Designing a Venus Cloud Base

[Rakaydos]

Keep in mind that a cloud city floating in galeforce winds on venus, is actually moving SLOWER than a "stationary" barge on the surface of earth, because earth is rotating faster than venus' s atmosphere rotates.

In essence, a rocket will be landing Iin perfectly calm conditions- the platform will be moving the same speed as the wind.

[Kaos]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

Venus orbit to clouds.

My current plan includes (at least in the early stage, where you do not build rockets on Venus, what you should do at some later point)

• Robots from Earth to Venus clouds, brake with parachutes & balloons, stay there
• Manned from Earth to Venus clouds, bring empty return rocket with you, brake with parachutes & balloons, dock with robotic stations with resources
• Manned from Earth to Venus clouds, bring empty return rocket with you, land on some flying landing plattform
• Manned from Venus clouds to Venus orbit with the rocket
• Venus orbit supplied an crew rotation from earth

You see, there is no return to Venus clouds in it.

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, Kaos said:

My current plan includes (at least in the early stage, where you do not build rockets on Venus, what you should do at some later point)

• Robots from Earth to Venus clouds, brake with parachutes & balloons, stay there
• Manned from Earth to Venus clouds, bring empty return rocket with you, brake with parachutes & balloons, dock with robotic stations with resources
• Manned from Earth to Venus clouds, bring empty return rocket with you, land on some flying landing plattform
• Manned from Venus clouds to Venus orbit with the rocket
• Venus orbit supplied an crew rotation from earth

You see, there is no return to Venus clouds in it.

Building a cloud base that can only be used once is a waste and short sighted.

[Kaos]

4 hours ago, fredinno said:

Building a cloud base that can only be used once is a waste and short sighted.

Than you have misunderstood my plans, which means that I have not explained them good enough. Clearly I have not explained every part that I have in mind.

There is a ever growing cloud base. You go there from earth again and again, but you do not return there directly form orbit of Venus. The base consists of docked modules. Some of these are brought from earth, some are constructed from resources from Venus.

If you want to go to this base, bring something with you that can stay on its own in the clouds. Then you have a lots of time for docking. But as soon you have docked to the base, you can use it, expand it or life there.

When the base is big enough, that you can build a bigger landing platform in there. At that point you can land and do not need to bring the capability to stay in the clouds with you. But this addition is for later.

Then there is a Venus orbital base. The main purpose is to dock vehicles that have returned from the cloud base. From there you can fly back to earth, be it crew or surface samples. The orbital base is supplied from earth. Only in the long run it is supported from Venus, be it that you managed to construct rockets on Venus, have fully reusable launch vehicles, or both. Only if this point is reached, a return from the orbital base to the cloud base is used.

[meve12]

 

I'll just point out that we need not make a cloud base to harvest gases from Venus's atmosphere.

http://www.alnaspaceprogram.org/blog/?p=25

This way, you can use a Venus space station to construct your cloud base from Venus's atmosphere, without needing to get into and out of Venus's atmosphere for maintenance.

It also means we don't need a cloud base for a Venus presence to be economically viable. Say we sold CO2 and nitrogen to space habitats further out-system....

[RuBisCO]

I can see AngelLestat was here, yeah I argued with her before on this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/64887-cloud-cities/&page=4

I augured that she needs to operated at a higher altitude where passive cooling is possible, this would save ALOT of weight in no need for insulator or cooling system, for some reason she insists otherwise at operating at 50 km and not >57 km.

[Rakaydos]

48 minutes ago, RuBisCO said:

I can see AngelLestat was here, yeah I argued with her before on this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/64887-cloud-cities/&page=4

I augured that she needs to operated at a higher altitude where passive cooling is possible, this would save ALOT of weight in no need for insulator or cooling system, for some reason she insists otherwise at operating at 50 km and not >57 km.

Nice round numbers.

The natual internal overpressure from operating at higher altitude with a 1 bar atmo inside also helps keep leaks blowing out and not in.

[Findthepin1]

At 50 km the pressure is similar to Earth's. At 57 km you likely couldn't breathe because the pressure is around that at the peak of Everest on Earth.

[fredinno]

4 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

At 50 km the pressure is similar to Earth's. At 57 km you likely couldn't breathe because the pressure is around that at the peak of Everest on Earth.

So? Venus atm is unbreathable anyways...

[AngelLestat]

On 12/1/2016 at 3:30 PM, Kaos said:

Sounds plausible that helium diffuses faster. I just know of the problem with brittleness by diffusion with hydrogen. Another thing I made a mistake in recalling memory here, was that I know that it is a problem to store high pressured hydrogen because of diffusion. But as we have 1 bar here, I do not really know, how big the problem is.

Multiple vehicles have to problem that they require more docking. Docking balloons is much simpler than docking planes or docking in space, but still something that can cost time. But I see the advantages: The mining hardware does not have to be lifted all the way up, the lifting hardware for the higher part does not have to be that much heatproof.

To speak clearly, there are not perfect layers that are not permeable to hydrogen (unless a single layer of perfect graphene), but if the material you are using is enough to just lost 1% of hydrogen in 1 month then I said is enough.  That % is reduced by volume, because volume increase faster than surface.
There is another option to harvester materials from land without floating ballons to cool the vehicles.. you can use the highest mountain in venus..  "Maxwell montes 11km", at that height you have almost 100c less than in the surface.

19 hours ago, Kaos said:

Then there is a Venus orbital base. The main purpose is to dock vehicles that have returned from the cloud base. From there you can fly back to earth, be it crew or surface samples. The orbital base is supplied from earth. Only in the long run it is supported from Venus, be it that you managed to construct rockets on Venus, have fully reusable launch vehicles, or both. Only if this point is reached, a return from the orbital base to the cloud base is used.

Is good idea start with modules from earth.
We would need a vasimr tug carrying things between earth and venus after some time, then solar sails can be added to the mix too.  I did the math some time ago, 400mx400m sails made in orbit with a density of 1gm2 to 5gm2 (does not matter much) are able to transport in cargo of 5 tons in 5 to 7 months (no manned), the cargo will detach from the solar sails for aerocapture or reentry. Then catch another load and go back to earth doing the same thing.  A fleet of those should be cheaper and they can work at any moment without waiting for launch windows.

8 hours ago, meve12 said:

I'll just point out that we need not make a cloud base to harvest gases from Venus's atmosphere.

http://www.alnaspaceprogram.org/blog/?p=25

This way, you can use a Venus space station to construct your cloud base from Venus's atmosphere, without needing to get into and out of Venus's atmosphere for maintenance.

It also means we don't need a cloud base for a Venus presence to be economically viable. Say we sold CO2 and nitrogen to space habitats further out-system....

mmm, but the drag you get from harvest that co2, is not worst than lift that co2 from cloud city to there?

 

6 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

I can see AngelLestat was here, yeah I argued with her before on this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/64887-cloud-cities/&page=4

I augured that she needs to operated at a higher altitude where passive cooling is possible, this would save ALOT of weight in no need for insulator or cooling system, for some reason she insists otherwise at operating at 50 km and not >57 km.

Hi there.. still not sure what advantage you see into such high altitude.. And I cant understand your math.. I just saw some numbers.. let me see if I understand.
Some facts:  at 50km the venus air density is 1,6kgm3, breathing air will lift 0,5 kg and hydrogen 1,6 kg aprox, but at 57 km,  venus air density is 0,72kgm3, at this height air lift 0,26kg by m3 and the hydrogen 0,76 kg by m3..  So for the same volume you have less than half of the payload.
50km is very hot, but 52,5km is fine.  You dont need to heat all the envelope, just your living area, some machines from the city or outpost, might be outside so the heat does not enter.
If your living area has good insulation, then the amount of cooling needed is negligible compared to your other needs. 
I show how get energy in venus is not a problem. 
At that height you lose a lot of radioactive shielding, you need uv protection and your breathable air should be mostly oxygen, that is expensive than nitrogen.. (nitrogen comes truly free in venus, you dont need to make chemical reactions and is the second more abundant gas.).

With this and other insulation and emissivity techniques, you will be able to have a 3 or 4 degrees lower than the surrounding in passive way
http://www.gizmag.com/building-heat-mirror-photonic-radiative-cooling/34958/

Edited January 14, 2016 by AngelLestat

[SSgt Baloo]

14 minutes ago, fredinno said:

So? Venus atm is unbreathable anyways...

The thing is, it's easier to keep a balloon up in dense atmosphere than a thin one. If we go to Venus, it won't be for a breath of fresh air.

[RuBisCO]

21 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

Hi there.. still not sure what advantage you see into such high altitude.. And I cant understand your math.. I just saw some numbers.. let me see if I understand.

Some facts:  at 50km the venus air density is 1,6kgm3, breathing air will lift 0,5 kg and hydrogen 1,6 kg aprox, but at 57 km,  venus air density is 0,72kgm3, at this height air lift 0,26kg by m3 and the hydrogen 0,76 kg by m3..  So for the same volume you have less than half of the payload.
50km is very hot, but 52,5km is fine.  You dont need to heat all the envelope, just your living area, some machines from the city or outpost, might be outside so the heat does not enter.
If your living area has good insulation, then the amount of cooling needed is negligible compared to your other needs. 
I show how get energy in venus is not a problem. 
At that height you lose a lot of radioactive shielding, you need uv protection and your breathable air should be mostly oxygen, that is expensive than nitrogen.. (nitrogen comes truly free in venus, you dont need to make chemical reactions and is the second more abundant gas.).

With this and other insulation and emissivity techniques, you will be able to have a 3 or 4 degrees lower than the surrounding in passive way
http://www.gizmag.com/building-heat-mirror-photonic-radiative-cooling/34958/

Been like 2 years and you noticed now?

Volume is irrelevant! Amount of gas and mass of materials is what matters. I showed the mass of a cooling system (not even counting the mass of insulator) ends up weighing more overall than a passively cooled higher altitude cloud city, completely negating the double lifting capacity per volume and that is counting heat inputs for plant growth only, assuming perfect insulators and no other inputs!  All the extra mass of a cooling system, powerplant for the cooling system, insulators, is materials and equipment that needs to be imported from earth, or built somehow on venus. Building or imported more balloon skin on the other hand is far easier.

Radioactive shielding? What from? solar winds are stopped way above in the thermosphere. I'm proposing and altitude of equal to 6-8 km here on earth, and don't see people of the Himalayas dying from radiation.  UV protection can come from the balloon skin its self, heck it is still inside clouds, and that we know the clouds are strong UV absorbers.

The breathing air no matter what needs to have ~200 mbar for normal human biology, you need another ~800 mbar to match your altitudes pressure, I need only 100-150 mbar more of nitrogen at my altitude, ergo less nitrogen is needed, regardless of how free it is. 

 

[HebaruSan]

On 1/11/2016 at 8:01 AM, Kaos said:

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.

We want a high-energy event on the surface, and we're starting from space. I'm not qualified to run the numbers, but could we use Rods from the Gods? The first one could impact shortly before the base-building probe at escape velocity to create a (hopefully resource-rich) dust plume in the vicinity of the target zone, and additional rounds could brake into eccentric orbits for future use as needed.

Obviously a finite supply wouldn't work for long-term sustainable mining, but if you knew you needed a certain amount of a certain surface substance, it might be possible to design the needed impacts. Then again, I suppose the total mass gathered would need to be greater than the mass of the rod to provide an advantage over just loading the materials in the craft on Earth in the first place, which sounds like a stretch for a small automated probe to accomplish in the time the plume would last.

Edited January 14, 2016 by HebaruSan
Confused elliptical with eccentric

[Rakaydos]

Just now, HebaruSan said:

We want a high-energy event on the surface, and we're starting from space. I'm not qualified to run the numbers, but could we use Rods from the Gods? The first one could impact shortly before the base-building probe at escape velocity to create a (hopefully resource-rich) dust plume in the vicinity of the target zone, and additional rounds could brake into elliptical orbits for future use as needed.

Obviously a finite supply wouldn't work for long-term sustainable mining, but if you knew you needed a certain amount of a certain surface substance, it might be possible to design the needed impacts. Then again, I suppose the total mass gathered would need to be greater than the mass of the rod to provide an advantage over just loading the materials in the craft on Earth in the first place, which sounds like a stretch for a small automated probe to accomplish in the time the plume would last.

Considering some plans call for sequential asteroid impact to speed up Venus's surface rotation, this idea has the potential to do double duty.

[Findthepin1]

I don't think these impact mining operations (the way we've been discussing it) are economically feasible. At best, by 2050 or whenever this will be tried, the costs for impacting something onto Venus, something large enough to fling pieces of the ground fifty kilometres into the air with enough precision for a blimp to catch them without popping or being damaged otherwise, are going to far outweigh the benefit gained from actually having those minerals. If it's something smaller knocked up into the air, like dust, it'll just block out the sun, which isn't good as I assume we'd be using solar power on such a base. It'd likely be the cheapest.

Anything we got up to our base would also be very hot, like 1000 degrees hot. Even if we manage to impact something big/fast enough to throw rocks up to our base, the rocks would be very hot because of a) the heat at the surface and b) they were just thrown fifty kilometres through a very thick atmosphere by an explosion in already very hot conditions. We couldn't touch those rocks. Neither could any airship, or any native life in the clouds. It'd be akin to a supervolcanic eruption. Tons of rock at hundreds of degrees thrown into the upper atmosphere along with enough dust to create an impact/volcanic winter in the upper atmosphere.

IMO only the dust would stay in the air long enough to cool down so we can pick it up. But at that point we'd likely be dead because the dust blocked out the sun and if we were using solar, we ran out of power.

TL;DR It's economically unsustainable to knock minerals off the ground with impacts to capture them. Even if we could, it'd be a natural disaster similar to a supervolcanic eruption.

Edited January 14, 2016 by Findthepin1

[SuperFastJellyfish]

On 1/12/2016 at 11:31 AM, Motokid600 said:

I remembered awhile back we were having a discussion about those pictures. They were said to be faked iirc. Venera never took any images of the Horizon.

So as far as surface visibility goes I'm willing to bet it's a lot worse then what you see there.

I'd love to see a source on that as the panoramas have the horizon in view on the edge, and since the sky is thought to be uniform at surface level it was extrapolated to create those perspective images I posted earlier.  I'm not an image guy, but these are spherical projections, AFAIK.  Which makes them look distorted to us.  So, it seems to me that the guy from http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm just cleaned them up(unspherical projectioned them) with a good amount of post processing, and added a good amount of sky(which is supposedly uniform anyways) to make it look nice.  It'd be cool if someone on here who's good with images weighed in(Lajoswinkler, I'm looking at you).  

From NASA.  Venera 9's only image returned:

From NASA:

 

Edited January 14, 2016 by SuperFastJellyfish
Clarity

[RuBisCO]

Tooting my horn here, but here were my calculations on Transforming Venus,

Long story short it would take thousands of years and millions of gigantic automated tug ships smashing KBO into venus to give it the water needed (as well as spin), the heat of impacts could in fact melt the surface completely adding more thousands of years to cool down. And orbital sunshade in Sun-Venus L1 would be needed to keep out all the sunlight, 4 times the diameter of the Venus!

Needs

- Strong AI

- Fusion or Fission extremely high ISP engines

- Asteroid construction of endless fleet tugs

It could also be done with wormholes pumping in H2 from Jupiter, engineered cloud microbes and heat would converting all the CO2 and H2 to Carbon soot and water. Still will need and L1 sunshade. 

Cloud cities would be more reasonable even though I disagree with them already

 

 

 

[AngelLestat]

21 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

Volume is irrelevant! Amount of gas and mass of materials is what matters. I showed the mass of a cooling system (not even counting the mass of insulator) ends up weighing more overall than a passively cooled higher altitude cloud city, completely negating the double lifting capacity per volume and that is counting heat inputs for plant growth only, assuming perfect insulators and no other inputs!  All the extra mass of a cooling system, powerplant for the cooling system, insulators, is materials and equipment that needs to be imported from earth, or built somehow on venus. Building or imported more balloon skin on the other hand is far easier.

Radioactive shielding? What from? solar winds are stopped way above in the thermosphere. I'm proposing and altitude of equal to 6-8 km here on earth, and don't see people of the Himalayas dying from radiation.  UV protection can come from the balloon skin its self, heck it is still inside clouds, and that we know the clouds are strong UV absorbers.

The breathing air no matter what needs to have ~200 mbar for normal human biology, you need another ~800 mbar to match your altitudes pressure, I need only 100-150 mbar more of nitrogen at my altitude, ergo less nitrogen is needed, regardless of how free it is. 

Ok, I did not realize before the mass of lifting gases remains similar. I give you a point for that.  But I still I don't see the point for all drawbacks you get just to fight a minimum problem (cooling).
Let's compare these two altitudes,  52,5 vs 57 km:
1-Radioactive shielding: 1,3kg/m3  vs  0,7 kg/m3,  then you need to multiply that by the scale height, in resume you lost half or more.
2-Pressure:  0,9 bar vs 0,37 bar. --> this equals to 7700m, not sure what physical problems might bring in case we use the right oxygen mixture,but nobody test it for longer periods of time.
3-Normal breathing air mixture vs oxygen rich mixture.  --> this increase the cost of the lifting gas, because nitrogen is much cheaper to get than oxygen, and a lot of process require oxygen from day 1. It also increase the risk of fire.
4 -Returning and flying vehicles:  You force all vehicles to fly at that height as minimum, returning vehicles from space would have problems to slow down, more time and energy to recover or rescue things floating at 50km, reach the surface could be possible with two different vehicles with variable buoyancy, but not if one of them needs to reach 57km.
5- At 57 km it needs higher UV protection, bad for materials.
6-More complex envelope design due gases expansions between day and night or changes of temperature. This nasa paper explain in more detail this and other drawbacks.
7-Envelope cost may be a bit higher, the surface increase but is more due manufacture complications working at big scales..
8-You can not collect much h2so4 at that height..

Positive things: passive cooling, extra solar energy and more visibility. (take care with direct sun exposure)

Now lets see how needed was this.. How much energy we waste with active cooling? 
Let's begin with the havoc mission, why you think they choose 50km?
Because they have a huge rocket they need to lift, and they can not double the envelope surface because increase the cost and the complexity of all the maneuvers.  They know that the only thing they need to counter is the thermal flux passing through the insulation with active cooling.. 

In this case you have modules, you just cool the modules, if you have a whole habitat inside the envelope, then lets imagine your habitat (bottom of an ellipsoid)  at 30 degrees, the rest of your envelope (heat keeps up) 45 degree, outside 46 degree, because the % of air in your habitable zone is nothing compared with the rest of the envelope, so the average temperature inside the envelope will be close to 1 degree lower.  That is the difference you need to cool down. And no get confuse with my old thermal passive stratification idea, this is different. 
And about the weight of insulation and cooling?   Insulators are the most lightest elements made, you have even an aerogel that can be manufacture in base to co2.
You have big quantities of argon in the atmosphere, you can use that as thermal insulator going in the middle of a double layer envelope. Or use different emissivity techniques, as the one that I show you which radiates heat directly to space.  And the extra energy you get from sun, you can harvest more energy from wind, is more reliable, does not need storage and reach Mw or Gw of power is cheap.

But.. It can be useful for different base uses and isru.. It might be process that will get efficiency benefits from passive cooling  and low pressures.  There are also other process that get benefic with high pressures and heat, like electrolysis.
Another way but also increase the complexity of the envelope, is with working fluids (evaporation and condensation using the thermal gradient of venus), then the city may oscillate between 49 and 56 km, you can cool things when you are at 56 and then insulate when you go down, this way you extract energy from the atmosphere.. But it may be more efficient just extract energy from a normal way and us active cooling. Or with a good insulated pipe scoop floating high enough suck.ng cool air to cool the city. 

6 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

I don't think these impact mining operations (the way we've been discussing it) are economically feasible. At best, by 2050 or whenever this will be tried, the costs for impacting something onto Venus, something large enough to fling pieces of the ground fifty kilometres into the air with enough precision for a blimp to catch them without popping or being damaged otherwise, are going to far outweigh the benefit gained from actually having those minerals. If it's something smaller knocked up into the air, like dust, it'll just block out the sun, which isn't good as I assume we'd be using solar power on such a base. It'd likely be the cheapest.

Yeah, I was also thinking in some of those crazy ideas, but they don't worth it. 
The most important I guess is know where we can get water and what would be the energy cost.  One for sure is from the sulphuric acid, and our best second hope will be in the ground crust, as a water reservoir trapped. Vulcans are the main source of water on venus, and some asteroids.
I saw that there is 12ppm of helium in venus atmosphere (much higher than earth),  So if we use oxygen, nitrogen and helium in our breathing air with a single envelope, we can save hydrogen and envelope surface. Better leave the hydrogen to produce methane and different things we would need to manufacture and self sustain..

Edited January 15, 2016 by AngelLestat

[RuBisCO]

AngelLestat,

Quote

But I still I don't see the point for all drawbacks you get just to fight a minimum problem (cooling).

Cooling is not a minimal problem, it would cost megawatts of power, even gigawatts if considering imperfect insulators, and hundreds of tons of cooling equipment.

Quote

1-Radioactive shielding: 1,3kg/m3  vs  0,7 kg/m3, you lost almost half.

So what? The radiation load will still be very low, millions of humans live their whole lives at radiations loads of elevated altitude or greater. Give me evidence the radiation load at 57 km will be dangerous!

Quote

2-Pressure:  0,9 bar vs 0,37 bar. --> this equals to 7700m, not sure what physical problems might bring in case we use the right oxygen mixture,but nobody test it for longer periods of time.

We have people that lived for generations at 5000m so probably not going to be a problem. You might as well be wondering if Venus's gravity at 90% earths will be a problem. 

Quote

3-Normal breathing air mixture vs oxygen rich mixture.  --> this increase the cost of the lifting gas, because nitrogen is much cheaper to get than oxygen, and a lot of process require oxygen from day 1. It also increase the risk of fire.

Again using my calculations the amount of lifting gas actually needed is lower due to reduce density. The risk of fire does not increased if the oxygen partial pressure is the same. 

Quote

4 -Returning and flying vehicles:  You force all vehicles to fly at that height as minimum, returning vehicles from space would have problems to slow down, more time and energy to recover or rescue things floating at 50km, reach the surface could be possible with two different vehicles with variable buoyancy, but not if one of them needs to reach 57km.

I don't see why a returning vehicle would not simply "land" at a lower minimally or unmanned station and be lifted up, by balloons no less.

Quote

5- At 57 km it needs higher UV protection, bad for materials.

Polyvinyl fluorides are very UV resistant, and we would still be under ~10 kilometers of clouds above, in fact the upper cloud layer begins at about 56 km and ends at 69 km (considering your obsession with this I really recommend you buy "Venus Revealed" by David Harry Grinspoon)

Quote

6-More complex envelope design due gases expansions between day and night or changes of temperature. This nasa paper explain in more detail this and other drawbacks.

Or just drop altitude as gas contracts at night. The paper refers to ballooning above 60 km.

Quote

7-Envelope cost may be a bit higher, the surface increase but is more due manufacture complications working at big scales

The increase in size is not much, plus the balloon skin is single layered with no insulator, that would reduce cost significantly.

All your energy scheme are contrived when your in clouds so bright you can pull >1 kw/m^2 of light from any direction, even straight down. Just put solar panels on some of the balloons surface. Wind speed increases by altitude and at its highest at 65 km altitude it is 354 km/hr, superrotating the planet every 4.5 days. It would be possible to build a cloud city that charges during the 50-60 hour "day" and has power to spare during the 50-60 hour night. If they really need power they could just drag a line to a lower layer and have it spin a turbine.

 

Edited January 15, 2016 by RuBisCO

[Findthepin1]

Quote: "Vulcans are the main source of water on venus, and some asteroids."

Interesting. You mean like this?

 

 

 

 

sorry

Really though, IDK how much water is in a Vulcanoid asteroid. I assume you mean those. The orbits are close enough to burn off all the ice. 

Edited January 15, 2016 by Findthepin1

[fredinno]

7 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

Tooting my horn here, but here were my calculations on Transforming Venus,

Long story short it would take thousands of years and millions of gigantic automated tug ships smashing KBO into venus to give it the water needed (as well as spin), the heat of impacts could in fact melt the surface completely adding more thousands of years to cool down. And orbital sunshade in Sun-Venus L1 would be needed to keep out all the sunlight, 4 times the diameter of the Venus!

Needs

- Strong AI

- Fusion or Fission extremely high ISP engines

- Asteroid construction of endless fleet tugs

It could also be done with wormholes pumping in H2 from Jupiter, engineered cloud microbes and heat would converting all the CO2 and H2 to Carbon soot and water. Still will need and L1 sunshade. 

Cloud cities would be more reasonable even though I disagree with them already

 

 

 

What's easier, terraforming the Moon or Ceres, or Venus?

2 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

Quote: "Vulcans are the main source of water on venus, and some asteroids."

Interesting. You mean like this?

 

 

 

 

sorry

Really though, IDK how much water is in a Vulcanoid asteroid. I assume you mean those. The orbits are close enough to burn off all the ice. 

We don't even know if any Vulcanian Asteroids exist. If they did, it would be a pain to get to them, since... Have you ever gone to low Kerbol Orbit in KSP?

[Dr.K Kerbal]

If we are talking here about a base, well the first thing you need is me. Dr. K Kerbal. The specialist in planetary bases.

If you are building in the clouds, you need to limit your parts into a minimum of about 150 and no part can be heavier than 5 tons. If any of the parts are over that limit, then your toast. On the venus surface. You will need an emergency engine incase that use becomes to heavy for the clouds to handle so need some fuel in spare. You will need a transfer stage with about 1250 metres of delta-V to get into orbit and transfer your crew back to Kerbin. The thing with the transfer stage is that it has to have enough TWR so you don't have to start your escape burn too early. If you use nuclear engines, ( Witch would be useless on the surface on Venus because it has an atmosphere)  you will need a lot of them depending on the height of your orbit. The higher your orbit, the less TWR you will need.  This is because, if you start your burn 5 minutes before the required time, you will not notice ( Unless if you have KER ) that you  eventually suicide  your orbit and before you know it, it's too late. 

Also. Be careful of heat. The surface  of Venus in the real world aka. not in ksp is about 400 degrees celsius. So if you had ablation, it would probably be gone in about 10 minutes. And there is no little cross next to the ablation bar. So be careful. Also if you have a space station around venus, try and get it into a really low orbit, because then when your transfer rocket leaves the base, it will be a very quick ride to the space station if you are going there.  

Oh my goodness. My fingers are getting tired. I will be back on this forum in a bit so don't delete it. see ya later.

Dr. K Kerbal

 

 

[meve12]

On 1/14/2016 at 9:11 PM, AngelLestat said:

mmm, but the drag you get from harvest that co2, is not worst than lift that co2 from cloud city to there?

 

No, actually. Since we're just skimming off the top of the atmosphere, we don't need a lot of energy to maintain the scooper's speed. It does need to thrust continuously, though. Hence the use of an electrodynamic tether.

....which wouldn't work around Venus, for lack of a planetary magnetic field. Maybe we can use excess gas in an arcjet thruster?

[Dr.K Kerbal]

Yeah.Venus has big clouds

[AngelLestat]

Well I could find some extra data about the biggest Venus issue.. how to get water.
At altitudes below 30km up to 10km, in afternoon, is possible to find high (for venus) concentrations of water (without h2so4). Amounts that goes from 50 ppm to 100ppm, This is equal to 50 to 100 grams of water by m3 (15m3 for each liter). The good news is that "afternoon" in venus may last some months if you are anchored to land. Winds are just 10m/s at that height and you can even use some mountains to reduce the cable needs, not sure the best way to collect it, with a scoop or with a big surface a bit more colder to condensate the water.
At 48km, we have the biggest h2so4 precipitation, this is just 10 to 20 ppm, but we don't need extra energy to collect it, only to separate water in case we don't want the acid.
 

19 hours ago, RuBisCO said:

AngelLestat,
Cooling is not a minimal problem, it would cost megawatts of power, even gigawatts if considering imperfect insulators, and hundreds of tons of cooling equipment.

Mr. Rubisco,
Is really annoying when you drop numbers without have a real idea or reference of what are you talking about
I made the math, for a 5000 tons habitat, which might be 150m x 150m x 2 floors + 100 people (or more floors and less area, this saves insulation), we need between 0,5mw to 1,3mw. (no gigawatts).
Now this cooling air machine may weight 2 or 4 tons, I will said 1 or 2 if we make it lighter.
Plants can help in the cooling needs, If we have all our roof surface with plants (where habitat air can not flow with the plants and envelope air, but you can visit this section using doors. What happens is that plants receive light and water.. they evaporate that water carrying that heat to the top of the envelope, this cool down few degrees the plants layer and the human habitat below.
If we use the special emissivity cover to radiate heat directly to space, then that is all we need for plants and us. 
A 40m x 12m kite at 48 kmh wind, can generate 8 mw.. So energy in venus is not a real problem.

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Give me evidence the radiation load at 57 km will be dangerous!

I am an evidence machine, is time that you provide once a while some evidence.. "as the 1gw air conditioner."
Take a look to the amount of radiation that people receive in airplanes.. then reduce a bit the altitude and increase the time exposure by 50 years. 
Then try to convince all inhabitants they will not die from cancer.

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We have people that lived for generations at 5000m so probably not going to be a problem. You might as well be wondering if Venus's gravity at 90% earths will be a problem. 

The higher cities are at 4000m in bolivia.  You may have some towns at 5000m but without much stadistic data. At 5000m you have 2 times the shielding than at 7500m.
Is easy to notice this just studying the atmosphere density curve and the area below:
Maybe if instead 57km, you place it at 54,5 may have more sense.

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Again using my calculations the amount of lifting gas actually needed is lower due to reduce density. The risk of fire does not increased if the oxygen partial pressure is the same. 

Helium and hydrogen lifting capacity is reduced. Air may increase.. not sure.. if is at higher temperature. You still can do that at 54km, you dont include the habitat inside the lifting envelope, but you deposite there all your waste heat from the machines and you apply special emissivity coefficients to the envelope (different top from bottom) to harvester heat.

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I don't see why a returning vehicle would not simply "land" at a lower minimally or unmanned station and be lifted up, by balloons no less.

Is a good idea, but like different layers means different speeds, you may need to wait quick a lot to to have an interception window (the same as orbits).
if you low the whole lading base for short amount of time (for all kind of isru bases or floating industries), then you might be wasting similar energy in changes of altitude for transport "goods" that the one you waste in cooling. But well, is pointless try to be so energy accurate now.

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Polyvinyl fluorides are very UV resistant, and we would still be under 

Almost all problems have solution, the factor here is find the one that is most cost efficient.

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The increase in size is not much, plus the balloon skin is single layered with no insulator, that would reduce cost significantly.

The envelope needs certain thick to support the structure, you can divide that thick in 2 or 3 layers.....

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All your energy scheme are contrived when your in clouds so bright you can pull >1 kw/m^2 of light from any direction, even straight down. Just put solar panels on some of the balloons surface. Wind speed increases by altitude and at its highest at 65 km altitude it is 354 km/hr, superrotating the planet every 4.5 days. It would be possible to build a cloud city that charges during the 50-60 hour "day" and has power to spare during the 50-60 hour night. If they really need power they could just drag a line to a lower layer and have it spin a turbine.

I don't understand, now you want a city at 65km?  Reduce the day/night cycle is welcome.. but not really necessary.. I will put this as last of requirements.
About wind speed, I am not interested in wind speed at certain layer.. I am interested in wind gradient.. the difference of wind speed at different layers.. that is the energy you can harvester.
At lower altitudes from 48 to 50, is when most of the speed change happen.

19 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

Really though, IDK how much water is in a Vulcanoid asteroid. I assume you mean those. The orbits are close enough to burn off all the ice. 

heh, I was trying to said volcano

5 hours ago, meve12 said:

No, actually. Since we're just skimming off the top of the atmosphere, we don't need a lot of energy to maintain the scooper's speed. It does need to thrust continuously, though. Hence the use of an electrodynamic tether.

....which wouldn't work around Venus, for lack of a planetary magnetic field. Maybe we can use excess gas in an arcjet thruster?

Ah with electrodynamic tether, yeah I know that technique. but yeah, there is no magnetic field here, also.. we know very little about this.. how much damage might receive this skimming trying to trap super fast particles.

15 hours ago, Dr.K Kerbal said:

If we are talking here about a base, well the first thing you need is me. Dr. K Kerbal. The specialist in planetary bases.

As you can see, we already solve those issues you mention.. we need some chemist.. also other kind of ideas or math is welcome.