Terraforming Venus

[NASAFanboy]

I do have a clue about what I'm discussing.

From what I know, you're trying to sell us the idea of living on a death world from your previous post.

The Moon and Mars will always be more preferable colonization targets. Venus, like I said, is a living planetary embodiement of hell.

You forget that the Moon has oxygen and water-ice in plentiful deposits under the surface, and oxygen is found in lunar regolith rather commonly. If anything, it would be easier to extract water and oxygen from the Moon, rather than "10,000" times harder, because...

1. No atmosphere that will destroy equipment like Venus.

2. Closer to Earth, anything that breaks down will be replaced in a matter of days

3. Lunar soil can, in fact, be used for 3D printing which allows for ISRU production of spare parts.

4. The sight of Earth in the sky will likely have more positive pyschological implications than not seeing Earth at all.

5. Closeness to Earth makes it a prime stopping point for interplanetary spacecraft on voyages to Mars and Jupiter.

Water has been found on the Moon in large deposits in the form of ice.

Venus, on the other hand, has lost around 99.9% of its water. Venus used to be habitable when the Sun was much younger, now its a dead rock surronded by a even deadlier atmosphere.

Your point about diamonds is moot.

Diamonds are useless. Yes there are industrial applications, but these can be provided for with artifical diamonds. Bringing 5T of diamonds suddenly back from Venus and having 5T of diamond suddenly appearing on the market will obivously lower prices, either that, or you failed Economics in High School and need to retake it. Besides, there probably will not be enough women on Earth to buy off that 5T of diamonds for jewerely. Need diamond? Why buy them from Venus when you can get it at Earth with an orbital dockyard and servicing station that's resupplied daily? And I want to know your plan of getting 5T of matierals BACK from Venus that doesn't involve KSP and asparagus staging. Any dV advantage Venus has is moot, as it takes ten times, or maybe even twenty times the dV to lift off from the Venusian surface and return to Earth than it takes to return from Mars.

And now, before you play the "electrical energy" card, let me explain to you that NASA has already tested working machienery that can turn lunar regolith into solar cells with simulated moondust. That happened in 2009. In the future, we could have rovers rolling along flat terrian, building a solar farm in a matter of hours. Its that easy.

[Rakaydos]

Why are we talking about asteroids in the Venus topic? Unless it's related to putting near-venus asteroids into orbit to make up for the lack of effective surface mining, it doesnt belong here. Same for mars discussions.

This isnt a "Venus is totally a better choice" topic. This is a "If we did go to venus, how would we do it" topic.

[Albert VDS]

How many times I need to explain that they are?? Is all about cost. Diamonds cost a lot more than platine. And if you kept thinking the opposite, I dont care.

If you dig down deep enough, here on Earth, then you will eventually find diamonds.

It's hard to get to, but a lot cheaper then shipping them from Venus.

[AngelLestat]

SargeRho

1: NEAR. EARTH. OBJECT only means "near". But that does not means low deltav requirements! You need an average of 5.5km/s to get there from LEO. You only need 3,8km/s to reach venus.

3: I write almost a book in this topic explaning all about diamonds and why is not a problem.

4: Nobody is talking about europe to india... I am talking about spain to argentina at colon times.

5: uranus, but still out of our possibilities.

6: But you are only comparing mining oportunities in which all profits are sent it to earth. Venus is offering a lot of other things. A different place to live to name one. A place where we dont need to put a stop to our popullation.

you might ask: Who would live there? -people who want to make a living. The colony by inside it would be a very nice place, and taking like example how much people that is close to nice places spends most of their time at house. I would said that live at venus would not be very different.

Venus it would be a place of oportunities, by other hand here at earth each time would be more hard to earn enoght to survive.

And you always had the possibility of go back to earth.

If have a moon colony, the gravity issue is too big. Also at mars. Experts said that it may have seriuos health problem grow up at mars gravity. And in case is possible, come to earth after live there is out of the question.

Also asteroids are usually piles of rubble held together by gravity. They are very easy to pick appart.

In the end it comes to pros vs cons. And Venus has too many cons.

Said by whom?? I can said moon is out of the question for thousands cons against none of venus.. Is mean something? No.. I need to prove it. And you dint it.

The asteroids that you want to mine are not.

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Well in real life after we blow up a cliff side we have truck and scopes clean that all up and crushers break down the bigger peices, its a rather complex system of machines.

Imagine all process from the energy point of view, how efficient are from time perspective or mechanims. You would be agree.

Well again the C-type asteriods have a bit of everything, including metals, and precious metals, as well as water and volatiles, and are very "soft" So we don't need to go to the M-type asteriods, I would assume though for an M-type asteriod that is one solid peice of metal, melting chucks out would be the best option, in the vaccum of space electron cutters would be an option, or we could just use concentrated sunlight and collect and vapors with an ion trap, refining and mining all in one.

Which is very energy intensive.

The asteriods generally have "extra concentrations", like the M-type have some rare-earth metal concentrations higher then any place on earth (or venus I assume). I mean unless you have evidence venus has particular deposites of purefied metal like nothing on earth, which may be possible, I mean what is with the snow cap effect there, something got to be comming out ot atmpshere and plating at that altitude and it sure is not snow! But barring some kind of geochimistry where platinum concentrates in pure metalic form on venus here and there, mining venus is simply not going to economical again asteriod mining.

We dont have evidence. Only theory about solar system formation.

For that reason extra data is needed. We need to send more probes, we know almost nothing about venus at comparison of moon or mars.

No we don't. There no limit how large we could make the solar panels or mirror arrays in space. On venus though we would need something like that, to make up for floating around the nightside, difficulty at facing panals at the sun, holding them up agains gravity, etc

yeah, there is a limit. Is called budget

I dont understand your venus solar panels point. You mean the 48hrs that the floating city remains at night?

There is several ways to gather energy at venus without sun. Like here at earth, sun energy transform into wind, ocean currents, thermal differences, etc.

At mars is different, you dont have sun energy at night.

Well I was assuming you wanted a colony, not just a mining crew. Need at least 150 people, to maintain genetic viability after several generations. But with the way AI is developing I would think by the end the century we could do astroid mining completely autonomously with Von Neumann machines.

I guess you are going too far with Von Neumann machines, scientist always position this technology after antimatter drive.

If you have an advance Von Neumann explorer, then you can explore the entire galaxy (each planet and rock) in 150000 years. And how they grow exponentialy, without a safe limit, they can consume all galaxy resources in no time.

Vaccum is not a problem either, what your point?

Vaccum is not a problem?? Space is really danger not due to temperature, radiation or resources and big distances. Is danger mostly for vaccum! That kills you in less of 2 min, and the only cure is pressure.

From the chart I was looking at in the book "Venus Revealed" temps between 0-32 F are beyond 60 km. Also still some cloud cover/haze there as well.

Well is not correct, search again temperature altitude chart at google images. Last data show that at 52km we would have 20 celcius. But maybe the next probes can make better estimations.

Except a 1 km wide ballon, that can hold the mass of 2 empire state buildings without breaking, cover with solar panels or windows to let in light.

Is not a ballon, is the volume of air inside the citie what matters. There are some pictures in the early topic.

Well considering the station is lined in several meters of glass fiber, carbon fiber and other overstock materials, it would need to be a big rock to penetrate. As well pressure barriers can be made inside it so a hole won't cause a leak for the whole station. The cloud city of yours would have the same problem, for any hole that forms for any reason would lead to a painful and hot death for all it occupants.

It does not need to be big, it would depend on its velocity. Any impact in the asteroid belt, will change the orbit of all fragments, but all these fragments would retorn and cross the same asteroid belt orbit over and over. For that reason, the asteroid belt is the most dangerous place from collission perspective.

And all measures that you take to reduce this chance. It makes your project a lot more expensive.

The cloud city does not have the same problem. First any small rock fallling from the sky "weird" it would reach a terminal velocity close to 120km/h, almost half from earth.

If you have the luck to be strike by a big metheorite, in that case do not open the door of your house becouse is also probable that a lion with eat you

And any rip in the cloud city would be 10000 times more easy to fix. Becouse is not vaccum!

You had the same pressure that outside. You dont have explosive decompression. The air would escape from the rip at very low speed. If you lost some height, that is mean that you have more lift. So you have plenty of time to repair that.

Why would we want to put an asteriod down venus's gravity well? We could just put one around the earth instead, use the moon for a gravity assited capture, no need for riskly aerocapture at all. Building an orbital city adds space for people.

You mean an orbital city to solve the population problem? that is the most inefficient way to solve that problem.

And gravity capture? You need to use a lot of extra deltav for that. Change an asteroid orbit with a solar sail over time is one thing, trying to slow down in 1 hr is another.

Yes, so? It would not be hard to make such a structure, again it weighs only 6 tons at 3 g/m^2, and that is the present limit with earth construction of fabric, in space we could make it even flimsier, a lithium sail just 20 nm thick would be only 0.011 g/m^2. Can you explain any show stoping technical problems in making as sail that is 1414 m x 1414 m verse 400 m x 400 m?

lithium is not a good sail material, very easy to break, you need CNT or graphere to reach those densities. And use quarter wave holes to make the sail refrective.

This would reduce the density even more. But that is not the point. Its all about cost.

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I do have a clue about what I'm discussing.

From what I know, you're trying to sell us the idea of living on a death world from your previous post.

The Moon and Mars will always be more preferable colonization targets. Venus, like I said, is a living planetary embodiement of hell.

You forget that the Moon has oxygen and water-ice in plentiful deposits under the surface, and oxygen is found in lunar regolith rather commonly. If anything, it would be easier to extract water and oxygen from the Moon, rather than "10,000" times harder, because...

Water has been found on the Moon in large deposits in the form of ice.

Venus, on the other hand, has lost around 99.9% of its water. Venus used to be habitable when the Sun was much younger, now its a dead rock surronded by a even deadlier atmosphere.

And I want to know your plan of getting 5T of matierals BACK from Venus that doesn't involve KSP and asparagus staging. Any dV advantage Venus has is moot, as it takes ten times, or maybe even twenty times the dV to lift off from the Venusian surface and return to Earth than it takes to return from Mars.

Again, go back to the page 2, And start to read from there. Becouse you dont have a clue of what we are talking here. "launch a rocket from surfuce" Yeah right..

Eve? asparagus?? Asparagus only work in KSP becouse we dont need to deal with real aerodinamics, recover cost and possible fails in mechanism.

Water in moon vs venus?

You get 2g of water in iceform per minute using a one-kilowatt microwave. It would take an estimated one ton of lunar dirt to extract one quart or liter of water close to the poles.

The water close to the moon surfuce is measure in m3. Water in venus (atmosphere) is measure in km3. We need better estimations, but one thing is certain. You can not compare how difficult is to get water from a cloud than from a rock.

If you dont like to read, nobody is pushing you, but dont ask things that I already answer or things that has nothing to do with this concept.

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Why are we talking about asteroids in the Venus topic? Unless it's related to putting near-venus asteroids into orbit to make up for the lack of effective surface mining, it doesnt belong here. Same for mars discussions.

This isnt a "Venus is totally a better choice" topic. This is a "If we did go to venus, how would we do it" topic.

But if you want to know how good one idea is, you need to compare it with similar ideas. Of course I would like to talk more about city details or how to overcome other problems.

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If you dig down deep enough, here on Earth, then you will eventually find diamonds.

It's hard to get to, but a lot cheaper then shipping them from Venus.

You find diamonds only at different height that depends of violent eruptions from the past. Then how different ground layers rise or down between millons or thoudsands of years.

All those locations that may had diamonds close to the surfuce are mostly all noted. For example, if you keep digging in a diamond location it will reach the point where you would not find any. Becouse all depends from the ground time-layers. Diamonds form at 60kbar and 1100C, this is close to 200km under surfuce.

So if you know that in some place you will find diamonds at 30meter deapth, then you need to extract at least 2 or 4 football fields of ground in funnel shape just to allow the trucks to reach there, then each m3 at that deapth that you want to remove, you need to remove 100 times that from the funnel shape. Or you need to use different mine techniques that are not so cost efficient.

Edited February 17, 2014 by AngelLestat

[NASAFanboy]

Quite obviously, you're biased toward Venus (And when did the Moon and Mars get involved in this, anyways)

What do you mean by "Venus has no cons"? Are you out of your mind? Are you crazy? As for the gravity issue on the Moon, we can generate artificial gravity by spinning an underground colony in a centerfuige, r building a O'Neill cylinder underground. That would be easier than constructing a floatin cloud city over a death world.

Who would want to colonize Venus? No one. Not a single person gives a damn about Venus, and do you know why? Because the technology for doing so is years away, while lunar and Martian bases are within reach of human tehnology today (Martian may be stretching it, the technology is still untested). And trust me, to extract water from basins of ice underground is thousands of times easier than to extract it from a acid cloud.

You also claim that "diamonds" are a good resource for Venusians.

Guess what?

Lasers are better. Lasers can cut diamonds. Lasers can be powered by batteries. Lasers can transmit data. In the future, mining asteroids will not require many diamonds, but lasers. Of corse we will need diamonds, but there is no need WHATSOEVER to import them from Venus. Diamonds can be manufactured on Earth, a process that is being advanced and perfected daily. From your posts, it appears what you are trying to do is to sell us a poisoned apple, a useless death world without any value to it over a much better property.

I'm not buying it.

(Anyways, can we not compare? The conversation is gettin nowhere, with Mars & Moon diehards entrenched on one side and Venusian diehards entrenched on the other, with no one gaining ground)

______________

On a more personal note, it's not my fault if you are biased. Can't change ones ways.

FUNFACT: A launch window to Mars lasts 25% longer than a window to Venus.

Edited February 17, 2014 by NASAFanboy

[AngelLestat]

You have not cure.. You dint read nothing, this is obvious becouse you post a answer only few min after. Is a shame.

You dint understand my answer to sargerho about that venus has no cons, it was just a irony responce to similar words that he use.

You still dont know that we are talking about a floating city. And I am not the only one..

Search at google: "venus floating city". Your ignorance has not limits.

There is also conferences about this, you can find some in youtube.

Funfact: launch windows to Venus occur every 584 days, compared to the 780 days to mars. Nobody cares -snip- how much last. You can launch any number of ships to venus in one launch windows, the only problem if you can deal with the budget. But mars would not give you any advantage in this matter.

Edited February 17, 2014 by KasperVld

[SargeRho]

Venus has too many cons to make it commercially viable compared to the Moon and NEOs. Mining the surface requires heavy, bulky materials to be brought there from Earth. Building colonies in the atmosphere requires you to build nuclear jet engines and space shuttle-like SSTOs, the surface is literally hell, and that punishes machines as well as humans. The DeltaV needed to get to some of the closest NEOs is less than that to get to the Moon or Venus.

As for launch windows: They depend entirely on your available deltaV. Some types of nuclear engines or fusion engines would be a soution to that, as they would allow you to go at almost any time of the year.

65 known NEOs have a dV requirement of under 4.5km/s. While you can use aerobraking, you'll need some sort of propulsion method that also works in the Venusian anoxic atmosphere to get from whereever you entered the atmosphere to the colony. Making the payload an airship could work, but that'll take a long time. It also takes a good part of a year to get from Venus to Earth or in reverse. In the case of an emergency, you're pooped.

The moon doesn't have launch windows. You can go to and get back from it all the time.

And there's emotional reasons for preferring Mars over Venus: I wouldn't feel safe floating in a baloon right above hell. I would feel much safer in a space suit or partial underground hab on Mars. Mostly because I'll be standing on solid ground, not on a few inches of metal separating me from Hell below.

And you want to mine stuff in that hell. How do you plan to make that economically viable if you have to replace and repair the equipment all the time? Either it would be ludicrously expensive, or it would be ludicrously maintenance-heavy, or, which is a lot more probable, it'll be both.

The vacuum of space on the surface of Asteroids and the Moon are much easier to deal with than 500°C and 90 atmospheres.

Edited February 17, 2014 by SargeRho

[NASAFanboy]

You have not cure.. You dint read nothing, this is obvious becouse you post a answer only few min after. Is a shame.

You dint understand my answer to sargerho about that venus has no cons, it was just a irony responce to similar words that he use.

You still dont know that we are talking about a floating city. And I am not the only one..

Search at google: "venus floating city". Your ignorance has not limits.

There is also conferences about this, you can find some in youtube.

Funfact: launch windows to Venus occur every 584 days, compared to the 780 days to mars. Nobody cares -snip- how much last. You can launch any number of ships to venus in one launch windows, the only problem if you can deal with the budget. But mars would not give you any advantage in this matter.

I have googled it, and I have long ago come to a conclusion that such cloud cities will not be feasible for another sixty years. Mars, on the other hand, may be reached with the technology of today, along with the mining and utilization of the Moon.

The Moon will always have an advantage over Mars and Venus. It is close to Earth, and can be quickly reached and replenished, or evacuated, should anything happen. Lunar soil has already been proven to be able to 3D print parts and construct solar panels. Lunar soil already contains large oxygen deposits, and there is ice-solid ice under the surface. To believe that a colony on a death world such as Venus, even if suspended above the clouds, is to be quite ignorant.

I do not detect sarcasm unless I am the one writing it. Any threat will e interpreted as a threat, any attack will be replied to, and any insult will be met with retaliation.

What do you mean by "cure"?

I'm unsure whether to interpret that as a personal attack.

I have said it once, and I will say it again.

Venus colonization is far off, but lunar and Martian colonization is something that we are already capable of.

Mars and the Moon will always have a advantage.

Edited February 17, 2014 by KasperVld

[KasperVld]

Guys, time to calm down and continue the discussion in a more friendly manner - thanks

[SargeRho]

And NASAFanboy brings up an important point: R&D. We need to build vehicles to go to Mars with existing technology. You would have to develop everything for that venusian colony.

[AngelLestat]

Guys, time to calm down and continue the discussion in a more friendly manner - thanks

Sorry, I apologize, but he was take me like a dumb from the begining, I ignore him at first, then I ask 2 times nicely to read before question. He didn´t

I have googled it, and I have long ago come to a conclusion that such cloud cities will not be feasible for another sixty years.

Sorry for my behavior, but is the true.

You should accept that you was confuse.

If you knew all the time that we were talking about a cloud city, why you did all these questions:

-To even attempt to land a single man on Venus is a foolhardy adventure.

-require habitats to be armored like a aircraft carrier. They do not melt lead, and they do not have thick layers of lava everywhere.

-The only advantage we will have in Venus is the gravity similar to Earth. Nothing else.

-have a base that is in the atmosphere of Venus before 2090. Venus is an red -herring, a poisoned apple. It may look convincing to you, but it will destroy everything. Everything.

-But by 2150, we might have this:

http://i.imgur.com/oiMP8kF.png

(Thats a manned landing on Venus, by the way)

Which will ultimately lead to your dream being realized around 2150-2200.

-I do have a clue about what I'm discussing.

From what I know, you're trying to sell us the idea of living on a death world from your previous post.

-you failed Economics in High School and need to retake it.

- twenty times the dV to lift off from the Venusian surface than it takes to return from Mars

Well, is fine for me. Try not to be so lazy next time.

Building colonies in the atmosphere requires you to build nuclear jet engines and space shuttle-like SSTOs, the surface is literally hell, and that punishes machines as well as humans.

Why humans? They command all using telerobotics from the cloud city.

There is not need of SSTO, you can recover all rocket parts if they has a small hidrogen ballon (instead parachute) that kept them floating at 50km, then you recover those with any kind of solar airplane or dirigible. Its very easy to fly there.

As for launch windows: They depend entirely on your available deltaV. Some types of nuclear engines or fusion engines would be a soution to that, as they would allow you to go at almost any time of the year.

Also solar sails, and is cheaper. But for the mars case, fussion or nuclear would be a better idea I guess.

65 known NEOs have a dV requirement of under 4.5km/s. While you can use aerobraking, you'll need some sort of propulsion method that also works in the Venusian anoxic atmosphere to get from whereever you entered the atmosphere to the colony. Making the payload an airship could work, but that'll take a long time. It also takes a good part of a year to get from Venus to Earth or in reverse. In the case of an emergency, you're pooped.

No more than mars. Your idea is not bad, but you need to add some complexity to each payload which is sent from earth. A simple electric motor and some solar cells does not add so much weight, but you already has those vehicles in the city. If each payload has 2 simple hidrogen ballon (in case first fail) you can recover those payloads. If it take you one extra day is not a big problem, after all the payload was traveling by 5 month.

And there's emotional reasons for preferring Mars over Venus: I wouldn't feel safe floating in a baloon right above hell. I would feel much safer in a space suit or partial underground hab on Mars. Mostly because I'll be standing on solid ground, not on a few inches of metal separating me from Hell below.

Of course, there would be always people who has more fear to fly than driving her/his car drunken.

And you want to mine stuff in that hell. How do you plan to make that economically viable if you have to replace and repair the equipment all the time? Either it would be ludicrously expensive, or it would be ludicrously maintenance-heavy, or, which is a lot more probable, it'll be both.

Why you would need to remplace or repair things all the time? I already told you. You can have electronics that can stand 500C without problem.

Any carbon base material can stand 3000 K. Pure graphene can stand 5000 K. (carbon does not have melting point, it has sublimation point) And you can have many different teflon/ceramics/etc covers against sulfure acids. Pressure is not a problem. Becouse you dont need to have anything at normal pressure. And even if you need. You can make things so solid that they would stand more than 20 times those pressures.

The vacuum of space on the surface of Asteroids and the Moon are much easier to deal with than 500°C and 90 atmospheres.

From the robotic perspective yes. But if you are talking about humans in vaccum is not.

And NASAFanboy brings up an important point: R&D. We need to build vehicles to go to Mars with existing technology. You would have to develop everything for that venusian colony.

So the rovers that we sent to mars was a Volkswagen Golf and the other a Ford GT?

What is the technology so extreme that we need to support those temperatures and pressures?

-We made the Trieste in 1958, at manned submarine that reach 11000 m of deep. That is 11 times the presure of venus.

-We deal with picks of 8000K each time that a spacecraft retourn from orbit. And you are crying for 700K?

There is fish and any kind of animals living at 6000m deep or more.

[RuBisCO]

Imagine all process from the energy point of view, how efficient are from time perspective or mechanims. You would be agree.

... I'm not sure what you just said.

Which is very energy intensive.

Completely manageable energy usage as I've shown when you can build many kilometer wide solar arrays and solar concentrator arrays afloat in solar orbit.

We dont have evidence. Only theory about solar system formation.

For that reason extra data is needed. We need to send more probes, we know almost nothing about venus at comparison of moon or mars.

Indubitably

yeah, there is a limit. Is called budget

Oh if we are considering that then your Venus plans are grossly unprofitable, well technically all manned space travel is at present and probably in the future if the machines get any smarter. Via capitalism there would be no point in sending people to Venus, or to mars, or the moon or asteroids, so I don't think you want to consider budget as a factor.

I dont understand your venus solar panels point. You mean the 48hrs that the floating city remains at night?

There is several ways to gather energy at venus without sun. Like here at earth, sun energy transform into wind, ocean currents, thermal differences, etc.

At mars is different, you dont have sun energy at night.

Or, just hear me out, we can just face some solar panels at the sun in solar orbit.

I guess you are going too far with Von Neumann machines, scientist always position this technology after antimatter drive.

As a certified "scientist" I will tell you self-replicating machines are probably going to happen long before antimatter drives, considering antimatter is a colossal expense to make and you can see a self-replicating machine in the mirror. An AI that can manage an asteroid mine, build more mining equipment from the material it harvests and build cargoships is not a far cry technologically, creating antimatter without having to consume fantastic amounts of energy to do it and having enough of it for propulsion is on the other hand ridiculous, not to mention also very uneconomical.

If you have an advance Von Neumann explorer, then you can explore the entire galaxy (each planet and rock) in 150000 years. And how they grow exponentialy, without a safe limit, they can consume all galaxy resources in no time.

Then we will have them programed with "safe limits" or transhumanism will work out and we will become the machines, what ever.

Vaccum is not a problem?? Space is really danger not due to temperature, radiation or resources and big distances. Is danger mostly for vaccum! That kills you in less of 2 min, and the only cure is pressure.

And a scorching hot CO2 atmosphere and sulfuric acid clouds, won't? As I pointed out before radiation, not a problem, temperature: if this is NEO space that not a problem either, as long as heat can transfer from hot to cold side the average will be comfortable. Big distance: in many cases less then a flight to Venus.

Well is not correct, search again temperature altitude chart at google images. Last data show that at 52km we would have 20 celcius. But maybe the next probes can make better estimations.

Hey I'm just reading out of the book here... Oh I see the problem you want room temp, I'm figuring the cloud city is going to need to dump waste heat (as well as take on some thermal buoyancy) so I figure it needs to operate at 0 C.

Is not a balloon, is the volume of air inside the citie what matters. There are some pictures in the early topic.

Didn't you say a 1 km wide balloon?

It does not need to be big, it would depend on its velocity. Any impact in the asteroid belt, will change the orbit of all fragments, but all these fragments would retorn and cross the same asteroid belt orbit over and over. For that reason, the asteroid belt is the most dangerous place from collission perspective.

Again we don't need to be in the asteroid belt, there are plenty of NEO instead, flying between mars, earth and even Venus.

And all measures that you take to reduce this chance. It makes your project a lot more expensive.

Using every part of the asteroid including the economically useless stuff not sent back to earth, is wise budgeting. Again if you want to talk about expensive the cheapest space enterprise would be the asteroids as they require the least delta-v to get to and from and have some of the best ore in the solar system.

The cloud city does not have the same problem. First any small rock fallling from the sky "weird" it would reach a terminal velocity close to 120km/h, almost half from earth.

If you have the luck to be strike by a big metheorite, in that case do not open the door of your house because is also probable that a lion with eat you

Does not make up for living in a gravity well, surround by a unbreathable atmosphere filled with corrosive acid. Exactly what are they going to do for business there, oh that right get diamonds from the hellish surface, and launch them out of venus atmosphere all the way to earth.... yeah that going to happen. Or they could spend a fraction of the energy mining rare-earths (and everything else) off of a NEO asteroids and bring them back to earth.

And any rip in the cloud city would be 10000 times more easy to fix. Becouse is not vaccum!

I'm not going to wonder how you came up with that math, did you add in the cost of getting people to Venus and getting things back... probably not.

You had the same pressure that outside. You dont have explosive decompression. The air would escape from the rip at very low speed. If you lost some height, that is mean that you have more lift. So you have plenty of time to repair that.

Except for the part about the air killing you, or that if you lose height your start to cook. With 2 meters of aforementioned shielding both radiation and meteors are not going to be a problem. A meteor that could penetrate would need to be big enough to detect ahead of time, and could be shot out or deflected with an interceptor.

You mean an orbital city to solve the population problem? that is the most inefficient way to solve that problem.

And sending people to Venus is a better idea? Also I would not speak of the "population problem", as it appears to already be self solving: just look at the developed countries birth rates, mind you some of them even have negative birth rates, raise the standard of living high enough and people seem to stop breeding. But hypothetically if we did want to colonies space, the asteroids would the most economical place to star, that and the asteroids, venus and mars, no so, well mars maybe if it can be terraformed as easily as hoped, why we could easily bring it surface temp and pressure to habitable in under a century if there is enough CO2 frozen in its soil, sure it will take longer to make the air breathable but its a much safer and more roomy existence then living in a balloon on venus.

And gravity capture? You need to use a lot of extra deltav for that. Change an asteroid orbit with a solar sail over time is one thing, trying to slow down in 1 hr is another.

No not at all, all you need to do if fly past the moon at the right trajectory, no extract delta-v needed, the moon's gravity can easily provide it, 1 km's should be more then enough for an asteroid capture.

lithium is not a good sail material, very easy to break, you need CNT or graphere to reach those densities.

Again zero-g can make the fragile strong enough.

This would reduce the density even more. But that is not the point. Its all about cost.

If it all about cost then why are you going on about mining Venus, that is grossly uneconomical, the delta-v is too high, the engineering considerations to extensive! How do you get a mining machine too venus, how do you keep it working on Venus, how do you get products off Venus? Your considering mining Hell. And what for, theoretical diamonds? How about this I bet that by the time technology comes about to make mining Venus a good business plan, manufacturing diamonds like plate glass will already have been invented.

Edited February 18, 2014 by RuBisCO

[chaos_forge]

Guys, let's try to get back on track. The OP (correct me if I'm wrong) started this discussion to talk about HOW to colonize Venus, not WHY. This is a thought experiment in terraforming, not interplanetary economics. I propose that we leave the Venus vs Mars debate for another thread, and talk about what would be the best way to terraform Venus. I for one am all for the floating cities idea.

[Dispatcher]

I blame scientists for the fact that Venus is the epitome of Hell. Before we got hard data, fiction writers portrayed Venus as a lush jungle planet; warmer than our tropics, but with a machete and a ray gun, one could eke out a decent enough living. Ah, those were the days! So I suggest that we give Venus a moon; Ceres would be a fine choice. We'd want the orbit to be in the plane of the ecliptic so as to allow a shadow to be cast upon the planet as often as not. Once that phase has done as much good as it can, we detonate Ceres and let the liquid and ice fragments rain down upon the planet. With enough force, the impacts might displace a large fraction of the atmosphere into space, which would form a nice shady ring around the planet. After sufficient time (no idea), the environment there stabilizes and we determine how best to proceed from there.

I'd hope that whatever needs to be done in the way of breathing gases for us; such industries could actually be enabled on the planet's surface by then; avoiding the need to float said industries in the choking clouds of our sister planet.

Of course, for a jungle habitat, we'd need to import flora and fauna from our own tropics. Then we'll claim Venus, much as the fiction writers of old imagined.

[lajoswinkler]

I blame scientists for the fact that Venus is the epitome of Hell. Before we got hard data, fiction writers portrayed Venus as a lush jungle planet; warmer than our tropics, but with a machete and a ray gun, one could eke out a decent enough living. Ah, those were the days! So I suggest that we give Venus a moon; Ceres would be a fine choice. We'd want the orbit to be in the plane of the ecliptic so as to allow a shadow to be cast upon the planet as often as not. Once that phase has done as much good as it can, we detonate Ceres and let the liquid and ice fragments rain down upon the planet. With enough force, the impacts might displace a large fraction of the atmosphere into space, which would form a nice shady ring around the planet. After sufficient time (no idea), the environment there stabilizes and we determine how best to proceed from there.

I'd hope that whatever needs to be done in the way of breathing gases for us; such industries could actually be enabled on the planet's surface by then; avoiding the need to float said industries in the choking clouds of our sister planet.

Of course, for a jungle habitat, we'd need to import flora and fauna from our own tropics. Then we'll claim Venus, much as the fiction writers of old imagined.

Nice dreams, y'all, but that's it. Dreams.

[Kasuha]

The first thing I would do regarding getting life on Venus would be dumping assortment of Earth extremophiles into its upper atmosphere. Knowing how unbelievably flexible and adaptive Earth microbial life actually is, I would be surprised if none if them was able to carry on in these conditions. And then build on that, evolve and deploy microbes which will bind excess sulfur and carbon in the atmosphere and release oxygen, and only after that slowly introduce oxygen breathing organisms.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Kasuha

[SargeRho]

It took 3 billion years or so for cyanobacteria to make Earth's atmosphere oxygen rich, I don't think it'll go any faster on Venus. By that time, it'll already have been toasted by the Sun. You'd have to get large terraforming stations into Venus' atmosphere, and lots of them. They would at the same time alter the atmospheric composition to be more favorable, while also producing substances that reduce the greenhouse effect.

Later you might have to use large-scale nuclear bombardement to split the surface up into tectonic plates.

[RuBisCO]

It took 3 billion years or so for cyanobacteria to make Earth's atmosphere oxygen rich, I don't think it'll go any faster on Venus. By that time, it'll already have been toasted by the Sun. You'd have to get large terraforming stations into Venus' atmosphere, and lots of them. They would at the same time alter the atmospheric composition to be more favorable, while also producing substances that reduce the greenhouse effect.

Later you might have to use large-scale nuclear bombardement to split the surface up into tectonic plates.

I would say why earth took billions of years to have a breathable oxygen partial pressure had little to do with energy concerns. Let say you want to make a partial pressue of oxygen that is breathable, That would be ~1.1*10^18 kg of oxygen (based on earth's atmospheric mass). To convert CO2 to Oxygen is 393.509 kj/mol, CO2 is 40 g/mol, the radius of venus 6052 km and area facing the sun is 1.15*10^14 m^2 with a solar flux of 2622 W/m^2... sol lets assume 0.1% of all light hitting venus is used by hypothetical bioengineered cloud organisms at 1% effiency to make oxygen (reasonable effieceny of terrestiral plants is 1%) it would take only *spreedsheet drum role* 112 years to make enough oxygen.

Earth's history was one filled with a constant war between organisms that consumed oxygen and those that produced it, geological processes that consumed oxygen, geological history that foiled life's progress, etc, etc, a bioengineered cloud algae we assume would not have those problems.

The problem is again how to get ride of all that carbon, and how to get in incredible amounts of water. Slowly moving venus out to a more habitable orbit (as well as the earth, maybe mars as well) over the next billion years would not be that difficulty if you fingued out how to solve the first problems.

Perhaps someday we could put venus and the earth in orbit about each other, knock out the moon, maybe put in orbit about mars, I don't know, what ever.

[AngelLestat]

Or, just hear me out, we can just face some solar panels at the sun in solar orbit.

What is solar orbit for you? you are saying collect sun energy very close to the sun and then transmit that energy with laser?

Hey I'm just reading out of the book here... Oh I see the problem you want room temp, I'm figuring the cloud city is going to need to dump waste heat (as well as take on some thermal buoyancy) so I figure it needs to operate at 0 C.

This is not space, you have thermal equilibrium you want it or not XD

I'm not going to wonder how you came up with that math, did you add in the cost of getting people to Venus and getting things back... probably not.

is all in my oldest post.

Except for the part about the air killing you, or that if you lose height your start to cook. With 2 meters of aforementioned shielding both radiation and meteors are not going to be a problem. A meteor that could penetrate would need to be big enough to detect ahead of time, and could be shot out or deflected with an interceptor.

You can hold the breath, open the hatch of the cloud city, go out with beachware, look at the sky for 1 min and go inside without any harm. How in hell that is equal to deal with vaccum? And forget about acid corrotion, there is hundreds of materials to cover and protect 100% all you need.

If you wanna be serious for one second, the only problem to discuss how usefull is venus to colonize, remains at how to reduce the 8,5km/s to reach orbit and how to collect enoght water.

But those problems are not enoght in comparison to the ones that you have in other places. And they can be managed it.

Also I would not speak of the "population problem", as it appears to already be self solving: just look at the developed countries birth rates

Ah great, so this is mean that the most educated people would have less children meanwhile the not educated people would grow in ratio. Again.. how this would solve the problem?

No not at all, all you need to do if fly past the moon at the right trajectory, no extract delta-v needed, the moon's gravity can easily provide it, 1 km's should be more then enough for an asteroid capture.

how do you kill the extra dv?

----------------------------------------------------------

Ceres would be a fine choice. We'd want the orbit to be in the plane of the ecliptic so as to allow a shadow to be cast upon the planet as often as not. Once that phase has done as much good as it can, we detonate Ceres and let the liquid and ice fragments rain down upon the planet. With enough force, the impacts might displace a large fraction of the atmosphere into space.

This is similar to the carl sagan idea back in 1960, but then he realize it than is not so easy get rid of the atmosphere. First you rise venus temperature with each impact, then all the atmosphere eventually would fall again to venus.

The best way to get read of most of its atmosphere would be convert all co2 to oxigen, but you need to redude at the same time the greenhouse effect, or all this solid co2 that falls would rise again.

We need to accept that we cant not transform venus into earth, but we can transform its atmosphere to be make it more friendly to leave in their clouds.

Then we can use all difference that it has with earth to process some products more efficient.

I'd hope that whatever needs to be done in the way of breathing gases for us; such industries could actually be enabled on the planet's surface by then; avoiding the need to float said industries in the choking clouds of our sister planet.

That is also my idea at the long. The high temperatures and not oxigen ambient can be usefull.

Rubisco: The problem is again how to get ride of all that carbon, and how to get in incredible amounts of water. Slowly moving venus out to a more habitable orbit (as well as the earth, maybe mars as well) over the next billion years would not be that difficulty if you fingued out how to solve the first problems.

The orbit is fine.

I would like to know what would happen "just as theoretical exercise" not from the point if it is possible.

What would happen if we get all europe water (more than earth water) and we drop it into the venus atmosphere (just drop it, no crush the planet).

The temperature of the planet would fall? all the water would be in the atmosphere in form of vapor? How much surface pressure would rise? what would happen?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I made one sketch in my free time of how I believe that it would be a good design for an advance cloud city. There is also some personal possible vehicles.

This kind of city would be an advance venus city, of course first venus outpost would not be nothing like this.

This would be more like it a first venus outpost, then it would need also rocket floating and moored at side.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Venusballoonoutpost.png

In the my design, rocket does not ignite inside the city, 6 floating ballons would be inflate in the sides, then this would start to gain height, due to a concave density atmosphere (earth is convex) and 0.9g it would rise until 75km, then (in case would be possible) it would use the hidrogen inside the ballons to gain some first seconds of trust, then detach ballons (with a little h2 left so it can be recover) and with a high isp engine would gain enoght speed to deploy the 5t payload (with almost orbit speed), and fall again to venus atmosphere where a hidrogen ballon would be inflate to recover the rocket.

The payload would dock with the solar sail and start the trip to earth capture (parachute then).

The city would gather all water and sulfure acid that is condence at city external walls in conjunction with all droplet rain that fall and round the surfuce until reach lower ring where is collected before decanting.

All city is made of graphene composites covers by transparent plastics films, green surfuce would gather 30% of solar energy in all its surfuce and directions and top transparent roof (also graphene and plastics base) would gather 10% of solar energy. And 100% of solar heat, (50km, outside temp 0 celcius)

At night and also day in case necesary, a parachute would be deploy to reach lower wind speeds, this would slow down the city, also would reduce a little amount the altutude that would become a little warmer; the parachute would move following a (infinite symbol) path, this increase the drag, so a generator would gather energy recovering and releasing the cable.

This would also produce an apararent wind in the city, so the airships electric engines would work like generators to produce extra energy.

So this slow down the city from 95m/s to 90m/s.

H2-Airships are far from the city, becouse is not good idea to put them close to the city "air".

In case necesary the cable can be retract it, then people can unload or load stuff, almost all heavy stuffs goes there, like water supplies, etc.

Now lets think in all emergency cases:

-One airship goes down, like they already has the heavy stuff, is not difficult to stay balance for other airships.

-City envelope rips., how they are at the same pressure, a rip would not generate any great gas flow. So there is plenty of time to repair. Doors can be closed to not compromise other city places. Take into account that titanic took like more of 1 hour to sink (and the rip was big), water was a higher pressure than air inside. so enter faster, also you can not work in any place close to the rip. In this case you can, you just need an oxigen mask.

The air volume is higher in the city, and it case you sink anyway (this also means more lift) you can detach the payloads from the airships to gain extra lift.

-there is no way to repair: Then evacuation begins, all people start to board the airships and they refuge in other city. Rocket inflate its ballons and float. Other city vehicles are also used.

Edited February 19, 2014 by AngelLestat

[RuBisCO]

What is solar orbit for you? you are saying collect sun energy very close to the sun and then transmit that energy with laser?

NRO, as in roughly 1 au from the sun. We can acheive 1300 W/M^2 of solar flux and passive temperature control there.

is all in my oldest post.

Can you summurize it? Maybe a spreedsheet?

You can hold the breath, open the hatch of the cloud city, go out with beachware, look at the sky for 1 min and go inside without any harm. How in hell that is equal to deal with vaccum?

I really doubt that, first the sulfuric acid particles in the haze at that altitude (another reason 60 km would be better then 50) would likely cause rashing and burns even for 1 minute of exposure, second just the pure CO2 alone would drop the pH in the water on your eyes in seconds, your eyes would start to tear up and burn even if no sulfuric acid cloud matterial entered your eyes.

Anyways the problem is the same: human need to kept in a seperate enviorment, your saying all that need on venus is to seperate atmosphere, bouyant atmosphere there no less, sure that nice but the needing to keep it afoat, keep it powered, to bring it to venus, to maintain the robotic work force that must be designed to operate in a literal hell, to get things off venus, etc, etc, these problems are far more extensive, expensive and impratical then asteriod colonies.

And forget about acid corrotion, there is hundreds of materials to cover and protect 100% all you need.

And we don't have materials for vaccum?

If you wanna be serious for one second, the only problem to discuss how usefull is venus to colonize, remains at how to reduce the 8,5km/s to reach orbit and how to collect enoght water.

But those problems are not enoght in comparison to the ones that you have in other places. And they can be managed it.

I disagree, lack of water and high delta-v are the BIGGEST problems! Water is fundemental to starting a colony, the C-type asteriods have that in aboundence, some of them require less delta-v to reach and return from then venus or mars, and delta-v is such a big problem it why we have not gotten outside of LEO in over 50 years because of how costly it is!

Ah great, so this is mean that the most educated people would have less children meanwhile the not educated people would grow in ratio. Again.. how this would solve the problem?

I would guess transhumanism will occur long before civilization collapses due to the idocracy effect. Darwinian evolution simply becomes overridden once we start forcibly redesigning our genomes, inserting cybernetic implants and even upload thoughts, memories and personality into a non-organic frame. Second of all I would imply thrid world people are stupid or of inferior genetic stock: sure they are un-educated and ignorant, but the intelligence needed to survive there is quite intensive, frankely they are "evolving" better then in developed countires were luxuary amd medicine allows the geneticaly weak to survive and prosper.

how do you kill the extra dv?

The moons gravity! If you fly by the orbital tailing side of the moon, velocity will be lost from you as it sucked by the moons gravity, then instead of flying by the earth and out, you will enter a High Earth Orbit instead.

The orbit is fine.

No its not, especially as the sun gets older, Even the earth will need to be moved out in order to avoid frying.

I would like to know what would happen "just as theoretical exercise" not from the point if it is possible.

What would happen if we get all europe water (more than earth water) and we drop it into the venus atmosphere (just drop it, no crush the planet).

Well the earth ocean's are 3% the mass of Europa, so assuming europa was 10% water it would be like 3 earth ocean's worth in water. Since venus is already so dam hot and water vapor is a great greenhouse gas, all the water would simply add to venus's atmsphere and increase it mass by ~9 times, I would assume conditions would get much worse on venus, not better. You need to reduce venus's solar flux, drop it temperature, get rid of all the CO2, then dump water and even then bringing back venus to it normal solar flux would still put it perilously close to not being habitalble. If venus was a black body radiator (no atmsophere, made of some kind of perfect black material that absorbs all light and re-emits all energy as infrared) it would have a surface temperature of 55 C, compare to earth's theoritical black body surface termperature 6 C. Venus would thus need a global cooling effect, very little heat retention! Either it surface, or it atmsphere would need to reflect back more light, especially infared light, then it lets in. The best solution I can think of is a gigantic sunshade in Sun-Venus L1, it would need to be ~4 times wider then venus out at that distance so that its shadow completely covers venus. Then venus would cool down. Assuming you did dump all that water and you bring venus's temp down so then it can become liquid you would then need to let the water and the carbon dioxide react with sodium and other metals in venus's soil to form carbonate minerals, pulling out all the CO2. Does venus have enough of those metals exposed to pull out all that CO2, maybe.

[AngelLestat]

Can you summurize it? Maybe a spreedsheet?

Lol. just read... :S

I really doubt that, first the sulfuric acid particles in the haze at that altitude (another reason 60 km would be better then 50) would likely cause rashing and burns even for 1 minute of exposure, second just the pure CO2 alone would drop the pH in the water on your eyes in seconds, your eyes would start to tear up and burn even if no sulfuric acid cloud matterial entered your eyes.

At 60 km you lift less than half of the weight that you can lift at 50km. The sulfure dopllets had a size of nanometers!

Its seems that you never manage sulfure acid. I did many times, and some times without gloves. It always remains some in bottle. You may feel a soft burning if the skin if the bottle was kinda wet, but nothing to be alarmed.

About the co2 effect in the eyes, I also thought in that, but again, nothing serious. Of course in that place you will use some latex suit for safety with a mask. But it does not need to be airproff.

But some how.. in your head, that is equal to use an astronaut suit with mechanims to manage corporal fluids, thermal regulator with radiators, etc. In resumem a space suit is a personal space ship.

Anyways the problem is the same: human need to kept in a seperate enviorment, your saying all that need on venus is to seperate atmosphere, bouyant atmosphere there no less, sure that nice but the needing to keep it afoat, keep it powered, to bring it to venus, to maintain the robotic work force that must be designed to operate in a literal hell, to get things off venus, etc, etc, these problems are far more extensive, expensive and impratical then asteriod colonies.

But mining asteroid only help to gain some profits. Instead colonize venus you get an extra place where to leave (safe), all the diversity materials that you might need are close enoght (different kinds of asteroids are very far one of another) all construction labors are a lot easier than work in zero-G (look how much time astronauts take to do some simple fix outside), you can select the most valueable things that you mining and you dont need and send it to earth.

Someone mention the psycologic aspect.

Well I guess seing this sky:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/04/EVE_in_cloud_1500x1000.png

is more conforting than this:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/562760main_mathilde.jpg

I disagree, lack of water and high delta-v are the BIGGEST problems! Water is fundemental to starting a colony, the C-type asteriods have that in aboundence, some of them require less delta-v to reach and return from then venus or mars, and delta-v is such a big problem it why we have not gotten outside of LEO in over 50 years because of how costly it is!

There is still 15000km3 of water, and when you drink it or use it in a rocket you dont lost it. It back to the atmosphere or "city atmosphere".

In my cloud city desing I propose how to gather, I guess that can be enoght.

about deltaV like I said, each year the cost to launch something into orbit goes down.

Like other mention we can use a nuclear rocket salt, in case we do, all deltav problems are solve.

I find harder to take you seriusly lately. You talk about making huge solar panels, transhumanism, self replicating machines, AI.. But when you see 400C of temperature or 1000m deapth pressure or some acid rain you freak out! haha. Be serious for once.

I would guess transhumanism will occur long before civilization collapses due to the idocracy effect. Darwinian evolution simply becomes overridden once we start forcibly redesigning our genomes, inserting cybernetic implants and even upload thoughts, memories and personality into a non-organic frame. Second of all I would imply thrid world people are stupid or of inferior genetic stock: sure they are un-educated and ignorant, but the intelligence needed to survive there is quite intensive, frankely they are "evolving" better then in developed countires were luxuary amd medicine allows the geneticaly weak to survive and prosper.

I already give my point of view in this matter here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68359-Humanity-s-reaction-to-sentient-machines?p=948254&viewfull=1#post948254

The moons gravity! If you fly by the orbital tailing side of the moon, velocity will be lost from you as it sucked by the moons gravity, then instead of flying by the earth and out, you will enter a High Earth Orbit instead.

Then let me tell to all scientist that they are dumb becouse they are dodging a lot of missions just becouse they can not use aerocapture, but it seems that you find a way.

Or tell me how to do it, becouse it happens the same in KSP.. You can reduce your retro burm some m/s with a good aproach, but you still need to do retro burns in the right moment.

No its not, especially as the sun gets older, Even the earth will need to be moved out in order to avoid frying.

It all depends on its atmophere, you can manage their values and have the same climate than earth.

Wait a second, you are really thinking about when the sun gets older??? 2000 milllons years later to start noticing the effects?

What about my design? you have some thoughts?

------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Europe teorical exercise. I was holping a deeper analisys from you Rubisco.

I had some ideas, but I still dont know how usefull they can be.

Lets said that we want to use europe water to improve some how the living at Venus.

I was thinking in how much energy takes to move an object so big like europe, just the idea looks stu-pid.

But maybe we dont need to move it. We just need to bring the water, which is 2 times the amount of earth oceans.

We can place some kind of fussion or nuclear engine in the surfuce of europe with the right amount of exhaust velocity. So we use the water like reaction mass, and we point the jet stream to venus capture, so all this water would fall (in particle form) into venus. But if we burn a crazy amount of 0,08km3 of water each second, then we would need 500 years to get the amount of water that we have at earth. This water falling will heat the atmophere, but the same heat would be radiated back at the same time.

If we dont want to heat the atmosphere, in case we have europe in orbiting venus at close distant, so europe would need some propulsion to counter the enegy lost by gravitational effect, so again you fire the jet stream of water to gain prograde propulsion, but this water would lost all orbit velocity, so when it fall to venus, it does not heat the planet even more.

So if we calculate 1 earth ocean, is 3 times the mass of venus atmosphere, we could cold down the atmophere to levels which allow liquid water.

Of course we need to take into account the amount of heat that we get by tidal effect and greenhouse effect.

Talking seriusly, I guess with only 1/10 of earth water in venus, we can produce genetic plants that would float with a reflecting face pointing to the sky, it will convert all co2 into solid, that would be the best way to get rid of the 88 bar from 90, and we would have a planet with an atmosphere of 1 bar, some oceans, but we still have the problem of venus rotation, so constant winds willl blow and huge 200m ocean waves would round the planet.

Not acid, a lot of nitrogen and oxigen.

Edited February 21, 2014 by AngelLestat

[RuBisCO]

At 60 km you lift less than half of the weight that you can lift at 50km. The sulfure dopllets had a size of nanometers!

Can you cite the size of droplets at that altitude?

Its seems that you never manage sulfure acid. I did many times, and some times without gloves. It always remains some in bottle. You may feel a soft burning if the skin if the bottle was kinda wet, but nothing to be alarmed.

I've handle surfuric acid, don't tell me how to play with it though.

About the co2 effect in the eyes, I also thought in that, but again, nothing serious. Of course in that place you will use some latex suit for safety with a mask. But it does not need to be airproff.

But some how.. in your head, that is equal to use an astronaut suit with mechanims to manage corporal fluids, thermal regulator with radiators, etc. In resumem a space suit is a personal space ship.

No "in my head": the added delta-v to get to Venus, be trapped there because of all the delta-v needed to get off, to do nothing of any profit, does not add up to being worth the ability to walk outside if I hold my breath and don a latex suit.

But mining asteroid only help to gain some profits. Instead colonize venus you get an extra place where to leave (safe), all the diversity materials that you might need are close enough (different kinds of asteroids are very far one of another)

Again safe living can be had in an orbital spacestation of the one I already describe, all the elements can be extracted from one 500 m C-type asteroid for decades to centuries, and it could all be done with solar power in Near Earth Space, no need to go to different asteroids.

all construction labors are a lot easier than work in zero-G (look how much time astronauts take to do some simple fix outside), you can select the most valueable things that you mining and you dont need and send it to earth.

Zero gravity work, is not as hard as working at nearly 500 C at 92 atmospheres.

Someone mention the psycologic aspect.

Well I guess seing this sky:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/04/EVE_in_cloud_1500x1000.png

is more conforting than this:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/562760main_mathilde.jpg

www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/AC75-1086-1f.jpeg

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/AC76-0628f.jpeg

You were saying?

There is still 15000km3 of water, and when you drink it or use it in a rocket you dont lost it. It back to the atmosphere or "city atmosphere".

That not much water, that 20 ppm of water, Water would need to by mined by extracting it from the sulfuric acid clouds via electrolysis.

about deltaV like I said, each year the cost to launch something into orbit goes down.

How about the delta-V to get back out?

Like other mention we can use a nuclear rocket salt, in case we do, all deltav problems are solve.

I doubt such an engine will every be used: its fuel is very expensive, highly unstable, and it shots out a beam of radioactive waste. I'm sure the anti-nuclear nuts will go ape if it was used even within earth's magnetosphere.

I find harder to take you seriusly lately. You talk about making huge solar panels, transhumanism, self replicating machines, AI.. But when you see 400C of temperature or 1000m deapth pressure or some acid rain you freak out! haha. Be serious for once.

Its a matter of what is practical, what is easier, frankly humans colonizing space will likely never happen, and if they do the asteroids will be the first place they go to do it (either that or mars, people are just obsessed with mars). The asteroids are the easiest place in space to make money, easiest place to build a colony, easier than Venus, that's the hard serious truth.

I already give my point of view in this matter here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68359-Humanity-s-reaction-to-sentient-machines?p=948254&viewfull=1#post948254

I don't care.

Then let me tell to all scientist that they are dumb becouse they are dodging a lot of missions just becouse they can not use aerocapture, but it seems that you find a way.

Or tell me how to do it, becouse it happens the same in KSP.. You can reduce your retro burm some m/s with a good aproach, but you still need to do retro burns in the right moment.

http://www.permanent.com/space-transportation-lunar-gravity-assist.html

They mention nothing of a breaking burn being needed.

It all depends on its atmophere, you can manage their values and have the same climate than earth.

We would need to remove almost all of Venus's atmosphere, while simultaneously engineering it to deflect much of the light that hits it, while keeping just enough CO2 for plant life. That a hard undertaking, harder then building a solarshade.

Wait a second, you are really thinking about when the sun gets older??? 2000 milllons years later to start noticing the effects?

Sure, why not?

What about my design? you have some thoughts?

I could design a city on Jupiter too, what's your point? Dreams and reality are different things, A Venus colony is highly unrealistic, an asteroid colony is more realistic, even then any human space colony is unlikely.

About the Europe teorical exercise. I was holping a deeper analisys from you Rubisco.

I have no clue what you just said.

I had some ideas, but I still dont know how usefull they can be.

Lets said that we want to use europe water to improve some how the living at Venus.

I was thinking in how much energy takes to move an object so big like europe, just the idea looks stu-pid.

But maybe we dont need to move it. We just need to bring the water, which is 2 times the amount of earth oceans.

The energy needed would be phenomenal, frankly if you want water, go to the oort cloud, grab comets

We can place some kind of fussion or nuclear engine in the surfuce of europe with the right amount of exhaust velocity. So we use the water like reaction mass, and we point the jet stream to venus capture, so all this water would fall (in particle form) into venus. But if we burn a crazy amount of 0,08km3 of water each second, then we would need 500 years to get the amount of water that we have at earth. This water falling will heat the atmophere, but the same heat would be radiated back at the same time.

Hey and maybe we can strip off the oxygen and just beam protons, either way you would need to figure out how to keep the beam coherent over millions and millions of kilometers.

If we dont want to heat the atmosphere, in case we have europe in orbiting venus at close distant, so europe would need some propulsion to counter the enegy lost by gravitational effect, so again you fire the jet stream of water to gain prograde propulsion, but this water would lost all orbit velocity, so when it fall to venus, it does not heat the planet even more.

I don't think you need to worry about the heating much, Venus is already really hot. Also it is Europa not Europe, all this time your talking about taking all the water of Europe and de-orbiting Europe, the EU must hate you.

So if we calculate 1 earth ocean, is 3 times the mass of venus atmosphere, we could cold down the atmophere to levels which allow liquid water. Of course we need to take into account the amount of heat that we get by tidal effect and greenhouse effect.

Yeah the latter: water is a great greenhouse gas.

Talking seriusly, I guess with only 1/10 of earth water in venus, we can produce genetic plants that would float with a reflecting face pointing to the sky, it will convert all co2 into solid, that would be the best way to get rid of the 88 bar from 90, and we would have a planet with an atmosphere of 1 bar, some oceans

I already covered that is my first post on this thread.

but we still have the problem of venus rotation, so constant winds willl blow and huge 200m ocean waves would round the planet. Not acid, a lot of nitrogen and oxigen.

I doubt the surface wind would be so bad, the present surface wind is pretty low even. 4 mouth days is liveable. The nitrogen partial pressure will be high, but humans should be able to adapt.

[chaos_forge]

RuBisCO, even if you're right and Venus is the worst option of every single body in the solar system, it doesn't matter, because this thread is about HOW to colonize Venus, not whether or not we SHOULD colonize Venus. If you look back to the first post you'll see that OP is well aware that there are many problems surrounding Venus colonization, but he wants to know, given the fact that we wish to colonize Venus, what would be the best way to go about it? At this point, all you're doing is propagating a flame war and stopping us from talking about the actual topic of the thread.

Given that we've brought up talk of orbital colonies, it seems like it would be pretty desirable to have orbital colonies/manufacturing around Venus, because they would have access to significantly more energy (what with the inverse square law and whatnot)

[RuBisCO]

RuBisCO, even if you're right and Venus is the worst option of every single body in the solar system,

I did not say it was the worse option "of every single body in the solar system".

it doesn't matter, because this thread is about HOW to colonize Venus, not whether or not we SHOULD colonize Venus.

I covered that on my first post, and the thread is about TERRAFORMING Venus, not simply colonizing venus. I was simply replying to AngelLestat comments about not terraforming and "living in the clouds."

If you look back to the first post you'll see that OP is well aware that there are many problems surrounding Venus colonization, but he wants to know, given the fact that we wish to colonize Venus, what would be the best way to go about it?

Again I beleive I answered that, no one replied to it, in fact and I quote:

Rubisco:You are late, we are agree that is not a good idea try to terraform venus. We are talking about the idea of live in their clouds.

and I told him that is inferior to asteriod colonies, so why do it? If this is off-topic I was mearly going along with where others were taking the thread.

At this point, all you're doing is propagating a flame war and stopping us from talking about the actual topic of the thread.

Flame war? Things here seem very civil to me, AngelLestat has not insulted me, no ad hominiems, etc, and has stayed high on the arguement pyramid, and so have I, I don't see any flame war at all.

But if you do want to return to the topic, then please do so, perhaps you can critique my ideas on terraforming venus?

Given that we've brought up talk of orbital colonies, it seems like it would be pretty desirable to have orbital colonies/manufacturing around Venus, because they would have access to significantly more energy (what with the inverse square law and whatnot)

They would also need to deal with the extra heat, not only from the sun but reflected off venus, as well as have to live with the extra delta-v of working in Venus's gravity well. If you want close to the sun there are NEO that cross even venus's orbit.

Edited February 21, 2014 by RuBisCO

[AngelLestat]

Can you cite the size of droplets at that altitude?

From 0.1nm to 35nm, most particle however are 0.5nm. My estimation said that the common size at that altitude would be 2 nm.

Here is the source where is better explain the altitude and process.

Again safe living can be had in an orbital spacestation of the one I already describe, all the elements can be extracted from one 500 m C-type asteroid for decades to centuries, and it could all be done with solar power in Near Earth Space, no need to go to different asteroids.

So you said that all elements can be extracted from 1 asteroid? Source?

Zero gravity work, is not as hard as working at nearly 500 C at 92 atmospheres.

But machinary or robots would not have any problems with this, so only remains the g-factor. Or I need to quote the trieste and re-entry examples again?

www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/AC75-1086-1f.jpeg

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/AC76-0628f.jpeg

You were saying?

I read Rendevouz with Rama and all its secuels 15 years ago. In this case such thing was made by the galaxy monitor.

We already had this at 1930:

http://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com.ar/2012/08/the-fabulous-interiors-of-hindenburg.html

http://www.nlhs.com/images/hindenburg/big_hindenburg_crew_mess.jpg

http://www.canadiancar.technomuses.ca/images/frise_chronologique-timeline/full/1930/Po-1930.jpg

90 years later, we have this in space:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/114305main_iss010e25228.jpg

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-34/hires/iss034e023541.jpg

So this mean that when we would be able to make something like you said, then in venus we can have something 10 times better.

That not much water, that 20 ppm of water, Water would need to by mined by extracting it from the sulfuric acid clouds via electrolysis.

mined is the right word??

20ppm in the whole atmophere 92 bar. We need to know yet with accuracy how much it is in the cloud level. Then you need to add the water inside sulfure acid 150ppm that is mostly at cloud lv too.

How about the delta-V to get back out?

you mean the cost? of course it would be also reduce it. But the deltav it would be always the same.

I doubt such an engine will every be used: its fuel is very expensive, highly unstable, and it shots out a beam of radioactive waste. I'm sure the anti-nuclear nuts will go ape if it was used even within earth's magnetosphere.

So now you are a especialist nuclear engineer? Where it said that is highly unstable? For earth we can have skylon, for venus it seems a good option.

http://www.permanent.com/space-transportation-lunar-gravity-assist.html

They mention nothing of a breaking burn being needed.

First you was talking about bring asteroids from asteroid belt, then you speak about near object, then I said that mostly all near object needs at least 5,4km/s, then you said that there is some with less. Now what? you need to find an asteroid that has all elements (I am not sure if that asteroid exist even in the asteroid belt) then it needs to have 2,2 km/s max deltav (less than earth escape velocity), and all the manuvers that you are using are the most low energy manuvers. So they take a lot of time. And time is money.

I can use also the Interplanetary Transport Network if the time is not important.

With aerocapture you can kill 15km/s or more if you want.

Sure, why not?

I really need to answer this?? if in 2000 millons of years we still "alive", then is the sun the one that needs to move away of us.

I could design a city on Jupiter too, what's your point? Dreams and reality are different things, A Venus colony is highly unrealistic, an asteroid colony is more realistic, even then any human space colony is unlikely.

In jupiter? In jupiter clouds? No you cant. Gravity is too high.

It seems that you are out of valid points, the only things that you do is repeat your self that an asteroid colony is more realistic with the hope you start to believe it.

And in my design I manage how to avoid all possible risks and how to collect energy at night. You would not find that in other place.

The energy needed would be phenomenal, frankly if you want water, go to the oort cloud, grab comets

There is not enoght comets or asteroids to get that amount of water. And you would take a lot more to do.

Hey and maybe we can strip off the oxygen and just beam protons, either way you would need to figure out how to keep the beam coherent over millions and millions of kilometers.

Yeah, that is tricky.

I don't think you need to worry about the heating much, Venus is already really hot. Also it is Europa not Europe, all this time your talking about taking all the water of Europe and de-orbiting Europe, the EU must hate you.

I know that its name is Europa, but Europa here in spanish means Europe (continent), so I thought that maybe this planet was called Europa in reference to the continent´s name.

I already covered that is my first post on this thread.

ok

I doubt the surface wind would be so bad, the present surface wind is pretty low even. 4 mouth days is liveable. The nitrogen partial pressure will be high, but humans should be able to adapt.

Winds dont blow right now at high speeds over the surfuce becouse the pressure, its all relative to the pressure. So almost all details of venus atmosphere at 50km 1bar should remain at venus surfuce 1 bar.

Given that we've brought up talk of orbital colonies, it seems like it would be pretty desirable to have orbital colonies/manufacturing around Venus, because they would have access to significantly more energy (what with the inverse square law and whatnot)

Yes indee, but what you mean? At orbit or clouds? I would like to know how to extract more energy at the surfuce of venus.

Becouse there is only 200 w/m2 there. But there is plenty of energy, maybe we can have some turbines harvesting the 10km/h heavy wings.