WOULD we plant life on Venus?

As long as the world we're tampering with is completely dead, I don't see any ethical issues with it. However, organisms growing in a hostile environment *might* end up being hostile to *us* as well - we need to be careful.

It was proposed in the late 1970's that we put balloons in the Venusian atmosphere, hovering where conditions would be much cooler. The balloons would support small colonies of bacteria and plants that would combine the CO2 in it's atmosphere, releasing oxygen in the process - reducing the pressure of Venus, while adding oxygen to the atmosphere.

When looking to live on Venus, forget about the surface. The highest temperature that any known life form can tolerate is 122 Celsius. Venus typically has a surface temperature of around 460 Celsius. The surface of Venus will be the exclusive domain of robots and the occasional tourist. Think instead about planting your extremophiles high in the atmosphere like let's say 50 km (30 miles) where the temperature is slightly warmer than on Earth and the pressure is slightly lower. People, plants and animals can live there too, in floating cities where breathable air is a great lifting gas. The sulfuric acid can be dealt with simply by choosing the right materials for anything that interfaces with the outdoors.

The temperatures on the surface are enough to melt lead and the pressure was enough to collapse the Soviet probes. We have never found an extremophile that could live in such an environment. However, it's much more pleasant in the atmosphere. At an altitude of 20 km, the pressure is one atmosphere same as at sea level on Earth and the temperature ranges from 0 to 50 Celsius. There's reason to believe that life may have developed on the surface when Venus was more pleasant and have since migrated into the clouds. It would be microbial life but the Sulfuric acid rain would give the organisms a chemical means of protecting themselves from UV radiation, all the elements needed for life are there and we have found microbes floating at high altitudes in Earth's atmosphere before.

Note that a nitrogen oxygen gas mixture has 60% of the lifting power in the Venusian atmosphere of helium in Earth's atmosphere so floating cities can be built at the 20 km altitude level where the winds will actually give an Earth like day night schedule.

As to directed panspermia where we plant life. There is the morality of displacing any existing life that we haven't found yet. Of course that has never stopped us before with dandelions, fire ants, killer bees, etc. but would it be right to do to a planet?

A better alternate basket for humanity would be space habitats such as O'Neill Cylinders. One proposal to build such a habitat was to find an iron core asteroid, drill deep into the asteroid and create an underground reservoir of water perhaps from a nearby asteroid belt comet. Then seal up the hole and start the asteroid rotating. Then you either divert it into an elliptical orbit to the Sun with a close pass and or use reflectors to concentrate sunlight on the asteroid melting the outer layers of iron and nickel till the water expands 1,000 fold into steam blowing the asteroid up like a glass bottle. The inner surface can then be furnished to simulate the terrain of Earth and either Sunlight can be directed in or a nuclear reactors can provide artificial sunlight. The asteroid itself should provide plenty of Thorium for such reactors. Rotating the asteroid can simulate an Earth like gravity. Care would have to be taken to make sure the shell is strong enough for the rotation as anything on the surface of the asteroid would fly off.

A space habitat would be easy to get to and leave, would have access to the resources of the asteroid belt and if things got really bad, a large ion drive could be strapped on and the whole thing moved to another solar system in a a few decades to a few centuries of travel time.

The problem is how to finance it. There would be little return for the investors as the benefits are far off and really just for the inhabitants. The inhabitants wouldn't be able to finance it themselves. I would suggest setting up a fund invested as University endowments are, receive small donations from people who support the idea of building habitats and diverting a small amount perhaps 2% per year of the fund for studies and planning. That way, compound interest will eventually amass the funds required for such a project. The project could be limited to 60% of the fund so that should the project fail, it can try again in perhaps a decade. It may take centuries to build such a habitat this way but it'll probably get built eventually.

Just to clear up some of the myths and confusion:

1) Extremophiles live in extremely benign environments compared with what exists on other planets. Extremophiles do NOT live in conditions that would substantially damage their dna structure, or in conditions where chemical processes cannot proceed. In particular: no living organism lives in concentrated sulphuric acid (as in Europa), molten lead (as on venus), or dry ice (as on Mars).

It's a question of balance and understanding. The word "extreme" does not cover absolutely all conditions.

2) Those microbes that supposedly survived on the Surveyor moon lander, were proven to have been contamination duie to handling upon return to Earth. Naturally, the media did not report this little detail, so the sensationalistic myth about microbes surviving on the moon persists.

3) Life is not going to disappear from Earth any time soon. It has survived gigantic volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, ice ages and other calamities. It is here to stay.

4) Is it not possible to appreciate a heavenly body without fantasising about bugs and boogiemen? The fanaticism to innoculate every planet in the solar system with Earth bugs is no more than technocolonialism at it's worst. The planets are beautiful as they are. Stark, strange and awe inspiring. Why change them?

Cheers!

No, we haven't actually verified that Venus doesn't already have life. If we found a form of life that could survive on Venus, how do we know something like it isn't already there? And what if the life that is there turns out to be the cure for cancer or something? It's like asking if we should bulldoze the rainforest to build a strip mall just in case all our other strip malls burn down.

It is not known if the worlds you mentioned contain life in the first place. It would serve little purpose to seed worlds with life forms in this solar system. They might not evolve past their current state and would eventually go extinct themselves as the sun will eventually die. Looking even further, the future of the universe looks pretty bleak. All life in the universe may go extinct when the universe goes through the big rip. To make a long story short, your idea serves no practical purpose at this time.

We already have, so you question is moot. Living organisms were found on the Surveyor craft by Apollo astronauts having survived our attempts at sterilization and three years on the Moon. The Russian Venera craft were of the same generation and beyond any doubt carried an array of bacteria to Venus. Knowing what we know now about bacteria, there is every possibility they survive and even thrive.

"PS: Abject discounting and being ignorant of the word "if" does not constitute an answer"

In that case, the life we need to put there would have to be a microorganism from Spongebob Squarepants' big toe. This organism would need to be spoon fed jell-o chocolate pudding until ready to make the ride...

Do you see why we don't want to deal with imaginary BS?!

I believe if we could we would. In fact I believe if we could we should. There is definitely no native life on Venus now and I have no moral objection to bringing life to a lifeless planet.

Do not take this to mean I think it is possible. I don't. But if it was.....

By the way, I might have a moral objection to putting Earth life on a planet that already has native life.

Not Possible. The atmosphere of Venus is poison and the pressure is too high and the heat is to high.