Colonizing other planets

[RenegadeRad]

I just feel like to add this but we cannot reach other planets until we have *childish mind activate* a world government and united people. Its necessary to have some social evolution before we can find our place in the stars. On the side note, accepting idiocracy and over sensitivity for making everyone equal is a bit impossible. Nothings that fair, there will always be a bad that we have to leave behind. Or improve.

Just wanted to get that off my chest, please continue with the main topic. 

[KerikBalm]

On 2/15/2016 at 4:02 PM, Hannu2 said:

Pressure on Titan is 1.6 atm. I thought habitat pressurized to 1 bar but of course it would be possible and practical to pressurize habitats to little over ambient pressure to ensure that leaking gas flows from inside to out. As far as I know 1.7-2.0 atm is not a problem to humans if oxygen partial pressure is suitable. However, leaks of oxygen containing air can be dangerous in hydrocarbon atmosphere. But probably they are not largest challenges in colonization of Titan.

As far as I know every proposed fusion technology need massive structures. Typically they need also some exotic metals and complex structures which can not be manufactured without advanced industrial infrastructure. Maybe we have ultralight space fusion devices in 30th century but I think that then middle class people goes to Mars cities as tourists. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the most important fertilizer elements, are relatively common all over solar system. They will not limit agriculture in space colonies.

The atmisphere of titan has very very low amounts of hydrocarbons... except when its raining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan#Composition

I don't know if 1.4% methane is enough to be dangerous if we assume a leak of oxygen containing air, which will rapidly diffuse.

And the proposed sizes for polywell and dense plasma focus reactors are orders of magnitude smaller than ITER... like... fit ona 747 scale, or at least in a nuclear powered submarine.

I don't think they need anything particularly rare, but they do need tight manufacturing tolerances and high purity components and fuels.

On 2/15/2016 at 5:48 PM, PB666 said:

Fusion reactors are heavy 100s of tonnes, How do you land a 100 tonne reactor on a planet even if you have an atmosphere, you are talking large amounts of kinetic energy encountered in the upper atmosphere and that 100 MW reactor needs substantial amount of radiative cooling, which just tore off into the upper atmosphere. In addition to start that reactor you already need a very powerful power supply, where are you going to get that electricity from on titan solar is no-go. Fission reactor is a better choice, even Pulonium RTGs are a good choice.

see above.

 

Anyway... Titan removes the threat of catastrophic pressure loss, when your habitat is pressurized to the same pressure, any breach will result in a slow leak driven mainly by the temperature differences. Insulation shouldn't be a problem... expanding foam could be shipped in large quantities and used to fill crude structures. The mostly nitrogen atmosphere would be compatible with our air... methane is non-toxic as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Safety

The only problem would be the combustion risk (I'm not sure if 1.4% is higher enough) and if large amounts of titan's atmosphere got in, it would be a temperature problem and an asphxiant due to displacing oxygen.... but thats a lot better than what you get if you have a breach on mars or a body with no atmosphere. Venus cloud colonies... well temperature wouldn't be a problem, nor would combustion be a risk... But a venus cloud colony would have no possibility of resource extraction... and CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations.

Titan gives you carbon containing compounds, nitrogen, water, etc in abundance. Mars lacks hydrocarbons, you'd have to mine water ice (there do seem to be some underground glaciers) and use the atmosphere to make hydrocarbons(ideally, just grow plants)... but nitrates are a bit hard to come by... whereas we have plenty of biological organisms that could simply use the nitrogen in titan's atmosphere.

It shouldn't be *too hard* to mine for minerals and other "rocky" stuff that would be rather inaccessible to a venus colony, or a Europa colony in the ice.

Underground colonies on large asteroids or mars are interesting though... both ceres and mars have sub-terranian (what root should I use aside from "terra" here?) water ice... and when underground, the risk of a habitat breach and pressure loss seems low, and you're protected from small meteors (titan's atmosphere would protect *really well* though. I think nitrogen would still be hard to comeby.

The inner solar system is deficient in volatiles unless the body has enough mass to hold on to them. While water isn't soo volatile, and you can use uce as a source of O and H... nitrogen ice is much rarer, and N2 isn't very reactive, so nitrates/chemicals with bound nitrogen aren't so common either. A N2 atmosphere is great... or you can go farther out where there are nitrogen ices... but then the planets/worlds are huge (ie, neptune), or really small (pluto, etc)... in particular, "rocky stuff" becomes hard to get to when you get nitrogen ices.

Seems like titan with its nitrogen atmosphere is a great candidate... followed by subsurface bases on mars and asteroids, particularly the big ones like ceres/vesta/pallas... assuming an adequate nuclear energy source (fusion ideally)... otherwise... I guess mars is a must if a requirement for fission/fusion reactors kills the other proposals.

Edited March 29, 2016 by KerikBalm

[AngelLestat]

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I don't know if 1.4% methane is enough to be dangerous if we assume a leak of oxygen containing air, which will rapidly diffuse.

There is no oxygen in titan, so there is no danger, any leak of oxygen from our habitats will be just that.. a simple leak and as you said.. the amount of methane is very low which will react only under a spark with a minuscule amount of oxygen. 

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Anyway... Titan removes the threat of catastrophic pressure loss, when your habitat is pressurized to the same pressure, any breach will result in a slow leak driven mainly by the temperature differences. Insulation shouldn't be a problem... expanding foam could be shipped in large quantities and used to fill crude structures. The mostly nitrogen atmosphere would be compatible with our air... methane is non-toxic as well:

The problem of Titan is the extreme low temperature -180c, the higher pressure 1.5 earth atmosphere only increase this issue.
You can insulate your habitats, but titan walks would be very hard, in earth orbit you have vacuum so there is very low heat lost and you also had sunlight, here you lost heat under radiation, conduction and convection, you can had a decent insulation but it will always require a modest amount of extra energy to keep the temperature.

You can not use the nitrogen in the air to reduce your amount of breathing gas you carry, because it will require a lot of energy to heat up that nitrogen in order to be breathable. 

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Safety

The only problem would be the combustion risk (I'm not sure if 1.4% is higher enough) and if large amounts of titan's atmosphere got in, it would be a temperature problem and an asphxiant due to displacing oxygen.... but thats a lot better than what you get if you have a breach on mars or a body with no atmosphere. Venus cloud colonies... well temperature wouldn't be a problem, nor would combustion be a risk... But a venus cloud colony would have no possibility of resource extraction... and CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations.

Again, combustion risk in titan would be several orders of lower magnitude than earth.
Why venus has problems with resource extraction?  I am agree that the cost of water in venus would be much more expensive than titan, but you have things that are more cheaper in venus too, you need to make a balance.

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It shouldn't be *too hard* to mine for minerals and other "rocky" stuff that would be rather inaccessible to a venus colony, or a Europa colony in the ice.

You mean heavy elements?   We know that mars density is much lower than earth, even mercury has the same surface gravity than mars with a much lower side.
With jupiter or saturn moons it becomes even more notorious, the volume of Titan is several times of the moon, the moon has almost half of the earth density, but even with that, it has more gravity than titan.

So the answer is simple..  it would not be easy to find heavy elements there, more taking into account that it lacks of geologic process like volcanoes to rise that heavy material.
In enceladus can be a bit easier, because you can cross the ocean with a submarine to reach a lower layer.
By the way.. you can mine venus surface with ease.

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Seems like titan with its nitrogen atmosphere is a great candidate... followed by subsurface bases on mars and asteroids, particularly the big ones like ceres/vesta/pallas... assuming an adequate nuclear energy source (fusion ideally)... otherwise... I guess mars is a must if a requirement for fission/fusion reactors kills the other proposals.

After thinking and comparing pros and cons of each place, searching all the data I could to complete the table I made, I reach the conclusion that the best candidates (in my opinion) are Mars and Venus for long time colonies, all the other places had huge drawbacks.

Edited March 29, 2016 by AngelLestat

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

There is no oxygen in titan, so there is no danger, any leak of oxygen from our habitats will be just that.. a simple leak and as you said.. the amount of methane is very low which will react only under a spark with a minuscule amount of oxygen. 

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

Again, combustion risk in titan would be several orders of lower magnitude than earth.

Source?

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

Why venus has problems with resource extraction?  I am agree that the cost of water in venus would be much more expensive than titan, but you have things that are more cheaper in venus too, you need to make a balance.

What things? You can't be serious that the cost of mining on the Venus surface will be easier...

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

You mean heavy elements?   We know that mars density is much lower than earth, even mercury has the same surface gravity than mars with a much lower side.

No, Mercury has less gravity than Mars.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28planet%29

1 hour ago, AngelLestat said:

So the answer is simple..  it would not be easy to find heavy elements there, more taking into account that it lacks of geologic process like volcanoes to rise that heavy material.
In enceladus can be a bit easier, because you can cross the ocean with a submarine to reach a lower layer.
By the way.. you can mine venus surface with ease.

Let's make a few things clear.

1. Building a Submarine to the bottom of Enceledus' oceans is NOT easy. The gravity is lower, but the sheer depth of the oceans means you're going to need a pretty expensive and complex submarine to get down that deep.

2. You CANNOT mine the Venus Surface with ease.

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But it's also exposed to some intense chemical weathering processes, which tend to concentrate specific minerals in different environments. So the surface of Venus is probably a mining treasure trove. It's easy to overstate the difficulty of accessing the surface; no, it's no walk in the park, but on the other hand, it's not vastly more difficult than a submarine. Temperature issues only affect the outside; the inside is insulated and relies largely on thermal inertia to maintain itself at a comfortable operating temperature.

It's not impossible, but it's not easy, and you need a deepwater submarine-esque vehicle tethered to a balloon capable of withstanding the acidic environment (relatively easy) while also using mining equipment capable of withstanding the highly basic surface, and functioning properly (not so easy)

The Venera Landers did not have any large instruments that came out of the lander for this reason.

 

8 hours ago, RenegadeRad said:

I just feel like to add this but we cannot reach other planets until we have *childish mind activate* a world government and united people. Its necessary to have some social evolution before we can find our place in the stars. On the side note, accepting idiocracy and over sensitivity for making everyone equal is a bit impossible. Nothings that fair, there will always be a bad that we have to leave behind. Or improve.

Just wanted to get that off my chest, please continue with the main topic. 

Ever heard "power corrupts, power corrupts absolutely?"

If you thought government was bureaucratic, inefficient, and corrupt, a world government would make that look miniscule. There are also way too many differences between nations to want that, ever. For example, few westerners would want to live under Sharia law.

Your naivety level is burying the needle.

A better idea is a united space exploration program, where UN members all contribute to a single space exploration goal, while producing their components in their own nations. Still problematic, but much better than a full-out world government.

 

[KerikBalm]

for all intents and purposes, mercury and mars have the same *surface gravity* despite mars being more massive.

Titan is less dense... sure... but density is a matter of both absolute mass, and element composition. Earth is the densest of the inner planets, despite having more low atomic/molecular mass volatiles than mercury or venus. Earth is also the most massive. Titan does have a rocky component, but its icy component combined with its low mass give it a not so high density. I can't be certain, but mining that stuff has got to be easier than descending tens of kilometers into a superheated and acidic supercritical fluid hot enough to melt lead, relying on thermal inertia (ie a heat sink... which severely limits time on the surface) to mine heavier elements.... connected to a floating city, with massive winds precluding  anchoring the colony overhead... how do you even mine down there? lower it, detach the cable/line/tether... then hope the winds take the colony back overhead to retrieve it via some skyhook like mechanism before its heat sink is overloaded?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system

Lets not forget that any floating colony would have a ridiculous groundspeed on venus... retreiving something from the surface is no easy task... staying connected to it would drag it all over the surface and destroy it... anchoring the colony to the surface would cause the relative wind to destroy the colony... its not going to happen.

Seems just drilling into ice until you hit the rocky layer underneath, as on Titan, would be much easier.

Maybe an underground colony on mars or ceres would be better... but I find the idea of a Venusian cloud colony to be simply ridiculous.

Maybe a robotic scientific explorer would float among the clouds... maybe if politics changed to the point that someone wanted to send people to venus for prestige, there'd be a Venusian atmospheric research base... but a self sustaining colony on Venus... that's pretty much the last place I'd pick to try and set up a self sustaining colony.

[fredinno]

1 minute ago, KerikBalm said:

Titan is less dense... sure... but density is a matter of both absolute mass, and element composition. Earth is the densest of the inner planets, despite having more low atomic/molecular mass volatiles than mercury or venus. Earth is also the most massive. Titan does have a rocky component, but its icy component combined with its low mass give it a not so high density. I can't be certain, but mining that stuff has got to be easier than descending tens of kilometers into a superheated and acidic supercritical fluid hot enough to melt lead, relying on thermal inertia (ie a heat sink... which severely limits time on the surface) to mine heavier elements.... connected to a floating city, with massive winds precluding  anchoring the colony overhead... how do you even mine down there? lower it, detach the cable/line/tether... then hope the winds take the colony back overhead to retrieve it via some skyhook like mechanism before its heat sink is overloaded?

Mining Titan for metals is very difficult due to the sheer depth of the silicate layer underneath. The surface gravity is lower, but it is still very difficult to get metals. You're better off going elsewhere in the Saturn System, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegaeon_%28moon%29

which have a low albedo, and are likely to be composed much more of rocky material than even places like Mimas.

5 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

 

Lets not forget that any floating colony would have a ridiculous groundspeed on venus... retreiving something from the surface is no easy task... staying connected to it would drag it all over the surface and destroy it... anchoring the colony to the surface would cause the relative wind to destroy the colony... its not going to happen.

I doesn't need to be anchored, just the mining vehicles and floating colonies need to be able to dock.

6 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

 

Maybe an underground colony on mars or ceres would be better... but I find the idea of a Venusian cloud colony to be simply ridiculous.

Maybe a robotic scientific explorer would float among the clouds... maybe if politics changed to the point that someone wanted to send people to venus for prestige, there'd be a Venusian atmospheric research base... but a self sustaining colony on Venus... that's pretty much the last place I'd pick to try and set up a self sustaining colony.

This. A Venus Colony has few benefits. If you needed it's location, build a colony in Orbit.

However, an atmospheric mine may be useful, and thus, there may be small bases.

But it'll likely never grow too big.

[KerikBalm]

Regarding reaching the heavier elements on titan... I was also thinking... the dV to get to orbit is rather low, and there's resources for making rocket fuel in abundance... SSTOs could operate there fairly easily (ideally using air augmented rockets). So... yea... they could look elsewhere in the saturnian system to supplement the colony. The abundant CHON means you cna make all sorts of plastics and the biological stuff would just need trace heavy elements... same with the electronics.

"just the mining vehicles and floating colonies need to be able to dock. "

How? the mining vehicle floats back up and the nmaneuvers with electric fans to meet the colony? so now you need to store high pressure volatiles to inflate the gas envelope to get back up...those aren't easy to store at high temperatures... to inflate the envelope, they will need to be much higher pressure than the surroundings. on earth we can compress a gas un high pressure cylinders until it liquifies... but when the pressure and temperature are so high that you start getting supercritical fluids (at the surface... its as much an ocean of a supercritical fluid as an atmosphere).. that doesn't work. You could cool and compress the gas at the same time, so that it expands when you heat it...but now you need to keep it cool until mining is finished... the whole thing seems ridiculous to me...

The mining vehicle ascends back to the colony under powered flight?

So now we need something that operates like an airplane at higher altitudes... a dynamic diving submarine at low altitudes (remember, near the surface, its a supercritical fluid), is very well insulated thermally, with a massive heatsink (literally massive... heat sinks are heavy)... and all this is also supposed to be a mining vehicle to supply the colony with heavy elements?

Still no explanation as to where the colony gets its nitrogen from... and the Hydrogen/water situation is pretty bad too.

I'll say it again... I find venus colonies to be utterly ridiculous.

[fredinno]

19 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

 

How? the mining vehicle floats back up and the nmaneuvers with electric fans to meet the colony? so now you need to store high pressure volatiles to inflate the gas envelope to get back up...those aren't easy to store at high temperatures... to inflate the envelope, they will need to be much higher pressure than the surroundings. on earth we can compress a gas un high pressure cylinders until it liquifies... but when the pressure and temperature are so high that you start getting supercritical fluids (at the surface... its as much an ocean of a supercritical fluid as an atmosphere).. that doesn't work. You could cool and compress the gas at the same time, so that it expands when you heat it...but now you need to keep it cool until mining is finished... the whole thing seems ridiculous to me...

Exactly what you are saying. Which is why Venus is so uneconomical to deal with.

20 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

The mining vehicle ascends back to the colony under powered flight?

Floating.

21 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Still no explanation as to where the colony gets its nitrogen from... and the Hydrogen/water situation is pretty bad too.

You can extract hydrogen/water from the Sulfuric acid in the atmosphere, and Venus' atmosphere is also 3% Nitrogen.

http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/43-What-is-the-atmosphere-of-Venus-like-

[KerikBalm]

Well, if we had a time machine and went back about 4 billion years... amd were only concerned about a colony lasting thousands to millions of years... the inner solar system would have had 3 excellent candidates.

By 2 billion years ago/2.5 billion years after the formation of the planets... only 1 would still be a good candidate... and we've already taken it.

[AngelLestat]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

Source?

physics rules and common sense.
On earth almost all materials can be used as fuel..  you have plenty of oxygen in any place.  But without oxygen nothing can burn (in normal circumstances).
Even if your habitat in titan crash so all your oxygen escape, that amount is limited and run out fast, and it needs to be raining and you need ignition too; and even in that case fire is the least of your concerns, because you are at -180c, and this is not like mars which would take a long time to feel the cold, you will feel it super fast.
 

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

What things? You can't be serious that the cost of mining on the Venus surface will be easier...

No, Mercury has less gravity than Mars.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28planet%29

Yeah, it will be cheaper than earth, because on earth you need to remove millions of m3 of dirt to reach the layers you want, on venus is all virgin like the first days on earth, where you could fine gold and other metals in any place on the surface.

About gravity.. is that a joke?  3,7m/s2 Vs 3,71m/s2?
Mars has 3 times more volume than mercury, radius: 2400 vs 3400 km

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

Let's make a few things clear.

1. Building a Submarine to the bottom of Enceledus' oceans is NOT easy. The gravity is lower, but the sheer depth of the oceans means you're going to need a pretty expensive and complex submarine to get down that deep.

2. You CANNOT mine the Venus Surface with ease.

1-The submarine does not need to be manned, so you get sure to always equal pressure with the outside, avoid to trap any kind of gas inside the vehicle or its components, if gases inside the submarine are not trapped, then you can equal pressure so this never would be a problem, no matter how high it would be.

2-I already answer this question many times with plenty of details and reasons.  I can even write a book on the topic.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Titan is less dense... sure... but density is a matter of both absolute mass, and element composition. Earth is the densest of the inner planets, despite having more low atomic/molecular mass volatiles than mercury or venus.

I read this in the past but I could never understand it.  Maybe some problems with my english.
From my theory perspective, mercury should be the planet with higher amount of heavy elements, venus should be close second and earth third.
Not sure how earth density is counted, because it also said in the wiki, that taking into account other methods of measurements mercury is the densest planet, can you elaborate or explain me this in a different way?

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I can't be certain, but mining that stuff has got to be easier than descending tens of kilometers into a superheated and acidic supercritical fluid hot enough to melt lead, relying on thermal inertia (ie a heat sink... which severely limits time on the surface) to mine heavier elements.... connected to a floating city, with massive winds precluding  anchoring the colony overhead... how do you even mine down there? lower it, detach the cable/line/tether... then hope the winds take the colony back overhead to retrieve it via some skyhook like mechanism before its heat sink is overloaded?

no way, titan would be much harder than earth by the amount of dirty ice and silicates that you should remove to obtain a much lower % due its main composition.
About Venus, there is not acid down there, the last traces of acid are evaporated due temperature at 35km of altitude.
As fredinno said you dont need to connect the habitat, you can have surface machinery (no wind down there), then 2 "submarine" (variable bouyancy airships) to transport cargo between the surface and the habitats, one for 0 to 35km and the other for 35 to 50km, the wind with respect to land increase with altitude, so if you keep latitude the habitat will pass over the mining ground one time every 60 hours.

This is one of my best explanations on why venus surface is not hard:

In the next post, I continue giving reasons why it does not have any real complication, hundreds of materials resist that temperature and much more, the biggest obstacle for a probe missions send it from earth is energy..  and you can solve that in venus with a floating (attached to ground) wind turbine which would be much cheaper than any earth wind turbine for the same power.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system

Lets not forget that any floating colony would have a ridiculous groundspeed on venus... retreiving something from the surface is no easy task... staying connected to it would drag it all over the surface and destroy it... anchoring the colony to the surface would cause the relative wind to destroy the colony... its not going to happen.

As I explain, those are not problems, in fact had different speeds at different altitude gives you a perfect advantage to set speeds, rendezvous and to control a whole latitude line with a single floating habitat, which you later can change your latitude if you want, in the mars case you need to transport cargo thousands of km to your base, in venus just 50 km wasting almost no energy, because you are just changing your buoyancy of your vehicle compressing or expanding gases (like a submarine with fluids).

 

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Regarding reaching the heavier elements on titan... I was also thinking... the dV to get to orbit is rather low, and there's resources for making rocket fuel in abundance... SSTOs could operate there fairly easily (ideally using air augmented rockets). So... yea... they could look elsewhere in the saturnian system to supplement the colony. The abundant CHON means you cna make all sorts of plastics and the biological stuff would just need trace heavy elements... same with the electronics.

Asteroids will be your only hope to get cheap heavy elements, but there is no asteroids around there, and the launch windows period for a particular asteroid would of several years, like 10 years.
Venus has lower time windows to any particular asteroid in the belt and lower transfer time to reach it, less than mars and earth.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

How? the mining vehicle floats back up and the nmaneuvers with electric fans to meet the colony? so now you need to store high pressure volatiles to inflate the gas envelope to get back up...those aren't easy to store at high temperatures...

If you let the outside air to enter, it will equal pressure, compress your inside gases and rise the overall density, so you sink.   If you push out the gases your density lower and you rise.
Very similar to a submarine, there are even ways to do it without wasting energy in compression and expansion, because you extract energy from the temperature gradient between different heights to do that work.
For example, you have water, your airships lose altitude, outside temperature rise,  you close the circulation between your heat exchanger and you dont let the water expand using valves, you touch ground, then if you want to go up you open your heat sink, you heat the water, you open the valve to let the steam expand and you rise, if you want to go down again, you open your radiator to let condense the water at higher altitude where the temperature is low.
This is a basic explanation, but this work better with 2 working fluids like ammonia and water for higher altitude or other fluids for lower altitude.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

but now you need to keep it cool until mining is finished... the whole thing seems ridiculous to me...

This vehicles does not need to be on the surface all day, one can be at 20 or 35 km altitude until it needs to pick up cargo, then it dock with another submarine specialize for a different range of altitude to carry that to the habitat.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Still no explanation as to where the colony gets its nitrogen from... and the Hydrogen/water situation is pretty bad too.

nitrogen is cheap there, water is expensive but no something crazy.
you extract water with condensation from the atmosphere or from the micro rain, etc.
You can also find water trapped in deep aquifers, this possibility can reduce the cost considerably.

[RenegadeRad]

@fredinno

Babe, I'm aware of that, the thing is that no matter hiw complex arguments we add to it, the rest will still be the same. World government, there are always people who cannot be corrupted, and we dont need a supreme leader, we need a group, an administration for this. Im naive I accept, but we are at the same side, and people who want different laws for them is another thing. If we make laws which would benifit everyone, wouldnt everyone agree for it? See star treks history and you already have replied to a topic of mine where I did mention something about United Space Exploration. Cheers

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Yeah, it will be cheaper than earth, because on earth you need to remove millions of m3 of dirt to reach the layers you want, on venus is all virgin like the first days on earth, where you could fine gold and other metals in any place on the surface.

About gravity.. is that a joke?  3,7m/s2 Vs 3,71m/s2?
Mars has 3 times more volume than mercury, radius: 2400 vs 3400 km

Hey, Mercury does have less gravity than Mars. 0.1 m/s does make a difference.

And yeah, Venusian deposits are more pure than Earth deposits, but that's like saying it's cheaper to mine on an extraterrestrial ocean floor than on Earth just because the mining zones have more pure deposits. Because that is a good analog to mining on Venus.

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

1-The submarine does not need to be manned, so you get sure to always equal pressure with the outside, avoid to trap any kind of gas inside the vehicle or its components, if gases inside the submarine are not trapped, then you can equal pressure so this never would be a problem, no matter how high it would be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Pressure_hull

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

energy,

Which brings me to another problem. You likely need to use nuclear to power a Venus surface miner, the solar power is miniscule there.

Either that, or wind.

The latter would be very expensive, the former would add another layer of complexity and mass.

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Venus has lower time windows to any particular asteroid in the belt and lower transfer time to reach it, less than mars and earth.

...wut? Mars has the lowest time widow to the Asteroid belt, it's closest. By your logic, it would take less time to get from Earth to Jupiter than Earth to Mars.

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

you extract water with condensation from the atmosphere or from the micro rain, etc.
You can also find water trapped in deep aquifers, this possibility can reduce the cost considerably.

I would like to know where these deep Venusian water aquifers exist....

And water is a trace gas in the atmosphere, it's probably easier to extract it from acid than trying to collect the miniscule amounts of water.

1 hour ago, RenegadeRad said:

@fredinno

Babe, I'm aware of that, the thing is that no matter hiw complex arguments we add to it, the rest will still be the same. World government, there are always people who cannot be corrupted, and we dont need a supreme leader, we need a group, an administration for this. Im naive I accept, but we are at the same side, and people who want different laws for them is another thing. If we make laws which would benifit everyone, wouldnt everyone agree for it? See star treks history and you already have replied to a topic of mine where I did mention something about United Space Exploration. Cheers

No. The closest thing to what you're proposing that exists today is the EU, and that's starting to crumble away.

Even a democratic world government will end up corrupt and inefficient- that's the nature of government.

I only support united space efforts since the budgets of space exploration around the world are not high enough to explore the solar system with men without merging the budgets. Even then, it's not easy: Look at the EU project Hermes:  https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/hermes-the-european-spaceplane/

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Yeah, it will be cheaper than earth, because on earth you need to remove millions of m3 of dirt to reach the layers you want, on venus is all virgin like the first days on earth, where you could fine gold and other metals in any place on the surface.

Venus has had significant volcanic activity, and resurfacing of the entire crust, likely as on earth the heavier elements sunk to the core as well

 

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Not sure how earth density is counted, because it also said in the wiki, that taking into account other methods of measurements mercury is the densest planet, can you elaborate or explain me this in a different way?

Not much to explain, you are simply wrong. Earth is denser than Mercury and Venus. Its simply mass/volume.

Earth: 5.51 grams/cm^3 : Venus: 5.24 grams/cm^3 : Mercury 5.43 grams/cm^3 : Mars 3.93 grams/cm^3

For reference, Titan is 1.88 grams/cm^3, Earth's moon is 3.34 grams/cm^3 - less dense than Mars

Gravity compacts stuff, the more massive the planet, the more stuff gets compacted. A loose "rubble pile" asteroid can be less dense than a compacted large planet, even if the asteroid has a higher proportion of heavier elements.

You can't take density alone as a measure of the amount of heavy elements. Titan's low density is a bit deceptive, because of its low mass... just look at the difference in density of the Earth vs Moon, despite forming from the same stuff and the moon losing its volatiles.

2 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

As fredinno said you dont need to connect the habitat, you can have surface machinery (no wind down there), then 2 "submarine" (variable bouyancy airships) to transport cargo between the surface and the habitats, one for 0 to 35km and the other for 35 to 50km, the wind with respect to land increase with altitude, so if you keep latitude the habitat will pass over the mining ground one time every 60 hours.

Nothing is going to last very long on the surface at those temperatures... you need to bring everything up periodically, or lose it.

"The winds near the surface of Venus are much slower than that on Earth. They actually move at only a few kilometres per hour (generally less than 2 m/s and with an average of 0.3 to 1.0 m/s), but due to the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, this is still enough to transport dust and small stones across the surface, much like a slow-moving current of water." There are winds at the surface... or rather currents... its a supercritical fluid... it doesn't take much speed when the atmosphere is that dense...

Varying bouyancy gets really hard near the surface when you're in a supercritical fluid, and your gas envelope needs to be at 92 bar, and will be at least 400C...

Letting the outside gasses in is easy... storing a a bouyand gas and pushing out the outside gasses would be a severe engineering challenge.

" Asteroids will be your only hope to get cheap heavy elements, but there is no asteroids around there, and the launch windows period for a particular asteroid would of several years, like 10 years."

One need not leave the saturn system... there are heavy elements in orbit... they are covered in ices... but if going deep into titan is too much trouble, one can go to smaller bodies that havent been differentiated... use the ices for reactionmass and keep the heavy elements to take back to titan which has conditions much better for living.

"you dont let the water expand using valves, you touch ground, then if you want to go up you open your heat sink, you heat the water,"

-What, this makes no sense... opening heat sinks? "not letting water expand"...ok so your entire thing ruptures from the pressure increase

"you open the valve to let the steam expand and you rise,"

Conditions are above the critical point for water vapor in addition to CO2... that's not going to be steam, its going to be a supercritical fluid... your idea won't work because you keep ignoring the extreme physics of Venus's atmosphere.

"if you want to go down again, you open your radiator to let condense the water at higher altitude where the temperature is low."

Now you have a craft that you have to keep intact across extreme wind gradients because you have it connected to a higher altitude, the atmosphere/ocean of venus will tear your craft apart.

[fredinno]

11 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Venus has had significant volcanic activity, and resurfacing of the entire crust, likely as on earth the heavier elements sunk to the core as well

 

Higher levels of weathering, and volcanism, however, tend to concentrate more valuable minerals to the surface.

 

12 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

You can't take density alone as a measure of the amount of heavy elements. Titan's low density is a bit deceptive, because of its low mass... just look at the difference in density of the Earth vs Moon, despite forming from the same stuff and the moon losing its volatiles.

Actually, the moon comparison is deceptive- the moon does not have a large iron core due to the nature of its formation- while Earth has a oversized iron core due to the same event- the Theia impact mainly shed mass off the Earth's mantle and crust.

 

[AngelLestat]

8 hours ago, RenegadeRad said:

@fredinno

Babe, I'm aware of that, the thing is that no matter hiw complex arguments we add to it, the rest will still be the same. World government, there are always people who cannot be corrupted, and we dont need a supreme leader, we need a group, an administration for this. Im naive I accept, but we are at the same side, and people who want different laws for them is another thing. If we make laws which would benifit everyone, wouldnt everyone agree for it? See star treks history and you already have replied to a topic of mine where I did mention something about United Space Exploration. Cheers

If you have a pyramid of power, then yeah, you will find huge levels of corruption, but we dont need an absolute leader, we just need an administration with a leader of that administration to manage and coordinate global and limited politics to solve issues like global warming, asteroids threats or things with global interest for the mankind.
So you leave the countries as they are with their presidents, and this will be an administration with the purpose to guide and coordinate efforts to deal the best we can with this troubles.
For example the world bank is an entity with a different purpose but with similar structure.    

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

And yeah, Venusian deposits are more pure than Earth deposits, but that's like saying it's cheaper to mine on an extraterrestrial ocean floor than on Earth just because the mining zones have more pure deposits. Because that is a good analog to mining on Venus.

Good example, and guess what, we already reach the point where that starts to be profitable, there are many companies interested to start mine the ocean floor, we already did it many times with oil, but this time they are searching for metals, the issues they face:  environmental studies, controls and the corrosion and problems related to salt water and life.

Most of these places to mine will be close to "black smokers", and as we know, there is special and fragile marine life living in those places that can be disturbed by mining activities, also any polluting you release does not stay in one place so it can not be sealed or contained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea_mining
https://www.wealthdaily.com/resources/underwater-mining-companies/11

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Pressure_hull

I repeat..   you don't need manned vehicles.

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

Which brings me to another problem. You likely need to use nuclear to power a Venus surface miner, the solar power is miniscule there.

Either that, or wind.

The latter would be very expensive, the former would add another layer of complexity and mass.

In the link that I post on "mining venus surface" is explained. 
Nuclear does not work well because you have a 30% less temperature gradient than earth, on the other hand if you use something like this:

attached to the ground to transmit the power would be very efficient and cheap. Because in the earth case, you can only lift 1 kg for each m3 of h2, meanwhile in venus at 10 km altitude, you can lift 37 kg for each m3 of h2, or 13 kg/m3 using N2. 
In addition, winds at 10 km are 30km/h all the time with a density 35 times higher than earth.  This mean that for the same cost, you will produce from 10 to 30 times more than earth. 

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

...wut? Mars has the lowest time widow to the Asteroid belt, it's closest. By your logic, it would take less time to get from Earth to Jupiter than Earth to Mars.

I will extract this from the Geoffrey Landis Paper:

Spoiler

 

Accessibility of Asteroids
It would be intuitive to think that a base to mine asteroids should be close to the asteroid belt, and hence further from the sun than the Earth, but detailed consideration of astrodynamics brings this conclusion into some question. In terms of flight time, Venus is closer to the asteroid belt than either,the Earth or Mars. For example, the minimum-energy trajectory to the largest main-belt asteroid, Ceres, takes 0.95 yeears from Venus, and 1.05 years from Earth. In terms of flight time, the closer you are to the sun, the more accessable the asteroids are. The asteroids are not actually close to each other, and hence if a habitat is to support prospecting and mining more than one asteroid, the asteroid belt is in some ways the worst location for it. An asteroid is as likely as not to be on the opposite side of the sun, and although the Earth is further from the sun, that does not put it closer, on the average, to any given asteroid. The higher orbital velocity of Venus actually makes transfer orbits somewhat faster, as well as increasing the number of transfer opportunities (that is, decreasing the synodic period).

 

 

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

I would like to know where these deep Venusian water aquifers exist....

we dont know for sure, but it would be rare if there is not.  I guess a better question is at what depth.
If venus would not have underground water it would not have active volcanoes either, then is just matter to make holes in different places until find one.

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

And water is a trace gas in the atmosphere, it's probably easier to extract it from acid than trying to collect the miniscule amounts of water.

When I said rain, I mean that..  Although there are higher water concentration at low altitude 150ppm, but you need to use condensation to capture that, collect raining and then split the acid seems less energy intensive. 

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Venus has had significant volcanic activity, and resurfacing of the entire crust, likely as on earth the heavier elements sunk to the core as well

With a big big difference.  In venus there is no high amount of free oxygen to corrode metals, or water to carry those minerals to the deep, there is no life and the carbon is all in the atmosphere.
Here on earth we have huge deep layers of what we call dirt or soil, which is select group of elements filtered by those process.
All metals expelled from volcanoes float in the atmosphere until they condense over the surface, lead and other low boiling point metals remains in the top of the mountains similar to snow.
http://news.discovery.com/space/the-metallic-snows-of-venus-130610.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_snow

Soil composition measured by all the landers, you can see the % of aluminum, magnesium, iron and others:

 

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Not much to explain, you are simply wrong. Earth is denser than Mercury and Venus. Its simply mass/volume.
Earth: 5.51 grams/cm^3 : Venus: 5.24 grams/cm^3 : Mercury 5.43 grams/cm^3 : Mars 3.93 grams/cm^3
For reference, Titan is 1.88 grams/cm^3, Earth's moon is 3.34 grams/cm^3 - less dense than Mars
Gravity compacts stuff, the more massive the planet, the more stuff gets compacted. A loose "rubble pile" asteroid can be less dense than a compacted large planet, even if the asteroid has a higher proportion of heavier elements.

You can't take density alone as a measure of the amount of heavy elements. Titan's low density is a bit deceptive, because of its low mass... just look at the difference in density of the Earth vs Moon, despite forming from the same stuff and the moon losing its volatiles.

Ok, what I hear is explained here:
http://www.universetoday.com/36935/density-of-the-planets/
" Mercury is composed of metals and silicate material. Mercury’s mean density is the second-highest in the Solar System, which is estimated to be 5.427 g/cm³ – only slightly less than Earth’s density of 5.515 g/cm³.However, if the effects of gravitational compression – in which the effects of gravity reduce the size of an object and increases its density – then Mercury is in fact more dense than Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3 g/cm³ compared to Earth’s 4.4 g/cm³. "

So my point remains, it does not matter how dense is the earth core due compression if what matters for us is the amount and % of heavy elements has, and not only that, the amount of heavy elements close to the surface.
All the solar system was created by a super nova explosion, the heaviest elements remains closer to the original star location, which later created the sun.
That is why Mercury has higher amount of heavy elements followed by Venus and then earth, with the advantage than venus does not have all the filter process to carry all those metals to the deep like earth. 

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Nothing is going to last very long on the surface at those temperatures... you need to bring everything up periodically, or lose it.

Is all explained in the link that I gave you, or the next post in that same topic.. I even bother to make a list of all materials and alloys (hundreds) that can stand more than 1000c, I give electronics data, engines, etc.
No sure what more you want..  I even post a (no maneed) big vehicle as a tank to combat fire that can last huge temperatures a lot of time (and is not designed for venus).
There are a lot of machines or ovens that stand  +500c  24/7 all year. 

You just need to desgin something to work under that environment..  we have all the tools, materials and knowledge, we dont need nothing more.
As I said.. the only issue on venus surface is how to get energy, but that is just an issue for today probes which can not carry and attach a floating wind turbine to the ground. But if you have floating habitats there, then not sure what is the excuse anymore.

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

"The winds near the surface of Venus are much slower than that on Earth. They actually move at only a few kilometres per hour (generally less than 2 m/s and with an average of 0.3 to 1.0 m/s), but due to the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, this is still enough to transport dust and small stones across the surface, much like a slow-moving current of water." There are winds at the surface... or rather currents... its a supercritical fluid... it doesn't take much speed when the atmosphere is that dense...

Yeah I know that.. so?  Is that a problem?  not really.   In fact nasa is designing a probe to take advantage of that.
http://www.universetoday.com/127658/venus-50-years-since-our-first-trip-and-were-going-back/
You think they will design a probe so light with a huge sail if the wind on the surface would be a problem?
Also any mining place is under the normal surface level.. "because you dig", so you create a place where the wind strength is lower. 

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Varying bouyancy gets really hard near the surface when you're in a supercritical fluid, and your gas envelope needs to be at 92 bar, and will be at least 400C...
Letting the outside gasses in is easy... storing a a bouyand gas and pushing out the outside gasses would be a severe engineering challenge.

Why pressure matters?  if you have inside also 92 bars?  You can design your vehicle to allow expansion like this:

Why supercritical co2 makes any difference?
I already explain the passive mechanism to control altitude using the thermal gradient of venus as energy source to make the expansion and compression work. There are many venus atmospheric probes propositions with that system.

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

" Asteroids will be your only hope to get cheap heavy elements, but there is no asteroids around there, and the launch windows period for a particular asteroid would of several years, like 10 years."

I explain this to fredinno,  10 years will be similar to the launch windows from mars, for venus is less than 400 days. Heavy elements are one of the venus pros as I show.

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

One need not leave the saturn system... there are heavy elements in orbit... they are covered in ices... but if going deep into titan is too much trouble, one can go to smaller bodies that havent been differentiated... use the ices for reactionmass and keep the heavy elements to take back to titan which has conditions much better for living.

You mean the saturn rings?  But you need a lot of deltav to send those to titan due how close are you from saturn.

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

"you dont let the water expand using valves, you touch ground, then if you want to go up you open your heat sink, you heat the water,"
-What, this makes no sense... opening heat sinks? "not letting water expand"...ok so your entire thing ruptures from the pressure increase
"you open the valve to let the steam expand and you rise,"
Conditions are above the critical point for water vapor in addition to CO2... that's not going to be steam, its going to be a supercritical fluid... your idea won't work because you keep ignoring the extreme physics of Venus's atmosphere.
"if you want to go down again, you open your radiator to let condense the water at higher altitude where the temperature is low."
Now you have a craft that you have to keep intact across extreme wind gradients because you have it connected to a higher altitude, the atmosphere/ocean of venus will tear your craft apart.

I need to search the link of the different probes concepts that are designed with this process or you want to think a bit more about it?
In fact was already test it (similar concept) on earth atmosphere.
Again.. what is your issue with supercritical co2?  What is the property of this that ruins everything for you?
Think about it.. if you dont find the answer then I will explain in detail.  But I run out of time now.

In fact the image of that compression vehicle that I post, is using this system.

[fredinno]

27 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

If you have a pyramid of power, then yeah, you will find huge levels of corruption, but we dont need an absolute leader, we just need an administration with a leader of that administration to manage and coordinate global and limited politics to solve issues like global warming, asteroids threats or things with global interest for the mankind.
So you leave the countries as they are with their presidents, and this will be an administration with the purpose to guide and coordinate efforts to deal the best we can with this troubles.
For example the world bank is an entity with a different purpose but with similar structure.

Except Governments today DO run on a Pyramid-esque sort of power. Changes need huge governmental reform, and it doesn't solve the problem that different nations need different laws.

 

28 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

Good example, and guess what, we already reach the point where that starts to be profitable, there are many companies interested to start mine the ocean floor, we already did it many times with oil, but this time they are searching for metals, the issues they face:  environmental studies, controls and the corrosion and problems related to salt water and life.

Most of these places to mine will be close to "black smokers", and as we know, there is special and fragile marine life living in those places that can be disturbed by mining activities, also any polluting you release does not stay in one place so it can not be sealed or contained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea_mining
https://www.wealthdaily.com/resources/underwater-mining-companies/11

Only you ignored one word: Extraterrestrial. That alone makes regular deep sea mining look very economical in comparison.

Only Venusians will ever want stuff mined from the surface of Venus- otherwise, asteroids or the native planetary surface is more economical.

Venus will always be like the Arctic communities of today- the cost of living will be insanely high, and you need a very good reason to ever want to build a space colony there.

33 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

I repeat..   you don't need manned vehicles.

Not all subs are manned, you know....

34 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

In the link that I post on "mining venus surface" is explained. 
Nuclear does not work well because you have a 30% less temperature gradient than earth, on the other hand if you use something like this:

attached to the ground to transmit the power would be very efficient and cheap. Because in the earth case, you can only lift 1 kg for each m3 of h2, meanwhile in venus at 10 km altitude, you can lift 37 kg for each m3 of h2, or 13 kg/m3 using N2. 
In addition, winds at 10 km are 30km/h all the time with a density 35 times higher than earth.  This mean that for the same cost, you will produce from 10 to 30 times more than earth.

I know that, that's what I said on the post you just quoted. And all these solutions look like they will be very expensive.

35 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

we dont know for sure, but it would be rare if there is not.  I guess a better question is at what depth.
If venus would not have underground water it would not have active volcanoes either, then is just matter to make holes in different places until find one.

Source? I'm fairly sure you don't need water to make a volcano...

37 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

Is all explained in the link that I gave you, or the next post in that same topic.. I even bother to make a list of all materials and alloys (hundreds) that can stand more than 1000c, I give electronics data, engines, etc.
No sure what more you want..  I even post a (no maneed) big vehicle as a tank to combat fire that can last huge temperatures a lot of time (and is not designed for venus).
There are a lot of machines or ovens that stand  +500c  24/7 all year. 

You just need to desgin something to work under that environment..  we have all the tools, materials and knowledge, we dont need nothing more.
As I said.. the only issue on venus surface is how to get energy, but that is just an issue for today probes which can not carry and attach a floating wind turbine to the ground. But if you have floating habitats there, then not sure what is the excuse anymore.

The excuse is economics VS a colony anywhere else in the Solar System. Venus ranks pretty badly on that list.

38 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

Why pressure matters?  if you have inside also 92 bars?  You can design your vehicle to allow expansion like this:

Why supercritical co2 makes any difference?
I already explain the passive mechanism to control altitude using the thermal gradient of venus as energy source to make the expansion and compression work. There are many venus atmospheric probes propositions with that system.

Umm, do you have an example of electronics running at 92 bars unprotected?

40 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

I explain this to fredinno,  10 years will be similar to the launch windows from mars, for venus is less than 400 days. Heavy elements are one of the venus pros as I show.

Yeah, and I'm still waiting for an explanation of why it takes less time to get to the asteroid belt from Venus than it does from Mars.

41 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

You mean the saturn rings?  But you need a lot of deltav to send those to titan due how close are you from saturn.

You can make use of gravity assists to help push you in and out. It's less delta V than getting off Venus

[AngelLestat]

7 hours ago, fredinno said:

Except Governments today DO run on a Pyramid-esque sort of power. Changes need huge governmental reform, and it doesn't solve the problem that different nations need different laws.

The same as the world bank, any country is free to said (I dont want to be part of it), but the true is that is not the best decision for the country.
Here you would have some guides that countries should follow (in the way that fix better for them) and it would be those that it will collaborate more with general causes and spends.
Those countries who reject these guides, they will have some economic cons or they will lose benefics, like cheap credits or technology help or even export import clients.
The tax for each country will depend on its PBI, or the amount that is willing to pay, or depending its current situation.
Countries with higher investment had more vote in the main decisions, but in any way, third world countries will be the most benefit to join these kind of world administrations. 

Quote

Only you ignored one word: Extraterrestrial. That alone makes regular deep sea mining look very economical in comparison.
Only Venusians will ever want stuff mined from the surface of Venus- otherwise, asteroids or the native planetary surface is more economical.
Venus will always be like the Arctic communities of today- the cost of living will be insanely high, and you need a very good reason to ever want to build a space colony there.

Venus can have a powerful local economy growing at higher rate than any other place in the solar system, so most of its resources are for themselves.
Of course mining the things you need you also get high cost resources as platinum, gold, etc.  things you can export with a lot of profit, more taking into account that dont require a special capital cost because is a sub-product, asteroid mining specialized for heavy metals needs to include the capital cost.
You may not have the same % of profit than asteroid mining, but you get a profit anyway, which is a plus of all your other profits (local or no local).
Besides, launch cost will always go down with the time due technology..  only you assume that technology is static.

Quote

Not all subs are manned, you know....

...  all subs that need to keep a pressure differential are manned, you link just talk about manned submarines.
And for those who choose to keep a pressure differential because they dont have the neurons to do it without it or just because they find that pressure is not an issue at all for them.. ok.. they can do whatever they want.
But the true is that you dont NEED to keep a pressure differential.
You can let as I said allow the gases inside the vehicle to compress changing the volume of the vehicle.  This is not a trouble for electronics.
Until you dont find an example without a simple solution on why you should keep a pressure differential in venus then this discussion is pointless.

Quote

I know that, that's what I said on the post you just quoted. And all these solutions look like they will be very expensive.

Why it would be very expensive?  I gave to you all math and logic explaining why it will be 10 to 30 times less expensive than earth.. but you just said opposite without any logic or know reason.
"Looks" is your prove?   They are trying this here on earth because winds at higher altitude are more constant (capacity factor and less storage requirements) and stronger.
There are better solutions here on earth to exploit high altitude winds using kites, but is the same.  In venus you had 35 times more density and 35 times less floating volume, so how can you said it will be very expensive?  is crazy.

Quote

Source? I'm fairly sure you don't need water to make a volcano...

I am starting to think that is pointless search and show you all the evidence, because you just negate everything or skipped without any sign of recognition.
The law of physics are clear, solids are incompressive, no matter the tempearature, so there is no work there..  you have water in all the earth crust, each time is combine with hot spots, it becomes magma and melts more stone.
If the pressure is high enough it remains in liquid state, if is not becomes steam which expand, this provide the work that produce the pressure and push. Only gases expand with heat..
You can measure the amount of water in each eruption taking into account how severe is the eruption, for example in hawaii the amount of water is low but constant, in big eruptions --> more water.
http://www.donaldfrobertson.com/venus_express.html
Observed deposits of explosive [volcanic] eruptions' and the fluid nature of some lavas imply high concentrations of ground water. 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/18/volcanoes-and-water/

Quote

The excuse is economics VS a colony anywhere else in the Solar System. Venus ranks pretty badly on that list.

Source?  you have that rank list?    You made a better and deeper research that mine?
You took into account all pros and cons of each site?  like I did with the table?
The fact that I can answer and prove all the things that I stand Vs all the things you think that are impossible until I show the otherwise, but sadly seems that none of the new info change your opinion on the matter. 

Quote

Umm, do you have an example of electronics running at 92 bars unprotected?

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/Hunter%20Extreme%20Environment%20Technologies%20for%20Venus.pdf

http://www.spe.org/ogf/print/archives/2012/02/02_12_17_154399.pdf  (this is for special electronics with air pockets inside that can be easily corrected with solid insulations)

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1003/1003.0592.pdf  (this explain normal pressure effect on normal electronics, as you can see the effect are only notorius  with pressure higher than 10000 bar

Again: solid does not have problem with compression, only gas pockets inside can present problems.

Quote

Yeah, and I'm still waiting for an explanation of why it takes less time to get to the asteroid belt from Venus than it does from Mars.

Is in the previous post inside a spoiler quote, put "reveal content"
From the minimum energy trajectory, venus has lower transfer time because it has higher orbital velocity, it cost a bit more of deltav, but you save time and you increase a lot the launch windows.

Quote

You can make use of gravity assists to help push you in and out. It's less delta V than getting off Venus

Venus habitants does not need to get their heavy elements at such high cost.

Edited March 31, 2016 by AngelLestat

[RocketSquid]

@AngelLestat, @fredinno

Please make sure you keep these things civil. The best way to settle this would probably be with a pros/cons list for Venus colonies.

[insert_name]

the only advantage at venus is a naturally occurring high pressure environment without a gas giant sized gravity well

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, insert_name said:

the only advantage at venus is a naturally occurring high pressure environment without a gas giant sized gravity well

There is a near Earth gravity.

[todofwar]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but in terms of current tech Venus is far FAR more accessbile than Mars. That sky crane wasn't just to be fancy, you can't brake with parachutes or gliders on Mars, and using rockets to brake will be very costly. Landing enough equipment for a base, let alone a self sustaining colony is a far way away. venus has a nice thick atmosphere and you don't even have to land. A few shuttle sized gliders that can deploy a hydrogen filled envelope (no need to worry about it burning, no oxygen) and your good. 

The real advantage remains energy. If we are talking about easiest to establish a self sustaining colony, Venus ranks pretty highly mainly because of the readily accessible energy. Don't forget how much of our needs on earth stem from not having enough energy to go around. In a floating Venus colony you get access to so many different types of energy, from geothermal like pipes you can drop to harness the temperature gradient, to hanging wind turbines to harness the wind gradient. In fact, since any kind of pipe designed to harness the thermal gradient would need to be quite long (nothing compared to some things we've already built here on earth) you can slap a few turbines on it to do both. What does Mars have? Solar? Going to need allot of solar panels to get things running, which will probably be low efficiency because sophisticated refining is out.

Sure, the surface is difficult, but honestly it's not that hot from a materials perspective (steal could even work). Just need to do quick runs for material and process them in the upper atmosphere. You would probably do a hand off to a different ship since getting something that can operate at both the surface and upper atmosphere is difficult of course. And you don't need much, plenty of CO2 to process into carbon based materials. And the pressure is child's play compared to deep sea submersibles. 

The one big problem with Venus, and this is admittedly a huge problem for long term colonization, is the lack of hydrogen in any form. In total, it could probably not sustain a colony above 20 million or so people and that is assuming you can harvest every last drop of water, sulfuric acid (those clouds are SO2 not H2SO4), HF and HCl. But with imports from Europa or maybe by trapping a convenient comet you can solve that in the super long term. 

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, todofwar said:

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but in terms of current tech Venus is far FAR more accessbile than Mars. That sky crane wasn't just to be fancy, you can't brake with parachutes or gliders on Mars, and using rockets to brake will be very costly. Landing enough equipment for a base, let alone a self sustaining colony is a far way away. venus has a nice thick atmosphere and you don't even have to land. A few shuttle sized gliders that can deploy a hydrogen filled envelope (no need to worry about it burning, no oxygen) and your good. 

 

But we have lots of experience with landing on Mars. We have none with putting stuff in Venus' atmosphere (except tiny aerostats from the VEGA missions), and air-launch has not been done anywhere at that scale (let alone at the harsher conditions on Venus compared to Earth.)

It's also harder to get public funding if you're not even going to land. People are going to ask what the point of going to another world will be if you can't land due to planetary chauvinism.

3 hours ago, todofwar said:

 

Sure, the surface is difficult, but honestly it's not that hot from a materials perspective (steal could even work). Just need to do quick runs for material and process them in the upper atmosphere. You would probably do a hand off to a different ship since getting something that can operate at both the surface and upper atmosphere is difficult of course. And you don't need much, plenty of CO2 to process into carbon based materials. And the pressure is child's play compared to deep sea submersibles. 

3 hours ago, todofwar said:

 

The one big problem with Venus, and this is admittedly a huge problem for long term colonization, is the lack of hydrogen in any form. In total, it could probably not sustain a colony above 20 million or so people and that is assuming you can harvest every last drop of water, sulfuric acid (those clouds are SO2 not H2SO4), HF and HCl. But with imports from Europa or maybe by trapping a convenient comet you can solve that in the super long term. 

Mining from Venus Surface is not impossible, but expensive. Couple that with lack of hydrogen, and high gravity well (even from the atmosphere), and you have a very uneconomical place to build a colony.

Also, if there was a movie "The Venusian", Mark Watney would be hit by the airlock, and fall to his death onto the planet below

 

[todofwar]

We have experience crashing balloons with lightweight toy trucks on Mars. We successfully soft landed once I believe, Curiosity, and that was about as big as we can get for now. The atmosphere being that thin is a huge problem. And for all the talk Mars gets, what is supposed to be the benefit? Gravity well just big enough to be a problem but possibly not big enough to counteract health effects of low gravity. Atmosphere too thin for radiation shielding or really anything of use. It might have plenty of hydrogen sources, but what about nitrogen? Last I checked (and I admittedly have not calculated this out too much) it doesn't have much and nitrogen is a macronutrient. It gets us slightly closer to the asteroid belt but if that's the argument it's really thin because you would have to land and relaunch from a planet rather than just straight shot back to Earth. Basically, Mars is a more difficult version of a Lunar colony, and why not just colonize the Moon at that point (side note: first step will obviously be a Lunar colony no matter what planet we're shooting for). Venus at least has the benefits of Earth gravity, unlimited energy, plenty of nitrogen gas (and plants are pretty darn good at the whole CO2 -> O2 process, so creating breathable air is easy), and we can easily "land" into the upper atmosphere. An airlaunch is tricky, but there is a reason Virgin is working on it, it would be a very effective launch system even from Earth if the problems can be worked out. And while I loved the Martian, in reality it stretched science just enough to work, but in real life you don't get to stretch science. Watney would have probably died a few weeks in (radiation).

And of course there is no economic benefit to colonizing any planet, though there may be an ecological argument to strip mine asteroids and planets so as to preserve the environment on Earth (bringing fuel back from Titan would be a terrible terrible idea though). So Venus would have to be a charity mission, a concentrated effort to allow our species a second chance should this planet get wiped out. But the same can be said for just about everywhere.  

[Nibb31]

14 minutes ago, todofwar said:

We have experience crashing balloons with lightweight toy trucks on Mars. We successfully soft landed once I believe, Curiosity, and that was about as big as we can get for now.

We have experience soft-landing on hard surfaces since Mars 3 in 1971, then Viking 1 and 2. There have also been Phoenix and MSL, and in the future Insight (if it ever flies) and Schiaparelli (the Exomars lander).

We also have experience soft-landing on the Moon, and on Earth. There is no reason why we couldn't soft-land a larger vehicle.

On the other hand, deploying sustaining balloons from a hypersonic reentry vehicle isn't something that we any experience with.

 

[fredinno]

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

Gravity well just big enough to be a problem but possibly not big enough to counteract health effects of low gravity.

Mars is about the 33% barrier that is thought to be the point where low gravity is not a huge problem. This is just an educated guess by scientists, though, we don't have any art. G modules on the ISS that would be necessary to do research (it was cancelled )

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

Atmosphere too thin for radiation shielding or really anything of use.

Except, you know, producing fuel and oxygen, providing a source of carbon, slowing down before landings, aerobraking, and it also protects against radiation to ISS levels on the surface.

 

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

Last I checked (and I admittedly have not calculated this out too much) it doesn't have much and nitrogen is a macronutrient.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

Mars' atmosphere is 1.89% nitrogen- you can freeze the air and extract the nitrogen- and concentrate the nitrogen to a 80% nitrogen environment inside your base. It is also about the same amount of argon, which can be used for VASMIR.

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

It gets us slightly closer to the asteroid belt but if that's the argument it's really thin because you would have to land and relaunch from a planet rather than just straight shot back to Earth.

It's orbit (around Deimos) is great- it's a constant, stable location that also offers opportunities to study Mars.

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

Venus at least has the benefits of Earth gravity, unlimited energy, plenty of nitrogen gas (and plants are pretty darn good at the whole CO2 -> O2 process, so creating breathable air is easy), and we can easily "land" into the upper atmosphere

You can't "easily land" in the upper atmosphere. The hazy atmosphere also blocks out a lot of sunlight, so you'll be getting less light than you would expect.

Venus is also 0.9G, not 1 G. Just saying...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

Also:

Quote

unlimited energy

 

Edited April 4, 2016 by fredinno