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If you can extract materials from a gas giant it is probably best to just live around the gas giant. Short term Venus looks more amenable to life, though.
by R0b0t1 6y ago
If you can extract materials from a gas giant it is probably best to just live around the gas giant. Short term Venus looks more amenable to life, though.
- bluGill 6y agoThat depends - where does energy come from. If we never figure out fusion, then it may be we can find the energy to extract a few materials, but not enough to live there long term. Depends on the material - a large platinum (very rare, the industrial need per year is greater than the total production in a century so industry makes do with something not as good) would be worth it, while iron is everywhere on earth so not worth it.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoWe already produce a significant quantity of ruthenium, rhodium and palladium in spent nuclear fuel and choose not to extract them. If these metals became more widely available the market price would collapse, which now would not justify both mining or nuclear reprocessing. Going to space to mine a nickel-iron asteroid would be out, for very much the same reason.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoGoing to space to mine a nickel-iron asteroid makes a lot of sense, because the material is then already in space and you can use it for orbital manufacturing without having to pay the energy cost of getting it out of Earth’s gravity well.
- bluGill 6y agoI specified platinum for a reason. High value, and high potential demand. I believe that if supply expanded price would go up as industrial processes switch. (diesel catalytic converters would be better with platinum, but total world supply covers less than 10% of all diesel engines so they use alternatives)
- HarryHirsch 6y agoThe lighter platinum group metals are widely used as catalysts to produce large-volume chemicals. Off the top of my head there's methyl acrylate, vinyl acetate, acetic acid, many more. Rhodium is especially scarce, palladium not so much, but it's a political metal, a substantial part of world production is not in the West. Rhodium use would go up were it more available, lots of interesting chemistry there, and political security is also worth a lot, but extraction from nuclear reprocessing isn't happening. That's the intersection of politics and the markets, where markets become political.
- nine_k 6y agoThe problem is it is too far from the local star, so it's cold there.
- cgriswald 6y agoThe radiation would be a significant problem.
- AftHurrahWinch 6y ago142 comments and this is the only one mentioning ionizing radiation. Are you and I missing something that everyone else already knows?
- TeMPOraL 6y agoCould we extract hydrogen from the outer planets and just shoot it at Venus? I.e. no tanks and transport ships, just a well-aimed jet of gas.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoIn principle, you could ionize the hydrogen and then accelerate a proton beam in the direction of Venus. But I think Venus has an active magnetic field powerful enough that it would be deflected off into space. Plus, accelerating mass out of the gravity well of a gas giant would be extremely energy intensive. Better to go looking for sources that aren’t at the bottom of a giant gravity well.
- sudosysgen 6y agoWhy not let it cool off away from a plasma phase before hitting Venus?
- dodobirdlord 6y agoI suppose you could fire a proton beam and an electron beam so that they would intersect before reaching Venus.