4 ms·

I reckon we'll master terraforming worlds here in our solar system by the time practical (or impractical) interstellar travel becomes a thing. We can get to Ma

I reckon we'll master terraforming worlds here in our solar system by the time practical (or impractical) interstellar travel becomes a thing. We can get to Mars, Venus, Titan, etc. Will it ever be possible to get to another star system in a useful amount of time? Terraforming Venus would be sweet; as soon as you do it, I'll come visit!

stcredzero 9y ago
Venus is pretty sweet as it is. Go high enough in the atmosphere, and you have about Earth atmospheric pressure and room temperatures. That altitude in the Venus atmosphere is effectively an Earth biosphere sized almost-Earthlike living space. One convenient circumstance: A breathable Earthlike atmosphere will float at that altitude, so it would be easy to live in floating balloon habitats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ5KV3rzuag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ5KV3rzuag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I
- amorphid 9y ago
  I can see the appeal of doing because it's cool. That's the primary reason I'd consider going into space. I'm not sure roughing it in a balloon would be the my idea of a good time once the novelty wore off. I wonder if there'd be some tangible benefit to colonizing Venus for adventurous entrepreneurial types... "There's gold in and/or on them thar clouds!" There's nothing like bajillions in potential profits to get people excited about moving to the a frontier. Actually... With floating cities, the idea of a space elevator isn't that crazy. What could we do with space elevators on Venus?
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    I'm not sure roughing it in a balloon would be the my idea of a good time once the novelty wore off. What if the small balloons were the size of a Las Vegas resort, and the average ones where something like Manhattan? I wonder if there'd be some tangible benefit to colonizing Venus for adventurous entrepreneurial types... "There's gold in and/or on them thar clouds!" The society that might arise in an entirely fluid, borderless geography might have a certain attraction. Venus might wind up being the next Las Vegas, writ large in the 21st century. With floating cities, the idea of a space elevator isn't that crazy. What could we do with space elevators on Venus? You could have ultra-high altitude balloons that can act as staging centers for rotorvators. Those would be way cheaper than space elevators to manufacture.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      There is zero chance of building viable space elevators or floating cities around Venus without magical 100% scifi technology. The lower atmosphere of Venus is denser than the surface of Earth’s ocean, but with extremely violent currents. The upper atmosphere - at the “inhabitable” level - has similar but much less dense winds, with the added henefit of a charmingly toxic and aggressive haze of sulphuric acid. It might just about be possible to build a floating research station, at vast effort and expense, but floating cities are not going to happen without some near-magical breakthroughs in materials science and engineering. And without access to the surface, there isn’t much to do above Venus anyway.
      - stcredzero 9y ago
        floating cities are not going to happen without some near-magical breakthroughs in materials science and engineering. The acid clouds aren't that bad. People have even worked out how to manufacture PTFE out of the Venusian atmosphere, so there's your acid proofing right there. We already know how to build lighter than air craft. And without access to the surface, there isn’t much to do above Venus anyway. Access to the surface is perfectly doable using teleoperated robots. You can lower them onto the surface with a store of a phase-change substance for cooling. Dry ice might be suitable for that. When they run out, you haul them back up. There's wasn't that much to do in the desert where Las Vegas is located, either.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  If you go to all the trouble to get out of one gravity well, what's the point of anchoring yourself?
  - macintux 9y ago
    Some of us are fond of the conveniences of a gravity well.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    Escaping radiation? Scenery? Proximity to lots of other people? There's a good chance that the barrier of a gravity well is going to go the way of the barrier of mountainous terrain. Also, exchanging the fixed geography of land for the fluid geography of fluid might result in changes to the underlying nature of society. In hunter gatherer days, dissenters could simply walk to a different part of the environment. Farmer's fields and defensive walls anchored people to particular pieces of land. If everyone lived in mobile floating habitats, everyone would be free to move. This is quite likely to change the nature of government. You also get this in a Dyson Swarm, but there's a matter of scale. A minimum viable space colony is likely to be larger and more expensive than a minimum viable floating Venusian compound.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Your habitat won't float as well once I transport some asteroid-mined calcium and magnesium to Jupiter, turn it all into hydrides, package it with transition-metallic catalysts (Co, Ni, Fe, Ru), and shoot it into Venus. MgH2 -> Mg + H2 (thermolysis @ 287 degC) CO2 + H2 --Fe-> CO + H2O (water-gas shift) CO + H2 --Fe-> C + H2O (Bosch) CO2 + 4 H2 --Ni-> CH4 + 2 H2O (Sabatier) 2n+1 H2 + n CO --metal--> CnH(2n+2) + n H2O (Fischer-Tropsch) 2 Mg + CO2 -> 2 MgO + C CaH2 + 2 H2O -> Ca(OH)2 + 2 H2 Ca(OH)2 + CO2 -> CaCO3 + H2O
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    We might have to switch to double-hulls, with the outer section filled with hydrogen. That would be concerning in an atmosphere with appreciable free oxygen, but I suppose you have a plan for that.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      The chemical intervention is only sufficient to get the excess of CO2 out of the atmosphere, which would get the surface pressure down to maybe 3 bar of mostly N2. From there, we'd still have to cool the atmosphere down far enough to support thermophilic autotrophic microbes in the new surface lakes. They would produce oxygen, but slowly, so there wouldn't be any appreciable free oxygen available for a long time. The primary concern would be that Earth-gas would not be a good enough lifting gas in the CO2-depleted Venus atmosphere to keep the floating habitat at a cool enough altitude. Hydrogen-filled chambers would certainly work for that, but you would have to bring that hydrogen with you to Venus. By the time atmospheric oxygen becomes a risk, you would just land the dirigible and burn the hydrogen in a controlled fashion.
      - stcredzero 9y ago
        but you would have to bring that hydrogen with you to Venus Why not extract the hydrogen out of the clouds of acid?
        9y ago
- dTal 9y ago
  It seems a good deal less convenient when you factor in the clouds of concentrated sulfuric acid. Any habitat is going to have to be just as hermetically sealed from the outside world as if you were on Mars, with the additional caveat that everything be acid-proof (including suits). At least Martian atmosphere won't melt your face off if it ever gets inside!

stcredzero 9y ago

Venus is pretty sweet as it is. Go high enough in the atmosphere, and you have about Earth atmospheric pressure and room temperatures. That altitude in the Venus atmosphere is effectively an Earth biosphere sized almost-Earthlike living space. One convenient circumstance: A breathable Earthlike atmosphere will float at that altitude, so it would be easy to live in floating balloon habitats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ5KV3rzuag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ5KV3rzuag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I

amorphid 9y ago
I can see the appeal of doing because it's cool. That's the primary reason I'd consider going into space. I'm not sure roughing it in a balloon would be the my idea of a good time once the novelty wore off. I wonder if there'd be some tangible benefit to colonizing Venus for adventurous entrepreneurial types... "There's gold in and/or on them thar clouds!" There's nothing like bajillions in potential profits to get people excited about moving to the a frontier. Actually... With floating cities, the idea of a space elevator isn't that crazy. What could we do with space elevators on Venus?
- stcredzero 9y ago
  I'm not sure roughing it in a balloon would be the my idea of a good time once the novelty wore off. What if the small balloons were the size of a Las Vegas resort, and the average ones where something like Manhattan? I wonder if there'd be some tangible benefit to colonizing Venus for adventurous entrepreneurial types... "There's gold in and/or on them thar clouds!" The society that might arise in an entirely fluid, borderless geography might have a certain attraction. Venus might wind up being the next Las Vegas, writ large in the 21st century. With floating cities, the idea of a space elevator isn't that crazy. What could we do with space elevators on Venus? You could have ultra-high altitude balloons that can act as staging centers for rotorvators. Those would be way cheaper than space elevators to manufacture.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    There is zero chance of building viable space elevators or floating cities around Venus without magical 100% scifi technology. The lower atmosphere of Venus is denser than the surface of Earth’s ocean, but with extremely violent currents. The upper atmosphere - at the “inhabitable” level - has similar but much less dense winds, with the added henefit of a charmingly toxic and aggressive haze of sulphuric acid. It might just about be possible to build a floating research station, at vast effort and expense, but floating cities are not going to happen without some near-magical breakthroughs in materials science and engineering. And without access to the surface, there isn’t much to do above Venus anyway.
    - stcredzero 9y ago
      floating cities are not going to happen without some near-magical breakthroughs in materials science and engineering. The acid clouds aren't that bad. People have even worked out how to manufacture PTFE out of the Venusian atmosphere, so there's your acid proofing right there. We already know how to build lighter than air craft. And without access to the surface, there isn’t much to do above Venus anyway. Access to the surface is perfectly doable using teleoperated robots. You can lower them onto the surface with a store of a phase-change substance for cooling. Dry ice might be suitable for that. When they run out, you haul them back up. There's wasn't that much to do in the desert where Las Vegas is located, either.
Simon_says 9y ago
If you go to all the trouble to get out of one gravity well, what's the point of anchoring yourself?
- macintux 9y ago
  Some of us are fond of the conveniences of a gravity well.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Escaping radiation? Scenery? Proximity to lots of other people? There's a good chance that the barrier of a gravity well is going to go the way of the barrier of mountainous terrain. Also, exchanging the fixed geography of land for the fluid geography of fluid might result in changes to the underlying nature of society. In hunter gatherer days, dissenters could simply walk to a different part of the environment. Farmer's fields and defensive walls anchored people to particular pieces of land. If everyone lived in mobile floating habitats, everyone would be free to move. This is quite likely to change the nature of government. You also get this in a Dyson Swarm, but there's a matter of scale. A minimum viable space colony is likely to be larger and more expensive than a minimum viable floating Venusian compound.
logfromblammo 9y ago
Your habitat won't float as well once I transport some asteroid-mined calcium and magnesium to Jupiter, turn it all into hydrides, package it with transition-metallic catalysts (Co, Ni, Fe, Ru), and shoot it into Venus. MgH2 -> Mg + H2 (thermolysis @ 287 degC) CO2 + H2 --Fe-> CO + H2O (water-gas shift) CO + H2 --Fe-> C + H2O (Bosch) CO2 + 4 H2 --Ni-> CH4 + 2 H2O (Sabatier) 2n+1 H2 + n CO --metal--> CnH(2n+2) + n H2O (Fischer-Tropsch) 2 Mg + CO2 -> 2 MgO + C CaH2 + 2 H2O -> Ca(OH)2 + 2 H2 Ca(OH)2 + CO2 -> CaCO3 + H2O
- stcredzero 9y ago
  We might have to switch to double-hulls, with the outer section filled with hydrogen. That would be concerning in an atmosphere with appreciable free oxygen, but I suppose you have a plan for that.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    The chemical intervention is only sufficient to get the excess of CO2 out of the atmosphere, which would get the surface pressure down to maybe 3 bar of mostly N2. From there, we'd still have to cool the atmosphere down far enough to support thermophilic autotrophic microbes in the new surface lakes. They would produce oxygen, but slowly, so there wouldn't be any appreciable free oxygen available for a long time. The primary concern would be that Earth-gas would not be a good enough lifting gas in the CO2-depleted Venus atmosphere to keep the floating habitat at a cool enough altitude. Hydrogen-filled chambers would certainly work for that, but you would have to bring that hydrogen with you to Venus. By the time atmospheric oxygen becomes a risk, you would just land the dirigible and burn the hydrogen in a controlled fashion.
    - stcredzero 9y ago
      but you would have to bring that hydrogen with you to Venus Why not extract the hydrogen out of the clouds of acid?
      - 9y ago
dTal 9y ago
It seems a good deal less convenient when you factor in the clouds of concentrated sulfuric acid. Any habitat is going to have to be just as hermetically sealed from the outside world as if you were on Mars, with the additional caveat that everything be acid-proof (including suits). At least Martian atmosphere won't melt your face off if it ever gets inside!