Introduction

You could never live on Venus. Her atmosphere of carbon dioxide with sulfuric acid clouds is 97 times denser than the air we breath on Earth. 400 degrees Celsius in the shade Venus, despite being forbidding, is actually the first place humanity will venture in the race to Space. Venus’ ties to mythology, love, means within twenty years nuptials will be taking brief love-sojourns orbiting Venus to cement their bliss. Venus is a quick trip for love-struck space tourists of the next twenty years. Ships could quickly jet to Venus for a week or so, just so people can take a look at this legendary planet – the planet of beauty and romance.

Image by radiant guy via Flickr

Love Me Tender

Forget about living there, Venus will be for visiting. Imagine proposing to your future wife circling our closest neighbour Venus whilst sipping Krug? Venus is also a great place to test short trips to other planets. I takes about eight days to reach the moon and back. Venus is further but probably not an impossibility being so close to the earth. A two week round trip with current technology perhaps.

Venus will be the front line to trying out our space capacity and all in the name of romance. Bliss.

La Lune et None

Venus has no major satellite. Her atmosphere is a, “runaway greenhouse effect,” with the Sun’s rays being trapped in a deadly, hot atmosphere no living thing could bear. Speculation that in Venus’ upper atmosphere there might be life, in a zone far enough from the heat, to produce a bacterial soup. In any case, you could not go there. You could orbit her from a safe distance in a space ship, however, and this is where Venus comes in as a prime candidate for quick visits soon.

Venus has stunning orange and yellow hazy hues that might just be appealing to newlyweds.

Space Tourism’s First Frontier

Venus would be ideal for tourism because:

·      Venus is accessible

·      Venus holds romantic notions for humanity

·      Venus is a perfect testing ground for quick, local space trips

·      Venus’ upper atmosphere is similar to Earth’s. A love-hotel in the Venusian sky is a possibility.

Imaging buying your loved one a holiday for two circling Venus for a couple of weeks?

Image via Wikipedia

Portents and Passion

Many cite Venus as an example of what could happen to the Earth if we release too much carbon into the sky. A greenhouse effect could rapidly take off creating a flaming deadly atmosphere on Earth. That seems wild speculation as Venus’ skies have been like that for a long time, and besides, the Earth today is relatively cold compared to how she once was. Science seems divided whether we are facing global warming of an ice-age in the near future on Earth.

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of Love roughly the same size as the Earth.

Slow and Backwards

A day on Venus is 243 Earth days long as Venus rotates in a counter-clockwise manner at a lazy pace. Temperatures in both hemispheres are the same as Venus is tilted lightly on her axis by about 3 degrees off the vertical. Earth tilts 23 degrees off it’s vertical. The surface of Venus shows signs of volcanism with areas of lava and volcanic flows. No eruptions have yet been spotted although Venus seems largely formed by volcanoes.  Venus rotates around the sun in clockwise manner – if you are looking from above the Sun’s North Pole – most of the planets circle the sun in a counter-clockwise way.

Venus is the second brightest jewel in the night sky and makes for a dazzling star, of morning or evening, low to the horizon.

Image via Wikipedia

More Planets Alive

Part One – Neptune

Part Two – Uranus

Part Three – Saturn

Part Four – Jupiter

Part Five – Mars

Part Six – Earth