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Tue 4 May, 2004 08:44 pm
- Terriforming Venus
My guess is: Venus turning 244 times faster on it's axis would produce no decrease in average temperature and no significantly cooler spots unless we also reduced the mass of the atmosphere by 100 times That would cool the equator to about 150 c and the poles to about 100c = the boiling point of water. To get the one bar at lowest elevations of Venus cooled to 60 c at the Equator, and 10 c at the poles we would need to replace 99.95% of the carbon dioxide with nitrogen and oxygen. Venus has about one bar of nitrogen and about .01 bar of argon. Other gases would give the cooling, but most would not be breathable. Humans could then live near the poles if there were negligible other greenhouse gases such as water vapor. So liquid water at the poles, yes but the temperature will rise if you let water evaporate increasing the humidity to 5% or more. Venus has about 2 degrees tilt on it's axis compared to 23 degrees for Earth and Mars. More tilt would make the poles hotter in summer. Less tilt would make the poles cooler but not by much as the tilt is already near zero.
If Venus kept the same face toward the sun that side would be about 200 degrees c with an Earth-like atmosphere and the dark side would be about minus 133 c which would freeze out nearly all the carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid into a huge ice cap. Temperatures would be comfortable for humans in the twilight area, but there would be no free oxygen and less than 1% humidity. Someone suggested it is possible to remove carbon monoxide from carbon dioxide leaving free oxygen. Not easy. Is there a practical way to do that? It is really difficult to make Venus habitable. Please embellish, refute and/or comment. Neil
The boiling point of water is 100C at 1 atmosphere.
The only sensible way to do it as far as I can see is to use an engineered bacteria that eats all the rubbish in Venus' atmosphere and excretes nitrogen and oxygen.
The temperature was measured at 55 degrees f high in the atmosphere of Venus. Hotter both higher and lower, so there is a narrow band where the bacteria (or algae) could thrive. All organisms need energy input. Using 1% of the solar energy that falls on all of Venus to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen would take 60,000 years. That is a long time to supply water and trace nutrients that the algae need. Venus has an enormous amount of carbon dioxide which would make too much oxygen for humans. Venus already has about as much nitrogen as Earth's atmosphere, so it won't have enough nitrogen if we eject 98 % of the Venus atmosphere before we introduce the algae. Neil
Bigger dude.
Need to think bigger.
You don't use normal bacteria. You use a variety that is genetically engineered from the toughest and hardiest bacteria on Earth to be able to survive at the pressures, temperatures and environment at the surface of Venus.
So all you have to do is dump a couple of cannisters of the stuff out of the window of your passing spaceship and wait until the timer dings.
The problem with mars is that there's not much of an atmosphere left to change. We'd have to probably bring along an atmosphere to give to Mars cause Mars is slightly too small to hold onto a light atmosphere.
Asherman wrote:Lets do Mars first.
And Venus in about 20,000 years after it's had time to cool off...
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