One of the only places in our system where you could feel the wind of another planet in a cool 25C against your face without protection except for eye goggles (not for very long though, again, acid).
The idea of floating outposts there is at least 50 years old (and comes from a soviet scientist originally IIRC); balloons filled with breathable air - which is a nice reserve for the same as a bonus - would have enough buoyancy at this altitude to support relatively large outposts attached to them. Not only that, the cosmic ray protection afforded by the atmosphere at that altitude is basically similar to the one on Earth; and those balloons wouldn't need to be pressurized either, just filled, meaning if you get a leak you have potentially hours to fix it (or even days / more if you connect several such balloons together with some buoyancy margin).
At 50km high it is literally the most Earth-like environment in the whole of the solar system (outside of Earth / the ISS / Tiāngōng obviously)
You wouldn't even need a spacesuit or a pressure suit to stand outside, just a respirator and some light protection against acid
That is so fucking cool to think about
One of the only places in our system where you could feel the wind of another planet in a cool 25C against your face without protection except for eye goggles (not for very long though, again, acid).
The idea of floating outposts there is at least 50 years old (and comes from a soviet scientist originally IIRC); balloons filled with breathable air - which is a nice reserve for the same as a bonus - would have enough buoyancy at this altitude to support relatively large outposts attached to them. Not only that, the cosmic ray protection afforded by the atmosphere at that altitude is basically similar to the one on Earth; and those balloons wouldn't need to be pressurized either, just filled, meaning if you get a leak you have potentially hours to fix it (or even days / more if you connect several such balloons together with some buoyancy margin).
I'd always assumed that floating Venus colonies were fun sci-fi nonsense. I'm kinda taken aback at how feasible it actually is