Colonisation/terraforming - Eve vs Duna

[Jesrad]

That's still a gravity well. If you're going to build pressure domes and divert asteroid onsite for resources, you'll be much better off digging an habitat into a suitable asteroid in the first place. You'll have your colony alright, more (continuous) sunlight, ice+metal within arm's reach, and ridiculously cheap access back to space.

[Xenon2462]

you could use eves atmosphere for power the heat has energy like how solar panels generate power from light except the power generation is working on an inferred level

[SmartS=true]

Actually, Laythe goes around Jool in about 14 hours, so it would actually rotate only 3.5 times slower than Kerbin. The atmosphere would also stop most radiation.

[Yellowburn10]

Actually, Laythe goes around Jool in about 14 hours, so it would actually rotate only 3.5 times slower than Kerbin. The atmosphere would also stop most radiation.

Yes, Laythe's souposphere would definitely protect it from radiation. The fact that the it's atmo has oxygen too is a big factor too, because oxygen in the air can make an ozone, to further protect Laythe from radiation. So as long as the radiation Jool has is less than the protection Laythe offers, it's a nice place to be.

[bitbucket]

I've conjectured, given the surface conditions on Eve, that the oceans are some foul brew of mercury and iodine, both of which would be liquid at 5 bars and 150° C.

[SmartS=true]

True, but there will be MUCH less oxygen. If that was true, than Duna and Eve would also have oxygen in their atmospheres. Oxygen is reactive it will get depleted from oxidation of metals fairly quickly if not replenished.

[zekes]

I think it's easier to live on a planet like Duna; you have Ice Caps, which can melt, releasing CO2, this raising temp and increasing atmosphere, as well as the fact that it's water, and the atmosphere is thinner rather than thicker. Also, it's easier to get to orbit and back than Eve.

[insert_name]

I thought the resource chart said it was water and Blutonium?.

first of all blutonium isn't an element, second, the only elements that are liquid at 110c are gallium, mercury, and bromine, water would boil witbh 110c, third, the game refers to it as explodium seas therefore it must be something that explodes, making bromine(unlikely due to high reactivity) or more likely a hydrocarbon the only reasonable awnsers

[Champ]

Also its much easier to lift off from duna if the kerbals ever wanted to return home

Duna/Eve to stay ! Traitors return to Kerbin !

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I think we are better off terraforming Tylo or Laythe than Eve or Duna ... just saying

[luizopiloto]

The most important thing about terraforming and colonization is the strength of the planet's/moon magnetic field... w/o it all that radiation from space will hit anything on surface... and slowly kill everyone...

and Solar winds will blow away the recent created atmosphere bit by bit w/o a magnetic field to protect it...

So before terraforming any place that have no magnetic field, we need a way to kickstart a planet's/Moon's core to create one...

[Slam_Jones]

From my experience, Duna seems very conducive to colonization, assuming you have the right tech. Due to the tenuous atmosphere and reduced gravity, propeller-driven vehicles are very effective. I've found that while a vessel of this sort has, for example, a TWR of 1.0 on Kerbin, it will have a TWR of 2.0+ on Duna. This means heavier vehicles can be built with smaller props, easing the burden of huge electric charge draw (though it can still be quite substantial for large vessels). It also means I can build tiny vessels that still serve a purpose, or can carry payload.

Altitude is still very achievable, even with small vessels. I've been able to get prop-driven planes up to 24km, which is nearly halfway to space.

The only downside to the weak atmosphere is in regards to incoming vessels not having to hit a very fine altitude to aerobrake properly. Once you're there, though, it's never an issue.

Duna City

KSC3

Outpost/Relay Station

Polar Research Station

New Kerbin City

Duna City 3 (My personal favorite... also it needs a name!)

Duna City 4 (Also needs a name!)

As far as terraforming, I really have no idea which would theoretically have better chemicals to work with. It does seem that Duna would be generally more pleasant, due to having less windstorms and violent weather in general.

Then again, sand storms can potentially be very deadly too...

Edited October 7, 2015 by Slam_Jones

[KAL 9000]

How can Eve have water in it's oceans if the temperature at sea level is over 100 degrees celsius?

We have no idea what Eve's oceans are made of. It would have to be a liquid with a melting point is greater than 150 degrees Centigrade.

- - - Updated - - -

http://i45.tinypic.com/xbe3qh.jpg

I know on first reaction everyone says Duna is more suitable for colonisation, but is that really the correct answer? I know if instead the question is between Mars and Venus then Mars is probably the more hospitable of the two. But while both Duna and Eve are more friendly than Mars and Venus I think Eve has some advantages that may put it ahead of Duna.

Let's have a look at the numbers first, at sea level:

Duna:

atmosphere = 0.2atm

gravity = 0.3G

temperature = really cold

Delta-V to orbit = 1,380m/s

Eve:

atmosphere = 5atm

gravity = 1.7G

temperature = 150 degrees

Delta-V to orbit = 12,000m/s

Okay, so Eve's sea level looks pretty horrible. However while there's no where on Duna where you could find a place with denser atmosphere and hotter temperate, there are places on Eve that's more friendly than its sea level. On one of those 6km Eve mountain tops you have:

atmosphere = 2atm

gravity = 1.7G

temperature = 120 degrees

Delta-V to orbit = 7,500m/s

Now that's not so bad. The only real obstacle is the temperature, but 110 degrees is well within modern engineering capabilities. Aside from these Eve also have the following advantages:

• liquid water ocean - yes okay it's laced with radioactive isotopes, but water is water and you could always purify it. Having copious amount of water means you have no shortage of breathable air and source of rocket fuel. On Duna, even if subsurface frozen water exist it will be a lot more difficult to extract
  
• high availability of energy, both solar and nuclear. With plenty of cheap energy you could afford to actively cool your habitat, distil pure water and generally do stuff. Duna on the other hand with reduced solar panel efficiency due to distance to Kerbol and lack of nuclear fuel source will probably require large amount of solar panels/nuclear reactors shipped in from Kerbin to keep a colony alive.
  

So what does everyone think of the possibility of a Kerbal colony on Eve?

Have you considered Laythe?

[Findthepin1]

Kerbin Similarity Index (KSI)

Kerbin: 1.00

Laythe: 0.96

Eve: 0.87

Duna: 0.84

Moho: 0.77

Tylo: 0.56

Eeloo: 0.55

Vall: 0.48

Minmus: 0.46

Dres: 0.45

Mun: 0.44

Bop: 0.26

Gilly: 0.24

Pol: 0.18

…

Might as well.

Magic Boulder: 0.05

Generally, any ranking above 0.9 in the KSI means that some simple form of life can survive there. However, Eve is a special case; there are high-altitude environments on its surface which have a KSI of 0.94, barely less than that of the surface of Laythe. It'd be more than Laythe's ranking if there wasn't oxygen on Laythe. I think there must be trace amounts of oxygen (at least) on Eve (although not nearly enough for a jet engine to operate), seeing as oxygen seems common in the universe and we have no proof otherwise. Given this information, I'd quarantine the surfaces of both Laythe and Eve to anything manned, because the environments' contamination can be prevented in the case of probes/landers/rovers, but a manned mission to the surface would guarantee something to be dropped off and survive. That being said, Duna, with its presumably CO2 atmosphere at 20 kpa and temperatures up to -2 or higher, should be quarantined as well, but considering that I'm about to send a manned mission there, oh well.

Edited October 7, 2015 by Findthepin1

[Findthepin1]

If I had to colonize something for the purposes of having a backup Kerbin, it'd be Laythe.

[Randazzo]

I would be highly suspect of the potential success of any colony built on a planet whose oceans are made of "explodium".

[Tweeker]

I notice no one has chimed in with anything definite on the subject of liquid water on Eve so I'll wade in,

From my youth when we would can a lot of food in the fall I remember my mother's pressure cooker, it was set for the standard pressure, 15 psi, this is psi absolute, so 29.7 psi or basically the 2 atm at the 6 km high mountain on Eve

As I recall the pressure cooker would not boil until 250F this translates to 121C, so the mountain - top colony would be right at the boiling point of water, essentially the water would boil in the day and condense at night.

That's about the limit of my "top of the head" knowledge, but a little digging turns up this:

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.html

At sea level, the pressure is 5atm or 5.065 bar & 150C.

Checking the chart, at 5 bar water boils at ~ 153C

So once again just under the boiling point, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record the water would boil off in the noonday sun, and you would get a hot hard rain or dew in the darktime.

Interesting weather for sure.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Tweeker

[xiej]

Ummm...... Use a giant mirror at L2 and a lens at L1 to burn away Eve's atmosphere? Land a Nuclear Reactor and a weapons factory on Eve and blow up the atmosphere? Then create a launchpad/fuel station on Eve? After it's terraformed, create a space elevator to launch stuff? I would definitely rather create a colony on Duna, than on Eve. And of course, my ideas for Eve require mods.....

[Findthepin1]

Ummm...... Use a giant mirror at L2 and a lens at L1 to burn away Eve's atmosphere? Land a Nuclear Reactor and a weapons factory on Eve and blow up the atmosphere?

Wouldn't this boil the oceans?

[xiej]

Use the space elevator to launch the oceans to Gilly, where they can stay until you've terraformed/sterilized the rest of Eve?

[mythic_fci]

I'm going with Duna. Solar power there isn't an issue (just set up a solar farm connected to your habitation module(s), and it's a LOT easier to return to Kerbin compared to Eve - instead of sending a massive, 7-stage Whackjobbian behemoth of an emergency crew return vehicle for an Eve colony, on Duna you'd just need a single/2 stage vehicle with just a bit more fuel than, say, a Mun lander, that can get you to an orbiting mothership/station.

[sdj64]

Duna would probably be much easier than Eve. But to know for sure you would need to know what conditions are best for Kerbals to live without space suits, since in game, they wear their suits even outside on Kerbin. Most people assume they're similar to humans so here goes:

Atmosphere: At Duna's equator and at low altitude a human could survive with arctic clothing and an oxygen mask, no pressure suit required (this is not possible on Mars because of its much lower atmospheric pressure). On Eve even at the mountain tops, a human would die without a climate controlled space suit.

Power: Solar is better on Eve. Nuclear power doesn't care where it is, but cooling a reactor might be a problem on Eve.

Resources: Duna has large polar caps that could realistically provide water (and therefore oxygen and rocket fuel). Eve's oceans and lots of its atmosphere are probably made of hydrocarbons (explodium sea). Oxygen and water are an issue there but might be able to be chemically extracted from the ground or filtered from the atmosphere. In game, there is ore on both planets so that's not a problem.

Transportation: It's easy to make a hopper-lander on Duna. You don't need any disposable stages to get to orbit and back. Planes will fly in both atmospheres, but will go farther on Duna because of lower drag, though they're more maneuverable on Eve. Rovers work better in the high gravity of Eve.

Radiation: A problem for humans, but it's pretty clear that Kerbals aren't adversely affected by it. Humans would need to build bases underground on Duna to hide from the radiation.

Overall: Duna is clearly easier in-game, and probably better in a more realistic colonization attempt, too.

Edit: It would be cool if there was a mod for an Eve jet that runs on onboard oxidizer and intakes atmospheric fuel.

Edited October 11, 2015 by sdj64

[OhioBob]

That being said, Duna, with its presumably CO2 atmosphere at 20 kpa...

We don't know what Duna's atmosphere consists of, but it's definitely not carbon dioxide. The average molecular weight of its gases is just 14. There is no real world analog for this. In fact, a planet presumably the size of Duna could never retain the lightweight gases needed to produce such a low molar mass. Duna's atmosphere is a mystery.

[ForScience6686]

I say colonize both. Why make a choice? Tailor a mission to suit each planet and have some fun. Don't be hindered by challenges, create solutions. Plus you'll have plenty of time to wait while the colony is in transit.

[Guest]

You need more than 10k delta-v to launch from Eve ASL.

Compare that to the delta-v required to launch from Duna.