The man who co-founded the company behind the Titan submarine disaster believes he can “safely” send humans to Venus.
Guillermo Söhnlein, 58, made the revelation in a blog post in April, where he claimed humanity could try to live and work on Venus despite its inhospitable conditions due to its proximity to Earth.
He believes that the challenges Venus presents, such as carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid clouds, “can be overcome with breathing apparatus and acid-resistant materials.”
The Argentinian-born co-founder of OceanGate also believes its inhospitable surface, which has a temperature of around 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), shouldn’t be a problem if people simply build a home 50km up in the air, where conditions are said to be similar to those on Earth .
The Argentinian-born co-founder of Oceangate wrote on his blog earlier this year: “TODAY we could take our Venus journey… and do it safely and cheaply.
“The reality is that Venus is much closer to Earth and has a much more similar orbit, making it much more accessible than Mars (lower cost, more frequent flight windows, shorter transit times, higher safety, etc.).
“Also, we don’t have to worry about successful landings on the planet’s surface, which is one of the biggest challenges we face on Mars.
“If anything, one could argue that sending people to Venus BEFORE sending them to Mars might be a better way to safely develop the capabilities to create a Martian community.”
Söhnlein now hopes to encourage enough people to join a community including scientists, explorers and private investors to make his dream of reaching Venus a reality, despite the fact that humans have never physically traveled further than the moon.
He co-founded OceanGate in 2009 with Stockton Rush, 61, who died last June when the Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion” about an hour and 45 minutes after diving into the Titanic wreck site, which happened a year ago today.
Söhnlein was still open about his most ambitious exploration plans last June after the Titan disaster.
After leaving OceanGate in January 2020, he founded the Humans2Venus Foundation.
Undeterred by the fact that humans have yet to reach Mars, he believes the hottest planet in our solar system is ripe for colonization.
“I think it’s less ambitious than putting a million people on the surface of Mars by 2050,” he said. Business Insider in time, when.
“It would raise eyebrows outside the space industry. And it’s even raising eyebrows within the space industry.
“Forget OceanGate. Forget the Titan. Forget Stockton. Humanity could be on the verge of a major breakthrough and not take advantage of it because we as a species will be closed off and pushed back into the status quo.
“[Sending humans to Venus] … it’s ambitious, but I think it’s also very doable by 2050.”
As Space.com reports, experts currently believe that human life on Venus is nearly impossible.
According to the LinkedIn co-founder, his passion for exploring the uncharted hasn’t waned even after the OceanGate disaster.
In January of this year, he founded Space Bridge Partners, a company that connects commercial investors interested in space exploration with missions.
Söhnlein’s LinkedIn also reveals that he was no longer working for OceanGate at the time of the Titan disaster last June, having quit his COO position in January 2013.