OceanGate co-founder defends his plan to send humans to hottest planet in solar system following Titan sub disaster
Guillermo Söhnlein, the co-founder of the company behind the doomed submersible that was destroyed diving down to the Titanic, has said he wants to send 1,000 people to live in the atmosphere of the solar system's hottest planet.
OceanGate was at the centre of the world's attention recently following the implosion of the Titan submersible which killed all five people on board, including the company's co-founder Stockton Rush.
His colleague Söhnlein was told during a TV interview that debris from the sub had been found and also hit out at Titanic director James Cameron for saying rescue efforts should have talked about the sub's implosion sooner.
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In the wake of the disaster, OceanGate deleted their social media channels and there have been a slew of revelations about the sub and Stockton Rush.
Plenty of people have come forward to say they had concerns over the safety of the submersible, while an old interview with Rush showed him admitting he didn't follow the rules when it came to constructing the sub.
Now Insider reports that OceanGate's surviving co-founder Söhnlein has told them he wants to see 1,000 people living on Venus by 2050.
He said: "I think it is less aspirational than putting a million people on the Martian surface by 2050.
"You're absolutely right that when you talk about going to Venus, it would raise eyebrows outside the space industry. And it even raises eyebrows inside the space industry."
"I think I've been driven to help make humanity a multi-planet species since I was 11 years old, I had this recurring dream of being the commander of the first Martian colony."
While putting 1,000 people on one planet is indeed less aspirational than moving a million into space, Venus is not exactly the most hospitable of places in our solar system.
For starters, it's the hottest planet in our system, as while Mercury is closer the atmosphere of Venus is choked with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide - and clouds of sulphuric acid which trap heat and make the planet so hot that it'd melt lead.
It's about 475 °C on Venus, but Söhnlein reckons a space station designed to withstand the clouds of acid could allow thousands of people to live in the planet's atmosphere.
Quite why they'd want to is unclear, especially as any sort of equipment failure or miscalculation could spell certain death by leaving people exposed to an environment that humans are simply not built to survive in.
Nonetheless the OceanGate co-founder thinks it's 'very doable' for humanity to set up a floating colony of 1,000 people in the atmosphere of Venus by 2050.
Some of these technology companies operate by setting themselves a lofty, seemingly unachievable goal and going for it, trusting that they'll develop technologies along the way which will actually get them closer to where they were aiming for.
Söhnlein said 'we'd probably all still be in caves' without people like Stockton Rush, comparing the deceased entrepreneur to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
One could generously call his plan to have people living in the atmosphere of Venus aspirational thinking, but given OceanGate's recent disaster, such a viewpoint is going to be met with some scepticism.
Doing things people say you can't may be impressive if you pull it off but there's very often a good reason the experts are telling you no.
Topics: Space, Technology, Titanic, Science
Joe Harker