NASA's plan for a floating city above Venus

@Brandon9000,

Planning to do something doesn't mean do it before we can.. NASA has plans, but they aren't stupid enough to start shipping people off into space on a dime. Mistakes will be made and lives will be lost however, and regardless if it's a plan to colonize the moon, Venus, Mars, or some discovered life supporting planet that we can either move into, or terraform. Baby steps also can sometimes seem to be giant leaps, and sometimes things cannot be done without making a leap. So I am all in favor of NASA moving forward, especially if it's done jointly with other nations around the world.

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What is the point supposed to be? With Mars we might get into mining, or we might find life. This looks to be on par with putting a flag at the north pole....all symbolism, no profit.

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@hawkeye10,

The profit need not be monetary, the profit is knowledge and expansion there of and our species. What do you think the point was? Scientists aren't scientists because they wanted to pretend to advance us into the future. Just finding life alone would have made the effort worth it. Trying to equate it to symbolism sounds like an argument coming from someone who is uncomfortable with the advancement of science, as if it's all a waste of time. And if that be the case, I dare say go back to living in the stone age. O.o

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@TheJackal,

Look at how fast going to the moon died once we had collected a few rocks, we did not even finish the Apollo missions and we never went back. There has to be a point, otherwise no one is going to pay the freight.

And lets say we wanted to go just for the scientists to play...what has Venus got for them to do?

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@hawkeye10,

look at how much we have accomplished in other areas of cosmology and astrophysics since then? Necessary knowledge before we decide to continue such adventures. We will be back to the moon, especially since the discover of water on the moon.

Furthermore, you thinks this is just about sending scientists to play rather than advancing humanity and expanding our reach into space. Lastly there are plenty of things for them to do... Things like further study of Venus, how to terraform a planet, how to colonize a planet, and so much more to which includes understanding geological processes on other planets that may contribute to the future of our species.. You must be really small minded to think this is all just about wanting to go out and play.

I must ask a question here... Is it your belief that we should never seek to advance ourselves? Should we all think like you and find furthering knowledge detestable, as of no profit? Well if we had, we would never have made it out of the trees...., and never have made it out of the dark ages.

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@TheJackal,

I don't think there's a snowball's chance in Hades of terraforming Venus. As much as I'd be excited by the prospects of having some long-term program in its atmosphere, I don't see how it'd be the superior choice over Mars for colonization.

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@FBM,

We won't know without trying... However I agree that Mars is the superior choice.. I also think Venus is a test bed for colonizing the upper atmospheres of the gas giants, and ways we could harvest resources from them.

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@TheJackal,

Lets look at men in space

Mercury/gemini/apollo...point, beat the soviets

Nasa/Mir mission...team work with the russians

Skylab...give nasa and the scientists something to do...lasted a short time

ISS.....global teamwork, get a little science done

Non ISS shuttle missions...expensive satellite launches that unnecessarily put lives in danger, get a little science done...done because of national pride, we must be in space, even if only a couple hundred miles above the surface.

Manned space missions have always been primarily motivated by politics, not yearning to learn. This is to be expected, because the taxpayers need to be convinced to pay the bills. Commercial space concerns might take over, but they too are going to need to get paid, they need to have a financial point to the work, which does not include flying around Venus doing who knows what.

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@TheJackal,

That got me to wondering. What would be the advantage of learning how to colonize the Venutian atmosphere over our own? We've already got the ISS going, and the atmosphere of Venus isn't going to much resemble those of any of our gas giants, anyway. Just wondering out loud.

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@FBM,

One option which has been mooted for terraforming Venus is to put a "parasol" in high orbit which would block the solar radiation which reaches the planet. The idea would be to freeze out the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Then, though, you have to do something with it--either "cap" it so that it won't melt and rejoin the atmosphere, or render it into its constituent elements. I don't see Venus as a very attractive choice, either. In the case of Mars, you would be obliged to break the carbon dioxide into its constituent elements and take steps to do this with the southern polar ice cap, which is CO2 ice. One might then get water ice "snowballs" from the rings of Saturn and fling them at Mars. Additionally, nitrogen could be harvested from the upper atmosphere of Titan and could then be flung at Mars.

In both cases, the initial effect would be to melt the "snowballs" in the upper atmosphere of Mars, which would in the former case yield water, followed by hydrogen and oxygen as the object heated up enough to break the water down into its constituent elements. Nitrogen from Titan would just come down as nitrogen, regardless of the heat of atmospheric entry. The present atmosphere of Mars is so scanty that initially, most of the water from Saturnian ice would come out in the atmosphere as water. You'd get crazy snow storms at first. Right now, the atmospheric pressure at the lowest levels of Mars is only about 15 or 16 millibars.

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@hawkeye10,

I detect uneducated internet troll within you.. Your post of ignorance is astounding, and your claim that the ISS produced literally to know science is also laughable. This is simply a very short list, and all of which is relevant to gaining knowledge about living and moving beyond Earth and in deep space. Tons of it for research in developing biospheres in micro-gravity as so forth.

Quote:

Chaos, Turbulence and its Transition Process in Marangoni Convection Marangoni Exp (Fluid Physics Experiment Facility (FPEF) )[96]
Spatio-temporal Flow Structure in Marangoni Convection (Marangoni UVP/MaranGoniat) (Fluid Physics Experiment Facility (FPEF) )[97]
Experimental Assessment of Dynamic Surface Deformation Effects in Transition to Oscillatory Thermo capillary Flow in Liquid Bridge of High Prandtl Number Fluid (Fluid Physics Experiment Facility (FPEF) )[98]
Pattern Formation during Ice Crystal Growth (Ice Crystal) (Solution Crystallization Observation Facility (SCOF) )[99]
Investigation on Mechanism of Faceted Cellular Array Growth (Facet) (Solution Crystallization Observation Facility (SCOF) )[100]
Growth of Homogeneous SiGe Crystals in Microgravity by the TLZ Method (Hicari) (Gradient Heating Furnace (GHF) )
Gene expression of p53-regulated Genes in Mammalian Cultured Cells after Exposure to Space Environment (Rad Gene)[101]
Detection of Changes in LOH Profile of TK mutants of Human Cultured Cells (LOH)[102]
Control of cell differentiation and morphogenesis of amphibian culture cells (Dome Gene)
Integrated Assessment of Long-term Cosmic Radiation Through Biological Responses of the Silkworm, Bombyx mori, in Space (Rad Silk)[103]
RNA interference and protein phosphorylation in space environment using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (CERISE)
Cbl-Mediated Protein Ubiquitination Downregulates the Response of Skeletal Muscle Cells to Growth Factors in Space (Myo Lab)
Hydrotropism and Auxin-Inducible Gene Expression in Roots Grown under Microgravity Conditions (Hydro Tropi)[104]
Biological effects of space radiation and microgravity on mammalian cells (Neuro Rad)
Life Cycle of Higher Plants under Microgravity Conditions (Space Seed)[105]
Regulation by Gravity of Ferulate Formation in Cell Walls of Rice Seedlings (Ferulate)[106]
Applied Research Fields[edit]
High Quality Protein Crystallization Research (HQPC)[107]
Applied research core center promotion program New material development (Protein Crystallization Research Facility (PCRF))
Applied research core center promotion program Dynamics of Interfaces (Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF))
Human Space Technology Development Fields[edit]
Passive Dosimeter for Life Science Experiments in Space (PADLES)[108]
High Definition TeleVision transmitting system (HDTV)[109]
Varidation of On-orbit Digital Holter ECG Monitoring[110]
Bisphosphonates as a Countermeasure to Space Flight Induced Bone Loss[111]
Educational and Cultural Utilization Fields[edit]
Space Poem Chain (ISS Experiment)[112]
Pilot missions for utilization for culture and humanity and social sciences
Commercial Utilization Fields[edit]
Fee-based utilization of Kibo is available to unrestricted research groups for commercial use. Costs involved in the operation will be paid by each user. The results obtained through the utilization will belong to the user.[95]
Exposed Facility (EF) Experiments[edit]
Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI)[113]
Space Environment Data Acquisition Equipment - Attached Payload (SEDA-AP)[114]
Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb Emission Sounder (SMILES)[115]

See also :
http://kibo.jaxa.jp/en/experiment/theme/first/
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090029998.pdf

ISS is essential to the goals of sending and colonizing the other planets, and as well as in research to life in space. Any further response to you would be an intellectual waste of time. Yes, you're the type we ought to ignore as we move forward in science and the future.

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@Setanta,

15 or 16 millibars, eh? I'm thinking that Mars won't have the gravity to hold a moist, habitable atmosphere outside of biodomes. That's the way I'd start, anyway. Probably with subterranean living quarters.

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@FBM,

Yes, those are very good ideas. If you have robot factories separating the carbon from the oxygen in the atmosphere and at the southern polar ice cap, you could make carbon nano-tube fiber which could then be used to make your biodome tents. Martian gravity is .38 G, so i think it could hold a relatively dense atmosphere at the lower levels.

If we detect any significant amounts of "stragegic" minerals there, the mining companies will line up to finance colonization, so long as the colonists are miners with few to no civil rights.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Yes, those are very good ideas. If you have robot factories separating the carbon from the oxygen in the atmosphere and at the southern polar ice cap, you could make carbon nano-tube fiber which could then be used to make your biodome tents. Martian gravity is .38 G, so i think it could hold a relatively dense atmosphere at the lower levels.

Artificially create those lower levels, then?

Quote:

If we detect any significant amounts of "stragegic" minerals there, the mining companies will line up to finance colonization, so long as the colonists are miners with few to no civil rights.

Civil rights, schmivil rights. Rolling Eyes

You can't be a pussy about such details if you're going to colonize another planet. Kidding aside, I'd sign up for slave labor (within reason) if it meant I could be on the team. That would be such a ******* blast.

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@FBM,

Naw . . . the lower levels are already there. Sometime remind to tell you about the Vastitas Borealis, which is 10,000 to 20,000 feet below the level of the 'chaoses" in the southern hemisphere.

The Hellas Basin is the largest, visible impact basin in this system, and is about 23,000 feet deep. It's about 1500 miles in diameter. Them Yer-a-peein' jokers checked it out about a year ago. Click here to see a page about ESA's Mars Express mission's look-see at the Hellas BAsin and the Hellespontus Mountains.

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The blue area at the top (northern hemisphere) is the Vastitas Borealis. The big purple spot in the southern hemisphere is the Hellas Planitia, the Hellas Basin. Huge suckers, ain't they?

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/treiman/greatdesert/workshop/marsmaps2/marsmaps2_imgs/mola_color3.jpg

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@Setanta,

**** fire, I bet you could fit a Knoxville or three in either one. You sure they'd hold enough moist, oxygen-rich atmosphere over the long term without a biodome, though? I hear the wind whips it up right smart during certain seasons. And then there's the temperature control that a dome offers...a greenhouse-type dome...

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There is a thesis (a minority thesis, admittedly) that the Vastitas Borealis was once an Oceanus Borealis, and that Martian gravity was once from .45 to .50 G. This thesis has it that Mars was struck by a planetesimal about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, and that a lot of water and other volatiles were blasted out into space, along with a big chunk of the Martian surface from the northern hemisphere. The thesis has it that the planetesimal struck a glancing blow on the northern hemisphere. It purports to explain the so-called asteriod belt as the detritus of the impact, and the rings of Saturn as the frozen volatiles swept up by Saturn as it passed through the "cloud" of volatiles the next time it came through. Even at .38 G, Mars should have no problem holding a 500 millibar atmosphere at the lowest levels.

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@FBM,

By the way, if you had an opaque dome to protect humans and livestock, you wouldn't need much in the way of domes for plant life--just enough to keep some heat in. They'd love the CO2 rich atmosphere.

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In this thread about Mars i posted a lot of info on the Martian surface.

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NASA's plan for a floating city above Venus

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