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Hypothetical Venusian War


Souper

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No, not in a new thread.

 

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How would war be carried out on / around Venus?

I know, you're probably wondering why they'd be fighting over Venus in the first place.

Here are the conditions:

The year is 2200. All the hypothetical scientific advancements and construction projects, economic expansion etc. predicted for 2200 are fully available.

The backstory is as follows: Two factions (the Red and the Blue) were once at peace and had focused the last 200 years terraforming and colonizing Mars. Their plan was to use the newly-terraformed Mars as a gateway to the colonization of the remaining solar system... until they found Venerium, a very valuable resource. They then declared war and now fought over it.

Red and Blue have exact same 2200 tech. Advances in 3D printing tech allows complex electronic, metal, plastic, glass, essentially all elements in the periodic table to be made in a matter of several minutes provided they have the resources to do so. For the most part, their machines are unmanned. Due to the 3D printer's limited size, in order to build larger structures, it prints out various modules and uses the help of a crane to assemble the full building. It can build more of itself in a deployable form to make it small enough to fit inside its fully deployed version.

TL;DR self-replicating machines in the future fight for Venus over Venerium.

 

Our scenario begins at the beginning of the war. Red is based on Earth, while Blue is on a terraformed Mars.

Red prefers more powerful weapons and armor, but slower building and slower / sluggish movement. Red is more specialized and organized.

Blue is the opposite, high building speed and high speed / maneuverability, but less powerful weapons and armor. Blue is more adaptable and creative.

 

Edited by Souper
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wana a reason to be in venus?

Earth is overpopulated, infested, exaust of resources (whatever reason to expand to other place) and humanity can't survive for long time neither in zeroG or low G ambient (mars gravity isn't good enough), neither in centrifugal stations because Coriolis based effects in health in long term. Which can be true, we don't really know.

People will live in the clouds though, and floating cities probably will be very fragile to weapons,in the surface there will be mining operations, probably unnmaned, so more like an air war between floating aircraft carriers.

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31 minutes ago, kunok said:

wana a reason to be in venus?

Earth is overpopulated, infested, exaust of resources (whatever reason to expand to other place) and humanity can't survive for long time neither in zeroG or low G ambient (mars gravity isn't good enough), neither in centrifugal stations because Coriolis based effects in health in long term. Which can be true, we don't really know.

People will live in the clouds though, and floating cities probably will be very fragile to weapons,in the surface there will be mining operations, probably unnmaned, so more like an air war between floating aircraft carriers.

Invent a hypothetical solar shield at L1.

Cause the atmosphere to collapse, no more floating cities. 

Same technique, but then modulate the temperature, captur oxygen and bury S8 under ground, same with catbon, you now have a breathable atmosphere, but still no water. 

So life is now trapped in domed structures which capture any moistue very limited. Each domed structure is separted from others. 

The most precious resource on Venus is the atom hydrogen, which is largely released from Sulfuric acid and very small amounts, so that each colony tries to find more efficient ways to extract and retain in order to expand. Without rain the surface becomes a dangerous poisonous landscape that few venture into, and wars are not wise. They risk the loss of precious hydrogen. 

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@PB666 The terraform effort will need tech, materials and energy orders of magnitude bigger than just colonizing the sky, and I don't really see the point. The war he is looking for isn't that long in the future

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4 minutes ago, kunok said:

@PB666 The terraform effort will need tech, materials and energy orders of magnitude bigger than just colonizing the sky, and I don't really see the point. The war he is looking for isn't that long in the future

Cloud civilizations are precarious, all you have to is lower the mass of atmospheric gas and floatation stops. 

You would not terrifrom venus, geeze, the best you could do is have shielded colonies. There is not enough hydrogen on venus to terriform, venus would be a last ditch desperate effort to  survive in our solar system, not a smart one given the sun will eventually wipe it out. 

By never i mean not going tothe  oort cloud kuiper belt and slinging hydrogen rich comets at it. 

In the habitable zone earth is it, even a postacopolyptic earth is better than the two alternatives. 

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5 minutes ago, kunok said:

@PB666 Change terraform to collapse the atmosphere and the rest of things you said to do to venus in my text and I still would say it.

As opposed to insert gigantic floating cities in the atmosphere? Seriously one could devise an expensive scheme to deprive venus of sunlight the orbital insertion of floating cities could be technologically impossible.

 

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9 minutes ago, PB666 said:

As opposed to insert gigantic floating cities in the atmosphere? Seriously one could devise an expensive scheme to deprive venus of sunlight the orbital insertion of floating cities could be technologically impossible.

As opposing to build in the atmosphere itself. You start with a little settlement and then you grow, as with every other settlement. I won't start other venus colonization thread, I only tried to give a reason to @Souper for the history

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no, Earth is perfectly fine. The Red faction is very efficient, especially in it's infrastructure, especially on it's home turf. They recycle EVERYTHING. Even plastic. Because the recycling is done on an atomic level - molecular bonds are broken, the elements are separated, etc.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, Venusian surface is such a tremendously inhospitable environment that a swarm of planet-cracking RKVs is the very best solution from the start. It could also blow away some of the atmosphere, drastically improving access to resources for the bombarding faction.

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Why you do not tell us how your story goes on? You initial assumptions are contradicting. It is not bad, there are illogical assumptions and events in almost every story, but then there is not one logic chain of consequences. Every author weights different assumptions and get different story, and probably the original author does not like anyone of them.

For example you told that they can easily product any elements by using nuclear reactions. But you do not like easy and natural solution of massive nuclear war between Earth and Mars. Resource depletion is also very illogical assumption in solar system scale production. Material can not disappear. If you mine some elements and use them, they stay in waste and with infinite energy resources they can be always recycled.

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On 24.05.2016 at 10:32 PM, PB666 said:

As opposed to insert gigantic floating cities in the atmosphere?

Not oposed! In addition!
If they build enough huge floatng cities with roofs made of foil, then Venusian albedo increases, atmosphere cools, gases condensate, cities are floating lower and lower and at last - bingo! - former floating cities stay on ground, temperature is low (just 50 C or so in a shade) and they have large amounts of sulfur to grab it in a heap and build a huge sulfuric mountain - Mons Sulfuris.

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On 2016-05-24 at 2:16 PM, kunok said:

wana a reason to be in venus?

Earth is overpopulated, infested, exaust of resources (whatever reason to expand to other place) and humanity can't survive for long time neither in zeroG or low G ambient (mars gravity isn't good enough), neither in centrifugal stations because Coriolis based effects in health in long term. Which can be true, we don't really know.

People will live in the clouds though, and floating cities probably will be very fragile to weapons,in the surface there will be mining operations, probably unnmaned, so more like an air war between floating aircraft carriers.

Yes.  Armored foam-metallic glass war-zeppelins battling for their floating city-state masters.  Only madmen would try to fight on the surface.

*calls the A-Team*

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On 5/23/2016 at 10:36 PM, kerbiloid said:

If they can live on Venus, they can live anywhere. Any place is better than Venus.

 

11 hours ago, qeveren said:

Armored foam-metallic glass war-zeppelins battling for their floating city-state masters.  Only madmen would try to fight on the surface.

If this were a movie, these would be the opening lines right here, as a spoken narration by the main character over a stage-setting intro.

 

Anyway, everyone seems to be assuming that conflict only ever arises for perfectly logical and rational reasons.  Why there are colonies around Venus, I don't know.  But the factions could have formed due to some sort of political split, each rallying behind rival leaders for their own purposes.  Perhaps one faction is no longer content with being controlled by a governor back on Earth and wants some degree of home rule, vs. a loyalist faction who prefers to maintain the status quo.  People don't change, there will always be someone motivated by money or power or what have you.

Edited by JetJaguar
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5 hours ago, JetJaguar said:

 

If this were a movie, these would be the opening lines right here, as a spoken narration by the main character over a stage-setting intro.

 

Anyway, everyone seems to be assuming that conflict only ever arises for perfectly logical and rational reasons.  Why there are colonies around Venus, I don't know.  But the factions could have formed due to some sort of political split, each rallying behind rival leaders for their own purposes.  Perhaps one faction is no longer content with being controlled by a governor back on Earth and wants some degree of home rule, vs. a loyalist faction who prefers to maintain the status quo.  People don't change, there will always be someone motivated by money or power or what have you.

Can't we just launch a cesium/hydrogen bomb in the upper atmosphere and the whole thing would be over with, no need to ask for details.

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War would be a highly horrific thing on venus, Imagine if your a foot soldier and you get shot? Suddenly your guts are getting simultaneously cooked by the 900 degree heat, And eaten away by the Acid, You wouldnt last long but better hope to be headshot! Thats the most merciful way.

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2 hours ago, daniel l. said:

War would be a highly horrific thing on venus, Imagine if your a foot soldier and you get shot? Suddenly your guts are getting simultaneously cooked by the 900 degree heat, And eaten away by the Acid, You wouldnt last long but better hope to be headshot! Thats the most merciful way.

That's why war wouldn't be fought on Venus. They would likely engage in a proxy war for the place.

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As the surface temperature on Venus is ~500 C, any city/facility should have giant radiators 1000 C hot to dissipate the waste heat.
As these giant radiators wood look like a permanent volcano over their head, they should place it outside of the town, behind, say, a hill, keeping the town in its shadow ("shadow" means just 500 C, not 1500).
The hill should work like a giant firewall, permanently white hot from the back side.

So, the main goal of their (dog? cat? mole? barbecue?) fight should be taking down enemy's radiators.
As they unlikely could heat them with portable lasers or nukes, the easiest way would be to cover them with sand.
So, they would be bombing each other's hills trying to bury the radiators (and vault exits) with sand.

Edited by kerbiloid
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29 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

As the surface temperature on Venus is ~500 C, any city/facility should have giant radiators 1000 C hot to dissipate the waste heat.
As these giant radiators wood look like a permanent volcano over their head, they should place it outside of the town, behind, say, a hill, keeping the town in its shadow ("shadow" means just 500 C, not 1500).
The hill should work like a giant firewall, permanently white hot from the back side.

So, the main goal of their (dog? cat? mole? barbecue?) fight should be taking down enemy's radiators.
As they unlikely could heat them with portable lasers or nukes, the easiest way would be to cover them with sand.
So, they would be bombing each other's hills trying to bury the radiators (and vault exits) with sand.

They wouldn't have bases on the surface. This far in the future they could easily build floating cities. Shoot the gas bags, basically. They'd fall to their doom.

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23 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

They wouldn't have bases on the surface. This far in the future they could easily build floating cities. Shoot the gas bags, basically. They'd fall to their doom.

After they had shot all their floating cities during the first day of their war, the fallen survivors digged into the ground and have found the cities.

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50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

After they had shot all their floating cities during the first day of their war, the fallen survivors digged into the ground and have found the cities.

They would have countermeasures. 

Living on the surface of venus, even with advanced tech, is very undesirable.

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2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Living on the surface of venus, even with advanced tech, is very undesirable.

Who knows, what temperature is under Venus surface. Unlikely 500 C or -100 C, probably something less terrible.

Edited by kerbiloid
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