Destination: Venus
In the latest installment of our space travelogue series, Jim Bell takes us on a tour of Venus. With population estimates on Earth soaring, maybe it really is time we started vacating the planet, and not just for a weekend break.
Jet setters these days don't dream about the beaches of the Costa Blanca or the glitzy lights of New York.
They dream of the bubbling pools of sulphuric acid of Rotorua in New Zealand, or days spent dodging the poisonous gases at the potential Super Volcano that is the Yellowstone National Park.
However, any extreme location on Earth pales into insignificance in comparison to the interplanetary thrill seeker’s ultimate holiday destination: Venus.
Getting there
Being the closest planet to our own, Venus is only a mere 40 million kilometres from Earth. Travelling at the speed of light, that would take you just over two minutes, although travelling at today’s spacecraft speeds, it would be more like five months.
Still, you certainly shouldn’t need a map to get there: Venus is the third brightest object in the sky, behind the Sun and our Moon. The planet is visible clearly at dusk and dawn, although not during the middle of the night because Venus is closer to the sun than we are. This unusual behaviour in our night sky is the reason Venus is actually often mistaken for a UFO, the most famous incident of which was by an American man named Jimmy Carter in 1969… who eight years later became president of the USA.
So, having intrigued your fellow passengers with your fascinating knowledge of Venus/US president related trivia for five months, you will be more than ready to take in the sights of Venus.
Climate
On a normal holiday, just as you arrive is the traditional time to realise that you’ve forgotten your suntan lotion. On Venus, however, there’s no need to worry.
Although it’s roasting (roughly 460°C – the hottest planet in the Solar System), and despite being an extra 40,000,000 kilometres or so closer to the sun, the dense clouds of Venus’ atmosphere pretty much prevent any light from reaching the surface at all, so sunburn is not going to be a problem.
continued below...
Atmosphere
Atmosphere is important when you’re on holiday, and on Venus there’s plenty about. So much in fact, that the atmospheric pressure on the surface is about 90 times greater than on Earth – equivalent to being one kilometre under the sea.
There are strong winds of up to 300 km/h in the upper Venusian atmosphere, but once on the surface of the planet there’s hardly any wind at all. So dense is the atmosphere that it is possible that it has actually physically slowed the planet’s rotation to an almost sedentary 6.5km/h at the equator, compared to 1600 km/h on Earth.
This makes a Venusian day (243 earth days) actually longer than a Venusian year (225 earth days). However, being composed mainly of deadly sulphur dioxide, with occasional showers of boiling sulphuric acid, atmosphere is something you probably will want to avoid taking in too much of.
A word of warning
Venus is an amazing place and an almost inconceivably extreme holiday destination, but it also acts as a cautionary tale for us earthlings.
Research has suggested that Venus may have been habitable as little as 2 billion years ago, over 2.6 billion years after the solar system was formed. As we know there to have been great oceans of water on Venus there would have been more than enough time for life to develop, but a runaway greenhouse effect took hold.
The oceans dried up, plate tectonics stopped, and roughly 700 million years ago Venus got so hot that its entire surface melted. Any friendly locals you might have expected to bump into during your travels evaporated along with the seas.
A lesson to be learned as well then from your trip, and inspiration for us all to pursue a carbon neutral lifestyle.
Perhaps you'd rather holiday on Pluto, or another far flung destination?
Or if you want to slow that greenhouse effect, try:
Stopping breathing
Praying
Oh, and join our Facebook group - it's out of this world (lame, we know)...
Image: NASA
Share this
