Despite not being able to complete a single voyage, Titanic, one of the most famous ships in history, became the grave of 5 more people 111 years after it sank through the company named OceanGate, which organizes touristic expeditions to the ship’s wreck. While all questions about OceanGate’s accident could not be answered yet, new statements came from Guillermo Söhnlein, one of the founding partners of the company, that made you say “Get off.”
Söhnlein stated that he wants to take 1000 people to Venus, which is the second closest planet to the Sun in the solar system, by 2050. Speaking to Insider, Söhnlein stated that he has dreamed of turning humanity into a multi-planet ‘species’ since he was 11 years old. (Can we say good luck to our new Elon Musk? I hope not…)
OceanGate scandal hasn’t dampened its founder’s dreams and ambition
As you can imagine, Guillermo Söhnlein is currently one of the names under the spotlight as the Titan submarine exploded and buried 5 people. Still, Söhnlein says the scandal hasn’t undermined his ambition to “get people somewhere”. According to him, humanity has to keep pushing its limits for ‘innovation’.
According to Söhnlein, taking as many as 1,000 people to Venus to live in clouds of sulfuric acid over the next 30-35 years is not as “crazy” as sending 1 million people to the surface of Mars by 2050. For this reason, he argues that his plans for Venus are not as frivolous as they seem.
He argues that hundreds of thousands of people can live in the atmosphere of Venus.
For those who don’t know, let’s remind: Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. The average surface temperature is 480 degrees Celsius, which is high enough to melt lead. Moreover, the atmospheric pressure is 90 times higher than the surface of the Earth. In other words, Venus is unquestionably a planet where humans cannot live or even come close to its surface. But Söhnlein is already aware of this.
Söhnlein envisions human societies living in Venus’ atmosphere, not its surface. He predicts that space stations where people can survive can be designed at an altitude of about 50 kilometers from the surface, where the temperature and atmospheric pressure are relatively low, and that hundreds of thousands of people can live in these stations. (We couldn’t understand why we had to leave the whole planet and live in airplane cans…)
He has even started a company that will research how he can transport humans to Venus…
Now… Designing submarines and arranging tourist trips to shipwrecks may not seem like similar tasks to designing space stations and taking people to different planets. However, both serve the same purpose: Söhnlein’s dream of taking humanity beyond its natural limits on Earth… Of course, this dream has already cost the lives of 5 people.
If we look at his statements, we will hear the name Guillermo Söhnlein and the company Humans2Venus a lot in the coming period. Humans2Venus is a company that Söhnlein co-founded with entrepreneur Khalid Al-Ali, where they will design concepts and initiatives to transport humans to Venus. The initiative will also work on new techniques to fund space missions without government support. The last time Elon Musk did this, we met with SpaceX’s reusable rockets. So while those living on Venus may be a farce, Söhnlein can also bring ‘real’ benefits to humanity.
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