Terraforming Venus

[Pds314]

On solar sails:

It becomes an issue of which is more efficient, being close to the sun and being able to do more powerful burns, or being further and not needing as much Delta-V. As it turns out, it actually makes the most sense to start nearer to the sun, as thrust is proportional to the inverse square of the distance, delta-v requirement is proportional to the inverse squareroot of the distance.

If you instead use solar ablation of the comet or the sail to move it, it is much more efficient as well.

[Dispatcher]

Just send Earth's moon into an intercept with Venus and boom. No more atmosphere.

Hehe! And no more tides on Earth.

[AngelLestat]

Damm Rubisco, these comments are becoming increasingly long, just becouse you keep ignoring all facts that I detail. Just remember, ignoring them does not make them disappears.

And what would that be?

Search aerocraft dream dragon in youtube.

"Maybe carbon, calcium, magneso, sulfure, lithium, potacium, argon, xenon, sulfur, phosphorus, sodium, etc."

All of which, exept xenon, are very abundant on Earth.

But rubisco is talking about build a huge habitat to solve the earth population problem taking all materials from just one asteroid.

Back to the drawing board for your theoretical high-temp det I'm afraid. High pressure blasts of liquids are actually used in bomb disposal because they disrupt IED components without triggering the explosives, they're called disruptors and are powered by substantially more energetic sources than a hot wire

Yeah, I also thought in that. But everything is solvable. We don't have them because we never needed them. The needs it what push all progress. So if a high temperaute explosive is possible, then also a detonator.

All flippant assumptions. Again for an asteroid mission there are no need for a heat shield

There is no need BECOUSE YOU CANT use aerocapture with an asteroid. Besides the mass that it adds is NOTHING in comparison to the fuel that you need to cut the same dv.

Also believe that you can get all components to sustain a big habitat and get profit mining just with a near earth object asteroid using only 2km/s of deltaV or less.

I dont know why you dont like the venus idea, because you already are living in the clouds

A little of info for you:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.4152.pdf

From the 7000 NEO only 69 has less of 4km/s of deltaV to reach them. And from all those, you need to select 1 that has all elements (you cant do that even if you have 100000000 to select), adding the fact that all these asteroids has a periapsis lower than earth, So is very difficult that they had water, and if they had, you can not mining them becouse it would destroy your /habitat/ships/machinery. YOU UNDERSTAND? So forget your silly 2km/s of deltaV, if you wanna search a good target, you need to go and risk in the asteroid belt.

is a “paper study†that is what I said. It is not a proposal, there is no designed rover, no built rover, all he present is a handful of experimental parts which provide some proof of concept.

They are already testing all the main parts of these rovers, but well, lets take your word. There are just "paper study". So then all your paper study of how to mining at zero g are only that.. a paper. So lets ignore them. You can not mine at zerog

At 92 atmosphere the arcing from a rotor to a stator in a motor could happen, any kind of conventional bearing or seal will be shot, etc, etc. These are not impossible to solve problems, they are just expensive to solve and add weight.

The mass added to solve those "problems" is a lot lower of what you imagine. An increase of 10% or 20% in a rover it does no makes much difference, less when you already had all the infrastructure to produce things in venus.

Are you suggesting human should work on the surface of Venus? Actually at extreme pressure proteins fold differently, it requires some evolution to adapt to life at extreme pressures or be able to operate at those depths, in short: human's are not spermwhales.

keep making those comments, so everybody see how you "think".

I just was trying to teach you that had 90 bar of pressure it does not mean that "pressure" would crush things. If we my examples you still can not visualize, then I am sorry for you.

Some asteroids like the M-types were in fact part of the cores of failed planets, those ones a could provide a lot of rare earth minerals in concentrations not see on earth (because our core is not exposed),

Why then all this time you was talking that is so easy mine or drill asteroids becouse its density was so low?

Where all the things that you most want are harded than iron.

I've explained how to do this already: a boring mining or 'mechanical worm' can eat out an asteroid from the inside. It remains fixed to the walls of the tunnels it bores. Such a machine would not need to be the size of terrestrial tunnel borers, as its tunnels are not designed for functional purpose (like trains), instead it can be small, like a meter across at most. The boring head would go through C-Type asteroid material at 1.3 g/ml like butter!

Until you reach a hard part, giving that you are fixed to 1.3g/cm3 material, that would represent a problem.

Inside the mining tunnels the machine would push against the walls and climb back out, bring with it crushed rock to a station on the surface. The mode of locamotion would be the same as a worm (hence the name) like this:

1. Expand section A

2. Deflat section B

3. Extend piston connecting section A to section B...

The 'inflated' sections of the 'worm' hold it firm against the walls of the tunnel. They don't need to be inflatable badder, they could just be hydraulic walls just like the boring machines here on earth.

The material is mechanically compressed into a chambers that makes up segments of the mechanical worm. Once full it crawls back to the station on the surface. In the station it “excretes†what it has collected into the stations enclosed containers.

The boring head is pressed against the rock, as it spins, crushed rock is forced through holes in the crushing face, mechanical pressure pushed it back into the storage segments, Piston walls in the segments allow it to excrete its contents later. After that material can be compressed into bricks which can be grabbed and move about robotically.

Again you have the walls to push against, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB19qOzX-qY except not as cute and with no gravity to fight against.

Sounds good for me. Fun video.

No they have th compete against heavy lift helicopters and aircraft, sure those consume more fuel but they have entrenched industries and require a fraction of the storage costs. Pratical things like that.

Aircrafts? they can not land in everywhere. Also more fuel.

Helicopters? They can not lift much, they consume a lot of fuel, and they can not stay all the time they want in the air.

The time that it may take against an aircraft is not an issue, there is a lot of payloads which has not rush to be delivery, also if you count how much time it takes send the payload by truck (in case is not big or heavy enoght) to the (boat aircraft or train), then the time to unload the cargo to another truck and deliver to destinations. You aircraft or wherever does not sound so good.

This thing can load a payload (of any size and heavy) everywhere (in the middle of the sea if you want), delivery to everywhere with less fuel consumption than any other techonology with a max speed of 200km/h (you can rise or down searching winds to gain even more speed), also can be used like entertening (who doesn´t want to fly in that?).

But with your "economic knowledge" you would not invest any penny in this. In the same way you said that venus has not value.

Lucky us, pentagon and nasa disagree with you.

Movement from one asteroid to another may not be much delta-v if they are both NEOs. And again one C-Type asteroid can provide all the necessary elements. So there is no need to move around.

They can not. In the same way that if I mine just one part on the earth I would not find all elements.

But I'm not saying asteriod minign solves all earth problems, I only saying it more pratical than Venus mining.

We are agree.

A venus mine is not a heavy lift zeppelin for a rare and specific task, it has not use what so ever.

?? ?? ??

...WHY??? Ok let me get his straight you boil water for something, you then compress it back into water... why? What need is there for boiled water at the surface of venus? Why not just use the mechanical work of the windmill directly and avoid all the energy transformation cycles?

With all the mechanical energy loses due to friction to transform a circular movement into 100 different movements?

Also you can not storage energy this way.

But with the steam cycle you can, and is very easy to use in any kind of movemements that you need.

But all this was just an example how you can (If you want) produce work without electrical motors. But like I said, special electric motors was already prove it in venus conditions with success.

You gave me a figure of 80%, so I told you the answer is a saving in weight moved is 20%. Now sure if you minning a body that is only 20% water that might be best, but how do you move that much water?

Europa has a lot of water, but its -50% water only. 80% is the enseladus case "maybe".

Again the impacting body will not be delivering as much energy as what created the moon which weighed several or orders of magnitude greater (I theory suggest it was mars sized) Second was the early earth covered in the shadow of a sunshade devoid of solar flux?

If there are small ones instead a big one? I guess is the same in venus case becouse you had a thick atmosphere.

Your changing the meaning of the word: building floating cities is not “terraformingâ€Â.

It is. Search in wiki what terraforming is mean.

We are rising the ground level with materials from the ground and atmosphere. To get earth like conditions.

And we are getting them. Same temperature, same pressure, same G; then we can start to convert co2 to get oxigen. That is terraforming.

If there's no rush, using a solar sail to deorbit an oort cloud object would probably be more efficent. Instead of heavy nuclear material, you're shipping miles upon miles of reflective material, and letting it sit there.

In Rubisco case, he is taking the asteroids from 4000AU, at that distance our sun looks almost like any other star. So a solar sail so far is pointless. Besides, if these asteroids has water, we can use that like reaction mass. Is a lot more effective.

Hmm... I think I'd put an array of mirror-sats that were transparent to IR but reflected visible light away from the planet.

Then, once the temperature was suitable, figure out a way to sequester 250 billion megatonnes of CO2..... Not sure how that is gonna work. Sending it to interplanetary space would take too much energy (1.25E28 joules or so).

For oxygen, just find an asteroid with large quantities of Iron or Silicon and burn it in the O2.

Why reflect all less IR?

Rubisco:

Your 4000AU case is too extreme I guess. A little more and you try to get asteroids from the centauri system

You know how much time take a mission to go there?

Another problem is how to select a good targets (and you need a lot), even if we have a super telescope it would not be enoght I guess, becouse this objects does not receive almost any light from our sun. So make an analysis to see if they got enoght water seems impossible.

The deltav benefic seems good, but we need to calculate too how much deltav we need to carry all engines to there.

There is another posibility to get a lot of water.

Iapetus, saturns satellite. Is the one that is more far from saturn (perfect for deltav escape), Its radius is 730km, 80% water, so this mean between 85% of earth water (perfect for venus).

You can burn into retrograde and get gravity assist from titan, that can take you very close to saturn, or just you can get another gravity assist from Rhea, until you get a very close periapsis with saturn (where you can use the oberth effect) to gain a encounter with jupiter (gravity assist) and then Venus.

The problem that with low trust, all that manuver can cause a mess in the saturn system XD.

But the benefics are many. Still you need more deltav. But is all the water is just one place.

I dont think that crushing things into venus can solve problems, but maybe with the new techonologies advances, we can have new energy resources and methods to make something like that possible.

Edited February 25, 2014 by AngelLestat

[SargeRho]

Dude. 70% of Asteroids, including NEOs, are C-Type Asteroids. These contain pretty much all naturally occuring elements. The odds are, 45-ish of those 69 NEOs are C-Type Asteroids, and contain all elements.

And you can use the Moon for gravitational slingshots, and cut back dramatically on your fuel consumption. Those being "below" Earth has another advantage. Solar Sails only get more powerful the closer you get to them, so using solar sails to reach them, or leave them, is very possible. And when returning from them, you can use ablative heat shields (which mostly consist of carbon, btw) and aerobraking, if your plan was to get them to Earth. Materials mined in space are best used in space, exept perhaps platinum group metals, which actually ARE rare on Earth as opposed to diamonds.

Venus doesn't have a moon. That means, you will have to bring ALL of your dV along with you.

No, building cloud cities is NOT terraforming. The atmosphere is still unbreathable, it is thus not terraforming, just colonisation.

[AngelLestat]

Dude..

"From the 7000 NEO only 69 has less of 4km/s of deltaV to reach them. And from all those, you need to select 1 that has all elements (you cant do that even if you have 100000000 to select), adding the fact that all these asteroids has a periapsis lower than earth, So is very difficult they had water, and if they had, you can not mining them becouse it would destroy your /habitat/ships/machinery. So forget your silly 2km/s of deltaV, if you wanna search a good target, you need to go and risk in the asteroid belt."

And 1 c-type asteroid has NOT all elements. Get that out of your head or find a source of one asteroid that contain all. And I mean all in the amount needed so Rubisco can make its colony with just 1 asteroid.

You can use aerocapture with venus.

About terraforming, so if you crush comets, you stop the rotation, you remove all the co2, you bring water, you get 1bar but still dont have the right amount of nitrogen or oxigen then all the things that you did is not terraforming?

Terraforming is each process that close you more to an earth enviroment.

[SargeRho]

"but still dont have the right amount of nitrogen or oxigen then all the things that you did is not terraforming?"

Exactly. Also stopping the rotation is a stupid idea.

And 1 c-type asteroid DOES have ALL the elements needed to build a colony. a 500m-wide one has enough to build a pretty large torus station.

[RuBisCO]

Your 4000AU case is too extreme I guess. A little more and you try to get asteroids from the centauri system

Just providing an example.

Another problem is how to select a good targets (and you need a lot), even if we have a super telescope it would not be enoght I guess, becouse this objects does not receive almost any light from our sun. So make an analysis to see if they got enoght water seems impossible.

Well we already have many Keplar Belt Objects cataloged even ones less then 1 km accross, spectra can tell us what their surface is made of at least, as well as a probe to one can give us rough figures on a whole class of others with matching spectra. Last but not least sending a probe to each one before sending the tug ship is cents compared to the tugs ships price tags.

The deltav benefic seems good, but we need to calculate too how much deltav we need to carry all engines to there.

Not really worthwhile considering it weighs less then one millionth the thing it is moving, in short even if it cost 10 times as much delta-v to move tugs up there that would still be negliable compared to the cost in energy and fuel to move the Keplar Belt Objects down here.

There is another posibility to get a lot of water.

Iapetus, saturns satellite. Is the one that is more far from saturn (perfect for deltav escape), Its radius is 730km, 80% water, so this mean between 85% of earth water (perfect for venus).

You can burn into retrograde and get gravity assist from titan, that can take you very close to saturn, or just you can get another gravity assist from Rhea, until you get a very close periapsis with saturn (where you can use the oberth effect) to gain a encounter with jupiter (gravity assist) and then Venus.

I don't think you can get much gravity assist off of Rhea, maybe Titan, but pass too close to saturn would likely tear Lapetus apart. Just figure out the raw Delta-V needed to get it out of Saturn space first. Since we would likely only be able to change it delta-v by a few meters a year at most slowly enlarging its orbit outwards is the only option, for going inwards will likely result in hitting one of the other moons because we can't make it orbit parabolic enough to not miss them. Lastly: once it is out of the Saturn system its going to cost almost 9.5 km/s to get it down to venus space.

The problem that with low trust, all that manuver can cause a mess in the saturn system XD.

But the benefics are many. Still you need more deltav. But is all the water is just one place.

Yeah sure, the problem though is that it would be one world colliding impact, it might end up completely melting the surface of venus and that is going to slow down terraforming and even lead to that ocean world problem: where we have to wait millions of years for land masses to form.

I dont think that crushing things into venus can solve problems, but maybe with the new techonologies advances, we can have new energy resources and methods to make something like that possible.

The question of this thread is: can we terraform venus and how? not "should we" or "why not be more pratical and do..." or "what problems will it solve?"

Edited February 26, 2014 by RuBisCO

[AngelLestat]

"but still dont have the right amount of nitrogen or oxigen then all the things that you did is not terraforming?"

Exactly. Also stopping the rotation is a stupid idea.

And 1 c-type asteroid DOES have ALL the elements needed to build a colony. a 500m-wide one has enough to build a pretty large torus station.

First, I never want to stop its rotation, that is Rubisco idea.

Second, then if we follow your terraforming definition, then is impossible terraform any other planet. Becouse there would be always discrepancies.

For example, mars has 0,3g, even if you match pressure, temperature, atmophere composition, water, etc. It never would be the earth. Its diameter or gravity is too different.

Each process that you made to have more similarity condition than earth in other planet is terraforming.

So find a way to leave in the clouds (equal to rise the ground lv) is the best terraforming approach for venus. Becouse with just that step you get pressure, temperature and almost 1g. If you want to get that in any other planet or with different methods you would require huge amounts of energy.

About the elements, no, you dont have the diversity of elements that you need in the amounts that you need.

A floating colony would have to use all elements that we know. Just to made medicines, any kind of electronics or artefacts, or different chemicals to transform or divide other sustains.

Also if you have a mining method that is good to extract metals and water or other materials, it would not be so good to extract other materials. You can not have all in one keeping good efficiencies. So dont think that you would be able to mining something of 20ppm, divide it, select it and storage that at the same time you mine all the other 100 elements.

Well we already have many Keplar Belt Objects cataloged even ones less then 1 km accross, spectra can tell us what their surface is made of at least, as well as a probe to one can give us rough figures on a whole class of others with matching spectra. Last but not least sending a probe to each one before sending the tug ship is cents compared to the tugs ships price tags.

Kuiper belt start from 30au, the objects are bigger than asteroid belt and they are more spaced.

They recieve much more light than an object at 4000 AU.

If there was an object like pluto at 4000AU it would be almost impossible to find.

Lets take eris for example, is bigger than pluto, its periapsis is 39 au and apoapsis 97au.

It was discover in the 2003, but they was not sure until 2005. So what can we expect from a small "rock" at 4000Au. Tell me its composition

We dont have the composition of objects from kuiper, we have just estimations due to bigger objets and solar system formation theories.

Not really worthwhile considering it weighs less then one millionth the thing it is moving, in short even if it cost 10 times as much delta-v to move tugs up there that would still be negliable compared to the cost in energy and fuel to move the Keplar Belt Objects down here.

Yeah, but is not possible see them, even if we have a super instrument, how we know where to point our instrument to find a rock in all that space? More powerfull telescope equals to more difficult to find a target.

I don't think you can get much gravity assist off of Rhea, maybe Titan, but pass too close to saturn would likely tear Lapetus apart. Just figure out the raw Delta-V needed to get it out of Saturn space first. Since we would likely only be able to change it delta-v by a few meters a year at most slowly enlarging its orbit outwards is the only option, for going inwards will likely result in hitting one of the other moons because we can't make it orbit parabolic enough to not miss them. Lastly: once it is out of the Saturn system its going to cost almost 9.5 km/s to get it down to venus space.

There is not need Rhea, Titan has 75 times the mass of iapetus. That it would be enoght.

So once you get there, it can shot you to a very close approach to saturn (well not so much, people would be bad if we make a hole in the rings :S), then like you was in free fall from that far orbit, the oberth effect it would be very powerfull. So a little burn it would be enoght to reach jupiter, from there venus.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Iapetus_orbit_%28polar%29.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Iapetus_orbit_%28side%29.jpg

My estimation of deltaV to reach Titan orbit from iapetus is a deltaV of 2.5kms. Weird I would be expected a lot less.

I dont know how to calculate orbits assits, but my estimation once you reach titan, you can reach venus with no more than 0.5kms

So that give us a total of 3km/s.

Of course we need some big pushes, we can not do this with fussion or anything else. We need something big.

Maybe making a hole in iapetus cortex with a powerfull laser, and then send an antimatter projectile to heat all the underground water, so you will get a noozle from the size of that hole. But how much water we spend doing this it will depends on the exhaust velocity of water across the hole.

The main problem is how we drop all the water without crashing iapetus into venus.. In this point we need another miracle or a very good idea..

Ye

ah sure, the problem though is that it would be one world colliding impact, it might end up completely melting the surface of venus and that is going to slow down terraforming and even lead to that ocean world problem: where we have to wait millions of years for land masses to form.

But is almost the same with small pieces or big. The energy would be the same. And the atmosphere would trap all that energy, and release it slowly due to the cloud top temperature.

But it does not matter how method would take more crashing, if we crash things we would have more problems and for sure it would take 1 millons years minimun.

[SargeRho]

Yes, C-Type asteroids DO offer all the needed elements in the right quantities.

"discrepancies."

Having your lungs melt from sulphuric acid air is a big god damn discrepancy. As is not being able to BREATHE.

[RuBisCO]

First, I never want to stop its rotation, that is Rubisco idea.

Oh no I'm not asking to stop it rotation, I'm asking to speed it up! With the mass and speed of body bashed into the Venus it should be more then enough to give Venus's a rate of rotation under 100 hours! The Math is clear on that, 1*10^22 kg traveling at 40-50 km/s is 1*10^31 J, the rotational energy of the earth is 2.6*10^29 J for comparesion. If only 2% of that energy were transfered to rotating venus by impact some of the comets at an slant to the equator venus would have a 26 hr day!

Second, then if we follow your terraforming definition, then is impossible terraform any other planet. Becouse there would be always discrepancies.

For example, mars has 0,3g, even if you match pressure, temperature, atmophere composition, water, etc. It never would be the earth. Its diameter or gravity is too different.

There a big diffrence between living and breathing open air on terraformed mars verse, living in a cloud city on venus. Lets limit terraforming to open air that is breathable and climate like that of earth's such that people could live at least some of the year in t-shirts.

So find a way to leave in the clouds (equal to rise the ground lv) is the best terraforming approach for venus. Becouse with just that step you get pressure, temperature and almost 1g. If you want to get that in any other planet or with different methods you would require huge amounts of energy.

Yeah but you don't get open breathable air, that is the biggest criteria of terraforming! All you have done is make habitates afloat on venus, for which the advantages of pressure and temperature and 1g are little compare to the costs of having to maintain a enclosed breathable atmosphere. Take the moon for example, the Lava caves of the moon could provide hundred meter wide kilometer long encloses with constant tempertures, radiation proofing, meteror proofing, potentially all we need to do is silica plate the caves and pump in oxygen and nitrogen gas and we have untold cubic kilometers of living space, with the advantages of dozens of meters of rock over a flimsy ballon skin and lower distance and Delta-v to and from the Earth. Technically we could build habitate enclosures anywhere in the solar system including as a use of material by-product of asteriod mining and afloat in solar orbit. Venus provides little advantage and grand detriments in comparision.

About the elements, no, you don't have the diversity of elements that you need in the amounts that you need.

Yes, we do. Some of the C-type asteroids have the same elemental composition of the sun (with exception of hydrogen and the noble gases) so Oxygen. Carbon, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, Iron Sulfur are at several dozen parts per thousand! All the way down to elements like Platinum which even on a C-Type asteroid is over 1 ppm!

A floating colony would have to use all elements that we know. Just to made medicines, any kind of electronics or artefacts, or different chemicals to transform or divide other sustains.

Not really because most of those elements would be 50 kilometers below at 450 C hotter and 92 atmosphere of pressure higher. Much of your industrial processing would need to be up in the clouds as well because of the inability to do advance chemist at 500 C and 92 atmospheres. Every kg needing to be supported by balloon fabric and balloon gas.

Also if you have a mining method that is good to extract metals and water or other materials, it would not be so good to extract other materials. You can not have all in one keeping good efficiencies.

Efficiency is irrelevant! At a obscene 100 Kwh/kg we would need only 154 m^2 of solar concentrators (assuming 50% efficiency) or 770 m^2 of solar panels assuming an overall horrible 10% efficiency and 1 AU from the sun, to process 1 kg per hour, 8.7 tons per year. That an array area underr 30x30 m per kg processed, of which we could be talking about 100-1000 g/m^2 of powerplant mass! A minning complex capable of processing 10 tons per day would have a powerplant mass of 32 – 320 tons. Of which it would produce roughly ~5.2 tons of oxygen, ~2.1 tons of carbon, ~500 kg of nitrogen, ~500 kg of silicon, ~400 kg of Mg, ~75 kg of iron and ~200 kg of sulfur, and >1000 kg of everything else, per day. In a year it would produce 365 tons of miscellaneous elements of which important stuff like phosphorous, copper, aluminum would make up major percentages, but even the rare stuff like platinum would come out at ~4 kg per year. And that just 10 tons per day, out of a minning facilities with a power plant mass of under 160 tons and a total mass likely under 1000 tons. Assuming ~10% of those products goes into build more mining capacity, (carbon fiber, magnesium metal, steel being most of the structural mass) the asteroid colony could double it capacity every 3 years, in 10 years it would exceed 100 tons per year, 20 years 1000 tons per years and in 30 years 10000 tons per year. All of that an inefficient 100 kwh/kg or 6 times the energy cost of making aluminum from bauxite.

So dont think that you would be able to mining something of 20ppm, divide it, select it and storage that at the same time you mine all the other 100 elements.

With thermal separation and electrowinning you can do just that, slowly grow the really rare stuff on the electroplates at the same time you separate out the really common stuff rapidly.

Kuiper belt start from 30au, the objects are bigger than asteroid belt and they are more spaced.

They recieve much more light than an object at 4000 AU.

If there was an object like pluto at 4000AU it would be almost impossible to find.

The Kepler belt is between 30-50 AU and already is noted for having many times the mass of the asteroid belt and a total of ~1/30 the mass of the earth or 20 to 200 times more matter than we are looking for, so the Kepler belt will do, so no need further into the oort cloud unless somehow that very low delta-v is worth the extreme wait.

Lets take eris for example, is bigger than pluto, its periapsis is 39 au and apoapsis 97au.

It was discover in the 2003, but they was not sure until 2005. So what can we expect from a small "rock" at 4000Au. Tell me its composition

Again we don't need to go to the oort cloud. But as for its composition based on all the oort cloud bodies that come down (comets) I can give it a very good estimate. As well as again sending probes to these bodies beforehand is a negligible cost compared to the trillions of tons fusion or fission tug ships needed.

We dont have the composition of objects from kuiper, we have just estimations due to bigger objets and solar system formation theories.

No again we know enough about their compositions already. Let me put it a different way: we know they are mostly ice, water, ammonia, co2, methane in that order. For the Keplar belt object to be unsuitable for venus terraforming they would need to be made out of something we have not yet seen, something truly radical, so far from what we have seen from just the bodies we have found they are already suitable.

Yeah, but is not possible see them, even if we have a super instrument, how we know where to point our instrument to find a rock in all that space? More powerfull telescope equals to more difficult to find a target.

We already found enough Kepler belt objects so what ever your saying now is irrelevant.

There is not need Rhea, Titan has 75 times the mass of iapetus. That it would be enoght.

So once you get there, it can shot you to a very close approach to saturn (well not so much, people would be bad if we make a hole in the rings :S), then like you was in free fall from that far orbit, the oberth effect it would be very powerfull. So a little burn it would be enoght to reach jupiter, from there venus.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Iapetus_orbit_%28polar%29.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Iapetus_orbit_%28side%29.jpg

My estimation of deltaV to reach Titan orbit from iapetus is a deltaV of 2.5kms. Weird I would be expected a lot less.

I dont know how to calculate orbits assits, but my estimation once you reach titan, you can reach venus with no more than 0.5kms

So that give us a total of 3km/s.

Again you completely ignored the fact we can't do anything but circular orbits because we don't have the thrust for “maneuversâ€Â, try to fly by a world for a gravity assist would be very difficult and again if it flies top close to Saturn we run the risk of ripping it apart. Just calculate how much delta-v is needed to enlarge it orbit until it leaves the Saturn system. I highly doubt your claims about once reaching Titan we can magically get tens of km's in delta-v, that not possible, delta-v a gravity assist can do is proportional to the mass of the world your going around, hence why the moon can't proved more then 2 km/s of delta-v in a gravity assist maneuver, likewise there is no way of flying around titan and then Saturn from Saturn orbit and magically gaining nearly 9 km/s in velocity, gravity slinging is not magic!

Of course we need some big pushes, we can not do this with fussion or anything else. We need something big.

Maybe making a hole in iapetus cortex with a powerfull laser, and then send an antimatter projectile to heat all the underground water, so you will get a noozle from the size of that hole. But how much water we spend doing this it will depends on the exhaust velocity of water across the hole.

And blow up the moon while your at it.

The main problem is how we drop all the water without crashing iapetus into venus.. In this point we need another miracle or a very good idea..

Or we could just take it in a million pieces. Blowing it up would not really help in that, we could just mine Iapetus directly, its escape velocity is minor enough.

Ye

But is almost the same with small pieces or big. The energy would be the same. And the atmosphere would trap all that energy, and release it slowly due to the cloud top temperature.

No it is not the same, for one titanic impact that liquifies the whole surface will create convection which will allow all the energy in Venus's mantel to circulate, multiplying the energy required to be released many fold. Many many small impacts can avoid that.

But it does not matter how method would take more crashing, if we crash things we would have more problems and for sure it would take 1 millons years minimun.

No please present calculations on that.

Edited February 28, 2014 by RuBisCO

[AngelLestat]

Well I guess this would be my last reply in this topic, becouse we said almost that we could said.

I would have liked a discussion with more contributions of ideas and solutions in regard to life and features that would have a cloud city.

That is certainly the most interesting proposal regarding venus.

Oh no I'm not asking to stop it rotation, I'm asking to speed it up! With the mass and speed of body bashed into the Venus it should be more then enough to give Venus's a rate of rotation under 100 hours! The Math is clear on that, 1*10^22 kg traveling at 40-50 km/s is 1*10^31 J, the rotational energy of the earth is 2.6*10^29 J for comparesion. If only 2% of that energy were transfered to rotating venus by impact some of the comets at an slant to the equator venus would have a 26 hr day!

I know, I meant to said increase rotation, but the amount of energy require is huge, so it does not worth it. We already have winds that give us 96hs cicle. If we took like example the day/night cicle of countries here at earth close to the poles, then you can said that 96hrs is more than ok.

There a big diffrence between living and breathing open air on terraformed mars verse, living in a cloud city on venus. Lets limit terraforming to open air that is breathable and climate like that of earth's such that people could live at least some of the year in t-shirts.

Well, you can use that t-shirt at mars or in the space vaccum (not much difference) and then tell me which do you prefer.

Yeah but you don't get open breathable air, that is the biggest criteria of terraforming! All you have done is make habitates afloat on venus, for which the advantages of pressure and temperature and 1g are little compare to the costs of having to maintain a enclosed breathable atmosphere. Take the moon for example, the Lava caves of the moon could provide hundred meter wide kilometer long encloses with constant tempertures, radiation proofing, meteror proofing, potentially all we need to do is silica plate the caves and pump in oxygen and nitrogen gas and we have untold cubic kilometers of living space, with the advantages of dozens of meters of rock over a flimsy ballon skin and lower distance and Delta-v to and from the Earth. Technically we could build habitate enclosures anywhere in the solar system including as a use of material by-product of asteriod mining and afloat in solar orbit. Venus provides little advantage and grand detriments in comparision.

So now you invent the rules of terraforming? the definition is your definition?

Not. Terraformin is any process that takes you more close to earth conditions. Get almost the same G, temperature and pressure. Is a very good approach, if you wanna have 3 similar characteristics in any other place, you need to spend incredible amounts of energy and time.

You can have oxigen, but if you dont have a similar pressure and temperature, you dont gain nothing.

Yes, we do. Some of the C-type asteroids have the same elemental composition of the sun (with exception of hydrogen and the noble gases) so Oxygen. Carbon, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, Iron Sulfur are at several dozen parts per thousand! All the way down to elements like Platinum which even on a C-Type asteroid is over 1 ppm!

I explain this too many times.. First, you would not find all elements, and if you find it in 10ppm amounts its completely useless. First you need to mine a lot just to have almost nothing, and you can not have a perfect method to separate and divide 1 hundred elements.

Not really because most of those elements would be 50 kilometers below at 450 C hotter and 92 atmosphere of pressure higher. Much of your industrial processing would need to be up in the clouds as well because of the inability to do advance chemist at 500 C and 92 atmospheres. Every kg needing to be supported by balloon fabric and balloon gas.

I said floaties, but I meant to said space colony, we were talking aboout how to get all colony materials from just 1 asteroid.

By the way, there is not problem to get all the elements from venus. And yes you can process them some down, some at the clounds.

Efficiency is irrelevant! At a obscene 100 Kwh/kg we would need only 154 m^2 of solar concentrators (assuming 50% efficiency) or 770 m^2 of solar panels assuming an overall horrible 10% efficiency and 1 AU from the sun, to process 1 kg per hour, 8.7 tons per year. That an array area underr 30x30 m per kg processed, of which we could be talking about 100-1000 g/m^2 of powerplant mass! A minning complex capable of processing 10 tons per day would have a powerplant mass of 32 – 320 tons. Of which it would produce roughly ~5.2 tons of oxygen, ~2.1 tons of carbon, ~500 kg of nitrogen, ~500 kg of silicon, ~400 kg of Mg, ~75 kg of iron and ~200 kg of sulfur, and >1000 kg of everything else, per day. In a year it would produce 365 tons of miscellaneous elements of which important stuff like phosphorous, copper, aluminum would make up major percentages, but even the rare stuff like platinum would come out at ~4 kg per year. And that just 10 tons per day, out of a minning facilities with a power plant mass of under 160 tons and a total mass likely under 1000 tons. Assuming ~10% of those products goes into build more mining capacity, (carbon fiber, magnesium metal, steel being most of the structural mass) the asteroid colony could double it capacity every 3 years, in 10 years it would exceed 100 tons per year, 20 years 1000 tons per years and in 30 years 10000 tons per year. All of that an inefficient 100 kwh/kg or 6 times the energy cost of making aluminum from bauxite.

Efficiency is irrelevant?? First, YOu ARE NOT at 1AU from the SUN! YOU ARE IN THE ASTEROID BELT BECOUSE YOU SAID THAT YOU WANT TO HAVE A COLONY TOO. (with full shields and radars to avoid hits) SO YOU NEED WATER. AND YOU CAN NOT HAVE WATER IN A ASTEROID WITH AN ORBIT SO NEAR TO THE SUN.

I also explain and I give it to you a source of how less is the amount of NEO with less than 4km/s So there is not a good target in NEO. Besides your calculates are crazy, you does not have into account everything.

Again we don't need to go to the oort cloud. But as for its composition based on all the oort cloud bodies that come down (comets) I can give it a very good estimate. As well as again sending probes to these bodies beforehand is a negligible cost compared to the trillions of tons fusion or fission tug ships needed.

Why you said it like if it was my idea? It was always your idea search water in the oort cloud.

No again we know enough about their compositions already. Let me put it a different way: we know they are mostly ice, water, ammonia, co2, methane in that order. For the Keplar belt object to be unsuitable for venus terraforming they would need to be made out of something we have not yet seen, something truly radical, so far from what we have seen from just the bodies we have found they are already suitable.

You think that wikipedia said that there is water ammonia co2 and methane, is becouse we measure most of them and we find that? Not. We measure the big ones, 7 or 10 I guess. And then with solar system formations theories we complete the holes, so those are our estimations.

We already found enough Kepler belt objects so what ever your saying now is irrelevant.

Yeah with the size of a planet or moon (and only 10 years ago).

A little of common sense here, pls.

Again you completely ignored the fact we can't do anything but circular orbits because we don't have the thrust for “maneuversâ€Â, try to fly by a world for a gravity assist would be very difficult and again if it flies top close to Saturn we run the risk of ripping it apart. Just calculate how much delta-v is needed to enlarge it orbit until it leaves the Saturn system. I highly doubt your claims about once reaching Titan we can magically get tens of km's in delta-v, that not possible, delta-v a gravity assist can do is proportional to the mass of the world your going around, hence why the moon can't proved more then 2 km/s of delta-v in a gravity assist maneuver, likewise there is no way of flying around titan and then Saturn from Saturn orbit and magically gaining nearly 9 km/s in velocity, gravity slinging is not magic!

You read my whole answer before reply?

I said that we needed another kind of propulsion to get the thrust that we need. So your reply is useless.

And blow up the moon while your at it.

Or we could just take it in a million pieces. Blowing it up would not really help in that, we could just mine Iapetus directly, its escape velocity is minor enough.

??? blow the moon? with waht? with the method that I mention? WHy? You just heat the water undergroung, and with the hole produce it by the laser you have a noozle.

An antimatter bomb is not so destructive like normal nuclear bombs. Becouse release the energy (radiation) in a bigger volume. Gamma ray are difficult to stop.

No it is not the same, for one titanic impact that liquifies the whole surface will create convection which will allow all the energy in Venus's mantel to circulate, multiplying the energy required to be released many fold. Many many small impacts can avoid that.

i dont know. Is easy to see it in that way when we think in small pieces. But if we think that is the same amount of mass. I dont see much difference. Maybe someone made this calculations already. A source would be nice.

No please present calculations on that.

If some day I made a ksp version with real solar system mod (i dont know if iapetus is in), I would test it. Then will see.

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

Well maybe we reach to the page 20, or maybe we dont. It was a good talk anyways.

I learn a lot of things.

[SargeRho]

Terraforming is the process of making a planet habitable to Earth-life. If you can't breathe the atmosphere, you haven't yet Terraformed the planet.

"I explain this too many times.. First, you would not find all elements, and if you find it in 10ppm amounts its completely useless. First you need to mine a lot just to have almost nothing, and you can not have a perfect method to separate and divide 1 hundred elements."

And you are still wrong. C-Type asteroids contain all elements needed for a space colony.

And NEOs are still not in the asteroid belt.

[sal_vager]

Keep it civil guys, this thread's going to see more attention, and congrats Rakaydos, you've been stickied

[RuBisCO]

Well I guess this would be my last reply in this topic, becouse we said almost that we could said.

I would have liked a discussion with more contributions of ideas and solutions in regard to life and features that would have a cloud city.

Then make a new thread about cloud cities on Venus.

I know, I meant to said increase rotation, but the amount of energy require is huge, so it does not worth it. We already have winds that give us 96hs cicle. If we took like example the day/night cicle of countries here at earth close to the poles, then you can said that 96hrs is more than ok.

If we are going to be impacting 10^21-10^22 kg of matter at 40-50 km/s that energy is simply a bi-product of which we can make use off in giving Venus and Earth like day (and magnetic field).

Well, you can use that t-shirt at mars or in the space vaccum (not much difference) and then tell me which do you prefer.

I was talking about terraformed mars.

So now you invent the rules of terraforming? the definition is your definition?

Not. Terraformin is any process that takes you more close to earth conditions. Get almost the same G, temperature and pressure. Is a very good approach, if you wanna have 3 similar characteristics in any other place, you need to spend incredible amounts of energy and time.

Earth-ish Gravity, temperature and pressure are not all of equal value, especially not against breathable air. Earth-ish gravity is the least necessary characteristic, we suspect people will be able to live just fine on Mars gravity for example. Habitable temperature and pressure are certainly much valuable, but on Venus that would come with a in-breathable acidic atmosphere. Breathable air is the most necessary characteristic, that alone requires a minimal pressure and temperature to sustain human life. Even on your cloud cities, your colonist would spend all their time in a habitat with BREATHABLE AIR, we could maintain such an environment on a moon colony, asteroid colony, mars colony for much cheaper then in the clouds of Venus.

You can have oxigen, but if you dont have a similar pressure and temperature, you dont gain nothing.

I explain this too many times.. First, you would not find all elements, and if you find it in 10ppm amounts its completely useless. First you need to mine a lot just to have almost nothing, and you can not have a perfect method to separate and divide 1 hundred elements.

And I explained repeatedly that is untrue and that its possible to mine ALL the elements even if they are in concentrations as low as 1 ppm. The method I describe is actually several methods, thermal-evaporation separation under hydrogen atmosphere followed by chloride or fluoridation and elector-winning or direct electrolysis (for water, SH2, ClH, etc) . The first process produces metals and hydride that evaporate off at different temperatures and are collected by cold traps at different temperatures, the second process separates elements via their voltage of formation. That is two dimensions of separation. The build up on the electrodes can be from hours to months depending on the concentration of a specific element it is selecting for, so it will allow collection of even very rare elements like platinum.

I said floaties, but I meant to said space colony, we were talking aboout how to get all colony materials from just 1 asteroid.

By the way, there is not problem to get all the elements from venus. And yes you can process them some down, some at the clounds.

There not a problem to get all elements for 1 asteroid either.

Efficiency is irrelevant?? First, YOu ARE NOT at 1AU from the SUN! YOU ARE IN THE ASTEROID BELT BECOUSE YOU SAID THAT YOU WANT TO HAVE A COLONY TOO. (with full shields and radars to avoid hits) SO YOU NEED WATER. AND YOU CAN NOT HAVE WATER IN A ASTEROID WITH AN ORBIT SO NEAR TO THE SUN.

As I explained repeatedly now this would be on an asteroid in Near Earth Space, not an asteroid in the asteroid belt. Such asteroids regularly cross even into Venus space. These include C-type asteroids. Originally these asteroids were in orbits and formed in the asteroid belt (with water and hydrates) then got knocked into earth crossing orbits by rare circumstances, their water content would remain for they entered into these orbits recently (last few million years) and their surface layers provide thermal protection.

I also explain and I give it to you a source of how less is the amount of NEO with less than 4km/s So there is not a good target in NEO. Besides your calculates are crazy, you does not have into account everything.

I'm not sure what you saying here, there are plenty of NEO to choose from, many more yet to be discovered. If you have a problem with my calculations please point out where specifically.

Why you said it like if it was my idea? It was always your idea search water in the oort cloud.

Well now I'm talking about the Kepler belt, please keep up.

You think that wikipedia said that there is water ammonia co2 and methane, is becouse we measure most of them and we find that? Not. We measure the big ones, 7 or 10 I guess. And then with solar system formations theories we complete the holes, so those are our estimations.

So? what are you saying exactly? That they don't have those compounds in high concentrations? What evidence do you have?

Yeah with the size of a planet or moon (and only 10 years ago).

A little of common sense here, pls.

None of them weigh as much as the moon, even Eris, are all much smaller in size and mass then the moon, and I'm talking about specifically moving them or removing large chunks of them at a time. What do you mean by "Common sense" I present numbers of how it is double to move 10^21 - 10^22 kg from the keplar belt with near term technologies in a several thousand year spanned to show that terraform Venus is doable, if you find that beyond the bounds of "common sense" then you should not be talking on this thread: because the very topic of terraforming Venus would be beyond "common sense".

You read my whole answer before reply?

I said that we needed another kind of propulsion to get the thrust that we need. So your reply is useless.

And that would be?

??? blow the moon? with waht? with the method that I mention? WHy? You just heat the water undergroung, and with the hole produce it by the laser you have a noozle.

An antimatter bomb is not so destructive like normal nuclear bombs. Because release the energy (radiation) in a bigger volume. Gamma ray are difficult to stop.

A laser from where, how much power output would that laser need to have, millions of terrawatts? And don't think for a moment you can beam it from across the solar system for a the beam will divergence. Also how are you going to produce the antimatter? Do you understand that antimatter explosions release huge amounts of gamma rays?

i dont know. Is easy to see it in that way when we think in small pieces. But if we think that is the same amount of mass. I dont see much difference. Maybe someone made this calculations already. A source would be nice.

You can look up how the moon and earth formed for one.

I learn a lot of things.

Good for you, good bye then.

[RuBisCO]

Keep it civil guys, this thread's going to see more attention, and congrats Rakaydos, you've been stickied

I think I and AngelLestat, we have yet to make ad hominems of insult at each other and have kept high on the argument pyramid, sure there has been a repeated inability to acknowledge specific points but that nothing.

Also why is the Mars Terraforming thread not a sticky? That would be order of magnitude easier to terraform than Venus, so I would think it slightly more viable and discussable.

[sal_vager]

Because I missed it RuBisCO, maybe next month

(hurriedly makes notes)

[stargazer1235]

Venus is a tough planet to terraform, the main problem it suffers from is heat and catastrophic climate change. Unlike Mars where it is too cold and we already have to knowledge to add heat, Venus is too hot and we haven't figured out how to cool whole planets yet (just watch Al Gore).

Problem 1: Venus Spins too slowly, leading to extreme heat difference and the lack of a magnetic field.

Solution 1: Before we start terraforming the planet, it might be advisable to smash some asteroids, at a low angle in to Venus. This might accurate the orbit a bit but I am not sure whether doing this too many times will destroy the surface. It also might kickstart volcanic activity and restart the core so that it creates a magnetic field.

Problem 2: Venus's atmosphere is too thick and comprises mostly of CO2.

Solution 2: At this point, we will have to delve into the area of geo-engineering, engineering whole planets. To survive on the surface we must reduce the air pressure down there. This might provide us with an opportunity. If the air pressure is so high then it should be easy to flout structures in the thinner part of the atmosphere. Here is what I propose. We can use artificial trees to suck in CO2 and release O2 into the atmosphere, secondly, we could also transport that CO2 Mars and dump it into the atmosphere to warm it up at the same time. Removing CO2 should start to thin the atmosphere and start to cool the planet.

Problem 3: Venus is too hot.

Solution 3: We must get radical to cool Venus, removing all the CO2 won't completely cool Venus to liveable standards. We might have to start putting up solar mirrors to reflect light away from Venus and start adding aerosols to the atmosphere, which have a natural cooling effect, to cool off Venus to liveable standards.

Problem 4. Venus doesn't have much water vapour left and is nitrogen poor.

Solution 3. Water and nitrogen are essential for Earth's plant life. Nitrogen can be fixed by looking to Saturn's moon, Titan, which has a nitrogen rich atmosphere. All we need to do is transport it and start dumping it into the atmosphere. Water is a bit harder but we can look at Comets for our solution. We bring water rich comets into areo-breaking manoeuvres around Venus, then every time it passes through the atmosphere, it will heat up and release water vapour into the atmosphere. If it is cool enough then rain can from and reach the ground.

Off course all of these steps are costly and if we were to do it today, it would bankrupt Earth and then some. We could look at Futurama for our cheap, last minute solution. Lets just dump an ice cube on Venus and see what happens.

Edited March 2, 2014 by stargazer1235

[RuBisCO]

Venus is a tough planet to terraform, the main problem it suffers from is heat and catastrophic climate change. Unlike Mars where it is too cold and we already have to knowledge to add heat, Venus is too hot and we haven't figured out how to cool whole planets yet (just watch Al Gore).

Problem 1: Venus Spins too slowly, leading to extreme heat difference and the lack of a magnetic field.

Solution 1: Before we start terraforming the planet, it might be advisable to smash some asteroids, at a low angle in to Venus. This might accurate the orbit a bit but I am not sure whether doing this too many times will destroy the surface. It also might kickstart volcanic activity and restart the core so that it creates a magnetic field.

Problem 2: Venus's atmosphere is too thick and comprises mostly of CO2.

Solution 2: At this point, we will have to delve into the area of geo-engineering, engineering whole planets. To survive on the surface we must reduce the air pressure down there. This might provide us with an opportunity. If the air pressure is so high then it should be easy to flout structures in the thinner part of the atmosphere. Here is what I propose. We can use artificial trees to suck in CO2 and release O2 into the atmosphere, secondly, we could also transport that CO2 Mars and dump it into the atmosphere to warm it up at the same time. Removing CO2 should start to thin the atmosphere and start to cool the planet.

Problem 3: Venus is too hot.

Solution 3: We must get radical to cool Venus, removing all the CO2 won't completely cool Venus to liveable standards. We might have to start putting up solar mirrors to reflect light away from Venus and start adding aerosols to the atmosphere, which have a natural cooling effect, to cool off Venus to liveable standards.

Problem 4. Venus doesn't have much water vapour left and is nitrogen poor.

Solution 3. Water and nitrogen are essential for Earth's plant life. Nitrogen can be fixed by looking to Saturn's moon, Titan, which has a nitrogen rich atmosphere. All we need to do is transport it and start dumping it into the atmosphere. Water is a bit harder but we can look at Comets for our solution. We bring water rich comets into areo-breaking manoeuvres around Venus, then every time it passes through the atmosphere, it will heat up and release water vapour into the atmosphere. If it is cool enough then rain can from and reach the ground.

Off course all of these steps are costly and if we were to do it today, it would bankrupt Earth and then some. We could look at Futurama for our cheap, last minute solution. Lets just dump an ice cube on Venus and see what happens.

Well everything you said has been covered before in detail, by my self, with basic calculations no less. Some of what you said though is in error though, for one Venus does not suffer for temperature swings, it atmosphere super rotates and keeps the whole surface at about the same temperature day and night. Second Venus is very nitrogen rich, 3 times as much nitrogen as earth, at least in gas form.

Anyways mining hydrogen and water form the Kepler belt is ideal, a minimum of ~1x10^21 kg of water is needed. The Kepler belt provides high concentrations of water with a delta-v of 4-6 km/s. Even cracking water into hydrogen from the Kepler belt makes sense because trying to extract it from gas giants would consume even more energy in delta-v (making 1 kg of hydrogen is equal to pushing 1 kg of matter to 6.3 km/s) plus the waste oxygen could be used as propellent mass. Venus already has 4.6x10^21 kg of CO2, add 4.1x10^19 kg of hydrogen, have the heat convert it and the CO2 to water and methane and have engineering cloud flora covert the methane back to hydrogen and carbon soot and you got 3.7x10^20 kg of water, that a quarter of the needed amount of water for 1/11 the input mass. The other 75% of water though will have to be mined and shiped directly. Titanic ships in a continues convoy would need to move 5.3X10^16 kg per year for 20,000 years to get the job done. That equal to over 50,000 km^3 of water pear year! Or you can think of it at 50,000 ships moving 1 km^3 of water weighing over 1 billion tons EACH, with 500 years to complete a round trip from the Kepler belt and back that would be 25 million titanic cargo ships in continues use, dumping 1 trillion kg of water (and hydrogen) every 10.5 minutes into Venus, for 20,000 years! Just a fraction of the kenetic energy from smacking that much mass into Venus at 40-50 km's (the speed gained from free-falling for the Kepler belt) would be enough to spin up Venus to an earth long day, this would also likely give Venus a magnetic field.

Heat from the impacts would be a problem, impacts would need to be small enough and spread out enough that they can be dissipate in Venus's thick atmosphere, combined with a gigantic solar shade 4 times the width of Venus in Venus-Sun L1 that blocks out all light and thus all thermal input on Venus. Once the water is deliver, and the planet has cooled down enough, can the sun shade be partially opened to provide earth like levels of sunlight. Terraformed Venus would still have 3-4 times the atmospheric pressure of the earth, almost all of that nitrogen.

Edited March 2, 2014 by RuBisCO

[Pds314]

Feasible without totally destroying any chance at habitability:

plants to lower CO2 in specialized filtered buildings.

artificial devices to do the same.

Cities in the sky.

Giant sun blockers.

coating everything in a meter of monocrystaline diamond.

Completely unfeasible or would destroy Venus as a habitable place:

Throwing away the atmosphere: This would require energy comparable to deorbitting Earth's moon. Clearly, if such energy is 95% expended in close proximity to Venus, the damage would completely change the planet's structure, probably by melting it.

Turning the CO2 into carbon and O2: this requires still a similar amount of energy to what one would need to deorbit medium-sized moons, again, destroys the planet's surface completely.

Smashing asteroids into Venus to change its rotation or orbit. Too much damage for not enough effect.

[RuBisCO]

Feasible without totally destroying any chance at habitability:

plants to lower CO2 in specialized filtered buildings.

artificial devices to do the same.

Cities in the sky.

Giant sun blockers.

coating everything in a meter of monocrystaline diamond.

Completely unfeasible or would destroy Venus as a habitable place:

Throwing away the atmosphere: This would require energy comparable to deorbitting Earth's moon. Clearly, if such energy is 95% expended in close proximity to Venus, the damage would completely change the planet's structure, probably by melting it.

Turning the CO2 into carbon and O2: this requires still a similar amount of energy to what one would need to deorbit medium-sized moons, again, destroys the planet's surface completely.

Smashing asteroids into Venus to change its rotation or orbit. Too much damage for not enough effect.

Where exactly do you plan to put the CO2? To convert the CO2 into biomass, water or solid carbon we are going to need hydrogen, as you already know we can only turn a tiny fraction of it into oxygen. So we are going to have to deliver a ridiculous amount of hydrogen, and that going to have to be bombarded one way or another into Venus, unless there are wormholes and/or teleporters in the future.

Edited March 2, 2014 by RuBisCO

[AngelLestat]

Terraforming is the process of making a planet habitable to Earth-life. If you can't breathe the atmosphere, you haven't yet Terraformed the planet.

This does not mean than a cloud city is not a terraforming process. Is the ultimate terraforming? No.. is just one step that gives you already 3 important similarities.

Earth-ish Gravity, temperature and pressure are not all of equal value, especially not against breathable air.

You are sure?

You can work hard at mars to get 78% nitrogen and 22% oxygen, but if your atmosphere pressure is still 0,6% compared with earth then you would die 100 times faster than in venus breathing 98% co2.

Now lets see how important is temperature. You know that air conditioning is the second more energy demanding after transport here at earth. And we spend all that energy to change the temperature a few degress to get comfort.

Just to change the air temperature 50 degrees from an average apartment, you would need 35000 kw/h. And what do you do if you need to go outside? Or if you need to heat the atmosphere some how?

Gravity, is still unknown the effects of long exposure to a different gravity. In the ISS Astronauts workout 2 hr at day, and even with that they need a lot of rehabilitation after come back. So what happen if you born in mars?

That is a problem which evolution never face it, so something is sure, our genetic is not prepared.

Like I show to you, pressure, temperature and gravity are equal or more important than any other similarity.

And I explained repeatedly that is untrue and that its possible to mine ALL the elements even if they are in concentrations as low as 1 ppm. The method I describe is actually several methods, thermal-evaporation separation under hydrogen atmosphere followed by chloride or fluoridation and elector-winning or direct electrolysis (for water, SH2, ClH, etc) . The first process produces metals and hydride that evaporate off at different temperatures and are collected by cold traps at different temperatures, the second process separates elements via their voltage of formation. That is two dimensions of separation. The build up on the electrodes can be from hours to months depending on the concentration of a specific element it is selecting for, so it will allow collection of even very rare elements like platinum.

Really? what are they wating to do it at earth if it is so easy?? why we not change all mining methods to obtain 100 % of all elements inside each m3 of ground or rock?

You're chasing a mining utopia. Will always be more efficient and profitable focus at some elements at the time and ignore rest.

More when you have smalls amounts of certain element.

With each extra element that you want to obtain and purify you are increasing the machinary complexity by a lot. And it is very easy to reach the point when its not worth it.

As I explained repeatedly now this would be on an asteroid in Near Earth Space, not an asteroid in the asteroid belt. Such asteroids regularly cross even into Venus space. These include C-type asteroids. Originally these asteroids were in orbits and formed in the asteroid belt (with water and hydrates) then got knocked into earth crossing orbits by rare circumstances, their water content would remain for they entered into these orbits recently (last few million years) and their surface layers provide thermal protection.

Another dream, how much time may take to construc a space colony taking all the difficulties of space labors and materials needed?

All this time you would be at side from an asteroid which have ice and other componds trap it, with huge heat differences between light exposure and shadows plus vaccum. That is a time bomb.

I dont remember the name of the probe that was destroy just by close a little bit to the tail from a comet.

I'm not sure what you saying here, there are plenty of NEO to choose from, many more yet to be discovered. If you have a problem with my calculations please point out where specifically.

What calculations? You dint read the source that I show to you about the few Neo objects with a deltav less than 4,5km/s?

And you want a neo with 2km/s, with all elements, and avoid all possible problems with sun heat.

ok... good luck.

So? what are you saying exactly? That they don't have those compounds in high concentrations? What evidence do you have?

What evidence you have that they have all those compounds? Please.. I really want a source that tells me if is possible to get all the elements from 1 asteroid. That is very different than said:

-what kinds of elements you "may" find in a "c-type" asteroid.

None of them weigh as much as the moon, even Eris, are all much smaller in size and mass then the moon

I said moons, no moon. Is easy to avoid confusion than said sattelites.

And that would be?

read!

A laser from where, how much power output would that laser need to have, millions of terrawatts? And don't think for a moment you can beam it from across the solar system for a the beam will divergence. Also how are you going to produce the antimatter? Do you understand that antimatter explosions release huge amounts of gamma rays?

You even read?? What I said? I said than an antimatter explosion release almost all its energy in gama ray form, like these are difficult to stop, the energy is realease it in a bigger volume. SO... is a lot less destructive than a nuclear detonation with equal power.

Also I dint think nothing, is very clear in my words that we need a new technology, we can not move moons yet.

Solution 1: It also might kickstart volcanic activity and restart the core so that it creates a magnetic field.

Solution 2: If the air pressure is so high then it should be easy to flout structures in the thinner part of the atmosphere. Here is what I propose. We can use artificial trees to suck in CO2 and release O2 into the atmosphere, secondly, we could also transport that CO2 Mars and dump it into the atmosphere to warm it up at the same time. Removing CO2 should start to thin the atmosphere and start to cool the planet.

Solution 3: We must get radical to cool Venus, removing all the CO2 won't completely cool Venus to liveable standards. We might have to start putting up solar mirrors to reflect light away from Venus and start adding aerosols to the atmosphere, which have a natural cooling effect, to cool off Venus to liveable standards.

Get a magnetic field would be nice to avoid lose more hidrogen, but this happen too slow than is not worth to considering.

About the co2, like rubisko point it, you can not extract it without water.

Plants extract the o2 from the h2o, not from the co2, and they storage that carbon.

I hear of some methods to extract o2 in direct way from the co2. But they still are far from be as efficient like plats. Besides, the best about plants its than they replicate.

There is another way, we know than some purple sulfur bacteria here at earth transform:

CO2 + 2H2S → (CH2O) + H2O + 2S

And the amount of 2h2s or some of their derivatives are higher than the amount of water vapor in venus.

Also if we dont cool the atmosphere first, all the death bacterias which had their carbon storage inside its cells would fall to the surfuce, were maybe the co2 would be release it again using the new oxygen from the atmosphere.

For that reason I said about cool down the atmosphere with an amount of water similar to earth, but you need drop the water wihout orbital velocity.

Smashing asteroids into Venus to change its rotation or orbit. Too much damage for not enough effect.

yup

Edited March 3, 2014 by AngelLestat

[SargeRho]

"That those not mean than a cloud city is not a terraforming process. Is the ultimate terraforming? No.. is just one step that gives you already 3 important similarities."

Wrong. It creates an enclosed habitat. That has nothing to do with Terraforming.

[Rakaydos]

For the sake of ending this pointless argument, let's declare Landis Land "not terraforming" and something deserving of it's own thread. (where terraforming concerns can be ignored)

AngelLestat, would you care to make that thread?

[Transits]

First of all, smash asteroids into Venus at angles and speeds that will increase its rotation and blow away parts of it's atmosphere. Then use electrolysis to turn the carbon dioxide into a mainly oxygen atmosphere (energy can be got via solar panels), and then put lots of mirrors/ a solar shade in place in order to cool it down into an earth like planet. After all of that, drag Io down into orbit around the planet to give it tides. Io could also act as a stopping point for ships.

[RuBisCO]

That those not mean than a cloud city is not a terraforming process. Is the ultimate terraforming? No.. is just one step that gives you already 3 important similarities.

You are sure?

You can work hard at mars to get 78% nitrogen and 22% oxygen, but if your atmosphere pressure is still 0,6% compared with earth then you would die 100 times faster than in venus breathing 98% co2.

Again breathable air means the minimum pressure and temperature to sustain human life, 0.6% is not enough pressure to make the air "breathable"

I already stated this before, stop playing semantic games.

Now lets see how important is temperature. You know that air conditioning is the second more energy demanding after transport here at earth. And we spend all that energy to change the temperature a few degress to get comfort.

Just to change the air temperature 50 degrees from an average apartment, you would need 35000 kw/h. And what do you do if you need to go outside? Or if you need to heat the atmosphere some how?

The vacuum of space is a pretty good insulator, at 1 AU temperature control can be achieve passively or with very minimal energy input.

Gravity, is still unknown the effects of long exposure to a different gravity. In the ISS Astronauts workout 2 hr at day, and even with that they need a lot of rehabilitation after come back. So what would if you born at mars?

That is a problem which evolution never face it, so something is sure, our genetic is not prepared.

Its doubtful it will be a serious problem, at least for people that never in their lives will set foot under earth gravity... more so if 100% earth gravity is what is needed then an orbital space colony in a gigantic centrifuge is the way to go.

Like I show to you, pressure, temperature and gravity are equal or more important than any other similarity.

No all your premises are invalid, breathable air is the most important factor. Let me put this way, someone gives you a choice on how to live, you can only have one: breathable air, earth gravity, earth pressure or earth temperature, any of the other beside breathable air means your dead in under a minute.

Really? what are they wating to do it at earth if it is so easy?? why we not change all mining methods to obtain 100 % of all elements inside each m3 of ground or rock?

Well first off because our rocks are differentiated and have much poor generally concentrations of minerals, and second of because without the power-plant mass to power advantages of zero gravity at 1 AU, it would not be energy efficient. On earth we need to burn fuels, complex power plants, we cant just aim a mirror at the sun and get continues heat and power 24/7. On earth 100 Kw per kg only makes sense for the most rare of elements, in space that would not be a concern because power is plentiful.

You're chasing a mining utopia. Will always be more efficient and profitable focus at some elements at the time and ignore rest.

More when you have smalls amounts of certain element.

With each extra element that you want to obtain and purify you are increasing the machinary complexity by a lot. And it is very easy to reach the point when its not worth it.

Again I have explained how 2D thermal-electrocution process can separate every element, you can't make a vague statements as a counter argument, you need to actually explain how in detail my process can't separate every element. The machine is not fundamental complected, 20 cold traps with 5 electrodes per trap could separate ~100 elements.

Another dream, how much time may take to construc a space colony taking all the difficulties of space labors and materials needed?

A lot easier to build an asteroid colony then one on Venus. Want to talk about construction difficulty: try build stuff on a balloon, now that has not even been tried. Try mining and extracting and even constructing at 500 C and 92 atm, that too has never been tried, and yet you just assume it will be easy?

All this time you would be at side from an asteroid which have ice and other componds trap it, with huge heat differences between light exposure and shadows plus vaccum. That is a time bomb.

Not really, at 1 AU the average temperature is at freezing, most hydrates are stable in that, even in a vacuum, as long as the first few meters average out 'day' and 'night' time temperatures.

What calculations? You dint read the source that I show to you about the few Neo objects with a deltav less than 4,5m/s?

No I posted that source before, there are already over 100 known requiring less then 4.5 km/s.

And you want a neo with 2km/s, with all elements, and avoid all possible problems with sun heat.

ok... good luck.

Why 2km/s? I never said 2 km/s! Lets consider the round trip cost two and from Venus, even with aerobraking that is going to be a delta-v of over 16 km/s, with an asteroid colony we could do it in 8 km/s for hundreds of asteroids.

What evidence you have that they have all those compuds? Please.. I really want a source that tells me if I can get all the elements from 1 asteroid. That is very different than said what kinds of elements you "may" find in a "c-type" asteroid.

Then I advice reading up on chondrites. Again this assertion of yours has been countered in multiple ways: a break down of the most common elements and quantities that could be extracted per ton of C-type material has been given to you. The argument that for what the asteroid colony can't make right way they can trade for in what they can mine, which can't be done on Venus without having to get things off of Venus. Heck even a stellar asteriod mining network would require less delta-v to get from each other then to get off of Venus!

You even read?? What I said? I said than an antimatter explosion release almost all its energy in gama ray form, like these difficult to stop, the energy is realease it in a bigger volume. SO... is a lot less destructive than a nuclear detonation with equal power.

What you said did not make sense. Well lets just assume you hitting anti-protons with protons and forming pure energy and that your saying these gamma rays will harmlessly leak out (harmless to what?) then would not most of the yield be lost to space? Anti-matter against regular multi-proton atoms though will be quite messy and form lots of high speed charged particles.

Also I dint think nothing, is very clear in my words that we need a new technology, we can not move moons yet.

Well sure, even with the near term ones like fission and fusion it would take obscene space infrastuture to do it, but I don't think technology is the limitation here: energy is! The amount of energy required to move that much matter is not going to change, and no new technology is going to reduce the energy needed, not even antimatter, which requires an unbelievable amount of energy to make.

Get a magnetic field would be nice to avoid lose more hidrogen, but this happen too slow than is not worth to considering.

I know that, but usually a common complaint is no magnetic field, that one is put to rest.

Also if we dont cool the atmosphere first, all the death bacterias which had their carbon storage inside its cells would fall to the surfuce, were maybe the co2 would be release it again using the new oxygen from the atmosphere.

For that reason I said about cool down the atmosphere with an amount of water similar to earth, but you need drop the water wihout orbital velocity.

hydrogen will react with co2 thermochemically (by heat alone) to form water and carbon monoxide and methane at venus's temperatures and pressure (or by the temperatures of impact), no biology is required for that process. Also the process of reducing CO2 with hydrogen to make water and biomass is biologically common among certain primitive bacteria, mind you without needing light. Venus under sunshade would need to be kept warm by the impacts alone.

For the sake of ending this pointless argument, let's declare Landis Land "not terraforming" and something deserving of it's own thread. (where terraforming concerns can be ignored)

AngelLestat, would you care to make that thread?

I and others have repeatedly ask her for that to no avail.

Edited March 3, 2014 by RuBisCO