Terraforming Venus

[sh1pman]

Cooling Venus with enormous space mirrors sounds crazy and awesome. Terraforming also requires some speculative technologies like space tethers, mass drivers and mining of Mercury and Europa for materials. What do you think, does this plan look good? I see some minor issues with the way it was laid out in the video, though. For example, they suggest removing CO2 ice from frozen Venus using mass drivers, forgetting that there’s still a 3 bar nitrogen atmosphere left. Firing a mass driver in a 3 bar atmosphere will probably cause spectacular fireworks and explosions.

Also, do you believe that humanity can actually commit to a thousand-year project like this, that won’t be of any economic benefit and will cost a tremendous amount of money, without some kind of authoritarian political will? 

Edited August 3, 2021 by sh1pman

[Minmus Taster]

2 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Cooling Venus with enormous space mirrors sounds crazy and awesome. Terraforming also requires some speculative technologies like space tethers, mass drivers and mining of Mercury and Europa for materials. What do you think, does this plan look good? I see some minor issues with the way it was laid out in the video, though. For example, they suggest removing CO2 ice from frozen Venus using mass drivers, forgetting that there’s still a 3 bar nitrogen atmosphere left. Firing a mass driver in a 3 bar atmosphere will probably cause spectacular fireworks and explosions.

Also, do you believe that humanity can actually commit to a thousand-year project like this, that won’t be of any economic benefit and will cost a tremendous amount of money, without some kind of authoritarian political will? 

It's crazy and I love it!

[kerbiloid]

It would still lack the magnetosphere (as a shield and as a necessary condition for embryo growth (see the Russian Launch thread))

And all those efforts just to place  population much smaller than on the Earth?
The bromine compote is many times cheaper.

[sh1pman]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It would still lack the magnetosphere (as a shield and as a necessary condition for embryo growth (see the Russian Launch thread)).

NASA proposed a magnetic satellite to protect the atmosphere of Mars, I’m sure something like that can be done for Venus when the atmosphere is stabilised. Also, atmosphere escapes into space very slowly, it takes millions of years, and mostly affects hydrogen atoms. If we can bring more ice from Europa, the process can be compensated.

And why much smaller population? Eventually it can grow to be billions.

[SpaceFace545]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It would still lack the magnetosphere (as a shield and as a necessary condition for embryo growth (see the Russian Launch thread))

And all those efforts just to place  population much smaller than on the Earth?
The bromine compote is many times cheaper.

Well currently Venus is semi protected by an ionized layer of gas, I don’t think that would work well with the thick atmosphere stripped

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

NASA proposed a magnetic satellite to protect the atmosphere of Mars, I’m sure something like that can be done for Venus when the atmosphere is stabilised.

Not just the atmosphere. In the Russian launches thread I posted a link that the absence of magnetic field destructively affects several generations of born species.

So, the outdoors farming and herding says oops even if everything other is ok (and it isn't).

Edited July 7, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Dientus]

I personally don't see any real benefit from terraforming Venus. The cost and time to terraform just don't match any rewards gained. All the materials on Venus are located in far easier to reach places in the solar system so resource gathering wouldn't be a reason. This seems like a "just because we can" situation. At best Venus would be a tourist and curiosity stop, like the worlds largest ball of twine in Kansas.

 

The terraforming itself seems sketch to me as well. One thing to remember is that it was once believed that we could put plants on Venus and they would do it for us, then came the bacteria idea. The more we learn about planets in general and Venus in particular, seems to make our previous ideas defunct. I think we do not know enough and our technology is not near advanced enough to effectively terraform any planet to be honest.

 

Guess we could always try?

[kerbiloid]

We should return back into the early XX century, and select another reality thread instead this wrong one.

Then the Mars is a planet full of artificial channels and a cycle of seasons, making the Martian plants change their color.
It's inhabitated by the remains of the ancient wise civilisation, with gorgeous and cool maidens.

And the Venus is a wet world, full of bogs and ocean, covered under the thick ayer of clouds, full of dinosaurs and wild and hot maidens.

Exactly like we can see in the sci-fi movies of that time.

As a bonus we can get a solid, blade-thin ring around Saturn, and a foam continent floating in the gas flows, aka Big Red Spot on Jupiter.

Idk why the people selected this ugly reality thread with two dry deserts.

[Dientus]

Well, I will give the idea of terraforming Venus one thing, the attempt in and of itself will be a great learning tool for future, more viable worlds.

 

Afterall you can never learn from your mistakes if you don't first try something and see it fail and the 'why's' that caused it to fail. We may discover some new offshoot that is beneficial in the process. Wouldn't be the first time.

[Dr. Kerbal]

Venus is probably a better place to terraform. Almost big as earth, gravity about the same, megnetosphere. 

[Dientus]

2 hours ago, Dr. Kerbal said:

Venus is probably a better place to terraform. Almost big as earth, gravity about the same, megnetosphere. 

Well, it doesn't actually have a magnetosphere. The atmosphere does however create a type of induced magnetic field that partially protects the planet, but for us to live out in the open there, we have to remove a LOT of what creates that limited protection. If we do that, the absence of a magnetosphere will be painfully evident.

 

[Spacescifi]

18 minutes ago, Dientus said:

Well, it doesn't actually have a magnetosphere. The atmosphere does however create a type of induced magnetic field that partially protects the planet, but for us to live out in the open there, we have to remove a LOT of what creates that limited protection. If we do that, the absence of a magnetosphere will be painfully evident.

 

 

Which brings us to a question humans seldom ask because we are simply not in the business of terraforming.... right now

 

How does mankind go about generating a planetwide magnetic field around a world that does not have one?

 

Earth has one for reasons I cannot fathom....  somewhere I read that Earth's molten iron core spins and causes magnetic force.

 

Obviously trying to dig to Venus core, insert thousands of tons of molten iron and  spin it is probably one of the hardest ways to do it. So let's try... anything else.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Spacescifi

[sh1pman]

4 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

How does mankind go about generating a planetwide magnetic field around a world that does not have one?

Put a magnetic satellite in L1 point between Sun and Venus, it will protect the planet. When we can build planet-size mirrors to cool Venus, magnetic satellites will be trivial.

Quote

"This new research is coming about due to the application of full plasma physics codes and laboratory experiments. In the future it is quite possible that an inflatable structure(s) can generate a magnetic dipole field at a level of perhaps 1 or 2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss) as an active shield against the solar wind."

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html

[Dientus]

5 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Obviously trying to dig to Venus core, insert thousands of tons of molten iron and  spin it is probably one if the hardest ways to do it. So let's try... anything else.

Actually, NASA has a pretty sound way to do that now using plasma physics by building a structure that can generate a dipole field. They plan on using it for Mars. So it's not impossible, just adds to the overall complexity and cost of terraforming.

(Ninjad)

Edited July 7, 2021 by Dientus
good answer sh1pman lol

[kerbiloid]

Make a bigger sat than you need, just to have a reserve.

Suddenly switch it to full power.

See the spoons lifting up and sticking to the ceiling.

[StrandedonEarth]

The biggest problem I heard with Venus is the extremely slow rotation. So, solar shade to block insolation, once the atmosphere finally freezes out, how to spin it up? Hit it with ice asteroids at extremely oblique angles? Magnetically? (Gets the core spinning too!) How much mass do we need to hit it with to spin it up?

Note: the above techniques are simple once we have mass production of space-grade  robotic mining infrastructure, cheap access to space, etc

E: And once robots are doing all the work with next to no human intervention, the cost will be next to nothing. 

Edited July 8, 2021 by StrandedonEarth

[kerbiloid]

Self-replicating Boston Dynamics dawgz.

They should be running around the Venusian equator.
So greater the pack of the dawgz, the longer they keep running, the faster the Venus rotates in the opposite direction.

[sh1pman]

13 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The biggest problem I heard with Venus is the extremely slow rotation. So, solar shade to block insolation, once the atmosphere finally freezes out, how to spin it up? Hit it with ice asteroids at extremely oblique angles? Magnetically? (Gets the core spinning too!) How much mass do we need to hit it with to spin it up?

Note: the above techniques are simple once we have mass production of space-grade  robotic mining infrastructure, cheap access to space, etc

E: And once robots are doing all the work with next to no human intervention, the cost will be next to nothing. 

At 8:00 in the OP video they propose to use another set of mirrors to create an artificial day-night cycle.
Spinning the planet up is a task on a completely different technological level than the rest of techniques mentioned in the video.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

18 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Put a magnetic satellite in L1 point between Sun and Venus, it will protect the planet. When we can build planet-size mirrors to cool Venus, magnetic satellites will be trivial.

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html

Could something like that be used to protect astronauts on a mission to another planet?

[KerikBalm]

Venus has a pretty severe hydrogen defecit.

What good is a relatively cool desert with a modest atmosphere?

[Admiral Fluffy]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Venus has a pretty severe hydrogen defecit.

What good is a relatively cool desert with a modest atmosphere?

Umm, if you like sun, then go there? 

[Jacke]

I've yet to watch the video linked in the first post.  However....

I once read about a back-of-the-envelop calculation on how long it would take Venus to cool from its current temperature to a living one if it was a black body, ie. a perfect radiator.  Was about 800 years or more.

I think that alone stops consideration of Venus terraforming until a lot of the other stumbling blocks, like no magnetic field and slow rotation, have some sort of good solution.

[StrandedonEarth]

34 minutes ago, Jacke said:

I've yet to watch the video linked in the first post.  However....

I once read about a back-of-the-envelop calculation on how long it would take Venus to cool from its current temperature to a living one if it was a black body, ie. a perfect radiator.  Was about 800 years or more.

I think that alone stops consideration of Venus terraforming until a lot of the other stumbling blocks, like no magnetic field and slow rotation, have some sort of good solution.

It just means it should wait until we have a spare mine-ufactory with an asteroid in tow to build the sunshield. Then wait another 800 years while we figure out the other issues. 

[Dientus]

On 7/8/2021 at 2:01 PM, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Could something like that be used to protect astronauts on a mission to another planet?

The way NASA has it laid out, it seems like it would be dependant on the size of the ship and if it could be attached at a far enough distance from the ship. Then of course the ship would have to make complicated maneuvers to maintain the shield in its proper position...

 

My best guess is that its possible, but not feasible or cost effective for something ship sized.

 

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

It just means it should wait until we have a spare mine-ufactory with an asteroid in tow to build the sunshield. Then wait another 800 years while we figure out the other issues. 

I personally don't think that humans can commit to 800 weeks let alone years. But given current scientific advancements and the speed we have achieved them over the last 100 years, I don't think the wait would be that long. (Unless you are of the thought that human tech is plateauing)

 

So the question I have is why choose Venus over Mars or Titan?

[Jacke]

23 minutes ago, Dientus said:

I personally don't think that humans can commit to 800 weeks let alone years. But given current scientific advancements and the speed we have achieved them over the last 100 years, I don't think the wait would be that long. (Unless you are of the thought that human tech is plateauing)

It's going to be over 800 years.  There's no new technology that can cause Venus to radiate heat faster than a black body, that's the physics of the universe as it is.  As Venus is not a black body and it radiates into an interplanetary medium that is warmer than absolute zero, it will take longer for it to cool.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Jacke