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Air is a lifting gas at 100km altitude on Venus


Agent86

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And insolation per square meter is about the same as on Earth. Gravity is close to Earth G, so muscle atrophy and bone loss won't be an issue. An inflatable habitat would float in the upper atmosphere, where the sun isn't blocked by the clouds, meaning solar panels would still be as efficient as on earth, and plant life and algae could be grown, because the cloud layer would still shield habitats from some harmful radiation.

The atmosphere of Venus is toxic, but is also an inexhaustible resource for synthesizing fertilizer, oxygen, rocket fuels, batteries and water, among other things.. An appropriate building material wouldn't be affected by the corrosive atmosphere, the planets slow rotational period and thick atmosphere would allow for solar powered motors to propel the habitat in the counter rotational direction, keeping the hab in the sun all the time.

Because Venus is void of life, there is no requirement for environmental protection, and resources can be harvested and sent into orbit at whatever rate is required, nuclear weapons can be used to expose and mine surface resources.

So this may be blasphemy, but I think Venus is a more important colonization target than Mars. What's your opinion?

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100km? Why? That's practically vacuum even on Venus. 55km sounds more like home. Half an atmosphere of pressure and 25°C temperature. Just make habitats a little oxygen rich and you don't have to build any pressure vessels or worry about heating/cooling. And since most of the atmo is CO2 outside, you're right, ordinary air is going to work as a lifting gas. Could work.

meve12, you'd want to use composites for this, not metals.

There are still many questions about logistics, however. Launching from 55km on Venus is not going to be easy. And many resources would still have to be lifted from the ground, which would require something like a bathyscaphe attached to a zeppelin. Still, nothing really impossible about that.

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If we had the technology and means to terraform venus, I don't think a bit of radiation would complicate the process, especially since that wouldn't be possible for hundreds, if not thousands of years, during which time the radiation would abate.

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The hurricane force winds at those elevations (50-55 km) would be ... challenging.

Exactely what I was thinking. The biggest problem would be wind shear which could probably tear any kind of habitat to shreds. Not familiar with the specifics of Venus though but I can imagine it would be very hard to do such a thing.

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Absolute wind speeds aren't a problem. Yes, shear would be bad, but I don't think it's going to be that significant. From Wikipedia.

Its windspeeds are roughly determined by the balance of the pressure gradient and centrifugal forces in almost purely zonal flow. [...] Venus's windspeeds can be directly measured only in the upper troposphere (tropopause), between 60–70 km, altitude, which corresponds to the upper cloud deck.[20] The cloud motion is usually observed in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, where the contrast between clouds is the highest.[20] The linear wind speeds at this level are about 100 ± 10 m/s at lower than 50° latitude.

That's not so bad. The fact that flows are primarily zonal means that most of the atmosphere is going to be moving together, resulting in strong winds with little shear. And when the winds themselves are going to be in 100m/s range, this suggests that relative wind at any part of the station is going to be manageable.

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There are still many questions about logistics, however. Launching from 55km on Venus is not going to be easy. And many resources would still have to be lifted from the ground, which would require something like a bathyscaphe attached to a zeppelin. Still, nothing really impossible about that.

If 55km on Venus corresponds to 0.5atm, that is less air drag than on Earth, probably less gravity drag, and less tangential velocity to achieve. Still, this corresponds to about 1km/s less than Earth. Better engineer a nuclear salt water rocket for this...

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Absolute wind speeds aren't a problem. Yes, shear would be bad, but I don't think it's going to be that significant. From Wikipedia.

That's not so bad. The fact that flows are primarily zonal means that most of the atmosphere is going to be moving together, resulting in strong winds with little shear. And when the winds themselves are going to be in 100m/s range, this suggests that relative wind at any part of the station is going to be manageable.

Okie, you sound like you know a lot more about venus than I do ;)

I have always been fascinated with climate and weather pattern right here on earth and concidering how long it took us to truly understand how things work right here, I am quite skeptical about the extent of our knowledge of venus climate/atmosphere. Not saying it isnt possible. But it would require a lot more studies and we havent been to venus in decades

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Absolute wind speeds aren't a problem. Yes, shear would be bad, but I don't think it's going to be that significant.

Agreed. Below is a chart showing winds right now at the 250 HPa level over our own planet. The chart shows the location of the jet stream. The wind arrow over SW Kansas is indicating a wind speed of 140 knots (about 260 km/hr or 72 m/s). The chart shows that United Airlines flight 656 reported similar wind conditions over the Wyoming/Nebraska border. Airliners are routinely flight planned to take advantage of winds like this to save fuel and shorten flight times when flying west to east. Most times, the passengers won't even notice.

pvQha1f.gif

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Before human colonizing, why don't we send down a wide variety of micro life?

Evolution is an awesome thing! Chernobyl has proven that micro AND macro life can actually succeed despite high radiation levels (after part of the population with less radiation-resilient DNA has been 'culled').

If we send down a 'zoo' of extremophiles to different regions of Venus, we might be able to kick-start extraterrestial life!

Risks:

A) Creating a biosphere so different and alien Humans still won't be able to survive.

B) Nothing happens

Challenges:

1) How to gather, contain, maintain and support a wide variety of micro life on a journey to Venus.

2) Venus' magnetic field is near non-existent, therefore there is very little natural radiation protection (but that might not be that much of a problem, see above)

3) extreme slow day/night cycle, but according to Wikipedia the strong winds keep the temperatures pretty balanced

4) lack of sunlight on the surface, 90% reflects back to space, which means less energy for our 'new life' to harvest. And they still have to survive the long nights.

If we can capture some large rock to act as a moon for Venus we might be able to invoke some tidal effects to increase Venus' internal energy, to strengthen its magnetic field.

Edit: this article covers the entire terraform-Venus subject a lot better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus

Edited by OrtwinS
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I don't think an extremophile exists that can survive the pressure and heat and corrosive atmosphere of venus. That place is harsh as balls. It's possible that bacteria could survive in the upper atmosphere though.

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