Strategos' Risk wrote:
In popular imagination of the sci-fi and speculative fiction variety, Mars is seen as the natural destiny of humanity. To explore, to settle, the possibly find aliens there (or at least, the vestiges of their dead civilizations). Venus has been overshadowed ever since the realization that the entire planet is a ball of sulphuric acid and the surface much more difficult to walk upon. But Venus used to be well-known in myth and pop culture, what with being the twin of Earth, the Morning Star, covered in jungles, etc. etc. Apparently Edgar Rice Burroughs has a Carson of Venus series! Some cool stuff here.
I think I first encountered the idea of exploration of Venus in Beer's Revolution, Maple Leafs, Chrysanthemes and the Eagle -A revised 1848 TL. Since then, I've found that there's been proposals to send an expedition and even colonize Venus before Mars. For one thing, Venus is closer to Earth than Mars is, and its gravity is the same, thus preventing the negative effects on the human body of living in a < 1G environment. Charles Stross makes a pretty interesting case here. Here's a summary article.
As far as the AH goes, what would it take to have Venus replace Mars in the popular conception as where humanity should voyage to first, settle on, have colonial tensions with, etc.? What would it take for a billionaire to want to build sky cities there?
Heh, "rehabilitating" Venus as a Human destination? (Stole that from here:
http://moonsociety.org/publications/mmm_papers/venus_rehabpaper.htm, and
http://www.moonsociety.org/publications/mmm_themes/mmmt_solarsystem.pdf 
) You have alread run into the main 'issues' with doing so; Most people think Venus is hell and that it's either to hard to get to, impossible to 'live' on, or you can't get back once you've gone. All of which makes getting it as 'popular' destination almost impossible despite valid and logical arguments to the contrary. You'll note the assumptions given here
Pop-culture wise, well I have a lot of notes and stuff for an RPG/adventure game campaign called "Sky Pirates of Venus!" which takes everything people loved about 20s-and-30s 'aero-punk' like "Crimsion Skies" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and gives it a light covering of science fiction and credabilty in the works

But the disappointment that it wasn't a swamp-covered world of dinasoars and naked-cave women seems to have been something humans genereally haven't been able to get over. It doesn't help that when people think of Lighter-Than-Air the Hindenburg and other airship disasters is what generally comes to mind.
Getting past the "land-based-bias" for colonization is almost impossible even here on Earth, (see issues/debate over SeaSteading) let alone in space.
Part of the 'problem' seems to be one of perception in any case as neither Mercur or Venus get much attention for what seems to be not much more than the fact they are 'inward' from the sun and not 'outward' from it like Mars. As most of the 'arguments' for going to and colonizing Mars are applicable to Venus the actual 'justification' is of course there but the main argument which boils down to we've 'landed' and survived longer on Mars than we have on Venus, (see land-bias' above) will not be resolved until we actually have 'done' a Venus long-term atmosphere probe.
(I'd originally come up with an idea I called "Green Dragon" before someone else started using it as the basis for an orbital greenhouse project and lately someone else has come up with the same idea but better PR

Anyway a Dragon capsule with suspended from a balloon deployed from the docking port and filled with science and measurment instruments is quite a do-able concept if anyone were interested)
Getting a 'billionare' as interested in Venus as Muck is in Mars is really only going to take, well, getting one interested in Venus
Why don't you build a skyhook?
Same reason we haven't built one for Earth, high upfront cost and required infrastructure to get it into space and then add getting it to and in place over Venus. Getting off Venus isn't easy but it isn't as tough as many think since you can use most of the same techniques as you'd use on Mars and since Venus has a thicker atmosphere you can use things like aerodynamic lift and CO2 based combustion where as you can't on Mars.
Randy