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Sweet. Venus has a very dense CO2 atmosphere with negligible amounts of oxygen and about twice the insolation of Earth. Let's set up some high altitude blimp
by jboggan 13y ago
Sweet. Venus has a very dense CO2 atmosphere with negligible amounts of oxygen and about twice the insolation of Earth. Let's set up some high altitude blimps above the cloud layers as floating solar syngas factories. I'm a little busy right now but in 10 years when Musk has the launch vehicles figured out I think we should do it.
Edit: I didn't type it because I thought it was obvious, but this would be producing fuel for rockets and other vehicles operating in exploration, not for bringing back to Earth to put in your car.
- bhousel 13y agoIt's not too early to patent the process..
- nostromo 13y agoI wouldn't look to Musk to create cheap and environmentally friendly hydrocarbon fuels. ;) At least not until every house already has an outlet for their Tesla.
- jboggan 13y agoI hope Musk would have better business sense than lifting hydrocarbons from Venus back to Earth in order to burn them in cars! This would be for fueling transport and exploration of the solar system, it's always cheaper to make it there than bring it with you.
- trhway 13y agoi think efficient fuel cells converting "cheap and environmentally friendly hydrocarbon fuels" straight into electricity would definitely be of interest to Musk - replace the 500Kg battery with 200Kg of the cell and the fuel and double the range of the Tesla. Of course there is also batteries (metal-air) with 10x capacity vs. current lithium-ion - in couple years they may make even the above mentioned fuel cell improvements obsolete.
- mikeash 13y agoI don't see why not. He builds electric cars, yes, but he also builds rockets. Falcon 9 burns kerosene with liquid oxygen and burns about 30,000 gallons for a launch.
- kashkhan 13y agovenus also has a 93 times the pressure at the surface, and a temperature of 500 deg c ( that's when steel becomes red hot) in a sulphuric acid fog cloud. So unless elon musk is superman it is unlikely that a solar plant will ever be made on the venus surface.
- trhway 13y agothis is why parent mentioned blimps - this is how human installations will exist there
- mikeash 13y agoTo elaborate, there's a certain altitude on Venus where both the temperature and pressure are like what we're used to on Earth. The air isn't breathable, but you don't need pressurization or temperature control, just breathing gas. Or if you're sending a robot, not even that.
- aruggirello 13y agoDid anybody mention Venus breeze? It seems Venusians are well aware of Elon Musk's plans and actively preparing for our arrival: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express/The_fast_winds_of_Venus_are_getting_faster http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Expres...
- jboggan 13y agoExactly. Building a blimp for something analogous to Earth atmospheric conditions wouldn't be terribly challenging from an engineering perspective. Getting the fuel into Venus orbit in a packaged form would be highly desirable though, now I'm thinking about docking a rocket with a blimp. I guess if you can hover a rocket to land on a flat surface you can hover it up to mate with the bottom of a floating factory platform. Cool.
- kashkhan 13y agodo a blimp with an area measured in sq km is a mean feat. Also venus is in a worse gravitational well position than earth so even if you could make gigawatts of power there it would mostly get wasted getting up outside. And that is after you get past the 1.73% efficiency of this process. icy/carbonaceous Asteroids on the other hand in the same orbit would be gold.
- breischl 13y agoWow, if there's one thing that's worse than burning fossil fuels, it's importing entirely new carbon from another planet so you can burn it. The environmentalists are going to love you! >> negligent amounts of oxygen Yeah, I've heard that the oxygen on Venus doesn't pay attention to anything and is generally untrustworthy. Stupid negligent atoms! ;-)
- apendleton 13y agoThe whole promise of environmental friendliness is that this is carbon-neutral because the carbon released from burning the fuel was already in the atmosphere anyway. If we import it from Venus, we lose all the benefits.
- lugg 13y agoBuilding up reserves while still neutral could have a net negative effect - which would be handy.
- mrfusion 13y agoWould this be a good way to terraform venus?
- jboggan 13y agoNot really. If you want to terraform Venus you should bioengineer a flying equivalent of kelp with buoyant gas bladders and let that do the work.
- mrfusion 13y agoCool idea. Has that been suggested before? Is it possible? I thought there was too little h2o on Venus for plant life.
- aruggirello 13y agoI can only imagine the tranquillity of such a buoyant thing, immersed in an atmosphere boiling at 872°F/500°C (a temperature capable of melting lead), while fierce winds endlessly blow at 300-400 Km/h (faster than any tornado on Earth)...
- mrfusion 13y agoThe atmospheric pressure and temperature approximately fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at Earth's surface.
- aruggirello 13y agoAnd what about wind speeds? Because when we have 400Km/h winds at Earth's surface, we call it a category 5 hurricane...
- dredmorbius 13y agoIf everything's moving at the same speed, it's not much of an issue. Turbulence and vortices, that could be problematic.
- samstave 13y agoNeed more vespeen gas...