Floating Colonies

[kerbiloid]

A mono-seat biplane is definitely what an extraterrestrial colony requires to carry payloads.

Btw, what about gasoline for it?

***

I would just advice to calculate everything required for even a small terrestrial farm, then start inventing how to keep all this in air and support without a farmer shop, a gas station, and other gifts of civilisation.

***

Of course, as a game feature (it's a gameplay subforum, not irl), this is absolutely normal in the game where the crew needs no food or air at all, lol.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

A mono-seat biplane is definitely what an extraterrestrial colony requires to carry payloads.

Btw, what about gasoline for it?

***

I would just advice to calculate everything required for even a small terrestrial farm, then start inventing how to keep all this in air and support without a farmer shop, a gas station, and other gifts of civilisation.

***

Of course, as a game feature (it's a gameplay subforum, not irl), this is absolutely normal in the game where the crew needs no food or air at all, lol.

The other user theorised that it could be serviced by landing on it with planes and I showed him that we built working flying carriers 90 years ago, I'm not in any way trying to say that you could use WW1 planes to service a flying colony on Venus, but sure enough if that's what we could do almost a century ago, we can surely do it better now (if it wasn't for its impracticality we would have also 747 acting as flying carriers and I've seen plenty of footage of c130 planes landing or taking off with ridiculous restraints and that without even beginning to talk about mid-air cargo transfer techniques)

 

 As other people pointed out (you completely ignored them) an ISS-like outpost in the atmosphere of Venus is doable IRL now, it doesn't require magic, anti-gravity or impossible space-elevator level of material science, just the very convenient fact that good old, nonflammable and boring air is a good enough lifting gas in Venus atmosphere (and using air as a lifting gas it's only the tip of the iceberg).

Obviously bigger structures, cities or colonies would meet the same problems of any other colony that's not grounded (a space colony has orbit keeping, pressurisation, radiation and micrometeorites impacts to deal with).

 

Yes, it's like the Hindenburg, if the Hindenburg used a breathable and nonflammable gas for lifting.

 

Edited January 19, 2021 by Master39

[kerbiloid]

29 minutes ago, Master39 said:

As other people pointed out (you completely ignored them) an ISS-like outpost in the atmosphere of Venus is doable IRL now

I just completely ignored this nonsense.

29 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I'm not in any way trying to say that you could use WW1 planes to service a flying colony on Venus, but sure enough if that's what we could do almost a century ago, we can surely do it better now (if it wasn't for its impracticality we would have also 747 acting as flying carriers and I've seen plenty of footage of c130 planes landing or taking off with ridiculous restraints and that without even beginning to talk about mid-air cargo transfer techniques)

It would be nice to see anything but a WWI biplane landing on an airship (except the excellent KSP videos, of course).
A payload traffic means bigger planes, bigger runways.

***

So, where is that brave educated farmer/gardener bringing an elementary calculation of his needs, mass, and land area required for just one family?

I have calculated a couple of years ago, have you?

29 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Yes, it's like the Hindenburg, if the Hindenburg used a breathable and nonflammable gas for lifting.

A non-flammable Hindenburg would be completely safe, because it wouldn't be able to  lift its cargo and fly.

***

Of course for a videogame it's normal, we need just a 1 m² of wheat and a torch in Minecraft to survive, and Kerbals need even less.

Edited January 19, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

You're mixing the realism of the idea of a space colony with the challenge of a floating outpost in Venus atmosphere, so, before I begin, let's start with this simple premise:

I'm not talking about colonies, I don't care about the argument around the realism of space colonies, that's not the point I'm talking about. If you have to continue talking about square meters of wheat please don't do it with me.

 

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

I just completely ignored this nonsense.

What nonsense?

The fact that just above 50Km the atmosphere of Venus is similar in pressure and temperatures to Earth's one at sea level and that breathable air would be a lifting gas in that  environment (due to the different composition) has been a known fact for decades now.

To sustain a ISS like outpost (like the one in the above image) you would only need a way to bring supplies down to it from orbit, but I'm sure that a simplified version of the craft used by the crew (without the return rocket) would be more than enough.

It's an engineering challenge, but it's far from impossible and it could actually be more feasible than a mars surface outpost of the same size.

[K^2]

8 minutes ago, Master39 said:

To sustain a ISS like outpost (like the one in the above image) you would only need a way to bring supplies down to it from orbit, but I'm sure that a simplified version of the craft used by the crew (without the return rocket) would be more than enough.

I wonder if it'd be more practical to have resupply remain air born after entry as a rotorcraft or a blimp. Either way, you definitely have options that don't require runways or anything like that. Bonus points if you can cannibalize parts of the resupply ship before letting it... sink? Drop?

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

nonflammable and boring air is a good enough lifting gas in Venus atmosphere

That's true, but if there's a good place to use hydrogen as a lifting gas anywhere in Sol, it's Venus. It's completely inert in Venusian atmosphere. So long as your habs are suspended bellow lifting cells, rather than enclosed within, you have no risk of fire, as there is nothing for hydrogen to combust with. Hydrogen is also much better at preventing materials from degrading, unlike oxygen-rich mixtures, and will require less than half of the lifting cell volume, once you account for all the additional structures for larger cells. Finally, if you are going to be replenishing oxygen from water catalysis, you'll have free source of hydrogen to help replenish lifting gas, and if you are going to be shipping in the lifting gas, it's still a lot less mass to bring hydrogen than any other gas mixture you might use.

I would definitely try to optimize buoyancy of habitat itself, as that will make the project a lot easier, but for any additional lift you need, hydrogen is the way to go on Venus.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Master39 said:

nonflammable and boring air

How would hydrogen react with the Venusian atmosphere, come to think of it? I'm assuming that we're floating above the sulfuric acid clouds. It's almost pure CO₂ with a dash of N₂, correct? If I remember my chemistry right, which is a big if, the Sabatier reaction (CO₂ + 4H₂ --> CH₄ + 2H₂O)  is endothermic and requires a temperature and pressure that's not present in the part of the Venusian atmosphere we're looking at, and ammonia synthesis from hydrogen and nitrogen is even harder to initiate.

If that's the case then hydrogen would be perfectly safe, it wouldn't be inclined to react with the atmosphere, as long as you kept it away from the oxygen atmosphere in the habitations.

Edit: ninja'ed by @K^2

Another edit: I got curious and came across somebody who actually does remember his chemistry. He's proposing a pretty neat bioreaction to extract all kinds of useful stuff from the Venusian atmosphere -- you start out with some table salt and algae plus some sulfuric acid you mined from the clouds, and end up with oxygen, water, methane, and hydrogen, plus the NaCl you started with, and more algae of course.

https://www.quora.com/Can-sulfuric-acid-be-turned-into-water

Edited January 19, 2021 by Guest

[K^2]

Sulfuric acid can be turned into water with application of heat and distillation, as it decomposes at moderately high temperatures, but using biochemistry might be more practical, yeah. And being able to produce methane on the side is always great. It can be used for fuels and as starting point of making various polymers for construction.