Kaos

I liked the barn somehow. Well, not when it was presented, but as soon as I saw what came after it. I think the current buildings are lifeless and sterile. But I do not care so much for graphics, so it is ok to me. I'd rather want the developers to see working on new stuff or fixing bugs than on the graphics.

Now I see the possibility of a manned surface expedition. It will not be worth the effort just to get a manned surface mission, but at least an in principle doable way. First you build a cupola on the ground with heat resistant materials that conduct only very little thermal. Perhaps some combinations of iron for stability and stone for reducing heat conduction. Or diamond powder and tungsten if you want to make it even more exclusive . And the cupola has to be stable enough to withstand Venus atmospheric pressure. You set up some heat stable power generation around (not completely sure, how, but quite certain possible). With an heat exchanger you cool the inner part of the cupola down. Perhaps one should also cool the ground actively, otherwise it will take a very long time to reach endurable temperatures. Then you exchange the atmosphere in it into breathable gas. Go into the cupola, plant a flag in the ground and think about why you have wasted so much effort in setting a step into Venus. More serious: A subsurface cooled base might indeed be useful for mining. Just the connections to the surface need such a cupola.

I agree that it will not happen with the SLS alone. I do not even see it very likely to happen. But I consider it to be possible. Lets say that SpaceX will have the Falcon 9 in 2 years at a state where they only have to refuel it, give it a new upper stage and can fly it again. Skylon ready to rapidly fly SSTO with just refueling in 4 years. I would not bet on that, but I consider it possible. In that case I see the 20 in 5 years possible. Then in 10 years the MCT ready to fly completely reusable 200 t in LEO, perhaps some more companies too. Also not likely, but opens the possibility for 300 people in 15 years. Then with a bit mining on the moon -- neither will ULA be the only company to land on the moon in this scenario, nor will it be named xeus -- 1000 people in 30 years are possible. Perhaps even in 20. All these assumptions are not very likely, but I would not exclude them as such. As I said in my first post here "but it is far away from happen for sure".

I you have an illness and there is only one medicine that might help you, but the probability of helping is low. Would you take it anyway? With the smallest chance that this mission is successful, I would take the mission. And if something goes wrong, not all is lost. Build 10 probes more and 10 may fail. Now the chances are much better. Besides of that, if that asteroid hits earth, we also have the situation that "the world economy will be under quite a delicate balance"

I am not sure, if that is necessary. If something starts to happen, it can sometimes happen fast.

Fluorine and chlorine are also used in some kind of plastics. Chlorine is also used in cleaning, sterilization and some production processes. Then both are essential to human bodies. But perhaps not in a mass that really counts

I have not heard of this, yet. I think it is perfectly possible, but it is far away from happen for sure. It could also be much slower or faster. Predictions are hard.

There is a region underground with a good temperature. As it is solid, you can choose kind of freely, which pressure you want to have, if you build something there. So in some way this hypothesis is true. Another advantage there, is that you are better protected against radiation there. Whether there is life, I do not want to speculate for myself, but I once heard a talk where they argued that because of radiation, genetic degeneration and possible reproduction rates, one should search for life on mars at least 10 m below the ground.

For "a Los Angeles sized rock" I take an cubic asteroid with an side length of of 37 km, as a square with this side length is just a bit bigger than Los Angeles. So it has a volume of 50653 km^3, which weighs at a density of 5 t/m^3, which is high for an asteroid, about 2.5 * 10^14 t. Escape velocity is sqrt (2 G M / r) = 0.95 m/s Now we design probes, which land on the surface: Each catapults 1 t of the asteroid with 10 m/s away once every minute. That is 850 W for the catapult, let it take 3 kW for digging, so that is totally possible with a typical sized probe. That would need big solar panels, but possible. The matter is strictly over escape velocity and is sent in roughly the same direction. So we get an effective force of 150 N per probe. So we accelerate the asteroid by 0.019 mm/s/a by each probe. That way, we make over 130 km per probe in 15 years. If we bring 100 probes there, we make in the 15 years over 1 earth diameter. Lets say we bring the 100 probes within 10 years there, the 25 years of early warning are quite enough. I know that this plan has weaknesses and is far from guaranteed to succeed. But I would say it has a chance to succeed and is far from "we can not do anything". Please correct me if I have made miscalculations.

One could build an suit that can withstand the conditions. It would have to be strongly cooled and armored. But I see no usage in that. They would use robots controlled from above, the same reason, we we build robots controlled from above for the bottom of the oceans. Going up would happen with a balloon. Venus is made for balloons

I suggested a rocket to take with as return vehicle. And for to ensure that it can fit on the Falcon Heavy, I looked up the size of the retired Ariane 4, which is slightly more capable than what we need. So I believe it to be plausible that we can develop an return vehicle that fits into the Falcon Heavy. @EDIT1: That is nice, I did not think of that. @EDIT2: I only considered the souposphere when bombarding the ground, not for launching. @EDIT3: I had that already in my first post in this thread, post nr. 3 in total: Chemical element you can get from the atmosphere are: Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, chlorine, fluorine and some noble gases.

I do not worry about the launch vehicle, I just want to make a somehow complete planing and try to be minimalistic. Minimalism can force to enhance the plan. Then using the better plan with more resources can be even better. The plan of dropping the ball of dirt is funny, quite kerbal and might gain extra science. But I am not convinced how good it works, especially as the venus-soupmosphere will slow down the thing quite considerable. Perhaps explosives will work better? But on the other hand you need an enormous amount to make an explosion that will throw stuff that high through that atmosphere. Another modification of the plan would be to let fall a big ball of cold sulfur-snow. That way it will be locally cold enough for a while to drill a bit and go up again, before it gets to hot again. I feels like this would also not work that good, but it is a somehow nice construction.

More energy (because of more light, because of proximity to the sun), faster communication home (proximity to earth). Then we have an atmosphere where we can extract resources uniformly from. And a gravity, so you have to build less or smaller (in case it turns out that mars gravity is to low to live healthy) artificial gravity stuff. Not to forget the better protection from radiation and micrometeorites by the atmosphere. Nevertheless, asteroids are valid targets, too.

Are you sure there are rocks lying around? I find the images that I have seen inconclusive. Albeit it seems plausible, I am not sure about that. If so that would be surely the way to go, at least at the beginning.

Why should a colony be in orbit? That way you are only further away from the resources and have to deal more with radiation. There should also be a part of the colony in orbit, sure, but only a small part. This way you have a refuel station for interplanetary travel. For Venus: A lot of useful stuff can be extracted directly out of the atmosphere. Surface mining will be needed if the colony should be completely independent. But in mass, most of the resources are probably directly from atmosphere. And for the argument of barely doable: Reaching space is barely doable. Colonizing space is barely doable, as well. I know some people here do not belief colonizing any space location is possible at all.

On another thought: For a long-term colony, we should get some resources from the ground. Furthermore we will want some samples for scientific reasons. For that I see in principle three methods: A heat-proof fixed mining station on the ground A heat-proof mining device with inflatable balloon. It sinks to the ground, mines a bit and then goes back into the air where it is catched and the mined stuff is processed. Like 2, but with a good temperature isolation instead of a heat-proof device. As it is only on the ground for a short time, it does not get too hot in the core. I think method 3 is the most promising. But one still should try to make it as heat-proof as possible. We would not get very far with plastic for this device. So perhaps we should build this with some mined material (and the first ones with imported material). But I did not find surface composition data for Venus, so I do not know, which material you can extract from.

No, we had rockets over 1000 years ago and balloons in 1783. Another note: We do not need helium or hydrogen as lifting gas. Breathing air is totally fine as lifting gas on Venus and can be produced in-situ.

Technically the upper stage will become the middle stage and this will be the upper stage. But the upper stage has like 4 km/s, 1 km/s is much easier. On the other hand some new stuff has to be developed for a new mission. In fact I believe that the Falcon Heavy can send that mass directly to Venus, but I am not sure of that, so in case it is not possible, a new transfer stage would do the trick. I did indeed not think of the 5m payload fairing. I still think it is doable, albeit perhaps a bit more challenging. When we compare for example with Ariane 4, which is bigger a rocket, that what you probably need. Then you have 60 cm of space around to implement the stuff that will produce the balloon to bring the rocket to float in Venus atmosphere.

Yes, this experiment would be valuable: For this base and for the scientific results as such.

A new transfer stage is not as complicated as a new rocket. It needs only to make a bit over 1 km/s and has much more time to do than in a launch. In fact I just realized that you can use your return rocket as transfer stage itself.

Falcon Heavy can carry more than Delta IV. I would guess it will be possible to bring something between 12 t and 15 t to Venus with the Falcon Heavy (taking 21 t to GTO and use a transfer stage then). This should be enough for an empty rocket capable to lift 2-3 people from Venus atmosphere into orbit. SLS might be better suited, but I think it is possible with a Falcon Heavy. Nothing further than experimental level I am aware of. The point is, that on earth workforce is much cheaper than this degree of automation. But there are some remote-controllable robots with high degree of freedom, with which one could do so.

Also I would want a Falcon Heavy instead of an SLS, because then we can start several times a year and not only once every other year ;-p

This one was an automatic start for a base. It can be extended without the help of humans. The human part has to be made different, that is true. But I did not want to construct here a complete base, only the start. Indeed I would construct a base on venus first prior to the first manned mission. Manned you can fly a rocket without fuel there and generate the fuel on venus in the base. I am unsure what an empty rocket capable of a launch from venus atmosphere needs to be transported to venus. But I am not convinced that you need SLS here. Do not get me wrong: I support heavy launch vehicles, but I prefer to plan in a way that you do not need them. Every critical item less in your mission plans is one item less where it can fail. And we neither have SLS nor MCT right now.

I doubt that this kind of thing is doable in KSP yet (despite I'd love to see that flexibility). Thank you

I will start with some considerations. Extracting the lifting gas might be one of the most important things, so I will start with that. Venus atmosphere has an molecular weight of roughly 42 u. You can extract nitrogen from there as well as carbon dioxide. From the carbon dioxide you can generate oxygen. So you can create a mixture of 80% nitrogen and 20% of oxygen, which has a molecular weight of 27 u. So we have a good lifting filling for the balloon that can be refilled in-situ, that also can be used for a human colony. For starting the project it might be preferable to just use nitrogen, though. The clouds below are reflective, so solar panels below the base also might be useful, as long as the base is not overwhelming big. Chemical element you can get from the atmosphere are: Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, chlorine, fluorine and some noble gases. With carbon, hydrogen we can synthesize some plastics. With the other things in there, we have even a wider range of possible plastics. With these plastics we can get produce some lifting balloons. I think this might be doable in just some tonnes of stuff, so we do not even need the MCT, so a Delta Heavy might even suffice for this starting base. With docking balloons we can make this base automatically bigger with mission after mission. What are your ideas?