Many organizations including NASA and Mars One are in the planning stages of missions to put humans on Mars. There are even plans to send the first colonists to the red planet within the next few decades. Although Mars is cold, rocky and barren it is downright hospitable compared to Earth’s other neighbor Venus.

Venus is a case of global warming run amok. Scientists believe that the planet may once have been very Earth-like. However, at some point in its history Venus experienced a runaway greenhouse effect. It became so hot that the planets liquid water evaporated and remained in the atmosphere. Now the surface of the planet can exceed 1,000 degrees fahrenheit, toxic acid rain falls from the sky at the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of Earth.

It is a safe bet that no human will ever set foot on the surface of Venus, but that isn’t what NASA has in mind. In a recent interview with IEEE Spectrum Chris Jones, Aerospace engineer at NASA Langley Research Center, talked about the potential for exploring Venus.

“The vast majority of people, when they hear the idea of going to Venus and exploring, think of the surface, where it’s hot enough to melt lead and the pressure is the same as if you were almost a mile underneath the ocean,” said Jones.

The NASA High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) is a solar powered Zeppelin-like vehicle is a 130 meter long craft, with a 21 cubic meter habitat for crew. The top of the craft would be covered with more than 1,000 square meters of solar panels.

Because it is closer to the sun, Venus gets more than 40 percent more solar power than Earth and 240 percent more than Mars. This means that the HAVOC craft could remain in orbit almost indefinitely and the mission could actually be easier than a manned trip to Mars.

“Traditionally, say if you’re going to Mars, you talk about ‘entry, descent, and landing,’ or EDL. Obviously, in our case, ‘landing’ would represent a significant failure of the mission, so instead we have ‘entry, descent, and inflation,’ or EDI,” said NASA scientist Dale Arney in a statement.

Initially NASA would send a robot into Venus’ atmosphere. In the second phase, NASA would send a pair of astronauts on a 30-day mission to collect data and assess the feasibility of a future scientific colony. In the third phase, astronauts would spend a year in the hot planet’s upper atmosphere and eventually a “cloud city” for scientific investigation might be established.

“Venus has value as a destination in and of itself for exploration and colonization. But it’s also complementary to current Mars plans.” He added, “There are things that you would need to do for a Mars mission, but we see a little easier path through Venus,” said Jones.

Havoc was developed by the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SADC) at NASA Langley Research Center .  The SADC looks at theoretical concepts to determine what is possible given existing and emerging technologies. While the Venus exploration plan is theoretically possible it is not currently on NASA’s mission schedule.