Terraforming Venus

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Proposed methods require technology far beyond the present, such as a sun shade with a radius of about 10,000 kilometers that blocks photons from the Sun, except for the wavelengths most valuable for photo synthesis. Worse it needs to be a stay tight that uses considerable energy to stay close to Venus's Sun side. The next step is to put an impervious layer in all the low places, of significance, that can be ponds, rivers, lakes, and oceans of sulphuric acid. A cover is installed on each when liquid carbon dioxide rain starts to reach the surface. Can anyone estimate how long the sun light needs to be reduce by 95% to rain out 2/3 of the carbon dioxide. I think the surface temperature needs to be about 30c = a bit below the triple point of carbon dioxide. The sea level pressure is now about thirty atmospheres which may be tolerable to genetically altered humans with a prosthesis to remove carbon dioxide from their blood and add oxygen. The next step is to import how many cubic kilometers of water are needed for rain to fall for agriculture. Possibly it is less costly to use hydroponics in sealed green houses and water extracted from the stored sulpheric acid. Any closer to Earth like will be incredibly costly and take many centuries. Please comment, correct and refute as needed.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 7 • Views: 2,085 • Replies: 13

@neil,

And a lot of this is why it won't happen, unless humans get really, really desperate. But if they do, other options are better. It's a lot easier and cheaper to add heat to a cold orb (think Europa or the like) than to remove heat.

Furthermore, in something like 5 billion years, we'll have solar expansion anyway. While I realize that's an incredibly long view, the upshot to it is that taking to the stars is more sensible, or at least going to the farther reaches of the solar system (most likely as an improved stellar jumping-off point). Going outward makes a lot more sense than trying to go inward.

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@jespah,

we really need to get on with the research.

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@neil,

neil wrote:

Proposed methods require technology far beyond the present

Correct. Why would we want to terraform Venus?

Rather than terraforming planets it seems like it might be easier, and more worthwhile, to genetically/cybernetically modify human beings.

In a few hundred years it seems likely that CRISPR-like technochemistry will be cranking out probably every flavor of human we would ever need.

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Terraforming Venus would take many centuries, probably thousands of years. The atmosphere is so dense it crushed Russian probes which attempted to land on the surface, long before they reached the surface. At mean surface level the atmospheric pressure is more than 90 bar, more than 90 times the pressure on this planet at mean sea level. The planet is slowing down in its rotation, nearing the state of being tidally locked to the star. A day on Venus lasts longer than its year. For all of the problems which would be involved, it makes much more sense to invest the time and materials for such a project on Mars.

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Isn't the temperature around 900 degrees there?

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Yeah, 450 Centigrade--as the result of a runaway greenhouse effect.

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@Setanta,

venus is a bellwether of earth' future. In the first several billion years When the sun was a dimmer less hopped up star, venus was in the habitable zone and there is strong evidence that there was liquid water on that planet. This fluid is gone from the surface as venus's proximity to the sun had negative results (for water and probably life). Runaway greenhouse effect indeed. Its the grandadsy of that phrase
The sun is building up stash of helium that will wvntually cause its expansion into our habitable zone and we will be going the way of venus. SO, terra forming Mars or a moon of Saturn or Jupiter may give us a couple hundred million years of life as the sun grows into a huge hot orange ball fusing helium as its final trick. Hopefully by then we will have gotten it and have the interstellar dimensional thing worked out. Otherwise our individual progeny wont hve as extended a future as was mathematically predicted.

But, what the hell, if it wasnt for deadlines , nothin would happen.

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Titan, we want to terraform Titan. Lots and lots of nitrogen.

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Thanks to all of you. I agree near term Mars is a better option, but we can get ideas from considering Venus, which has almost as much surface gravity as Earth. Giant Sun shades can likely keep Earth cool enough until the Sun actually starts fusing helium instead of hydrogen. Giant sun shades can possibly keep Mars Habitable though out the red giant stage of our Sun. Will we get some advance warning of the helium flash?
Mars needs some 1000 kilometer mirrors to warm the surface, that can orbit Mars, which is much easier than much larger stay tight sun shades, and several provides redundancy. Likely we need to warm the surface of Mars to 30c to get a half bar of atmosphere, which some present humans can tolerate with a mask that supplies 99% oxygen, as a warmer Mars will have too much carbon dioxide. Some plants are ok with 30 c, near zero free oxygen, and lots of carbon dioxide, but they need water and fertilizer. If we can get a super conductor that works at 30c, we can possibly reduce the ionizing radiation over a square mile or more to Denver, Colorado or better radiation levels. Can someone tell us about terriforming Titan?

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@neil,

I wonder if it would be feasible to harvest gases from Venus for use on other orbs, at least to get them started. Go there, skim off the top, bring back to Ganymede (or wherever) and at least start the warming process. I haven't thought of this beyond science fiction-style speculation, but it just seems like a place with excess heat, if there could be a way to harness some of that efficiently (which is the real issue of course) and send it where it was needed, that could maybe do something ...?

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Probably not but why would you want to terraform Venus anyway?

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@farmerman,

I don't think Homo Sapiens will be the same in less then 300 years away, go figure in the next 1 billion years ahead which is the time estimated for Earth to get a bit to hot way before the sun expands into a red giant...by that time AI is all that its left on this world and AI can live wherever it wants so long there is sunlight strong enough to charge batteries.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Ai would still be testing physical limits of an environment.
Could we transform into equivalents of energy with designed gossamer structure ?
We know now that life can take some unique and weird forms to solve problems.

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Terraforming Venus

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