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Ignoring the distance (which is a big thing, I admit) might Venus be a better choice to try and make livable compared to Mars?
by paganel 4y ago
Ignoring the distance (which is a big thing, I admit) might Venus be a better choice to try and make livable compared to Mars?
- ayende 4y agoReally hot, ACID rain. Not really
- deepdriver 4y agoThe wonderful pop science channel Kurzgesagt has a video on this: https://youtu.be/G-WO-z-QuWI https://youtu.be/G-WO-z-QuWI
- XorNot 4y agoVenus is close too but not quite tidally locked. Even if you could solve the considerable other problems, a planet with a day/night cycle nearly 6 months long isn't usable anywhere except the poles, and "spinning up" a planet is an absolutely enormous challenge compared to building a biosphere.
- drran 4y agoIt's possible to live on floating platforms, because O2 is lighter than CO2. By capturing of sunlight (or strong winds), platform can generate a lot of energy to split CO2 into O2 and carbon, to keep platform flying forever, even with moderate leaks.
- euroderf 4y agoIsn't the main problem with Venus mainly an excess of carbon ? Is there any way to use (say) solar power to extract it and mass drivers to fling it off-planet ? It would have to scale. Megamegamega-ly.
- rbanffy 4y agoBefore anything else, you’ll need to cool it down. We could use solar sails for that as well, but to make shade instead of extra sunlight. It’d require a lot more sails (but they could be less efficient at producing thrust) than heating Mars. They’d need to be parked closer to the Sun than Sun-Venus L1 to compensate for the push they’ll get from the Sun. According to my napkin math, a sunshade capable of completely obstructing sunlight to Venus would require at least 450 million sails of 1 square kilometre each. Seems doable for a civilisation slightly more advanced than ours.