Go to Venus, not Mars.

[teatime]

Airships are cool, flying colonies are even cooler. So the atmosphere is corrosive, poisonous, hot, and too dense. Those are just problems to be solved. You could have your winter home there and then bounce back to mars for the summer. I, of course, would not fly commercial, I would have my own personal ship.

So if the atmosphere was not corrosive, poisonous, and hot, could you slowly descend to ground level. Somewhat like doing a deep dive. I was told that when you go diving your cells absorb nitrogen to increase the cell pressure to balance against the surrounding water pressure. Any divers out there that know if that is true or not?

[Kryten]

Your body doesn't need to counteract water pressure outside of the lungs, because it's basically incompressible. Nitrogen dissolving is just something that happens under increased pressure, not a physiological response to anything.

[_Augustus_]

Venus has clouds of sulphuric acid. There's your hydrogen, once you process it appropriately.

So we don't need water resupply on Venus! We have both oxygen and hydrogen readily available, along with nitrogen. A Venusian colony can be every bit as self-sufficient as a Mars one, with added benefits such as better radiation protection, more concentrated solar power, and more Earthlike gravity!

[Kryten]

The clouds are actually sulphur dioxide, the substance that produces sulphuric acid when dissolved in water.

[Kibble]

Anywhere we go would be equally difficult to colonize and make self sufficient, at least within an order of magnitude. Venus and Mars are just, different. It is wierd to me how much people focus on Mars.

[RuBisCO]

So we don't need water resupply on Venus! We have both oxygen and hydrogen readily available, along with nitrogen. A Venusian colony can be every bit as self-sufficient as a Mars one, with added benefits such as better radiation protection, more concentrated solar power, and more Earthlike gravity!

There is only the problem of limited access to minerals. A mine on the surface would need to contend with temperatures and pressures the likes of which demons probably find uncomfortable. A Mine on the surface of mars on the other hand has less to contend with then even terrestrial ocean mining. Nitrogen and water is present on mars, they just need to be mined, just like aluminum, iron, nickel, titanium, etc, etc. In the clouds of venus nitrogen and sulfates can be sucked out the air, sure, but where are you going to get the aluminum, iron, nickel, titanium, etc?

[Kibble]

There is only the problem of limited access to minerals.

Everywhere has limited access to important materiels. If you ever have to ask "Where do we get the X on Earth?" the answer is probably that it's a trace element that takes worldwide extraction and processing infrastructure to make in large scale.

where are you going to get the aluminum, iron, nickel, titanium, etc?

Minor planet aerocaptured onto Venerian orbit? Since you can make plastic from elements in the atmosphere, metal for construction purposes won't be as much of an issue.

[RuBisCO]

Everywhere has limited access to important materiels. If you ever have to ask "Where do we get the X on Earth?" the answer is probably that it's a trace element that takes worldwide extraction and processing infrastructure to make in large scale.

I don't think that is comparable to mining the surface of Venus.

Minor planet aerocaptured onto Venerian orbit? Since you can make plastic from elements in the atmosphere, metal for construction purposes won't be as much of an issue.

Ok so you want to bring in the metal from asteroids that we park in Venus's orbit... why not just mine the asteroids directly? Why not colonize the asteroids, what advantage would Venus provide?

I been down this route before so read these so I don't have to repeat myself:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71519-Cloud-cities

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68857-Terraforming-Venus

[fredinno]

I don't think that is comparable to mining the surface of Venus.

Ok so you want to bring in the metal from asteroids that we park in Venus's orbit... why not just mine the asteroids directly? Why not colonize the asteroids, what advantage would Venus provide?

I been down this route before so read these so I don't have to repeat myself:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71519-Cloud-cities

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68857-Terraforming-Venus

Research would benefit enormously from a Venus Base. Probably not worth it for a colony though.

[kStrout]

Research would benefit enormously from a Venus Base. Probably not worth it for a colony though.

That's how I feel about mars, but on Venus, not only are you deeper in the heliosphere which gives you a better environment radiation wise, but You can make floating colonies at 1 atmosphere and .9g surrounded by helpful elements (O,C,N) that gets free shielding from the atmosphere and in theory lots of power from wind shear. What's on mars? A desert, a very interesting desert once perhaps, but still a radiation plagued, low gravity environment with an annoying atmosphere which is just thick enough to require heat shields, but thin enough that you can't use it for almost anything.

[SargeRho]

That's how I feel about mars, but on Venus, not only are you deeper in the heliosphere which gives you a better environment radiation wise, but You can make floating colonies at 1 atmosphere and .9g surrounded by helpful elements (O,C,N) that gets free shielding from the atmosphere and in theory lots of power from wind shear. What's on mars? A desert, a very interesting desert once perhaps, but still a radiation plagued, low gravity environment with an annoying atmosphere which is just thick enough to require heat shields, but thin enough that you can't use it for almost anything.

And what resources does Venus have? CO2, Sulphuric Acid, Nitrogen...that's 5 elements, that are actually in abundance. Everything else, you'll have to import.

Mars has just about everything, particularly metals. I don't think the gravity and extra radiation protection on Venus are worth more than the abundance of resources on Mars.

[PB666]

And what resources does Venus have? CO2, Sulphuric Acid, Nitrogen...that's 5 elements, that are actually in abundance. Everything else, you'll have to import.

Mars has just about everything, particularly metals. I don't think the gravity and extra radiation protection on Venus are worth more than the abundance of resources on Mars.

It is easier to deal with the extras that venus has in the long run than lack thereofs of Mars. The big prblem of venus is simple i * hv > earths. Solution is the get rid if some of the i at L1. very expensive proposition, but theoretecically doable.

H2SO4 <------- H20+ SO3 the reaction that gives venus its clouds Is driven by the heat of the surface. drivivg sulfate off the surface left alkali metals on the surface, sodium, lithium, potassioum in thier oxide and reduced forms. When the atmosphere cools sulferic acid will rain from those clouds and pelt the surface, which will explode. It will take generations for the acids to penetrate deep enoughbto sufficiently neutralize the excess of oxidized sulfer.

Venus is not approachable in our lifetimes, maybe in 10000 years.

[SargeRho]

Why would the atmosphere cool? You would have to somehow blast away over 90% of its atmosphere. If anything, Venus is going to continue heating up.

[Kibble]

And what resources does Venus have? CO2, Sulphuric Acid, Nitrogen...that's 5 elements, that are actually in abundance.

Just because something isn't abundant doesn't mean something isn't there. Mars isn't "abundant" in many more elements than Venus is. Just different ones!

[PB666]

Why would the atmosphere cool? You would have to somehow blast away over 90% of its atmosphere. If anything, Venus is going to continue heating up.

The atmosphere cools because you place a large hideous reflector between it and the sun. saying its possible and actually doing it are two differnet things. Im not the one arguing for colonizing in etither of these highly fantasized thread.

This thread is like arguing which is better; being impaled on a sharp pole roman style or being skewered like a pig on a roast.

[SargeRho]

Just because something isn't abundant doesn't mean something isn't there. Mars isn't "abundant" in many more elements than Venus is. Just different ones!

Hm? No. Mars has many more accessible elements than Venus. Venus' are locked away under 450°C and 100 atmospheres.

While they're literally laying around on Mars.

The atmosphere cools because you place a large hideous reflector between it and the sun. saying its possible and actually doing it are two differnet things. Im not the one arguing for colonizing in etither of these highly fantasized thread.

This thread is like arguing which is better; being impaled on a sharp pole roman style or being skewered like a pig on a roast.

Then you still have to get rid of a large portion of the atmosphere, and that's not exactly easy. Venus is already incredibly reflective because of its clouds, too. Unless you want to import just about everything, you'll have to do something about the atmosphere. Not to mention it'll remain hot for quite a while.

While we can begin to develop spacecraft to colonize and make use of Mars, for all intents and purposes, right now.

Edited September 25, 2015 by SargeRho

[Darnok]

haha, funny.. I was not going to do it, the same as the last 2 or 3 similar topics where I dint make any comment.

But I dont want to ruin your joke.. so one link:

http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/will_we_build_colonies_that_float_over_venus_like_buckminster_fullers_cloud_nine-127573

For those who really want to know why is a better option, this site explained in detail. Is long... because there are a lot of aspects why is better.

And many aspects are not even explained in that site, but is a start for those who wanna challenge their convictions.

This is great!

We can use wood as basic construction material inside city dome and when some elements are too old you can just burn them for heat.

If we need metals we can always redirect few asteroids and put them in orbit and this is going to be cheap because they can break in atmosphere before circular orbit.

Mining on surface sure is going to be hard at start, but you got free lift up to 50km with balloons or acid resistance domes filled with breathable air or other gas that can be harvested from atmosphere, no rockets or fuel needed.

We can have power plants running on water/steam

Just lower flight height to warm up water, lots of heat from atmosphere will produce steam and turbines can easily produce electricity. While city is converting water into steam it is going up, so steam will cool down and condenses over time. To produce electricity city would fly like Reduced gravity aircraft used by NASA only much much slower. We could even simulate rain inside city dome with that mechanic

No micro-meteorites and even larger meteorites are going to burn in atmosphere, in Mars you won't have that for next 10000 years.

Using airships and wind we can get anywhere on the planet in just ~96 hours, while carrying large cargo! How much fuel you need to do same thing on Mars?

Terraforming Venus would basically need water, redirect asteroids made of ice or comets, aim for burning in atmosphere.

[PB666]

Hm? No. Mars has many more accessible elements than Venus. Venus' are locked away under 450°C and 100 atmospheres.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/PIA16572-MarsCuriosityRover-RoverSoils-20121203.jpg

While they're literally laying around on Mars.

Then you still have to get rid of a large portion of the atmosphere, and that's not exactly easy. Venus is already incredibly reflective because of its clouds, too. Unless you want to import just about everything, you'll have to do something about the atmosphere. Not to mention it'll remain hot for quite a while.

While we can begin to develop spacecraft to colonize and make use of Mars, for all intents and purposes, right now.

Oh, no, SO3 does not want to be up, its molecular weight is 80 and it is highly reactive with water below waters boiling point. This all comes crashing down once the super surface tempertaure fallls below the boiling point of water. The problem is, and I say this with A KSP grin.........the surface situation, mm a way to describe it having neutralized sulferic acid volatile, turbulant, most of the venutian surface would disappear much like being in the head of a volcanic reaction, the atmospher would like try to dissipate the energy by forming cyclones. The soil woul separtae, the silicone oxides settling down and the alkaline metals coming to the surface. yes the gas issue would subside as the atmospere reforms salts, but it would not be livable for a long time, at the end you would have a less greenhousey venus, but the only viable places would be peaks and slopes were rainfall, still highly acidic has washed all the alkali salts down into valleys and low lying areas. It would take generations.

[Kibble]

Hm? No. Mars has many more accessible elements than Venus. Venus' are locked away under 450°C and 100 atmospheres.

You can get elements from the atmosphere. I have a chart from Wikipedia too! There are also apparently a number of trace hydrogen compounds, hydrogen chloride, flouride, and sulfide.

[PB666]

Well then looks like Venus has lost a fair amount of water also.

Carbon dioxide can be dealt with

Sulfer dioxide will react with metals

Carbon monoxide can be dealt with

Nitrogen, Helium, Argon and Neon are not problems.

Problem is S03 would have to be reduced to sulfide forming sulfide salts such as Iron, and Nickle sulfide on the surface.

Problem is there is insufficient hydrogen.

Lighter gases, including water vapour, are continuously blown away by the solar wind through the induced magnetotail.^[4] It is speculated that the atmosphere of Venus up to around 4 billion years ago was more like that of the Earth with liquid water on the surface. A runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of the levels of other greenhouse gases.^[8][9]-Wikipedia

Since the atmosphere is 92 bar if you dropped the temperature to the sublimation point of CO2 (Dry ice sublimes at −78.5 °C) at one bar and the triple point of SO2 is -75.5'C. Which means you could clear the atmosphere of both of these leaving .035 times 92 of approximately 3.22 atmospheres of nitrogen. The nitrogen will begin reacting with earths at some point and some of this will be bound.

CO2 -----> C (diamond or graphite) + O2.

2SO2 + O2 + 2H20 ------> 2H2S04 + add alkali ------> 2Alk2SO4- + 2H20. Most of the alkali on the surface is going to either be in the form of Alalkali Oxides like Calcium Oxide, Magnesium Oxides, Aluminum Oxide. In areas with recent volcanism or extraordinarily high surface temperatures these degrade to form metals and oxide free radicals which would titer out carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. Since there is carbon monoxide then it means that most of the metals, should (repeat should, be in the metalic state, good for the mining industry, very bad for terraforming), the first thing that would happen to H2O is that it will burn the alkali metals, and secondarily after doing this they will react violently with the sulfer dioxide directly, very messy.

So basically you can titrate the carbon dioxide with SO2, however after the SO2 runs out.

Following this CO2 can react with water (unfortunately not much), but can undergo formation of metal and alkali carbonates. Unfortunately these tend also to bind up water at low temperatures and high pressure. So basically the water is gone.

Getting the water back would require converting CO2 to carbon and essentially burying it, generating a heck of alot of oxygen. It can bind up metals, but at 65 bar of Oxygen, thats equivalent of 650 meters of water. Thats alot of surface turbulation (1000s of meters) to get rid of all that oxygen, not to mention average of 300 meters of coal that needs to be buried. You could in theory nitrify organics, such as Nitrosoaromatics. Nitrosobenzene as an example, you only need to bury about 20 meters of this across the surface.

Smashing comets into the surface will not help much (these carry elements we need to get rid of), but one could devise a way to use RF to concentrate hydrogen in deep space and bring it back to Venus you could develop oceans and our ocean has alot of dissolved sulfate and carbonates. We also have vast areas of carbonate rocks, so carbon dioxide with lots of alkali earths and water is not too much of a problem, neither is SO2. Big problem is lack of hydrogen, if you have hydrogen you can deal with all of these things.

Unlike Eve, no-one will be walking across the surface of Venus anytime soon, even a -100'C Venus, you are going to be walking across 1000 meters of dry-ice and sulfur dioxide, with mixed surface sulfates and no water.

I should add, On Monday, it looks like NASA is going to announce they have found flowing water either on the surface or near the surface with one of their satellites, it would appear that some subterranean volcanic source has activated a buried reservoir of water, but I speculate. If so one of the blocks for Mars station could be solved, provided good source of power you could make fuel. At about 10% efficiency you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, these can be stored at 2500 PSI until needs and liquified.

------------------------------

Added: http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-announce-major-discovery-regarding-mars-monday

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nasa-announce-discovered-flowing-water-104339386.html

Edited September 26, 2015 by PB666

[fredinno]

This is great!

We can use wood as basic construction material inside city dome and when some elements are too old you can just burn them for heat.

If we need metals we can always redirect few asteroids and put them in orbit and this is going to be cheap because they can break in atmosphere before circular orbit.

Mining on surface sure is going to be hard at start, but you got free lift up to 50km with balloons or acid resistance domes filled with breathable air or other gas that can be harvested from atmosphere, no rockets or fuel needed.

We can have power plants running on water/steam

Just lower flight height to warm up water, lots of heat from atmosphere will produce steam and turbines can easily produce electricity. While city is converting water into steam it is going up, so steam will cool down and condenses over time. To produce electricity city would fly like Reduced gravity aircraft used by NASA only much much slower. We could even simulate rain inside city dome with that mechanic

No micro-meteorites and even larger meteorites are going to burn in atmosphere, in Mars you won't have that for next 10000 years.

Using airships and wind we can get anywhere on the planet in just ~96 hours, while carrying large cargo! How much fuel you need to do same thing on Mars?

Terraforming Venus would basically need water, redirect asteroids made of ice or comets, aim for burning in atmosphere.

How is that any easier than Mars? On Mars, you can extract metals FROM THE GROUND. No need to go into space. There's also still geothermal vents in volcanic areas on Mars-It's still somewhat volcanic.

[Kibble]

How is that any easier than Mars? On Mars, you can extract metals FROM THE GROUND. No need to go into space.

If you're on Mars or Venus, you are already also in space!

[cantab]

You can get elements from the atmosphere. I have a chart from Wikipedia too! There are also apparently a number of trace hydrogen compounds, hydrogen chloride, flouride, and sulfide.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Atmosphere_of_venus.png

But no metals. While a lot of the construction might be done with polymers, not least because they tend to be acid-resistant, metals will still be wanted for many purposes. No silicon or other semiconductor materials either, so computer chips or the materials to make them would all need to be either imported from space or brought up from the hostile surface.

[AngelLestat]

But no metals. While a lot of the construction might be done with polymers, not least because they tend to be acid-resistant, metals will still be wanted for many purposes. No silicon or other semiconductor materials either, so computer chips or the materials to make them would all need to be either imported from space or brought up from the hostile surface.

Few km close to the surface already rain metals.

Also not sure if you heard it, but they already have chips to stand almost surface temperatures, which they need very low cooling, they already said that with extra development they can achieve chips without the need of cooling.

But well, going back to the first missions. The best advantage of venus, is that you can drop anything to the atmosphere, it will float at 50km, then with PV and proppelers you can dock with any other airship in venus. There is not danger to crash or break your head with EDL calculations.

A first mission to venus is many times easier than mars.

[Darnok]

How is that any easier than Mars? On Mars, you can extract metals FROM THE GROUND. No need to go into space. There's also still geothermal vents in volcanic areas on Mars-It's still somewhat volcanic.

But no metals. While a lot of the construction might be done with polymers, not least because they tend to be acid-resistant, metals will still be wanted for many purposes. No silicon or other semiconductor materials either, so computer chips or the materials to make them would all need to be either imported from space or brought up from the hostile surface.

For me most important thing in space exploration is human health and life. After few years on Mars you will have health issues, smaller than after few year on ISS, but still. On Venus you can spend 10 years and you almost won't feel the difference, so after you return to Earth you won't have to spend weeks or months(?) on things you don't want to waste your life.

First bases on both Mars and Venus are going to be build on Earth and send to its destination, so you don't have to worry about metals for first 20-30+ years? Just look at ISS, how long its working and how much metals they needed to mine to repair main structure?

Even if you mine metals you won't do anything with those metals on Mars, it is called heavy industry for a reason

To build simple CPU you need more than 5 different metals, what do you think to mine "ksp ore"? You would need many mines to find those rare metals.

And even after 30+ years living on Mars, your funny solar panels won't give you enough energy to power up ironworks.

Because to manufacture metals you need insane amounts of heat, on Mars you can have solar panels, maybe few geothermal power plants... while on Venus you have unlimited amount of heat right there on the ground level! With Venusian ground level pressure we could make stronger structures from metals?

Inside flying cities you could use wood as main building blocks, outside structure can be delivered from Earth. On Venus you won't need pressurized structures like on Mars, so living space will be much much larger.

In first few years main goal of both Mars and Venus bases is going to be produce enough food to self sustain.

I've seen picture of corn grown on ISS and grown on Earth, no idea if this was true, but if it was ISS corn had ~30% size of corn grown on Earth. If that is correct then on Mars you will get 50% food production efficiency compare to Earth? While on Venus you have ~95%, and you don't need pressurized space because you can have almost same pressure as on Earth.

While on Mars pressurized space for plants if going to be problem, because you will need lots of it and pressurized space is not cheap and it is not lightweight.