Oceangate’s co-founder failed to get people to the Titanic but says he can safely put humans on Venus

The man who co-founded the company behind the Titan submersible disaster believes that he can “safely” send humans to Venus.
Guillermo Söhnlein, 58, made the revelation in a blog post in April where he argued that humanity can attempt to live and work on Venus, despite its inhospitable conditions because of its proximity to the Earth.
He believes that the challenges presented by Venus like carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulfuric acid “can be overcome with breathing apparatus and acid-resistant materials.”
The Argentinian-born OceanGate co-founder also believes that its inhospitable surface, which is around 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), should not be an issue if humans simply build a home 50km in its air where conditions are reportedly similar to those on the Earth.
Taking to his blog earlier this year, the Argentinian-born Oceangate co-founder wrote: “We could embark on our Venusian journey TODAY… and do it safely and cost-effectively.
“The reality is that Venus is much closer to Earth and has a much more similar orbit, which makes 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 conducting successful landings on the planet’s surface, which is one of the biggest challenges awaiting us on Mars.
“If anything, one could argue that sending humans to Venus BEFORE sending them to Mars might be a better way to safely develop the capabilities to create a Martian community.”
Söhnlein is now hoping 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 travelled further than the moon.
He co-founded OceanGate back in 2009 with Stockton Rush, 61, who died last June when the Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion” around an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to the Titanic wreck site, which occured one year ago today.
Söhnlein was still open about his most ambitious exploration plans last June after the Titan disaster.
He founded the Humans2Venus Foundation after leaving OceanGate in January 2020.
Undeterred by the fact that humans have not yet reached Mars, he believes that the hottest planet in our solar system is ripe for colonisation.
“I think it is less aspirational than putting a million people on the Martian surface by 2050,” he told Business Insider at the time.
“It would raise eyebrows outside the space industry. And it even raises eyebrows inside the space industry.
“Forget OceanGate. Forget Titan. Forget Stockton. Humanity could be on the verge of a big breakthrough and not take advantage of it because we, as a species, are gonna get shut down and pushed back into the status quo.
“[Sending humans to Venus] … it is aspirational, but I think it’s also very doable by 2050.”
As reported by Space.com, experts currently believe that human life on Venus is almost impossible.
According to the co-founder’s LinkedIn, his passion for exploring the unexplored has not waned in the wake of the OceanGate disaster.
In January of this year, he founded Space Bridge Partners, a company that connects commercial investors with an interest in space exploration to missions.
Söhnlein’s LinkedIn also reveals that he was no longer working for OceanGate at the time of the Titan disaster last June, having ended his position as COO in January 2013.

In The Independent

OceanGate’s cofounder wants to send 1,000 people to a floating colony on Venus by 2050, and says we shouldn’t stop pushing the limits of innovation
Guillermo Söhnlein has been unexpectedly thrust into the limelight in the wake of the Titan submersible tragedy.
The cofounder of OceanGate Expeditions has been grappling with questions about the company’s ill-fated trip to the Titanic shipwreck on June 18, which killed five people, including former colleague and friend Stockton Rush.
The sub is thought to have imploded within hours of its descent, raising concerns about OceanGate’s approach to innovation and safety.
But OceanGate is not Söhnlein’s only venture. The businessman’s latest — and possibly grandest — endeavor is to send 1,000 humans to live in Venus’ atmosphere by 2050.
Söhnlein hasn’t let the recent events dampen his ambition and claims humanity needs to continue pushing the limits of innovation.
He maintains his plan is not as crazy as it seems. “I think it is less aspirational than putting a million people on the Martian surface by 2050,” he told Insider.
Sending humans to Earth’s evil twin
Though it’s often called “Earth’s twin,” Venus doesn’t seem like the ideal place for humans to thrive.
Even Söhnlein agrees. “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,” he said.
Venus is the warmest planet in the solar system. Its atmosphere is chock-full of carbon dioxide, its surface temperature could melt lead, and sulfuric acid rains down from its clouds. Its atmospheric pressure is crushing — more than 90 times that of Earth, according to NASA.
In spite of this, Söhnlein doesn’t see why humanity shouldn’t attempt to live on the planet. He points to research that suggests there is a sliver of the Venusian atmosphere about 30 miles from the surface where humans could theoretically survive because temperatures are lower and pressure is less intense.
If a space station could be designed to withstand the sulfuric acid in the clouds, Söhnlein says, hundreds to thousands of people could someday live in the Venusian atmosphere.
He says a floating colony could hold 1,000 people in the Venusian atmosphere by 2050, although exactly how this will happen is less clear.
Part of a bigger plan
A company that designs submersibles and a venture that’s reaching for Venus may not seem alike, but it’s all part of a grander plan for Söhnlein.
The entrepreneur collects companies that bring him nearer to his ultimate ambition: to push humanity beyond its natural boundaries on Earth.
“I think I’ve been driven to help make humanity a multi-planet species since I was 11 years old,” he said. “I had this recurring dream of being the commander of the first Martian colony,” he said.
OceanGate was no exception. Söhnlein and Rush “both saw underwater exploration — and especially using crewed submersibles — as the closest thing that we could do to go into space and further that vision without actually going into space,” said Söhnlein.
OceanGate’s long-term vision was to create cheap crewed submersibles that could be chartered to go to the bottom of the sea. The technologies found along the way to this goal would likely be useful to help humans get to space.
This is a commonly used tactic. For instance, SpaceX’s goal was to put a million people on Mars. Along the way, it developed reusable rockets, Starlink, and its Starship mega-rockets.
Similarly, Humans2Venus, Söhnlein’s venture studio co-founded with entrepreneur Khalid Al-Ali, will come up with creative business concepts and start-up ideas to overcome commercial barriers to putting humans on Venus.
Along the way, they’ll seek to develop techniques to reduce launch operational costs and fund space missions without support from governmental agencies, Söhnlein said.
Still, for Söhnlein, having 1,000 humans living in Venus’s clouds is not just a motivational goal. “It is aspirational, but I think it’s also very doable by 2050,” he said.
Innovation needs to break barriers
In order to go farther than anyone has gone before, you may need to break a few barriers along the way.
By 2013, the point when Söhnlein handed over the control of the company to Rush, OceanGate had already found ways to reduce the cost of operation and launch costs of the submersible.
But there was one seemingly unbreakable barrier that thwarted Rush’s desire to create an affordable trip to the bottom of the ocean: Every expert said deep-diving submersibles needed to be in the shape of a sphere and made out of titanium steel, said Söhnlein.
This meant they were too small and too heavy to act as the “little buses” to the oceans. So Rush decided to break that unbreakable barrier and make a big deep-diving submersible out of carbon fiber.
For Söhnlein, this type of thinking is one of the things Rush had in common with the likes of Silicon Valley superstars Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
“I don’t think that should have a negative connotation because you could almost argue that it’s a critical element of humanity moving forward,” he said.
“If we didn’t have people that like this, we’d probably all still be in caves,” he said.
There’s no such thing as perfect safety
Rush did not seek to have his submersible certified by independent certification bodies. Söhnlein said he saw it as a distraction.
One reason is there was no way to independently certify the safety of a completely new type of vessel. There is no independent expert on carbon fiber submersible for deep sea diving because by definition Rush was “one foremost expert” in that field, per Söhnlein.
Because of this, certification would only have served to give the vessel the illusion of safety, which could have led to complacency, he said.
For Söhnlein, in any endeavor that pushes boundaries, explorers need to take calculated risks, he said.
In Rush’s case, it was a gamble that didn’t pay off. Alongside four paying customers who signed waivers saying they acknowledged the risks of the trip, Rush died when the submersible disappeared on its trip to the Titanic shipwreck on June 18.
Silicon Valley should keep pushing humanity to its limits
Söhnlein said the Titan passengers’ deaths shouldn’t stop humans from continuing to investigate carbon fiber hulled submersibles as a way to reach the bottom of the ocean.
Humanity must push the limits of innovation, he believes, despite the Titan tragedy.
“Forget OceanGate. Forget Titan. Forget Stockton. Humanity could be on the verge of a big breakthrough and not take advantage of it because we, as a species, are gonna get shut down and pushed back into the status quo,” he said.
Insider asked an independent expert whether sending humans to Venus was a realistic goal by 2050.
“If political will and a lot of money going into it, then I’m sure humanity could do it,” said Andrew Coates, a professor of space physics from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
“I suppose the question is why do we want to do that?” said Coates, who is working on instruments for a planned robotic mission to Mars.
For him, Venus is no worse a target for humanity than Mars. The point is that both would create environments that would be extremely harsh for humans.
Exposure to cosmic radiation, unyielding temperatures, and long space trips aren’t the only problem. It takes a very particular type of person to be able to live in closed environments like these for a prolonged period of time.
“People compare it to a month-long caravan trip. Some people can do it, some people can’t,” he said.
A finer point is that budding research suggests the building blocks of life may be found on both Venus and Mars and that bringing humans to these planets could contaminate these pristine environments, he said.
If humanity does need to move beyond Earth because it needs more space to expand, the moon, which is closer, “is perfectly fine for that,” said Coates.
But for Human2Venus, the question is not “why Venus.”
“Perhaps a better question would be ‘Why not?'” its website reads.

In Business Insider

WHY VENUS?
Perhaps a better question would be “Why not?”
After all, humanity has had a permanent presence in Low-Earth Orbit for 20+ years, and there are legitimate efforts currently underway to extend our footprint to the Moon and even to Mars. So … why not Venus?
In fact, the Venusian atmosphere may be the only non-Earth location in the solar system where humans may be able to exist on a long-term basis.
At approximately 50km above the Venusian surface:

Gravity
Gravity is ~1G (almost identical to Earth)
Given that Venus and Earth are of a similar size (Venus’ radius = 0.95 Earths) and mass (Venus’ mass = 0.82 Earths), the surface gravity on Venus is almost identical to that of Earth (Venus’ gravity = 0.9G). In other words, if you weighed 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 90 pounds on Venus.
Radiation Protection
Radiation protection is similar to Earth
Venus has radiation protection similar to that of Earth, but not in the way you might expect.
As ultraviolet light from the Sun bombards the planet’s outer atmosphere, it excites gases (known as ions), that form the ionosphere. When the Sun’s magnetic field interacts with these excited ions, it induces a magnetic field, which envelops the planet, similar to the shape of a teardrop. As a result, incoming solar winds blow past Venus and are diverted outward into the solar system.
Pressure
Pressure is ~1 ATM (almost identical to Earth)
Pressure is approximately 1 bar / 1 ATM (almost identical to Earth at sea level).
Temperature
Temperature is ~25° C / ~77° F
Temperature is in the favourable ‘liquid water’ range of 0-50°C.
Of course, there are downsides, including: the atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide, and the clouds are mostly sulfuric acid. However, these obstacles can be overcome with breathing apparatus and acid-resistant materials.
So … rather than live underground on the Moon or Mars and risk the unknown long-term effects of reduced gravity, why not live in a structure floating in the Venusian atmosphere?
The question may no longer be “why?” or “why not?, but rather, “when?”