OceanGate Co-founder Wants Send 1,000 Peoples to a ‘Floating Colony’ on Venus by 2050

Would you ever like to live in the atmosphere of the hottest planet in our solar system (Venus)?

In just a few short decades, you might — or at least, that's what the co-founder of OceanGate, the builder of the doomed Titanic seeking submersible, saying.

In an interview with Insider, OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein introduced his latest ambitious venture: Humans2Venus, a research group intent on building a colony floating above the surface of Venus, and that he says, by 2050, it will be home to 1,000 people.

As hostile as the ocean depths are, Venus's climate could be even worse. Although the planet is sometimes called "Earth's twin", NASA says that its thick sulfuric atmosphere – the same one in which Sohnelin wants to colonize – traps heat in a "runaway greenhouse effect", causing surface temperatures to rise, Gets very high, about 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  If Venus is our twin, then it is evil.

An Argentina businessman admits, at least, that going to Venus is something of a moonshot. "You're absolutely right that when you talk about going to Venus, it would raise eyebrows outside the space industry," Söhnlein told Insider. "And it even raises eyebrows inside the space industry."

"It is aspirational," he added, "but I think it's also very doable by 2050."

Meanwhile, the troubles surrounding the Titan submersible are not a concern for the entrepreneur, who resigned as CEO of OceanGate in 2013 but retained a minority ownership. 

Sohnlein suggested, "Forget OceanGate. Forget Titan. Forget Stockton (Rush, the CEO who died in the submersible's implosion)". "Humanity may be on the verge of a great breakthrough and we cannot take advantage of it because we, as a species, will be shut down and pushed back to the status quo."

It is not yet clear what exact technological breakthroughs Sohnlein and Humans2Venus hope to make in the next 27 years that would allow a spacecraft colony that could withstand the ultraviolet radiation of the Venusian atmosphere for long periods of time.

However, these matters also seem outside his grand vision — and as far as the late OceanGate CEO goes, Sohnelin has nothing but praise. He told Insider, "If we didn't have people like [Rush], we'd probably all still be in caves."