Terraforming Venus
closed account (N36fSL3A)
We haven't had a good debate in a while, and people have left, so here's something that should bring us back to a normal state.
I know I made a thread about terraforming Mars a while back, but I think that terraforming Venus would be a more sensible investment. It's 80% the size of Earth, so unlike Mars, people born on Venus would likely be able to visit Earth someday.
There are problems.
- Poisonous clouds
- Large Amount of C02 in atmosphere
- Pressure
- Hot
- Many volcanoes.
- Slow rotation
I propose bombarding Venus with Sodium Bicarbonate to cancel out the sulfuric acid in the clouds. Then, since hydrogen is in abundance in the universe, we can bombard it with packets of it to react with the carbon dioxide and make graphite. Once we do that, we can import various bacteria/plants to adsorb the remaining carbon dioxide and release oxygen. The pressure due to the atmosphere, and the hot climate of Venus are a direct result of the thick atmosphere. If there was some way to pump CO2 out of Venus' atmosphere, we possibly could add it to Mars' atmosphere, and heat it up. That way, we get two habitable planets...
Another problem is water. We would need some sort of way to create water on the planet. We could manually take water from our planet, that'd require ~10 percent of the water covering it. That amount would cover Venus' surface by 80%, due to it's relatively flat surface.
The final problem is rotation. We need some way to speed up the rotation... this part I'm actually clueless about, what are your ideas?
I know I made a thread about terraforming Mars a while back, but I think that terraforming Venus would be a more sensible investment. It's 80% the size of Earth, so unlike Mars, people born on Venus would likely be able to visit Earth someday.
There are problems.
- Poisonous clouds
- Large Amount of C02 in atmosphere
- Pressure
- Hot
- Many volcanoes.
- Slow rotation
I propose bombarding Venus with Sodium Bicarbonate to cancel out the sulfuric acid in the clouds. Then, since hydrogen is in abundance in the universe, we can bombard it with packets of it to react with the carbon dioxide and make graphite. Once we do that, we can import various bacteria/plants to adsorb the remaining carbon dioxide and release oxygen. The pressure due to the atmosphere, and the hot climate of Venus are a direct result of the thick atmosphere. If there was some way to pump CO2 out of Venus' atmosphere, we possibly could add it to Mars' atmosphere, and heat it up. That way, we get two habitable planets...
Another problem is water. We would need some sort of way to create water on the planet. We could manually take water from our planet, that'd require ~10 percent of the water covering it. That amount would cover Venus' surface by 80%, due to it's relatively flat surface.
The final problem is rotation. We need some way to speed up the rotation... this part I'm actually clueless about, what are your ideas?
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| we can bombard it with packets of it to react with the carbon dioxide and make graphite |
Reading this, I thought of two things.
1) How are you supposed to get the hydrogen? Just because its the most common element doesn't mean its easy to get (most of it is in stars)
2) We will never run out of lead pencils ever again.
Another problem I can think of:
The energy required to do this is well and truly beyond the energy that is available to Earth at this current time, especially considering the massive volumes of elements that we would require to send to Mars. For example, for the water, Since there is 1.26 yottaliters of water on earth, that would require taking 126 exaliters (1.26 * 10^20 liters, 10%) of water to Venus, a distance of at least 38 million kilometres.
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Terraforming mars would be so much easier than terraforming venus.
That said, terraforming isn't anything close to our technical capabilities at the moment. There are at least some ideas for mars that seem some what plausible even if they would take decades if not centuries.
Humans can't even currently make a probe that would survive in venus's atmosphere let alone surface for long.
Here check this out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_probes#Venus_probes
The longest anything we've made that lasted on the surface was about an hour.
The longest anything we've made that lasted floating in the atmosphere was about 2 days.
I'm all for innovating and pushing boundaries, but to even attempt venus without trying something easier first seems an irresponsible allocation of time and resources.
That said, terraforming isn't anything close to our technical capabilities at the moment. There are at least some ideas for mars that seem some what plausible even if they would take decades if not centuries.
Humans can't even currently make a probe that would survive in venus's atmosphere let alone surface for long.
Here check this out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_probes#Venus_probes
The longest anything we've made that lasted on the surface was about an hour.
The longest anything we've made that lasted floating in the atmosphere was about 2 days.
I'm all for innovating and pushing boundaries, but to even attempt venus without trying something easier first seems an irresponsible allocation of time and resources.
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closed account (13bSLyTq)
Humanity would never do that, keeping in mind when humans can truly terraform planets:
- If they have terraform technology, they must have advanced space exploration capabilities.
- There are planets which are less energy consuming and does not require any "manmade" interference.
- A better target would be Mars as the temperature is similar to that in Antarctica and Arctic not to mention, it has similar time of day
- Mars has a better environment overall than venus in terms of human life.
- Mars is already a selected candidate for many Space Exploration programmes
Venus (Specific)
- Venus contains pressure which can squash a Human being like a pancake
(92 times more atmospheric pressure than of Earth)
- Constant Meteorological bombardment
- The temperatures soar to the temperature of your Oven\Microwave.
- Venus has C02 filled enviroment
- Volcanic Activity is very high.
With that said Venus will most likely never be terraformed.
- If they have terraform technology, they must have advanced space exploration capabilities.
- There are planets which are less energy consuming and does not require any "manmade" interference.
- A better target would be Mars as the temperature is similar to that in Antarctica and Arctic not to mention, it has similar time of day
- Mars has a better environment overall than venus in terms of human life.
- Mars is already a selected candidate for many Space Exploration programmes
Venus (Specific)
- Venus contains pressure which can squash a Human being like a pancake
(92 times more atmospheric pressure than of Earth)
- Constant Meteorological bombardment
- The temperatures soar to the temperature of your Oven\Microwave.
- Venus has C02 filled enviroment
- Volcanic Activity is very high.
With that said Venus will most likely never be terraformed.
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closed account (N36fSL3A)
Mars has little gravity compared to Earth and Venus. If a human was born on Mars, the child would have very bad defects and problems with bones an muscles rendering them unable to visit Earth or die from the gravity.
We have no way of knowing how approximately 1/3rd the gravity of earth would affect people without having sent astronauts/long term research teams there first.
The real question is how will the ethicist's finally rationalize letting somebody get pregnant in space or mars and giving birth out there. I'm imagining some kind of huge PR push or reality show if it ever reaches that point.
If people are ever going to leave the planet Earth it would seem prudent to study the effects of different gravities on gestation and conception.
Otherwise we might as well just sit here on earth and keep sending probes until we find something almost exactly like earth.
The real question is how will the ethicist's finally rationalize letting somebody get pregnant in space or mars and giving birth out there. I'm imagining some kind of huge PR push or reality show if it ever reaches that point.
If people are ever going to leave the planet Earth it would seem prudent to study the effects of different gravities on gestation and conception.
Otherwise we might as well just sit here on earth and keep sending probes until we find something almost exactly like earth.
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| We have no way of knowing how approximately 1/3rd the gravity of earth would affect people without having sent astronauts/long term research teams there first |
If the experiences of astronauts on the ISS are anything to go on, living for a few months would cripple you if subjected to earth-grav, a few years could possibly push it beyond repair.
Frankly though, terraforming Mars is actually within the realm of feasibility. Venus though... not so much. Leaving aside the fact that runaway greenhouse effect create outrageously high temperatures, the atmosphere's density is the key problem.
Whereas on Mars you can melt the ice caps (releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere thereby raising temperatures even higher in a cascade effect), then seed the resulting lakes/rivers with oxygen-producing algae, subtracting somehow from the atmosphere on Venus would be so complex as to possibly be never economically viable.
closed account (13bSLyTq)
Well being born on Mars a different thing, if we can terraform planets we would have artificial gravity technology.
Venus would be a excellent place if were to be like mars only in terms of temperature and atmospheric pressure and such but to get to that stage it would take a lot of energy suppose to having pregnant women to be escorted to Earth in some "World Wide Health Care" Ships.
Next, Venus has acidic environment and it is impossible to even remove it as we would need atleast a half or 3/4 yottaliters of Sodium Bicarbonate.
Venus would be a excellent place if were to be like mars only in terms of temperature and atmospheric pressure and such but to get to that stage it would take a lot of energy suppose to having pregnant women to be escorted to Earth in some "World Wide Health Care" Ships.
Next, Venus has acidic environment and it is impossible to even remove it as we would need atleast a half or 3/4 yottaliters of Sodium Bicarbonate.
I have thought about terraforming Mars before and the best way seems to be meteor bombardment. We could redirect asteroids with near Mars orbits (and maybe some from the asteroid belt) to collide with it. By using the sun and Mars' gravity wells, we can create far larger energies with these impacts than we ever able to raise ourselves through any means. They could free large amounts of CO2, H2O, dust and other substances and with a severe enough assault, perhaps form a basic atmosphere and bring the temperature up to just about livable.
The problems of lower gravity will probably be overcome with improved medical technology in the coming decades, as well as better techniques for keeping fit in low gravity environment.
As for the prospect of terraforming Venus. Consider how much we have done to our own atmosphere. We have spread around much of the land area of Earth and built literally millions of factories and power plants, which are mostly kicking out huge volumes of various greenhouse gases. It's making hardly any difference to Earth's atmosphere (2-4C rise over a century predicted). So how on Earth would you propose to bring down the temperature of a similar sized atmosphere by hundreds of degrees?
Artificial gravity appears to be something we will never have. There is nothing at all in theoretical physics to suggest such a feat to be possible, unless by artificial gravity you actually mean using a force other than gravity, such as magnetism.
The problems of lower gravity will probably be overcome with improved medical technology in the coming decades, as well as better techniques for keeping fit in low gravity environment.
As for the prospect of terraforming Venus. Consider how much we have done to our own atmosphere. We have spread around much of the land area of Earth and built literally millions of factories and power plants, which are mostly kicking out huge volumes of various greenhouse gases. It's making hardly any difference to Earth's atmosphere (2-4C rise over a century predicted). So how on Earth would you propose to bring down the temperature of a similar sized atmosphere by hundreds of degrees?
| Well being born on Mars a different thing, if we can terraform planets we would have artificial gravity technology. |
Artificial gravity appears to be something we will never have. There is nothing at all in theoretical physics to suggest such a feat to be possible, unless by artificial gravity you actually mean using a force other than gravity, such as magnetism.
closed account (13bSLyTq)
Actually NASA, said simply spinning any given object at a speed generates "artificial" gravity without actually using gravity. However it would take energy but until that time we would posses energy creation from the wildest dreams maybe using Anti-Matter. Maybe we could find a way to create ANTI-MATTER in huge quantities in small amount of time.
Anti-Matter is overrated. Its just matter, and just happens to self destuct upon contact with matter. Due to the balance of particles in the start of the universe, and the larger amounts of matter than antimatter, it means that there is almost no antimatter left in the universe. Also, you cannot create matter (matter being energy), that breaks just about every law in physics.
As a really efficient and impractical idea for an "artificial gravity generator", just replace the centre of mars with a really small neutron star? Takes no energy and just requires a million year journey to somehow pull a star along, giving you enough time to hollow out Mars!
As a really efficient and impractical idea for an "artificial gravity generator", just replace the centre of mars with a really small neutron star? Takes no energy and just requires a million year journey to somehow pull a star along, giving you enough time to hollow out Mars!
| Actually NASA, said simply spinning any given object at a speed generates "artificial" gravity without actually using gravity. |
Presumably you're talking about something like:
http://regentsprep.org/regents/physics/phys06/bartgrav/default.htm
However, that obviously has no application in simulating a higher gravity for planets, and I would imagine it suffers problems when you try to put people in giant hamster wheels on a planet surface.
| If the experiences of astronauts on the ISS are anything to go on, living for a few months would cripple you if subjected to earth-grav, a few years could possibly push it beyond repair. |
I'm going to hypothesize that 1/3rd gravity will have different physiological effects on the human body than no gravity.
There is no reason to think that there are only two physiological states for humans. Ie the human body behaves one way in earth gravity's and another way in all the varying ranges of gravity.
So, sending people to mars to see what happens to them would be a good first step.
Other than that, the only reason to send people to live on a planets surface that doesn't have exactly earth-like earth gravity would be if we developed some means of artificial gravity inducement.
Besides that, the only "artificial gravity" that seems somewhat plausible at the moment would require living in space so a spinning spacecraft could take advantage of centripetal force to simulate the "downward" forces on the body. This spinning spacecraft solution would not work on a planets surface.
If the human body can't handle the rigors of different gravities for sustained periods of time then there is no reason to send them out into space or low gravity planets until we develop tech that allows us to make those places hospitable to us. The only way to know how 1/3rd gravity would affect humans is to send people there to live for an extended period of time.
In short, we know that zero gravity is bad for human health, we don't know how bad low gravity is for human health yet or if we can develop medical treatments or other tech to counter these negative effects.
Also, in the absence of Mars as a place to send people, there doesn't seem to be any other planet or moon that is remotely habitable by humans. So if our physiology can't handle low gravity (I'm not saying zero gravity) then we may as well stop wasting money on manned space missions and focus on making better unmanned crafts and engines then do research on artificial gravity inducement and ways to make orbital colony ships. This is assuming it was even economically viable or desirable to send people into space. Automated machines can do most of what humans can, and that which they can't could probably be controlled via signal.
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closed account (13bSLyTq)
The main idea in making antimatter is just getting enough energy in a collision to allow the particles to be made. If you get electrons going fast enough and throw them at a piece of material called a target, preferably made out of atoms that have a large atomic number, you will have a shower of electrons, positrons (anti-electrons) and photons. The details are as follows:
A high-energy electron, when it comes near a nucleus, will feel the electric field of the charged nucleus, and be deflected in its path. The larger the charge of the nucleus, the more frequently this deflection will happen at large angles. When a fast electron is diverted from its straight-line path, it radiates some of its energy away as photons. High-energy photons, when they come near another nucleus, can spontaneously turn into an electron-positron pair (conserving charge and the "number of electrons", which both add to zero since a positron has positive charge and is an anti-electron). The second nucleus is there to exchange energy and momentum with, otherwise you cannot start with a photon (zero mass) and end up with two objects with mass and conserve energy and momentum.
If the electron and positron thus produced have enough energy, they can undergo scattering with more nuclei, radiate photons which can pair-produce more electrons and positrons, creating a whole "shower" of electrons, positrons, and photons. Positrons then can be separated away with magnets and collected in particle accelerators.
illinois University
A high-energy electron, when it comes near a nucleus, will feel the electric field of the charged nucleus, and be deflected in its path. The larger the charge of the nucleus, the more frequently this deflection will happen at large angles. When a fast electron is diverted from its straight-line path, it radiates some of its energy away as photons. High-energy photons, when they come near another nucleus, can spontaneously turn into an electron-positron pair (conserving charge and the "number of electrons", which both add to zero since a positron has positive charge and is an anti-electron). The second nucleus is there to exchange energy and momentum with, otherwise you cannot start with a photon (zero mass) and end up with two objects with mass and conserve energy and momentum.
If the electron and positron thus produced have enough energy, they can undergo scattering with more nuclei, radiate photons which can pair-produce more electrons and positrons, creating a whole "shower" of electrons, positrons, and photons. Positrons then can be separated away with magnets and collected in particle accelerators.
illinois University
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Why are we talking about making anti-matter exactly? Creation of fusion power plants would provide plentiful energy and I really can't see anti-matter creation being a more effective means of harnessing energy. There are huge problems with creation and storage of anti-matter and if you're talking about making positrons in the collisions, you're going to get a lot more energy from fusing protons than annihilating electron - anti-electron pairs.
closed account (N36fSL3A)
Okay fine, since you guys are all for Mars, I'll go for Mars.
If you hit Mars at the wrong angle with an asteroid, bye bye Mars. We *could* find a way to pay companies a small fee to take carbon dioxide emissions of their hands... Once we get enough, we could send it to Mars.
Or, we could go to the top cloud layers of Venus and extract enough little by little to get them to Mars. Of course- the first option is safest, but it'd probably cost lest to do the second.
If you hit Mars at the wrong angle with an asteroid, bye bye Mars. We *could* find a way to pay companies a small fee to take carbon dioxide emissions of their hands... Once we get enough, we could send it to Mars.
Or, we could go to the top cloud layers of Venus and extract enough little by little to get them to Mars. Of course- the first option is safest, but it'd probably cost lest to do the second.
| If you hit Mars at the wrong angle with an asteroid, bye bye Mars. |
Explain?
| We *could* find a way to pay companies a small fee to take carbon dioxide emissions of their hands... Once we get enough, we could send it to Mars. |
How much resources do you think it would take to move vast amounts of CO2 to Mars? Do you not think it might be polluting to do all those rocket launches?
Or, we could go to the top cloud layers of Venus and extract enough little by little to get them to Mars. Of course- the first option is safest, but it'd probably cost lest to do the second. |
What makes you think this would cost less? You need to launch something from Earth which can survive in the top cloud layer of Venus and launch it again from Venus, to Mars. This is way beyond our current best tech and would be monstrously expensive if it were possible.
I have better idea - let's move Venus to Mars' orbit and Mars to Venus' orbit! Venus will cool down and mars will heat up. Just imagine walking by a river of sulfuric acid...
On more serious note, let's imagine that we managed to warm up Mars and make the atmosphere more dense to support liquid water. How much time would we have until solar wind blows off the atmosphere again?
On more serious note, let's imagine that we managed to warm up Mars and make the atmosphere more dense to support liquid water. How much time would we have until solar wind blows off the atmosphere again?
| Lumpkin wrote: |
|---|
| If you hit Mars at the wrong angle with an asteroid, bye bye Mars |
Mars has survived billions of years so far. I don't think it's as fragile as you think. Besides, the same could be said of Earth.
| We *could* find a way to pay companies a small fee to take carbon dioxide emissions of their hands... Once we get enough, we could send it to Mars. |
Ignoring the obvious problem of "how do you transport that much material to another planet", there's another problem here.
Emissions aren't "free gas" that is generated... they're conversion of gas from one form to another. There's only so much matter available... and if you take it away from Earth to give to Mars, then there'll be less on Earth.
Of course we wouldn't remove the atmosphere completely, but when you're talking the volume of gas that is necessary to make any sort of impact on Mars, there would be very serious environment consequences.
Reduced air pressure would make high-altitude places impossible to live. And would make the air much thinner even at lower altitude places.
It would also weaken the "shield" protecting the Earth from debris, making it more susceptible to bombardment by meteors, and possibly harmful solar rays.
Terraforming an entire planet is science fiction. It might be possible 3000 years from now.... but with our current abilities it is impossible to the point of being absurd.
A more reasonable approach is to terraform an extremely small subsection of the planet... like the size of a small city. Kind of like the cities in Cowboy Bebop (see this image):
http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090805152551/cowboybebop/images/0/0c/2_Marscity.png
But even that is far beyond what we're currently capable of
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closed account (N36fSL3A)
| On more serious note, let's imagine that we managed to warm up Mars and make the atmosphere more dense to support liquid water. How much time would we have until solar wind blows off the atmosphere again? |