Wouldn't our ability to learn about more than the atmosphere of Venus be extremely impaired from an airship? If one of the goals is ultimately colonization, how would we harvest materials beyond those available in the atmosphere? Even robots would have great difficulty doing this task for us due to Venus' hellish conditions on the ground, assuming they could get the materials back up to the sky city or airship.
For now assume that all the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen you want is available in the atmosphere and solar power. You still need hydrogen to make plastics, and you are going to need silicon to build more solar panels, and you need metals you can forge. The surface of Venus is 50km below, which isn't as far away as the ISS, but it's still 50km straight down and then back up for anything.
It might be a nice vacation spot, or a penal colony.
One colonizes land, not people. The Latin word colonus also means 'farmer' or 'settler.' At the current pace, I anticipate that the first interplanetary colony will be set up by China.
I'm actually hoping the gp poster is a troll account or one of the worst attempts at parody in a while. Sadly, some folks actually believe that type of thing.
I remember one example from many years ago. I was working with an government grant when an evaluation team showed up for our yearly site visit. Now, site visits are conducted in order of best vacation spot / most senior staff. It shouldn't be that way, but when a staff member has a choice between Florida and North Dakota in February, you can guess which staff get assigned to North Dakota. I'm sure if asked, grant manager would say this isn't so, but well, human nature is human nature.
One of the fun[1] staff members we got had decided the term "socialize" (which at the time simply meant kids mingling with kids and learning, etc.) actually had some weird indoctrination context. The havoc and psychosis of that visit lead me to believe that people who try to redefine words basically fit into the part of humanity that wants to gain outrage from people who meant none and were just trying to use the dictionary value of the word. An interesting offshoot to this is that you can see language drift in grants submitted to certain agencies that tell the funding folks who the "in" crowd is so the "in" crowd can continue to receive funding and lock out the newbies. Doesn't happen in all agencies, but it sure seems to have been a pattern. There is also the my group vs them identification of the whole thing.
1) fun = racist as they come. Some of the other behavior was scary and surreal. I blame a weekends bar bill on that visit.
[edit: getting the same reaction from myself and anigbrowl leads me to believe it's a troll account]
It's a connotation thing. In certain cultures, "colonization" historically meant "invasion, oppression, slavery, and even genocide", as various "colonial" powers took up the "white man's burden". Here in Canada, "colonialism" is a term used by first nations groups to describe the continuation of racist institutions.
So yeah, it has that other meaning for a lot of folks, unfortunately. Kinda makes science fiction novels a bit confusing.
Colonialism != colonization. The first means keeping colonies, which are by definition "less" (less powerful, less important, less independent) than the "motherland". The second means setting up home in foreign lands (that were unpopulated before).
That isn't an argument. You might as well have said "parrot bird dog mouse."
Actually, it's worse than that, because it is an attempt to emotionally manipulate in lieu of presenting an argument or even making a rational, factual statement.
I don't. Past colonization was typically into areas that already contained people, and industrial civilization in general has ruined natural treasures. But there is no one on Venus, nor much in the way of natural environment to destroy.
