Mars or venus?

[cratercracker]

5 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Isaac Arthur is an American with a speech impediment. He has difficulty pronouncing 'R'.

Yet, he is the best narrator in my opinion.

I just like it when there is this secondary voice while i am drawing.

[kerbiloid]

15 minutes ago, Helmetman said:

So the airship gets hauled to Venus atmosphere? How? Does it re-enter like a airship? It can't right? Airships don't tolerate reentry, right? Tell me about the magical element or read on...

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

21 minutes ago, Helmetman said:

Cargo Resupply missions? How does a small cabin with a very large balloon dock to another small cabin with another great balloon? Some kind of walkway?

And if this walkway is required then what? You have another great balloon that is just there to be expanded after loading cargo just to get snacks onboard the airship at Venus?

Spoiler

 

17 minutes ago, Helmetman said:

What is the narrators accent of the video he posted? He says 'Oarth' (instead of Earth) and a lot of more 'oar' speech accents throughout his narratation.

Venusian. True Venusians always call so that Oarth.

[DAL59]

@Helmetman  The balloons would be encased in a shell and then rapidly inflate.  

Watch this video for an animation

 

3 minutes ago, cratercracker said:

he is the best narrator

agreed

[Helmetman]

@DAL59 Thanks  

@kerbiloid I see the resupply method. Still, it seems tricky in real life, not? 

It would be very cool though if they can make something like this.

Still, Mars is my favourite choice. Venus has resources unavailable, Mars has. But I can see the design feasibility for Venus airship, just not the long term spoils like Vanamonde pointed out concerning sustainability. Without ability to colonize, what's the point? Just hover there doing nothing but doing science research a airship probe could do on it's own?

Still cool though

 

Edited October 10, 2017 by Helmetman

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, Helmetman said:

Still, it seems tricky in real life, not? 

I'm not a Pro-Venus proponent. (As well as Pro-Mars). But I can see no other way. At least, this works in Kerbal Space Program.

Edited October 10, 2017 by kerbiloid

[DAL59]

20 minutes ago, Helmetman said:

unavailable

It would be good for providing food to orbital colonies.  Plenty of CO2, fertilizer, and sunlight.

[ARS]

Which one should we colonize first? No, both of them is a no-go. The one we should colonize first is moon. Reasons?

- its closer to earth

- easy to get material

- lower gravity means structures can be built easier and make it larger

- easy to return

- better place to be used as spaceport due to lower gravity and very thin (if any) atmosphere

- a good place to start observing and perfecting the colonization

Until we've mastered the colonization of moon, we won't get very far in our solar system. When you have a failure or need something that can't be made on mars, the fastest help that can come from earth is 8 months, while on the moon, it's only around 3 days. Yes, we are a naturally curious species, but the fact is, we need to know how to establish a colony in our closest celestial body first. Once we're able to effortlessly build colony there to sustainable level and become a full fledged colony, then we're good to go to mars or venus

[NSEP]

15 minutes ago, ARS said:

Which one should we colonize first? No, both of them is a no-go. The one we should colonize first is moon. Reasons?

- its closer to earth

- easy to get material

- lower gravity means structures can be built easier and make it larger

- easy to return

- better place to be used as spaceport due to lower gravity and very thin (if any) atmosphere

- a good place to start observing and perfecting the colonization

Until we've mastered the colonization of moon, we won't get very far in our solar system. When you have a failure or need something that can't be made on mars, the fastest help that can come from earth is 8 months, while on the moon, it's only around 3 days. Yes, we are a naturally curious species, but the fact is, we need to know how to establish a colony in our closest celestial body first. Once we're able to effortlessly build colony there to sustainable level and become a full fledged colony, then we're good to go to mars or venus

You've got a point^^

The Moon would also make a great proving ground for space technology.

[HebaruSan]

Just now, NSEP said:

You've got a point^^

The Moon would also make a great proving ground for space technology.

Plus, the Moon stays politically loyal to Earth, unlike those pro-independence Martian rebels.

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

its closer to earth

It takes equal delta vee to land from LEO though.

1 hour ago, ARS said:

easy to get material

Experiments have shown that plants grow better in simulated Martian soil than in lunar soil.  Also, even if there is ice, which is debatable, it would only be at the poles.  Mars has much of its surface above giant glaciers.  

1 hour ago, ARS said:

lower gravity means structures can be built easier and make it larger

It also means more muscle atrophy.

 

1 hour ago, ARS said:

a good place to start observing and perfecting the colonization

Mars and the Moon are very different environments.  Phobos might be a more useful test bed.  Or maybe just setting up a mock base in the artic, which is currently being done by several organizations. 

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

Plus, the Moon stays politically loyal to Earth, unlike those pro-independence Martian rebels.

Obviously not a fan of Heinlein.

[RatchetinSpace]

Mars is far more suitable. Venus' surface is essentially hell, 92 bar atmospheric pressure, a day lasting 1176.5 earth days and an equally long night, sulphuric acid clouds and hellish temperatures.

We COULD make a floating city to alleviate some of those problems but access to the surface is essentially required if a civilization on the planet is to become self-sustaining (mining ore, etc). Mars has decent gravity, good day/night cycle (24.5 hours), and reasonable(ish) temperatures (not lead melting).

Another big advantage Mars has over Venus is an abundance of water. Water is pretty much essential for all human endeavours and so a good supply of it on Mars is important for both agriculture and manufacturing processes.

Ultimately, the only thing Mars is missing is a magnetic field. If humans can build an artificial one, we can heat up the poles to release the frozen CO2 and being thawing the planet, melting the subsurface ice to create oceans, introducing subsurface bacteria and creating an ecosystem.

Venus COULD be terraformed, but fixing things like the slow rotation and hellish temperatures would require more advanced technology than what Mars requires.

The only issue I see with terraforming Mars is the lack of Nitrogen in the atmosphere which is important for plant and bacteria growth, as well as filler for providing atmospheric pressure. Does anyone know where we could get Nitrogen from on Mars?

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, NSEP said:

You've got a point^^

The Moon would also make a great proving ground for space technology.

if something goes wrong its 3 days back to earth. Mars or asteroids are not as easy. 

Asteroids win a bit as an resource base over Moon, Mars win on science. 

Venus, well the balloon idea makes some sense for an sample return mission, that however would be unmanned, you might have an crew in orbit to avoid the light speed lag and letting you do more science from the landers. Complexity rating would anyway be the size of an manned Mars mission. 

[kerbiloid]

Btw don't forget that "muscle atrophy" is not the greatest trouble of low-G.
You can make colonists to break stones with pickaxes and build a Great Martian Pyramid or to repair the Martian Face by hands.
(Also this solves the recreational problems. They will fall down with face into cushion (or into soup) and recreate. Four hours till the next working day.)

Cardiovascular deseases are. Blood, moved from the legs to the head and the chest. You can't withstand this so easy.

Edited October 11, 2017 by kerbiloid

[MatterBeam]

On 10/10/2017 at 1:09 PM, NSEP said:

If Venus is so Earth like, with pressure, temperature and gravity, then why not stay here? On Mars you at least got challenges and problems that you can learn from, and go further with. Sure, Venus got its challenges too, but making a balloon float above Hell is only going to make you move forward if we had more Venuses in our Solar System. And suprise suprise, Mars has flaws most celestial bodies have too, so, if you learn how to for example protect yourself from solar radiation, you can also live on other alien worlds with solar radiation as a problem.

Im afraid this is a stupid argument.

Why not stay here? is very different question from Venus or Mars? 
Once we have decided to settle the solar system, either artificially pushed forwards by industrial pursuits or organically motivated by the need to colonize new lands, the only decisions to make is how to allocate our resources towards developing various potential sites for supporting large populations. Cheap and rapid transport of humans across interplanetary distances is an implicit requirement for this question to be valid. As a consequence, none of these potential sites have to be self-sufficient - just like today where we can travel quickly with airplanes or transport goods in bulk with cargo ships, we don't have to extract, process and consume all the things we need in the same spot. Humans living on Mars can be supplied basic elements such as water from Phobos, while their heavy element needs can be extracted from metallic asteroids and converted into machines and electronics on Mars, to be sold to Earth in return for complex items such as rocket turbines and microprocessors... 

With all of this in place, all we have to do is evaluate the relative value of the potential sites. 
In contention are Venus, Mars, the Moon and orbital habitats, which can be placed anywhere.

Orbital habitats are the simplest. They provide the best living conditions. However, they cost the most to produce and need to import everything they consume. 
The Moon is the easiest to develop and build on due to its proximity to Earth. It lacks many vital resources, such as large quantities of water or carbon, and the 1/6th gravity can mean very bad things for long term health of adults and the development of children. 
Mars fares better in terms of living conditions. A bit less than half gravity might not be so bad, and it has a lot of water and CO2 that is just a bit difficult to extract or collect. Bonus points for lots of iron and minerals in the soil to grow plants on. Energy will be expensive however.
Venus provides excellent living conditions at much lower cost than orbital habitats, but still needs to import a lot of resources. Energy from sunlight is more available and a thick atmosphere makes importing resources slightly cheaper. 

On 10/10/2017 at 3:01 PM, magnemoe said:

This, it makes no sense, you can not do much at Venus, yes you have some resources but less than Mars and the asteroids, the main killer is however to get away from Venus, its at hard as from Earth but you lack Earth infrastructure. 
I say Earth orbit, Asteroids, Moon and Mars makes sense, not Venus.
Getting gravity from spin is far easier if you want an decent sized base, Don't need to be an ring just two arms with two habitats. and an elevator. 

Terraforming Venus would be nice but not something we could do anytime soon. 

Make sense for what? Supporting a population or making money? Requiring the least amount of money to explore or having the best long term prospects. It is also dangerous to mix up terraforming with colonization. People who moved into the Siberian tundra adapted their equipment, homes and lifestyle instead of not bothering with the land because melting all the ice is very difficult. 

21 hours ago, Helmetman said:

I agree with Vanamonde's last statement.

I first like to reference the Outward bound: Colonizing Venus video posted by @AHeroReborn a few posts up.

What is the narrators accent of the video he posted? He says 'Oarth' (instead of Earth) and a lot of more 'oar' speech accents throughout his narratation.
What accent is that? American I guess, but I am not

Anyway...

These airships are single launches right? So the airship gets hauled to Venus atmosphere? How? Does it re-enter like a airship? It can't right? Airships don't tolerate reentry, right? Tell me about the magical element or read on...

So I hereby assume it fills it's balloons at below critical velocities after reentry before plunging further down? Can you fill a balloon that fast without sinking to fast in the atmosphere? HOW?

Also, how do you get supplies there? With another airship? As Vanamonde said, you can't get resources from Venus itself, so what do you live on?

Cargo Resupply missions? How does a small cabin with a very large balloon dock to another small cabin with another great balloon? Some kind of walkway?

And if this walkway is required then what? You have another great balloon that is just there to be expanded after loading cargo just to get snacks onboard the airship at Venus?
That seems a waste of cash and 'matter' if I'm honest. And as said, the resupply balloon will only be there to get expanded.

Also, how do you get back to orbit?
Is the crew compartment a actual rocket? So that you have a mechanism to quikly cut the balloon where it sways off through engineered control thrusting so you can freely navigate your way back to orbit without hitting it on the way up? The balloon is in the way, so it needs to disperse fast, right? This is instant in KSP, not in real life, definitely not based on the balloon dimensions concerning the video previously posted.
Or do you have to dock another rocket to the airship to get the astronauts back to orbit?

If you live above hell, I'm sure you can only vacate your airship when there was a ascent module to get you back to orbit and ultimately home (earth, I mean Oarth, lol)
Oh, and by the way, roman goddess my foot, by JUPITOAR!

The airships depicted are exploration vehicles. They're not a suitable basis for how a long-term habitat might look like, just like the Apollo Lunar Lander won't look like the underground Martian colonies. 

Supplies delivered to Venus will likely be delivered by a mothership that performs an aerocapture, then sends down flying vehicles from low orbit. The flying vehicles either slow down and dock with the floating habitat, or just fly past and parachute the supplies before accelerating back into orbit.

Also, it's not nice to mock someone's speech impediment. 

9 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Btw don't forget that "muscle atrophy" is not the greatest trouble of low-G.
You can make colonists to break stones with pickaxes and build a Great Martian Pyramid or to repair the Martian Face by hands.
(Also this solves the recreational problems. They will fall down with face into cushion (or into soup) and recreate. Four hours till the next working day.)

Cardiovascular deseases are. Blood, moved from the legs to the head and the chest. You can't withstand this so easy.

The big danger is not exactly the blood moving, but the heart muscles getting weaker and the artery walls getting thinner. We currently do not have a system which ramps up gravity slowly back to 1g for an astronaut to re-condition themselves before re-entry. This would involve a lot of exercise under increasing gravity to build their heart muscles and cardiovascular system back up to its original strength.  

Edited October 11, 2017 by MatterBeam

[kerbiloid]

14 minutes ago, MatterBeam said:

The big danger is not exactly the blood moving, but the heart muscles getting weaker and the artery walls getting thinner. We currently do not have a system which ramps up gravity slowly back to 1g for an astronaut to re-condition themselves before re-entry. This would involve a lot of exercise under increasing gravity to build their heart muscles and cardiovascular system back up to its original strength.  

Blood getting up means not only heart deseases. It also means brain and eyes problem.

[MatterBeam]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Blood getting up means not only heart deseases. It also means brain and eyes problem.

Yes, increasing fluid pressure in the eyes causes them to distort over time, and increased blood pressure in the brain might lead to aneurysms.... but these are problems which will take a lot time to develop and don't become very severe. Fluid pressure is eventually equalized as the body re-distributes fluids. Blood pressure in the brain drops as the heart weakens. They are both of very minor concern compared to the risk of cardiac arrest or an artery failing during the 3-6G re-entry to Earth, at least this is the case for today's astronauts. 

[kerbiloid]

58 minutes ago, MatterBeam said:

Blood pressure in the brain drops as the heart weakens.

This inspires hope.

[DAL59]

2 hours ago, MatterBeam said:

The airships depicted are exploration vehicles.

If you watch the end of the video, after the credits, you will see the habitation ships.  

@MatterBeam

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Blood getting up means not only heart diseases. It also means brain and eyes problem.

This is one of the problems that Venus airships don't have.  With practically normal gravity, low radiation, and quick hohmann transfers, plus an ideal environment for agriculture(plenty of fertilizer in the air.), it would be harder to colonize than Mars, but have a better living environment.  Like Mars, it used to have oceans, but the entire surface has been subject to lava, possibly making hypothetical past life hard to find, not to mention the difficulties of exploring the surface, so the science opportunity is less than Mars.  

[AHeroReborn]

On 10/10/2017 at 2:09 AM, NSEP said:

If Venus is so Earth like, with pressure, temperature and gravity, then why not stay here? On Mars you at least got challenges and problems that you can learn from, and go further with. Sure, Venus got its challenges too, but making a balloon float above Hell is only going to make you move forward if we had more Venuses in our Solar System. And suprise suprise, Mars has flaws most celestial bodies have too, so, if you learn how to for example protect yourself from solar radiation, you can also live on other alien worlds with solar radiation as a problem.

Im afraid this is a stupid argument.

We don't want to go to mars for the challenge. We want to spread out to not all become extinct. Venus would be an easier first step in my opinion and seems more appealing considering it would be rather pretty to be above the clouds and easier to adjust to the normal gravity. A journey home would take much less time. obviously mars would be the second choice since it won't be eaten when the sun becomes a red giant and it would make for much smaller rockets if we produced them on mars. But people need to be interested in moving to another planet. And Venus would be the perfect tourist attraction to generate interest.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, AHeroReborn said:

when the sun becomes a red giant

, Mars will become modern Mercury. Not much difference.

But I agree, we have just 6 billion years left and should hurry up.

[mikegarrison]

12 hours ago, AHeroReborn said:

We don't want to go to mars for the challenge. We want to spread out to not all become extinct. Venus would be an easier first step in my opinion and seems more appealing considering it would be rather pretty to be above the clouds and easier to adjust to the normal gravity. A journey home would take much less time. obviously mars would be the second choice since it won't be eaten when the sun becomes a red giant and it would make for much smaller rockets if we produced them on mars. But people need to be interested in moving to another planet. And Venus would be the perfect tourist attraction to generate interest.

Humans have been around for 50,000 years or so. Hominids for maybe 1-2M years. Mammals for a few hundred million years.

You are talking about timescales of Billions of years. There is essentially 0% chance that humans will exist by the time the sun moves to the red giant phase.

[AHeroReborn]

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Humans have been around for 50,000 years or so. Hominids for maybe 1-2M years. Mammals for a few hundred million years.

You are talking about timescales of Billions of years. There is essentially 0% chance that humans will exist by the time the sun moves to the red giant phase.

But we as space enthusiasts want to increase those odds by going to other planets, galaxies maybe even other universes. that can only be done in space.

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, AHeroReborn said:

But we as space enthusiasts want to increase those odds by going to other planets, galaxies maybe even other universes. that can only be done in space.

There is a difference between "space" and "fantasy".

Fantasies have their place, but it's useful to keep science and fantasy distinct. Science has taught us that no complex organism we have any evidence of has ever had a species lifetime of billions of years.

Edited October 12, 2017 by mikegarrison

[AHeroReborn]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

There is a difference between "space" and "fantasy".

Fantasies have their place, but it's useful to keep science and fantasy distinct. Science has taught us that no complex organism we have any evidence of has ever had a species lifetime of billions of years.

because the only species we observed never leaved their home planet. they never developed as far as we did.

Comparing us to other species here on earth is a bad comparison. You can't predict how long humans will exist based on how long the dinosaurs roamed around doing nothing but reproducing. Logic says that more planets=longer lifespan.