Venus terraforming fact checking- Chemistry edition

[AngelLestat]

First, is not my proposal, Soviets already had this idea since 1971, here is a skecth:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=14334.0

It was never notice it becouse NASA did not send many probes there, the few who send mostly all fail. The same than soviets probes with mars. How USA is a country media, Mars become a lot more popular than venus.

But netherless, this concept is shared in hundreds of pages all over internet.

The asteroid it does not need to be so big, if its a long period asteroid, is very probably that we do not have it categorized.

Dinosaurs Asteroid was 10km diameter, traveling at 70km/s, if something like this enter in the solar system and hits the earth before a sun-flyby. How you stop it?

There was another asteroid who fall at earth 200millons years back I guess, it was 40km diameter at antartica. Moon has a lot of of craters made it by 40km asteroids.

300km asteroids are not rare in the asteroid belt.

[Kryten]

How you stop it?

Why would you have to stop it? Yes, it would do major damage, but the idea that one could outright wipe out human civilisation-especially a human civilisation with the kind of technology necessary for off-world colonisation-is ridiculous.

300km asteroids are not rare in the asteroid belt.

Then it's a good thing we're not in the asteroid belt, isn't it? The largest asteroid that actually crosses earth orbit (i.e. could be relevant to this discussion) is about 30km across at it's longest axis, and there's very little chance of any similar asteroids not having already been found and catalogued.

[AngelLestat]

Why would you have to stop it? Yes, it would do major damage, but the idea that one could outright wipe out human civilisation-especially a human civilisation with the kind of technology necessary for off-world colonisation-is ridiculous.

When I said "stop it", I mean stop the risk, try push the asteroid to dodge us.

We already had the technology to off-world colonization, we need just resources over time. The problem with the asteroid or any other danger that we can face, is that we might not have the time. So the idea is not ridiculous.

[Idobox]

Really? I think Mars has an abundance of resources, as well as being potentially a place for human habitation.

It doesn't have large concentrations of platinum group metals, rare earths, fancy power sources, etc. Neither does Venus, by the way.

It has a bunch of resources, but metal oxides, frozen CO2 and water ice are not exciting.

In that regard, the Moon is more interesting, with He3 and He4 (not terribly useful while difficult to retrieve though). I imagine meteors are better preserved there too, which would make mining them easier, but I'm not very sure of this one. Deep mining might also be interesting on the Moon, given that it's much colder than larger bodies.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. If you can make Mars or (especially) Venus habitable, then you can keep the earth habitable pretty much regardless of what happens to it. There's no plausible scenario short of the sun going red giant that could make earth less hospitable than Venus is now.

Although it's very improbable, a massive impact could render Earth less habitable than Mars or Venus. Like the one that resulted in the creation of the Moon for example. There are a bunch of big objects far away from the Sun, and also wandering planets, we can't be sure none of them will ever impact us.

Also, if we have technology to survive a dinosaur killer, we probably have the technology to wipe ourselves out. Granted it means we can also destroy whatever colonies we have built, but it is still more difficult.

I'm not sure about this one, but I've heard of Supernovas and other astronomic events being a risk for life, and imagine the thick atmosphere of Venus would provide a nice protection. Granted, we could survive in deep bunkers too, but I'm not sure it would be easier than on another planet in the long run.

Finally, even if we have the technology to save a few hundred thousands people on Earth, it doesn't mean we will, because the 7 billion or more people left out would want to get in. And we all know desperate people do a lot of harm, and humans are keen to destroy resources rather than let others use them.

[AngelLestat]

I Neither does Venus, by the way.

we dont know for sure, but there is something that we know. Heavy elements are easy to find close to the sun.

With some discrepancies in atmospheric models, surfuce temperature, volcane activity, etc. Scientist come to the conclusion that Venus is not become much cold under surfuce, the temperature can go down a bit, but then start to rise again. This is due to an higher amount of radioactive elements than earth.

About supernovas, it is believed that an hipernova produce one of the biggest global extintions at earth.

[Dispatcher]

It doesn't have large concentrations of platinum group metals, rare earths, fancy power sources, etc. Neither does Venus, by the way.

It has a bunch of resources, but metal oxides, frozen CO2 and water ice are not exciting. ...

Besides silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the Martian crust are iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium. Elements such as chlorine, phosphorus and sulphur are much more common on Mars than Earth. The Phoenix Lander returned data showing Martian soil to be slightly alkaline and containing vital nutrients such as magnesium, sodium, potassium and chlorides, all of which are necessary for living organisms (as we understand them) to grow. The rarefied atmosphere contains trace gases such as argon and nitrogen. It has concentrations of thorium, which might become a "fancy power source" at Mars in the future.

I'm not too concerned about platinum group metals or rare "earths" (or is it "rare Mars"?), from an investment point of view, since if the market were flooded with those commodities, the values of their terrestrial cousins would drop. Oh sure, there could be bragging rights to "this is MARTIAN palladium, not like your sister's Earthy palladium", but the same is true for Martian dirt. As for CO2 and water ices; those are extremely exciting from a colonization and industrial point of view, as are the other things mentioned above.

All the more reason to shoot for Mars.

Edit: as for Venus, it also has ground based resources; its just extremely difficult to get to them.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Dispatcher

[Idobox]

Besides silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the Martian crust are iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium. Elements such as chlorine, phosphorus and sulphur are much more common on Mars than Earth. The Phoenix Lander returned data showing Martian soil to be slightly alkaline and containing vital nutrients such as magnesium, sodium, potassium and chlorides, all of which are necessary for living organisms (as we understand them) to grow. The rarefied atmosphere contains trace gases such as argon and nitrogen. It has concentrations of thorium, which might become a "fancy power source" at Mars in the future.

(stuff)

Edit: as for Venus, it also has ground based resources; its just extremely difficult to get to them.

All this stuff is common in rocks everywhere. The big question is, do you have the stuff in high concentrations anywhere? Finding iron, aluminium or magnesium oxides is easy, but you have to refine it, and if you have 20 to 30% of useful mineral in your rocks, it's going to be a pain in the ass. Asteroids are great for that because they have high concentrations of useful stuff, and the big ones are differentiated, which means they have cores of almost pure, unoxidized metal, when planetary crusts are messy mixes.

An advantage for Mars is that since it has had water, it has sedimentary rocks that should have separated stuff a little.

If there are interesting deposits, they will likely be in different places, and you can't easily move stuff for hundreds of km on Mars.

The atmosphere of Mars is very thin, you can extract CO2 and maybe methane out of it, but exploiting argon and nitrogen is completely impractical.

Venus has probably similar rocks to Mars, and I'm not convinced they are very difficult to get. You need to basically dredge the surface from an airship, in conditions typical steel can easily support. And it has plenty of gases, because even traces mean big quantities when you have so much pressure.

The Moon and asteroids have the same stuff as Mars, minus the super thin atmosphere, plus high quality deposits, and much smaller transport costs.

[Dispatcher]

There are several related threads going on now; I'll just restate some comments I'd made in these. I don't advocate a "one task, one goal" approach to expanding the human presence (via personnel or robotics). I favor reaching for several opportunities during the same timeframe. I can easily see private enterprises doing so, in order to fill in what they consider profitable niches. Yet governmental resources will tend to go toward what is perceived to be the popular public notion (i.e. going to Mars). I favor that, as well as mining NEOs, returning to the Moon and going to moons of the gas giants (especially Titan).

I favor sending probes to Venus, as there is much to learn about it. I think that in the interest of learning from small steps first, that we be on the path toward reaching the above objectives before we set out to tame the Hell that Venus and its atmosphere are. That's the path that industry and government will follow, if a return on investment is expected within a single human lifetime. Even then, these will be significant challenges.

[Idobox]

I'm not sure about the PR aspect.

Asteroids are not exactly exciting for the general public, and although the Moon and Mars are popular, imagine the publicity if NASA decided to send Zepellins to build a floating city just above the clouds of Venus.

That being said, the Moon and near-Earth asteroids are the best target for the next step, simply because they can provide fuel and structural metals where it's most needed: in LEO

Also, I remember discussing at length on another forum the possibility of using aluminium and LOx produced on the Moon as fuel, and NASA has looked into it. Turns out it's not easy (metallic aluminium is not rubber), but it seems doable. Building boosters on the Moon (at least the heavy parts, probably not the pumps, valves and such) would be immensely useful.

[Dispatcher]

... the Moon and near-Earth asteroids are the best target for the next step, simply because they can provide fuel and structural metals where it's most needed: in LEO

Also, I remember discussing at length on another forum the possibility of using aluminium and LOx produced on the Moon as fuel, and NASA has looked into it. Turns out it's not easy (metallic aluminium is not rubber), but it seems doable. Building boosters on the Moon (at least the heavy parts, probably not the pumps, valves and such) would be immensely useful.

I agree with you. I think its sad that we (humankind) haven't been back to the Moon since the early 1970's. But rather than lament that we have no bases or industrial infrastructure yet on the Moon, I am a proponent of going back in a concerted effort, prior to setting up shop on Mars or in the vicinity of an NEO.

[nhnifong]

I'm working on a planet terraforming puzzle game (for scientists!) with a friend of mine, and If anyone subbed to this thread would like to be a chemistry advisor, please PM me.

You are given a randomly generated planet and have to use certain chemicals to try and make an autocatalytic cycle that works for that planet. You can speed up or reverse time at will, and you gradually acquire more powerful terraforming tools such as the power to divert comets and asteroids into collision trajectories, set off volcanic eruptions, and detonate explosions.

I still need to determine what the optimal balance is between playability and realism such that there are a number of not-too-difficult solutions to each puzzle.