Venus vs. Mars colonization

[DBowman]

32 minutes ago, RuBisCO said:

Personally I would say a Asteroid colony is the better then Mars, or Venus. The delta-v to get to an asteroid can be lower then Mars or Venus, a C type Asteroid has all the elements, water, nitrates, you name it, continuous solar power, no night cycles, no clouds, orbital cities could be built with centrifugal earth simulating gravity and meter thick walls made out of asteroid mined slag for shielding.  

Can we add asteroids to the mix? it does seem to me also they are the natural place to start...

[Panel]

Edited the poll to add asteroids.

[K^2]

2 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

A Mars colony has access to the surface with existence technology, we have yet to build anything that could operate on Venus for time periods longer then a few hours! How are we going to mine the surface for resources???

What did you forget on the surface? Everything you need for a colony can be extracted from atmosphere.

[SargeRho]

You'll need to import or mine some nutrients for plants, because not all necessary elements are present in Venus' atmosphere, unless you don't plan to expand the colony, ever. Phosphorus, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium...these are literally laying around on Mars in the form of metal oxides, and in other forms on asteroids and the moon. Otherwise you will have to take recycling to extreme levels, more so than Mars or asteroid colonies, where you can afford wasting material, because it's right there. Hydrogen, Carbon, Sulphur, Oxygen and Nitrogen. That's not enough for a self-sustaining colony.

And Venus doesn't offer anything that could possibly be exported economically. You can shoot things to Earth from the Moon and Mars using linear accelerators, and NEOs get close to Earth periodically, so you don't even need all that much dV to get things from Asteroids either.

Edited January 14, 2016 by SargeRho

[YNM]

I suppose you won't see Sulphur on Mars ? Phosporus and metals isn't needed as much. And given their acids, there should be some phosporus acids in the atmosphere or something. Nitrogen is available. Power can be done from PV. Expansion isn't by metal primarily - it'd be from polymers. No large need for imports as much as it doesn't export any. Shooting cargo from surface to space ? Have you considered everything about their energy requirement ? Venus also have induced magnetosphere from ionized gases, while you don't see them at Mars. The wind is steady and fast (so you'll have faster day and night than the surface).

[K^2]

You need some metals for plant life and, potentially, as supplements for colonists, but most of it will get recycled pretty efficiently, and you don't need much to begin with. This is nowhere near the imports you'd need to keep the heavy machinery working on Mars.

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Hi Sargerho, I dont have time for a full review.. also I will like you get some help from other mars advocates.. We (in the other thread) are trying to make a similar plan, we still need more time.  It will be fun to see what group have the best plan.
One thing: take into account that nuclear power or fussion or similar stuff, they all require cooling to measure its efficiency.   Here on earth we use huge cooling towers evaporating water that is lost and we have an atmosphere to help in the heat transfer..  In mars you can not waste water, is almost as difficult like get ride of heat in space, maybe worst if your radiators transfer heat to the soil or between them (depending the angle).
Any radioactive pollution will be dangerous than earth, because the atmosphere is 205 times less massive than earth (this means 205 times less radioactive diluted).

THe other ideas looks nice.

What is ITT and WTC?  
The amount of acid in the air is almost none.. micro doplets that are not enough to harm you (in short exposures) because they just can react with the same amount of skin (also micro).
You get rid of the suit, you hang it on the rack and you go dinner, it will evaporate. In mars you really need special procedure to get ride of the dust which might do a lot of harm.

Heh, why you need to launch your rocket from inside the city or airship? 
In that case in mars you will launch the rocket from the top of the habitats? XD
If you sent people only, this is how big is your rocket:

 

I meant to get back home. It doesn't have to be on top, of course, but you need a way to transfer to and fro Venus Orbit (Presumably a SSTO, for reusability-metals to make the rocket are limited in Venus), equipped with a crewed (and possibly also cargo) section, not to mention a heat shield and a way to float to and transfer crew/cargo to and fro a Venus Cloud Base. Adds a whole new level of complexity. 

Also, HAVOC is meant for 2 people on a short duration mission.

16 minutes ago, K^2 said:

You need some metals for plant life and, potentially, as supplements for colonists, but most of it will get recycled pretty efficiently, and you don't need much to begin with. This is nowhere near the imports you'd need to keep the heavy machinery working on Mars.

Explain. 

31 minutes ago, YNM said:

I suppose you won't see Sulphur on Mars ? Phosporus and metals isn't needed as much. And given their acids, there should be some phosporus acids in the atmosphere or something. Nitrogen is available. Power can be done from PV. Expansion isn't by metal primarily - it'd be from polymers. No large need for imports as much as it doesn't export any. Shooting cargo from surface to space ? Have you considered everything about their energy requirement ? Venus also have induced magnetosphere from ionized gases, while you don't see them at Mars. The wind is steady and fast (so you'll have faster day and night than the surface).

Sulphur IS on Mars.http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/03/nasa-curiosity-rover-mars-soil-analysis/

[Albert VDS]

 

3 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

 

The HAVOC - Human blimp is already enormous, a colony rated one would be even more so. Now again how are you even going to start and inspect and maintain such a vehicle let alone fix it?
 

16 minutes ago, K^2 said:

You need some metals for plant life and, potentially, as supplements for colonists, but most of it will get recycled pretty efficiently, and you don't need much to begin with. This is nowhere near the imports you'd need to keep the heavy machinery working on Mars.

So a Venus colony can recycle their resources quite efficiently, but a Mars colony can't? Why?

[Rakaydos]

53 minutes ago, Albert VDS said:

So a Venus colony can recycle their resources quite efficiently, but a Mars colony can't? Why?

Because the human (and plant) digestive system(s) is far more efficient than our equipment recycling. Blame millions of years of debugging.

[DBowman]

2 hours ago, SargeRho said:

... you don't even need all that much dV to get things from Asteroids either.

Apparently a large portion are easier to get things back from than the moon. I've watched a few video's of Chris Lewicki of Planetary Resources (an asteroid mining startup (early days...)) Asteroid Mining: The Compelling Opportunity - there is a great animation of the discovery of asteroids, from a few to too many to count.

I think people will only fund 'going big' on space if they think they can make money, which means trading with Earth. There doesn't seem to be a great reason to fall back down a gravity well if you intend to be trading.

Re floating cities on Venus, sometime the 1930 through 1950s Buckminster Fuller proposed building floating cities here (apparently one upping someone designing a city that floated on water). Buckminster Fuller's Flying Cities. His though was that a 900m diameter sphere would weigh only 0.001 as much as the air it contained, make it 0.5C warmer than ambient and it'l float...

[AngelLestat]

On 12/1/2016 at 3:04 AM, magnemoe said:

As I say this idea is insane even in KSP, please try to do it on EVE in KSP, use any mod you like but use realistic buoyancy on balloons. 
negative if you need stuff like orion nuclear pulse engines to get it of the ground. 

Look what I found..  no ksp.. orbiter.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=3495

 

17 hours ago, K^2 said:

Venus ascent would require equivalent rocket to Earth ascent. Maybe even a tiny bit heftier. (If scale height of 15km holds, it can be as much as 500m/s of extra dV for ascent from a cloud city vs. ascent from Earth.)

Can you elaborate?  Why it will consume more deltav?  You can launch from 55km to lower the atmosphere, the gravity there is 8,7ms2 instead 9,8 like earth. The circumference of venus is a bit small, that also reduce a bit the deltav, the only drawback it is the rotation speed at cloud level vs earth..  cloud level at 55km 90 to 100 m/s, earth at cape canaveral is 400 m/s.
Someone can make an accurate deltav requirement?

8 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

A Mars colony has access to the surface with existence technology, we have yet to build anything that could operate on Venus for time periods longer then a few hours! How are we going to mine the surface for resources??? A Venus colony would be limited to only what is in the atmosphere, no metals, no heavy elements, doomed.

We already have an idea which does not need any new tech in the cloud topic to solve the surface mining (in case is needed). We can even mine the top of a mountain 10km height with even less requirements.
It will fun to divide us in two designing groups and find an answer once for all to this venus vs mars question.  You may help mars or both if you like. But try to be organize.  So we can compare a rought cost and energy requirements and the amount of things needed to be exported from earth.. and the whole deltav cost. 
Until now only sargenrho made some advancements in the mars quest.  The only way to figure out what problems we might find is thinking step by step. Someone accept the challenge? Or the mars points and arguments only can reach this step?

6 hours ago, SargeRho said:

And Venus doesn't offer anything that could possibly be exported economically. You can shoot things to Earth from the Moon and Mars using linear accelerators, and NEOs get close to Earth periodically, so you don't even need all that much dV to get things from Asteroids either.

You made your point with the magnetic accelerator, it is truly an advantage, about venus, you can build "weave" a fleet of solar sails in orbit with few kg of material that would also transport things between earth and venus without propellant. We still need to solve the propellent needed to ascend stuff from the clouds.. or just include that in the extra cost that venus has.. 

5 hours ago, fredinno said:

Also, HAVOC is meant for 2 people on a short duration mission.

Yeah, we still need to know the exact deltav requirement from cloud base, but how small it is vs falcon9 is a positive hint.

5 hours ago, Albert VDS said:

The HAVOC - Human blimp is already enormous, a colony rated one would be even more so. Now again how are you even going to start and inspect and maintain such a vehicle let alone fix it?

If they are filled with gases why it matter how big they are?  also that blimp carries a rocket, the density of an habitat will be lower.

PD: About an asteroid colony. Being close to the sun means more energy, that is 100% related to your manufacture and mining cost. Plus the cost of the habitat vs mars or venus. The asteroid belt is the most dangerous place to have an hábitat. But well you can made a thread as the venus cloud design, and find what are the real requirements, then we can compare all.

Edited January 14, 2016 by AngelLestat

[K^2]

3 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Can you elaborate?  Why it will consume more deltav?  You can launch from 55km to lower the atmosphere, the gravity there is 8,7ms2 instead 9,8 like earth. The circumference of venus is a bit small, that also reduce a bit the deltav, the only drawback it is the rotation speed at cloud level vs earth..  cloud level at 55km 90 to 100 m/s, earth at cape canaveral is 400 m/s.
Someone can make an accurate deltav requirement?

Actually, equatorial winds on Venus can be in excess of 300m/s, and because Venus turns retrograde, the equatorial winds are actually prograde. So you get most of these 400m/s back. (Edit: Come to think of it, there isn't really a requirement to stick to prograde orbits, so direction of winds wouldn't have mattered. What's important is that they are comparable to Earth rotation speeds.)

Mostly, I was thinking of it as launching from ~1bar and using the quoted value for scale height of ~15km. That got me an estimated dV requriements that were almost 500m/s higher than launch from Earth. But you are right, if your rocket is deployed from balloons anyways, there is no reason not to gain a lot more altitude before launching it. The scale height at altitude is probably lower as well. I just couldn't find figures for it. So in practice, you can probably get a launch with a smaller rocket.

Edited January 14, 2016 by K^2

[Albert VDS]

4 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Look what I found..  no ksp.. orbiter.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=3495

 

 

How would you even be able to fix those balloons?

[fredinno]

6 hours ago, DBowman said:

Apparently a large portion are easier to get things back from than the moon. I've watched a few video's of Chris Lewicki of Planetary Resources (an asteroid mining startup (early days...)) Asteroid Mining: The Compelling Opportunity - there is a great animation of the discovery of asteroids, from a few to too many to count.

I think people will only fund 'going big' on space if they think they can make money, which means trading with Earth. There doesn't seem to be a great reason to fall back down a gravity well if you intend to be trading.

Re floating cities on Venus, sometime the 1930 through 1950s Buckminster Fuller proposed building floating cities here (apparently one upping someone designing a city that floated on water). Buckminster Fuller's Flying Cities. His though was that a 900m diameter sphere would weigh only 0.001 as much as the air it contained, make it 0.5C warmer than ambient and it'l float...

But Venus Upper Atmosphere is already too hot for humans w/o cooling...

59 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Actually, equatorial winds on Venus can be in excess of 300m/s, and because Venus turns retrograde, the equatorial winds are actually prograde. So you get most of these 400m/s back. (Edit: Come to think of it, there isn't really a requirement to stick to prograde orbits, so direction of winds wouldn't have mattered. What's important is that they are comparable to Earth rotation speeds.)

Mostly, I was thinking of it as launching from ~1bar and using the quoted value for scale height of ~15km. That got me an estimated dV requriements that were almost 500m/s higher than launch from Earth. But you are right, if your rocket is deployed from balloons anyways, there is no reason not to gain a lot more altitude before launching it. The scale height at altitude is probably lower as well. I just couldn't find figures for it. So in practice, you can probably get a launch with a smaller rocket.

Unfortunately, you would need something like Helium if you wanted to do that- Breathing Air isn' very boyant.

[fredinno]

4 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Look what I found..  no ksp.. orbiter.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=3495

PD: About an asteroid colony. Being close to the sun means more energy, that is 100% related to your manufacture and mining cost. Plus the cost of the habitat vs mars or venus. The asteroid belt is the most dangerous place to have an hábitat. But well you can made a thread as the venus cloud design, and find what are the real requirements, then we can compare all.

Actually, no. Asteroids are generally really far apart from each other. It houldn't really be more dangerous than say, LEO, what with space junk flying around.

[K^2]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Unfortunately, you would need something like Helium if you wanted to do that- Breathing Air isn' very boyant.

Gee. If only there was a gas which is even more buoyant than Helium, is abundant in Venusian atmosphere, and isn't dangerous. It's a shame we can't use Hydrogen. Oh, wait, we can. There is no free Oxygen for Hydrogen to react with, so it's as safe as Helium, and we can make tons of it from water we condense out of the atmosphere.

1 hour ago, Albert VDS said:

How would you even be able to fix those balloons?

Erm. Why would you want to fix them? The entire city is carried by the winds, so there is no relative wind. Except for light turbulence, it will always be calm weather in the cloud city, so the balloons can be just balloons. Though, I would put them into some sort of semi-rigid grid, so we can attach solar panels on top, and have various service catwalks all over.

Edited January 14, 2016 by K^2

[DBowman]

8 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

PD: About an asteroid colony. Being close to the sun means more energy, that is 100% related to your manufacture and mining cost. Plus the cost of the habitat vs mars or venus. The asteroid belt is the most dangerous place to have an hábitat. But well you can made a thread as the venus cloud design, and find what are the real requirements, then we can compare all.

The solar power available in Venus atmosphere may still be less than at the asteroids, or at least less advantageous than you think. Asteroids pay an inverse square distance penalty but Venus pays a number of penalties that multiply together: day/night, latitude => more air to get through, time of day => 'tracking penalty' either cost or efficiency, I don't know if weather is a factor, mechanical support cost penalty.

If Venus wants to build orbital solar power my asteroid miners will sell you the materials or manufactured items ready to assemble, we'll nudge it down the gravity well and aerocapture.

[DBowman]

7 hours ago, fredinno said:

...
But Venus Upper Atmosphere is already too hot for humans w/o cooling...

...
Unfortunately, you would need something like Helium if you wanted to do that- Breathing Air isn' very boyant.

I referenced Buckminster just for background really, I thought I'd recalled that Venus atmosphere at 1 bar was pretty Earth like but wikipedia has the temp there as 75C - too hot as you say.

I'm not advocating it but I think you could still make a Buckyburg work. At Venus 0.5 bar the temp is 27C (nice) and that corresponds to a little over 5,000m on Earth - about the altitude of the highest permanent human habitation, La Rinconada in Peru. Standard human suitable gas mix is about 1.286 g/L vs 1.964 g/L => 6.78 g/L of buoyancy, one might want to bump up the O2 a little, and maybe substitute some He for N.

Last year I posted a HAVOC challenge (mission report) - a bit of fun. Here docking to transfer crew to the descent/ascent vehicle. (guess where the balloon is)

Edited January 15, 2016 by DBowman

[K^2]

1 hour ago, DBowman said:

I referenced Buckminster just for background really, I thought I'd recalled that Venus atmosphere at 1 bar was pretty Earth like but wikipedia has the temp there as 75C - too hot as you say.

I'm not advocating it but I think you could still make a Buckyburg work. At Venus 0.5 bar the temp is 27C (nice) and that corresponds to a little over 5,000m on Earth - about the altitude of the highest permanent human habitation, La Rinconada in Peru. Standard human suitable gas mix is about 1.286 g/L vs 1.964 g/L => 6.78 g/L of buoyancy, one might want to bump up the O2 a little, and maybe substitute some He for N.

0.5 bar is perfectly fine. We can elevate Oxygen content to something like 30% without compromising the fire safety, and then the partial pressure ends up being comparable to elevation of, say Cusco, Peru. Which you adjust to in couple of days just fine.

What I don't understand is why you are trying to get buoyancy out of habitat. I mean, it's nice that it contributes, but trying to make it entirely self-supporting by introducing a complicated and hard to support mixture is silly. It's far more efficient to have dedicated buoyancy sections filled with Hydrogen gas.

[DBowman]

13 minutes ago, K^2 said:

0.5 bar is perfectly fine. We can elevate Oxygen content to something like 30% without compromising the fire safety, and then the partial pressure ends up being comparable to elevation of, say Cusco, Peru. Which you adjust to in couple of days just fine.

What I don't understand is why you are trying to get buoyancy out of habitat. I mean, it's nice that it contributes, but trying to make it entirely self-supporting by introducing a complicated and hard to support mixture is silly. It's far more efficient to have dedicated buoyancy sections filled with Hydrogen gas.

Agreed re the partial pressures etc. Cusco you barely notice after a while.

Like I say above I'm not really advocating the Buckminster approach, it was more of a 'could you make it work?' exercise. I kind of feel the same way about Venus; maybe you could make it work, but you'd need a reason other than efficiency to try it.

[AngelLestat]

9 hours ago, Albert VDS said:

How would you even be able to fix those balloons?

I don't like that base design, I just find exactly what magnemoe was asking (when I was looking something else), so I wanna see his reaction   
On the design, I like more a rigid structure as K2 said, a ellipsoid shape to keep aerodynamic and structure strengh will do the work.. because you want to move that city or outpost to different latitudes once a while.

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

Mostly, I was thinking of it as launching from ~1bar and using the quoted value for scale height of ~15km. That got me an estimated dV requriements that were almost 500m/s higher than launch from Earth. But you are right, if your rocket is deployed from balloons anyways, there is no reason not to gain a lot more altitude before launching it. The scale height at altitude is probably lower as well. I just couldn't find figures for it. So in practice, you can probably get a launch with a smaller rocket.

In a quick read I did not understand how to calculate the scale height, I will see tomorrow if I have time.. it also work to calculate radioactive shielding. 

9 hours ago, fredinno said:

Actually, no. Asteroids are generally really far apart from each other. It houldn't really be more dangerous than say, LEO, what with space junk flying around.

4 hours ago, DBowman said:

The solar power available in Venus atmosphere may still be less than at the asteroids, or at least less advantageous than you think. Asteroids pay an inverse square distance penalty but Venus pays a number of penalties that multiply together: day/night, latitude => more air to get through, time of day => 'tracking penalty' either cost or efficiency, I don't know if weather is a factor, mechanical support cost penalty.

If Venus wants to build orbital solar power my asteroid miners will sell you the materials or manufactured items ready to assemble, we'll nudge it down the gravity well and aerocapture.

(long distance between asteroids) I know, that is one of the reasons why the asteroid belt is the worst location to find the next right asteroid.
About safety...

No planet is in that area, that is why jupiter clean all the objects and the same with inner planets.  And I am not saying that you will be hit for a big asteroid.. just a small one will do enough damage. And is just a game of chances..  which is higher there than close to other planets.
The distance is 2,2 to 3,2 AU, this mean 282w/m2 vs 133w/m2 (one side), this has no comparison with venus that you get 400w/m2 (all sides, no need for tracking) inside the clouds and +600w/m2 a little above... 
No to mention 2600w/m2 in venus orbit.
Venus is closer that any other planet to the asteroid belt, and it has higher orbital velocity, so the travel time is lower. You can pick one, use its own ice as propellent and then capture the asteroid using the thick atmosphere of venus..  then is all yours.  Earth can not do aerocapture of asteroids.. it will be too risky.
 

 

[AngelLestat]

36 minutes ago, K^2 said:

What I don't understand is why you are trying to get buoyancy out of habitat. I mean, it's nice that it contributes, but trying to make it entirely self-supporting by introducing a complicated and hard to support mixture is silly. It's far more efficient to have dedicated buoyancy sections filled with Hydrogen gas.

You need to keep some aerodynamic, there are times depending your latitude location that you need to counter the meridional winds (toward the poles), if you are not aerodynamic, it will cost you a lot of energy to move. Not sure.. but all big airships use rigid structure. Even the new goodyear blimp, is no longer a blimp.

[Chewy62]

On 1/14/2016 at 10:02 PM, AngelLestat said:

 

What is ITT and WTC?  
The amount of acid in the air is almost none.. micro doplets that are not enough to harm you (in short exposures) because they just can react with the same amount of skin (also micro).
You get rid of the suit, you hang it on the rack and you go dinner, it will evaporate. In mars you really need special procedure to get ride of the dust which might do a lot of harm.

 

ITT : in this thread

WTC : World trade center. Skyscrapers are very safe buildings.

A cavern on mars could be lined with "concrete" and layers of plastic for an airtight seal. radiation will be nearly nonexistent save for naturally occuring isotopes in the soil. 

At the 50km range the base is deep inside the cloud deck, where acid concentrations are much higher than the atmosphere by itself. Constant exposure to the clouds will require the exterior to be made of nonreactive material.

Visibility will be very bad, so landing will need to be handled by robots. Horizontal landing seems like it might be your best bet, but needs a big runway or arresting gear to happen. Ideally i think that an electric helicopter setup is going to be the safest way to land in as small of an area as possible, while also being able to save itself in the event of a go-around. the bad part will be that a capsule with a huge battery and rotor is going to be heavy. 

[fredinno]

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

Gee. If only there was a gas which is even more buoyant than Helium, is abundant in Venusian atmosphere, and isn't dangerous. It's a shame we can't use Hydrogen. Oh, wait, we can. There is no free Oxygen for Hydrogen to react with, so it's as safe as Helium, and we can make tons of it from water we condense out of the atmosphere.

Erm. Why would you want to fix them? The entire city is carried by the winds, so there is no relative wind. Except for light turbulence, it will always be calm weather in the cloud city, so the balloons can be just balloons. Though, I would put them into some sort of semi-rigid grid, so we can attach solar panels on top, and have various service catwalks all over.

Wouldn't hydrogen more readily leak through though, or make the balloon more brittle?

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

Gee. If only there was a gas which is even more buoyant than Helium, is abundant in Venusian atmosphere, and isn't dangerous. It's a shame we can't use Hydrogen. Oh, wait, we can. There is no free Oxygen for Hydrogen to react with, so it's as safe as Helium, and we can make tons of it from water we condense out of the atmosphere.

Erm. Why would you want to fix them? The entire city is carried by the winds, so there is no relative wind. Except for light turbulence, it will always be calm weather in the cloud city, so the balloons can be just balloons. Though, I would put them into some sort of semi-rigid grid, so we can attach solar panels on top, and have various service catwalks all over.

You might still want to do maintenance tho.

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

No planet is in that area, that is why jupiter clean all the objects and the same with inner planets.  And I am not saying that you will be hit for a big asteroid.. just a small one will do enough damage. And is just a game of chances..  which is higher there than close to other planets.
The distance is 2,2 to 3,2 AU, this mean 282w/m2 vs 133w/m2 (one side), this has no comparison with venus that you get 400w/m2 (all sides, no need for tracking) inside the clouds and +600w/m2 a little above... 
No to mention 2600w/m2 in venus orbit.
Venus is closer that any other planet to the asteroid belt, and it has higher orbital velocity, so the travel time is lower. You can pick one, use its own ice as propellent and then capture the asteroid using the thick atmosphere of venus..  then is all yours.  Earth can not do aerocapture of asteroids.. it will be too risky.
 

 

Actually Mars is the closest to the Asteroid Belts... Also, the Asteroid belt is very dense in comparison to the rest of the solar system in terms of asteroid density, but it's also lost 99% of its mass. You'll be fine.