I love to dream. Maybe that’s because potential is everywhere. The possibilities seem endless, although how one can conceivably see everything during the course of one lifetime still eludes me. So I have to visit things with heart and soul, rather than with body. What does that mean?

Well, take this article on the feasibility of colonizing Venus rather than Mars. I LOVE this stuff. The basic gist of the essay is that it may make more sense to colonize Venus, rather than Mars. This could be accomplished by, get this, building a floating city. Star Wars style.

The surface of Venus is an uninhabitable mix of corrosive chemicals and annihilating pressure. Fifty kilometers above, however, the atmosphere provides protection from solar radiation, milder temperatures, and the pressure is nearly equivalent to Earth’s, unlike on Mars. Dense levels of carbon dioxide in the upper reaches of Venus’ toxic atmosphere would keep an air-filled blimp city afloat. Several sections of the colony could be dedicated arboretums, atmospheric and human byproduct carbon dioxide consumed by the trees while they pump fresh oxygen out. A city of trees in the clouds.Continue Reading