Starship at Venus: How far could it survive?

[darthgently]

The day length on Venus has to make for some strange wind patterns and insolation and temperature extremes up in the clouds.  One would definitely want any cloud floating station to be able to determine its position, rapidly, at all times. If the winds are crazy strong that may not be feasible given the drag on a huge structure

[magnemoe]

On 12/9/2024 at 9:24 PM, darthgently said:

The day length on Venus has to make for some strange wind patterns and insolation and temperature extremes up in the clouds.  One would definitely want any cloud floating station to be able to determine its position, rapidly, at all times. If the winds are crazy strong that may not be feasible given the drag on a huge structure

Day length adds an more serious problem power during the night, on the moon you can just bury an small nuclear reactor and night is shorter. You do power intensive stuff like making fuel during the day. 

But yes docking airships together is another challenge, 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Day length adds an more serious problem power during the night, on the moon you can just bury an small nuclear reactor and night is shorter. You do power intensive stuff like making fuel during the day. 

But yes docking airships together is another challenge, 

Maybe having Cloud City with enough maneuverability that it could hold station near the terminator would be a solution for temperature control and power generation but I think this is possibly where wind speed would generally be highest as it would bridge bordering high and low pressure areas of vast size.

I think, given the very slow rotation, that a fairly stable toroidal convection cell could develop encircling Venus at the terminator.  Maybe there is a relatively low wind speed zone ring inside the tube of the toroidal cell analogous to the eye of a hurricane?  Stuff like this compels me to favor orbitals

Edited December 11 by darthgently

[Piscator]

Actually, the atmosphere of Venus super-rotates in about four days, so the day length for anything carried along by the winds would not be crazy long. 48 hours of daylight at twice the insolation would be somewhat harsh but probably not the most difficult of the technical problems you would have to solve.

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Piscator said:

Actually, the atmosphere of Venus super-rotates in about four days, so the day length for anything carried along by the winds would not be crazy long. 48 hours of daylight at twice the insolation would be somewhat harsh but probably not the most difficult of the technical problems you would have to solve.

I’m humbly corrected. My thought experiment failed horribly wrt how much  surface velocity and atmospheric velocity could differ.  I partially attribute to KSP for simplifying my unconscious thoughts on this, but I can only blame myself.  I appreciate the clarification.

 In related news, it appears that Venus may never have had vast oceans as previously thought and climate theories about what happened there are in limbo again:

 

[kerbiloid]

Without the magnetosphere and close to the UV source, it's hard to keep  some water.

 

[darthgently]

12 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Without the magnetosphere and close to the UV source, it's hard to keep  some water.

 

Exactly.  I’m merely remembering when a hypothetical oceanic Venus was the poster child of how runaway global warming turned it into the hell it is today and that we earthlings should be extremely fearful of the same process here.  But it is complete apples and oranges and was, and is,  a silly comparison for argument.  But it still comes up now and then

https://x.com/i/grok/share/W4NZpF4vL7ujGMr8NtXKXSGLw
 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

All of this reminds me of how lucky we are in having a ridiculously large moon in comparison to the size of the wet rock we abide upon. 

[darthgently]

13 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

All of this reminds me of how lucky we are in having a ridiculously large moon in comparison to the size of the wet rock we abide upon. 

If the earth-moon system were discovered in a blurry image of another star we’d probably call it a binary planet system.  Though I think it might technically depend on how close the barycenter is to the more massive body.