Terraforming Venus

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Helius
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Post by Helius »

choff wrote:No problem, we provide the singularities with free passage to sunny new homes on the surface of Venus.
Ah-HA! You're guilty of an Anthropomorphism.

Oort cloud singularities are happy and at home in the Oort cloud. They only need to watch out for more powerful unrelated Oort cloud singularities, that they may be devoured for their resources.

It is *us* who'd appreciate a nice sunny warm Venetian lakefront property.

Nydoc
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Post by Nydoc »

palladin9479 wrote:If on Venus, better would be to create floating city's high in the atmosphere. The air is so dense that floating would be easy, this also takes care of the temperature problem. Could use remote robotics to mine the surface for materials.

Only issue is you'd have to make the entire skin of the habitat out of material resistant to sulfuric acid clouds. Seeing as we handle sulfuric acid regularly these days this shouldn't be too much of a challenge. The real challenge would be to get supplies to and from this floating city. There is no ground for a heavy space craft to land on and no ground to use as a launch surface. Practically requires development of thrusters capable of creating a large force without using mass.
I like this idea. You could send down scientific robots as well. I imagine it would be similar to operating remote submarines from an ocean vessel and would have similar pressure requirements. Perhaps a good design would be a tensegrity sphere ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_nine ... sphere)) that was covered in ceramic materials. It would slowly get worn down by acid, but should be designed with on-site repairs as a forethought. According to the wikipedia article on the colonization of Venus:
Because there is not a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric mixing rates, giving time to repair any such damages. In addition, humans would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air to breathe, a protection from the acidic rain; and on some occasions low level protection against heat. Alternatively, two-part domes could contain a lifting gas like hydrogen or helium (extractable from the atmosphere) to allow a higher mass density.
The wikipedia article also mentions using skyhooks as a means of accessing the platform, but I don't know how practical that would be. I'd be curious to know approximately how big a tensegrity sphere would need to be to be buoyant on Venus. Buckminster Fuller said that on earth you could make a mile-wide floating sphere and it would be buoyant when the internal temperature was 1 degree higher than the outside temperature. I suspect the required size would be much smaller on Venus.

I once calculated how fast a floating Venusian platform would have to move to be in continuous sunlight. IIRC it's something like 7mph because Venus has a retrograde rotation. However, the wind speed on Venus can reach 212mph in some locations so you'd need some turbines or ramjets to keep your platform in continuous sunlight.

Perhaps in the far future you could have a platform that looks something like this:
Image

zbarlici
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somebody mention habitable planets?

Post by zbarlici »

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-wea ... milky.html

Sadly enough though, my great grandchildren will most likely not live to see the day when mankind gets there.. even if society manages NOT to blow itself up by then :)

Carl White
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Post by Carl White »

palladin9479 wrote:If on Venus, better would be to create floating city's high in the atmosphere. The air is so dense that floating would be easy, this also takes care of the temperature problem. Could use remote robotics to mine the surface for materials.

Only issue is you'd have to make the entire skin of the habitat out of material resistant to sulfuric acid clouds. Seeing as we handle sulfuric acid regularly these days this shouldn't be too much of a challenge. The real challenge would be to get supplies to and from this floating city. There is no ground for a heavy space craft to land on and no ground to use as a launch surface. Practically requires development of thrusters capable of creating a large force without using mass.
And then what? What is the point, as opposed to just living on the Earth?

Mars, yes. It has a more obvious potential for being made Earth-like.

Could you imagine the sun, living on Venus? Think of how hot surfaces can get under the sun on the Earth; hot enough to fry eggs. Now double that.

So far as mining goes, other planets/moons/asteroids would provide a better prospect.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

Carl White wrote:
palladin9479 wrote:If on Venus, better would be to create floating city's high in the atmosphere. The air is so dense that floating would be easy, this also takes care of the temperature problem. Could use remote robotics to mine the surface for materials.

Only issue is you'd have to make the entire skin of the habitat out of material resistant to sulfuric acid clouds. Seeing as we handle sulfuric acid regularly these days this shouldn't be too much of a challenge. The real challenge would be to get supplies to and from this floating city. There is no ground for a heavy space craft to land on and no ground to use as a launch surface. Practically requires development of thrusters capable of creating a large force without using mass.
And then what? What is the point, as opposed to just living on the Earth?

Mars, yes. It has a more obvious potential for being made Earth-like.

Could you imagine the sun, living on Venus? Think of how hot surfaces can get under the sun on the Earth; hot enough to fry eggs. Now double that.

So far as mining goes, other planets/moons/asteroids would provide a better prospect.
Yup. Dropping more water on mars would seem to be a more productive use of time and resources.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

At least for now, it seems to me that it would be better to live in orbit around Venus than in the clouds thereof.

Just a Thought.

hanelyp
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Post by hanelyp »

There you have to go and be practical. :wink:

choff
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Post by choff »

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story ... ation.html

Looks like it may be possible to alter the rotation of Venus after all.
CHoff

Carl White
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Post by Carl White »

Scupperer wrote:Grab something massive like Mercury, speed it up to smack Venus hard and right where you want it. If you do it right, Venus gets a moon, spins up so it has reasonable day lengths and a magnetic field, you strip some atmosphere away, and what's left will be inundated with enough dirt and minor impacts for several decades to keep it cool enough to finish terraforming.
Thereby turning the surface of Venus molten for how long? Just when did you want to colonize it?

Not to mention all the debris from the collision that would spread out through the solar system, some of which would impact upon the Earth. Multiple extinction-level events.

choff
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Post by choff »

The point of the article is that Venus has slowed down by six minutes in less that twenty years, and they think the weather is a factor. If thats the case, it wouldn't take such a staggering amount of energy that cosmic billiards with comets couldn't change it to something desireable. All stretching the imagination of course.
CHoff

rjaypeters
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Post by rjaypeters »

Stretch the imagination? Avoid the mess of minor planet collisions with Venus? Try a mini-Ringworld (really just a reasonably rigid hoop - enough to keep the hoop from falling out of the sky, Chicken Little) built elsewhere in the solar system and then made coorbital and concentric with Venus' center of mass. Drop cables to the surface and anchor (think bicycle wheel). Apply thrust to the hoop along the circumference. Apply thrust for a long time. Apply a lot of thrust for a long time. Energy source is up to the contractors and the people paying the bills.

While arranging all of the above, remember how desirable it is to have a moderate axial tilt w.r.t. the plane of the ecliptic (makes seasons possible and avoids complete stratification of habitable and unacceptable latitudes all around the planet.

When desired rotation is reached, compact the hoop into a core for the moon of Venus, or recruit another solar system body for the job.

Dang, just checked. Venus' obliquity is about 2.7% not nearly the comfy 23.5% Earth enjoys. I'll have to think about that. Much easier to change the obliquity why the rotation is slow.

I don't think increasing the rate of retrograde rotation is really a problem, it'll keep the orbital dynamicists employed.

...

Ah, slow the rotation of Venus to zero then change the orientation of the hoop. Apply thrust. See above.
"Aqaba! By Land!" T. E. Lawrence

R. Peters

Scupperer
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Post by Scupperer »

Carl White wrote:
Scupperer wrote:Grab something massive like Mercury, speed it up to smack Venus hard and right where you want it. If you do it right, Venus gets a moon, spins up so it has reasonable day lengths and a magnetic field, you strip some atmosphere away, and what's left will be inundated with enough dirt and minor impacts for several decades to keep it cool enough to finish terraforming.
Thereby turning the surface of Venus molten for how long? Just when did you want to colonize it?

Not to mention all the debris from the collision that would spread out through the solar system, some of which would impact upon the Earth. Multiple extinction-level events.
The fully molten phase would last about 100 years, while a new moon for Venus would coalesce and sweep up most of the debris from the disk. Then, outgassing from the molten surface will begin to create the new atmosphere and the crust will begin solidifying. After that, it's debatable how long it will take to cool off enough to be habitable. On Earth, the ocean's formed approximately 150 million years after the moon, but that was after natural comet bombardment, and there's no analysis I could find (didn't look too hard) of how quickly the crust had solidified, how quickly the atmosphere had thickened, etc. Since we're moving massive objects around by ourselves, we could speed up the cooling process by introducing the water ourselves by flinging comets, and/or putting up a planetary sun shield.

Once it's cool enough to support photosynthesizing extremophiles, we can start the terraforming process by introducing such life and creating an oxygen rich atmosphere.

If we have the tech to move a rock big enough to form a moon, we should be able to handle any stray debris that finds its way to Earth, so no concerns on that point.

As to how long this takes; thousands to millions of years? If you can't use the planet any other way, though, what's the difference? But in the really long run, you'll gain a billion or so maintenance free years of habitable Venus this way (until the sun starts to die).
Perrin Ehlinger

choff
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Post by choff »

If Venus continues to alter its rate of spin by six minutes per sixteen years it might be faster to wait for the planet to stop and get up to speed going the other way.
CHoff

nyar
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Post by nyar »

Terraforming_Venus_Milestones

1- Identify resources: Venus, Phoebe (Saturnian moon), M-class Asteroids, 13 Egeria (ice rich asteroid.

2- Build fusion power plant on Phoebe to power systems.

3- Place geosynchronous ring around Phoebe at 200 km above surface attached by cables.

4- Extend from ring 2000-3000 km light sail.

5- Build ion cannons(thrusters) with gimble on either pole of Phoebe using local material or M-class asteriod.

6- Use combination of light sail and ion cannons to break Phoebe out of Saturn's orbit.

7- Use combination of light sail and ion cannons to orient Phoebe and light sail properly.

8- Use combination of light sail, ion cannons, and planetary swingbys to navigate Phoebe to Venusian L5 point.

9- Assemble M-class asteroids (if needed) to L5 point.

10- Cover Phoebe with reflective surface to preserve ice.

11- Extend light sail to radius of 30,000 km and convert surface of light sail into a solar power panel.

12- Construct two hollow spheres 60 km in diameter (Phoebe II and Endymion). Store in sunward side recess in Phoebe.

13- Move sunward side ion cannon equipment to Endymion. Modify remaining Phoebe ion cannon to dual beam purpose (+ and -). Fill Endymion with fuel for the ion cannon. Cover Endymion with solar power panels to power ion cannon at reduced power.

14- Fill Phoebe II with material for the final ring and self replicating orbiting shade panel robots.

15- Construct a 10 km object (Trigger) of rock, ice and frozen CO2 and store on anti-sunward side of Phoebe.

16- Use light sail to move assembly to Venusian L1 point. Use Phoebe ion cannon to prevent light sail from pushing Phoebe to Venus. Power comes from light sail solar panels. Light sail will serve as a shade for Venus assisting in cooling.

17- Release Trigger to make an atmosphere grazing encounter with Venus in the opposite direction of planetary spin and an angle of 30 Degrees from the ecliptic.

18- While the ring of dust from the Trigger collision is still ionized direct the positive ion beam to the edge of the ring. Direct the negative (electron) beam at one of Venus's poles. Use power from the solar sail/generator. Homopolar effect will begin spinning away air at escape velocity and spinning up Venus in opposite directions. See image below . A self regenerating magnetic field is assumed. Preliminary research is needed.

19- As the ring grows and spins off air continue firing the positive beam at the edge of the ring. When one pole is obscured by the ring due to the inclination, switch the electron beam to the other pole. The turbulence in the air and the extended surface area of the ring will help cool the Venusian atmosphere and compensate for the electric resistance heating.

20- When enough of the Venusian atmosphere is gone and the day is short enough, turn off the ion cannon. Approximate time 100 + years. Final status 5-10 atmosphere surface pressure, 3 day day. Note-permanent planetary magnetic field, and global tectonics may be induced.

21- Allow what is left of Phoebe (mostly ice) to fall towards Venus in a trajectory that will put it into an orbit in the opposite direction of the ring. Optional-save the solar sail and the ion cannon thruster at the L1 point for more shading or move elsewhere for other work.

21- As Phoebe encounters the gas/dust ring the ring will be swept up and Phoebe's orbit will drop lower due to momentum loss from the collision clearing the orbit of the gas/dust ring.

22- When Phoebe is at the outer Roche limit release Phoebe II which will be the outer shepherding satellite.

23- When Phoebe is at an acceptable orbit release Endymion which will be the inner shepherding satellite. The ion cannon on Endymion will be used for weather control.

24- Phoebe will drop lower in the gas/dust ring until it contacts the atmosphere, breaks up, and finally collides with Venus releasing volatiles for the shallow seas. Considerable heat from kinetic energy release. Approximate ocean depth if Venus were flat is 30 feet. Optional-use the solar sail to retrieve asteroid 13 Egeria for water ice adding another 15 feet of water to Venus.

25- Release new ring material and self replicating shadow satellites from Phoebe II to form a remote controlled artificial shadow ring between Phoebe II and Endymion.

26- Venus is now ready for inoculation by biological agents to create a biosphere.

27- Rename Venus to Cytherea and Phoebe II to Phoebe.


Image


Excuse the vertical ion beams. I can't get them to point to the ion cannon at the Venus parasol.
Think outside of the box

krenshala
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Post by krenshala »

Quite a few of these steps could be done while in transit from Saturn to Venus, especially if you took a low energy transfer orbit inward. The biggest would be the protective/reflective layer for the ices being brought to the inner system.

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