Name: Should We Colonize Venus Instead of Mars? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
Uploaded: 2016-05-24T13:34:26.000Z
Duration: 7 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

There's a lot of talk about sending humans to Mars.

And could Venus actually be the better option

It's inspired more sci-fi movies and stories than I can count,

a ride at Disney World, and a Twitter following for the Mars

Basically, Venus has the worst public relations

not just in culture and media but in space policy.

Presidents Bush and Obama and the Chinese government

have all outlined goals for manned missions to Mars.

to find volunteers for a one-way mission to the Martian surface.

Venus is actually an easier and less costly

That's why we sent probes to Venus long before we sent them

Depending on the launch window, the round trip

can be 30% to 50% shorter, which is a major factor

Shorter trips means less weightlessness and radiation,

in moving the people and equipment necessary to actually

colonize another world, because bear in mind,

If we ever start a colony, we'll need to bring along

The planet itself has some significant advantages

It's closer to the sun, which means about four times

more available solar power then you have on Mars.

It also has a thick atmosphere, unlike that wispy layer

That means better protection from space radiation

and meteorites for our enterprising colonizers

It also means more available carbon dioxide

from which, in principle, you might extract oxygen.

Venus has about 0.9 Earth g's-- pretty close--

And one thing we do know is that prolonged low gravity

In Earth orbit, astronauts lose bone mass

Now no one knows exactly how bad Martian gravity

would be for humans, but it's definitely not

And remember, we're talking about long-term colonization,

to add water to a planet's surface and oxygen to its air,

is currently not even within the realm of discussion.

So terraforming seems silly, and if people couldn't live there

more than a few months without their bones falling apart.

OK, I just made that word up, but hear me out.

Ever since the days of seafaring exploration,

it's almost like having gotten there doesn't count.

So what's all this have to do with Venus, which

Well it does, but humans can't land on it.

See, there's a teensy problem with temperature.

There's so much CO2 on Venus that the greenhouse effect

makes the surface hotter than hell-- over 450 degrees

Celsius, well above the melting point of lead.

But the bigger problem is the barometric pressure

That means that landing on the Venutian surface

would be like diving one kilometer underwater on Earth--