Venus

Adjectives: Venusian, Cytherean

Venus is a darkenned world, none of Sol's Light has reached the planet in its original state for some decades now. A giant solar collector resting at its L1 Lagrange point absorbs all light that the Sun would fell upon the world. This solar collector, and thousands of others, harness over half of humanity's total power production for one purpose.

Though none of the Sun's light reaches Venus, the planet is still visible from across the Solar System. In fact, it is brighter than it has ever been since its formation, with lightning storms of an intensity unparalleled elsewhere in the Solar System sweeping across the planet in neverending fury, large areas of its surface have long since returned to a molten state.

These storms signal that Venus is but the focus of the largest, most powerful engine yet created. In another forty years, the engine will be shut off, its purpose done, the Morning Star being given a rotation rate roughly on par with that of Earth and Mars.

Venus is easily the most hostile environment in the Solar System that humans care to live in. Often dubbed Lucifer by some of the more sarcastic residents, the researchers, though safe in their aerial bases, often look with a bit of trepidition at the deadly fall beneath them. So far, no station has failed, and all terrorist attempts have either sorely missed their mark, or have been shot down by the token fleet in orbit.

Large blimp-like objects represent the majority of human activity on the planet, hovering in various temperate zones in the atmosphere. Only a single percent of the 'population' actually resides inside of these aerial bases on a permanent basis, the rest rotating out to the various orbital and Lagrange stations (at least) on a monthly basis. Occasionally, an expedition is sent to land or lava, but no permanent stations are actually present on the planet's surface.

Two large asteroids have been tugged into orbits perpendiculat or Venus'. Dubbed the Higg's asteroids, each one crosses just outside of Venus' orbit twice a year, slowly tugging the larger planet's orbit outwards. This slow process will take hundreds of millions of years, and will eventually have to be duplicated on Earth and even Mars in order for the planets to survive Solar Expansion.

The future of Venus remains unsettled. The Neith Proposal seeks to give the already ravaged planet a moon in much the same way Earth got hers, in order to make the planet more permanent. It seeks to slam Mercury into the planet at the exact proper angle and force, some of which will be ejected to form a moon, and give Venus plate tectonics. Above and beyond the idea of eliminating one of the core planets, there is no minor degree of debate regarding the suitableness of the project.

Some consider Venus to be a 'safe' place for stress-testing machinery, the giant storms, intense pressure, and caustic atmosphere make it a gruelling challenge, while the much lighter gravity well makes it significantly safer than diving into Neptune or Saturn.

Venus' gravity, while noticably less than Earth's, is still close enough that adjusting is easy.