which would house the
crew during ascent: The ascent vehicle will be dropped and ascend to Venus
orbit, which is an epic leap-of-fate. While falling, the rockets of the ascent
vehicle would ignite and ascend up the atmosphere. Stage-by-stage, the ascent
habitat would have been boosted up-to Venus orbit, where the crew will again
meet with their transit vehicle (The transit vehicle had been orbiting Venus
during the entire atmospheric stay). The transit vehicle would again take them
on the perilous journey back home, followed by a rendezvous with Earth orbit [67].
Then they will descend through the Earth’s atmosphere, and probably impact the
Pacific Ocean, as with the case of Apollo11. If the mission were to be
successful to this extent, the crew will be well received and likely world-famous.
But, more importantly, humanity will be a step closer to Venusian colonization.
If
the phase-III HAVOC mission was rather hard to visualize, I would recommend
looking into the following link on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0az7DEwG68A.
It’s a lovely and rather-epic animation of the phase-III HAVOC mission,
published by the Langley Research Centre. Enjoy!
It’s
worth noting that all missions up-to this would technically be part of the
Phase-I colonization of Venus – the missions were exploratory, experimental,
short-lived and quickly abandoned. Now, we shall return to establish a truer
colony. The following mission would be quite similar to the phase-III mission,
but presumably much more complex – I believe it to be rather the transition
from phase-I to phase-II colonization of Venus. Well, this phase-IV mission of
HAVOC is also relatively left un-discussed, and partly for many reasons. I
believe one of them to be that it isn’t as much a priority now as the first
three missions. For that reason, I believe that the dimensions and plans of the
mission aren’t very much designed yet, and the potential problems are not worth
solving at present. Similarly, even at the most ideal situation; HAVOC would
only likely fly from the late 2020s, owing to its dependency on the massive
Block IIB configuration of the space launch system [67].
Thereby, I believe that the phase-IV mission would likely take place after the
half-life of this century – the late 2050s, the 2060s; it’s still speculation.
Similarly, it would require development in self-sufficiency, resource
management systems and methodologies of using the Venusian environment for the
crew’s benefit and for extracting resources – overall, the mission would have
to try to be self-sufficient via imports from the Earth.
This
mission would likely have a crew much larger than two, perhaps with an airship
of undreamt-of dimensions – it’s likely to be enormous. Or, perhaps this
mission might be done with a multitude of airships? Regardless of the
situation, I estimate that the airship(s) would circumnavigate Venus about ~80
times during the entirety of the atmospheric stay – that is, the crew would
likely get to see ~80 Venusian western sunrises and eastern sunsets from the
perspective of the cloud-tops. I believe that either the crew will happen to
use their resources in a self-sufficient system, or that supplies will arrive for
them via aeroshells, or both – either way would give it a phase-II character.
Similarly,
considering the longevity of this mission, this might be the first mission
where atmospheric EVA would be feasible! – The first atmospheric-walk,
nice to think of it. This mission is likely to have a great deal of research
and experimentation, which would give it a phase-I character. It is for
these reasons for which I believe this mission to be the transition from
phase-I to phase-II Venusian colonization [1]. Regardless of
how the mission might be played-out, it would obviously be quite advanced – it
would be quite a huge leap from the phase-III HAVOC mission. Still, the mission
could be re-done based on the success, non-success, and even potential
failure of this mission. However, if it were to be a success, the most likely
option, it would be one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Succinctly, the
success of this mission would be synonymous to success in establishing a
Venusian presence – like a proto-colony. I mean, if we can sustain a
proto-colony in the Venusian cloud-tops for a year, we could do so for much
longer periods of times; perhaps for decades, scores, centuries, even
millennia! That is, we can move-on to our next phase – establishing a permanent
presence on Venus.
HAVOC
too has the eventual aim of establishing a permanent presence on Venus in its
final phase, but not with the cloud-cities though. Presumably, HAVOC intends to
do so with the assistance of large floating structures, which are solar-powered
and float on the buoyancy of the Helium, as depicted from the below
illustration. The colonists would live in these structures, extract recourses
and utilize them in a self-sufficient system. Similarly, it seems as if the
airships would be used as a sort of transportation. For the time-being, they’re
quite fine, but we would have to move into cloud-cities later. I would
sometimes imagine the lives of those who’d call these floating structures –
‘home’ [1]:
I
believe that they will be amazed at the blueness of the sky above, and the
whiteness of the clouds below; for an alien world, it does a good job at
resembling the Earth! It would be interesting to see the sun rise from the west
and set in the east, but twice as slowly. I believe that the colonists would
maintain and harvest communal farms, while potentially surviving on some
supplies from the Earth, which arrive in aeroshells. While not farming or
performing EVA, I believe that that they would spend their time experimenting
or enjoying their leisure, perhaps communicating with their kith and kin, or
perhaps with creative activities or forms of entertainment. The night might be
of their fancy too, perhaps with stargazing with altered constellations;
Orion’s belt not straight, and the Great Dipper warped. But the highlight of
the night sky would be a distinctive blue star, reminiscent of the colonists’
origins; The Earth[1]. Most importantly, I appreciate the
role those pioneer colonists would play, in the utopian future humanity would
behold.
After
some years in these structures, we’d have to shift to the cloud-cities. Of the
entire affair of building Venusian cloud-cities, I don’t think construction
would be an issue – we’ve plenteous experience of building geodesic domes and
spheres before. But, we’ve never really built a floating one – let alone,
building that while suspended in the middle of the atmosphere! The only step
now would be to experiment on constructing Buckminster Fuller’s Cloud Nine.
This would likely start simple, perhaps with the construction of a prototype
which would be about 50-100 metres in diameter, perhaps. Seeing this prototype
afloat would be quite an awe-inspiring moment – a moment relatable to the first
people to the hot-air balloon. Afterwards, we’d be perfecting the model with
regards to stability, manoeuvrability and other critical factors. Perhaps after
perfecting several prototypes, we could gradually scale-up to the real thing –
we could construct several Cloud Nines in proportions that would make
Fuller the happiest man ever.
Now,
after mastering the art of Cloud Nine - making, it’s now the matter of
mastering the art of constructing them up-in-the atmosphere. How it would be
done would be quite vague to me, but I know there’d be skilled engineers flying
miles above our heads, in the Earth-made HAVOC-ish structures of the proposed
phase-V and gradually make the first mid-atmospheric Cloud Nine. It
might take many series of prototypical system and trials-and-errors sequences;
they’d be ready for Venus. One might ask why a pre-made Cloud-Nine
designed-for-Venus couldn’t be sent directly to Venus with all inhabitants.
Well, sending a mile-wide sphere along with a population of thousands upon a
single mission is quite very infeasible, impractical and too risky. Over the
years, with an ever-expanding regime of HAVOC-ish biospherical structures; the
raw-materials would have to be sent to Venus – a good supply of infrastructure.
After that healthy infrastructure-supply becomes well-established, the
Venusians would do the crafty engineering required for constructing a Cloud
Nine above the cloud-tops, while living and assembling stuff in the giant
floating structures of the phase-V HAVOC missions. This will be a highly
ambitious target for the Venusian colonists, considering how hard establishing
an interplanetary supply of infrastructure, really is.
After,
the Venusians could move into their first cloud-city and live on firm terra
for the time-being.Now, knowing how a cloud-city would have to be
mid-atmospherically built, one might be asking as to why I would suggest taking
all these troubles of constructing cloud-cities rather than living on the large
floating HAVOC-ish biospherical structures? Why incur that additional expenditure
if we could just modestly live on much-larger airships? Well, my main
reason would be that it would that he first cloud-city
would revolutionize Venusian lifestyle, as it would provide much more room for
habitation, perhaps even redundant space to an extent. The habitation
volume will be much more immense, than anything they lived-with, on Venus
before.
Over
the years, it might grow to house an entire population of thousands of
Venusians. It alone might be able to house Venusian civilization for an
entire century! Moreover, by
‘revolutionize’, I meant that the first cloud-city (Let’s call it Venutropolis)
would open many corridors of opportunities, not only by dramatically increasing
their quality of life, but by also letting them do things that they could never
have done before: For instance, the Venusians could now begin mining and more
industrial activities, as Venutropolis would give an appropriate platform to do
so. They now have much-more room for manufacturing purposes, for generating
usable resources, and to create new technology and innovations for new systems,
such as transportation. Similarly, they would have the much-required room for
assembling new infrastructure, using the resources that they find themselves, within
the premises of Venutropolis. Similarly, Venutropolis could provide room
for exporting material back to the Earth, more consistently than any similar
means attempted before.
Moreover,
the large floating HAVOC-ish biospherical structures would require extremely
large masses of Helium – Helium which isn’t quite prominent in the Venusian
atmosphere and quite rare to find in the solar system (accept the sun,
perhaps). Meanwhile, Venutropolis and the future cloud-cities solely rely on
the buoyancy of readily available atmospheric Nitrogen and extractable Oxygen –
pressurized at 1 bar at a comfy temperature, that is. With decades passing,
many more Venusians would have arrived to Venutropolis, and get quite cramped
after a while.
When
writing Exodus to Venus: the Civilization of Cloud-Cities, I assumed
Venutropolis to be ‘Prima-V’, and separate cloud-cities would be buit
after tense population growth – I was wrong to assume that. It isn’t that it
isn’t possible; I now believe it to be more unlikely than I thought: Cloud-Cities
aren’t meant to be universally spherical – many spherical shapes could be
merged to form a geodesic structure which would likely resemble a cloud. That
must’ve been why Fuller named his proposed idea as ‘CLOUD’Nine. Thereby,
Venutropolis is likely to undergo persistent gradual construction over the
decades of population-growth and possibly double, triple or quadruple in size.
It would amoeba-ishly evolve into a giant cloud-like structure – to form a
colossal flying conurbation, a gargantuan floating metropolis; the first
colony. It could potentially increase its size to
cover Venus, but it would likely undergo a schism well-before that for a
multitude of thinkable reasons. It’d be a spectacular event, like the mitosis
of Amoeba and the binary fission of Yeast, on a grand scale. Like the
prokaryotes, it would replicate to form many cloud-colonies and eventually
cloud-archipelagos.
It
is likely at these stages that the Venusian industries and planetary
commercialization kicks-in: It is likely that the Venusian atmosphere would
have become haven for phase-III Venusian colonies, which would be self-sufficient
via exports to the Earth. Venusian
cloud-archipelagos would have gained their sovereignty and be like ‘Venusian
Nation’, Entire collections of Cloud-Colonies might specialize in agriculture,
industry, import and export. Moreover, the surface would have quite a mining
and industrial frenzy: I’d imagine it as if some mega-industrial revolution
were going on, in an incarnation of hell. I would imagine rovers, scaled like
large dump-trucks scuttling to-and-fro. Similarly, high above or slightly below
the cloud-tops, I imagine seeing similarly large factories, which are fully
automated and very much in line with each other. I’d imagine the factories and
mining machinery to be quite reminiscent of the black smokers that hide in the
deep-abysmal ocean trenches, and they would be connected by strong long
ballooned cable systems, with hoppers ascending and descending in-and-out of
the hazes of the Venusian atmosphere. The utter amount of them would make it
seem as an escalator to heaven. The industrial gamut of Venus during phase-III
colonization would simply be a well-organized chaos which would manufacture
unfathomable quantities of resources [1].
Well,
for the purposes of this chapter, knowledge the pioneering steps needed
todayand the feasibility of building and expanding a cloud-city would be quite
feasible is quite enough. If interest, I’ve described a more detailed
distant-future-eccentric view of the cloud-archipelagos in Exodus to Venus:
the Civilization of Cloud-Cities. Presuming that this chapter achieved its
purpose, we would have now accumulated ample reasoning and evidence in favour
of a Venusian civilization of cloud-cities. But, why isn’t it that relatively
well known? Would we be making the biggest blunder humanity will ever make, by
not pioneering Venusian colonization before it’s too late? What would happen if
we didn’t do so in time?
Achinthya Nanayakkara (31.03.2025)
Originally written - 2019
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