Venus: The Forgotten Planet

Anonymous Coward from Winnipeg writes "These days many of us are consumed by daily batches of spectacular images from our twin Marsbots and international fleet of Mars-orbiting craft. But we should not forget our sister planet, Venus, which has undergone significant exploration in years past. Don P. Mitchell's home page features an intriguing refinement of Soviet surface images using modern reprocessing techniques. Don also includes a terrific overview of the Soviet Venus exploration program. Complete radar mapping of Venus was provided by Magellan ten years ago. Sadly, according to the Venus Exploration Timeline, only two new missions to Venus are envisioned: ESA's Venus Express (using leftover Mars Express and Rosetta equipment) and JAXA's Planet-C orbiter. Apparently, no landings on Venus are planned - is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo?" (We've mentioned Mitchell's reworked images before -- amazing stuff.)

Comments

It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

We do cold and dry much better than hot and caustic. And Mars has all the potential for life evidence (or so we think) so it gets a lot of focus. I think Venus still takes a back seat to the moons of Jupiter. That's where the future action is going to be.

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[shigelojoe]

I think Venus still takes a back seat to the moons of Jupiter. That's where the future action is going to be.

Except Europa, of course.

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[Artifakt]

This is partly a question of energy. Rough calculations seem to suggest that the human race will be producing enough power to be able to break down iron oxides on the Martian surface and free oxygen, or to move icy comet cores from the outer system and impact them on Mars, before that many generations have passed.
We don't know much about what technology would make such things possible, but if you draw even a straight line curve from the technology of the past, such as wood heated boilers, through today (fission), and extrapolate, the time till we can spruce up Mars is only a hundred years or so.
Terraforming Venus, on the other hand, takes changing that long rotation. Even if we could strip off the existing atmosphere, and replace it with 15 PSI worth of 70 some odd % Nitrogen, 22% Oxygen, etc., the Venusian day is so long that such an atmosphere would freeze out on the night side.
Even if we can sustain a technological growth rate that may be just plain impossible in the long run, Mars will be doable generations before Venus.

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[Inspector Lopez]

One of the weird coincidences of the Solar System is that, on every planet, there is a place that is not too far from STP ("standard temperature and pressure --- more or less like sea level and 300 K). In the case of Mars, that place happens to be in a very deep hole in the ground, whereas on Venus and Jupiter, that place happens to be well above the "surface" (whatever that means on Jupiter). For you Mars colonizers, if you dig a hole about 30-40 km deep, you'll find that a pretty good air pressure and temperature will result. It'll be CO2, of course, but perhaps some trees won't mind too much.

In the case of Venus, the question is, then, "why bother landing?" Why not just build yourself a balloon that floats around at some convenient altitude where it's not so hot, below the H2SO4 clouds so you can see the ground, perhaps occasionally deploying gliders or whatever to go down to the surface....

A subsequent /. post mentions that the Soviet landers bounced off the surface at 7m/s. If a "lander" had been equipped with airbags, it probably wouldn't have it the surface at all, if the bags were filled with a gas with lower molecular weight than that of Venus. Rather, it would bob at some altitude(well) above the surface, a sort of low altitude satellite bobbing along in Venus extremely dull weather.

[ The submersibles like the Trieste used "balloons" filled with gasoline to supply bouyancy; the gasoline was not crushed by the terrific pressure down there. Then by shedding ballast, the subermisibles could return to the surface. ]

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[AKAImBatman]

This is partly a question of energy. Rough calculations seem to suggest that the human race will be producing enough power to be able to break down iron oxides on the Martian surface and free oxygen, or to move icy comet cores from the outer system and impact them on Mars, before that many generations have passed.

*cough* Actually we have the power today. When one considers that space travelers' lives depend on energy, one realizes that Nuclear Fission is pretty much a requirement for space travel.

We don't know much about what technology would make such things possible, but if you draw even a straight line curve from the technology of the past, such as wood heated boilers, through today (fission), and extrapolate, the time till we can spruce up Mars is only a hundred years or so.

This is difficult, because the technology already exists for getting to Mars. Unfortunately, our society has been stopping technological progress in favor of the idea that everything must be "safe". So much so, that dangers are percieved where none exist. What people *want* is a Star Trek technology that glosses over how dangerous that much power actually is.

Even if we can sustain a technological growth rate that may be just plain impossible in the long run, Mars will be doable generations before Venus.

No argument here. I was just pointing out that Mars is more interesting *because* it doesn't need to be terraformed. Terraforming is still one of those "on the drawing board" type of things. Simple blimps flying around Venus would be a more viable option. With the extreme pressure of the atmosphere, it's even possible to build floating islands for exploration.

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[AKAImBatman]

just make a nanotube pipe and send it down to suck out the venician atmosphere.

Riiigghhhttt... And just how do you propose to pump the atomosphere? You're trying to pull it *out* of a gravity well. You'd need approximately the same amount of energy for every kilogram of atmosphere that it takes to launch a kilogram of stuff to Earth escape velocity.

A much better option is microbes. If you can get some microbes to start changing CO2 into oxygen, a lot of the O2 will be absorbed by the soil. I can't say how much (or if it will even be enough), but it would be a start.

The only problem with that sort of terraforming is that it would tend to do irreparable damage to the geologic history of the planet. As a result, the whole thing is a bit of a "give and take" type of situation.

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[ajagci]

Assuming those were good reasons to colonize other planets, the time frame of those issues is so long-term (as is the time-frame in which we will be technologically ready to actually colonize other planets in any meaningful way) that it really has no bearing on which planets to target by unmanned probes for the foreseeable future.

In this century and the next, we should pick our targets for maximum scientific benefit, not for the possibility of colonization.

Re:It's not forgotten, just more expensive

[phreakmonkey]

Unfortunately, our society has been stopping technological progress in favor of the idea that everything must be "safe". So much so, that dangers are percieved where none exist. What people *want* is a Star Trek technology that glosses over how dangerous that much power actually is.

Eh? Are you kidding? It seems like in every other episode of Star Trek that I watched the ship's Warp Core was going to self-destruct and needed to be fixed before it had to be ejected... or there was a matter/anti-matter collision explosion somewhere in engineering. (Granted, they used the latter more often in the original series). Hell, even their phasers were always overloading and being left somewhere to explode, killing a red-shirt or to.

No sirree, I don't think people want a Star Trek technology world at all. :)

- P.M.

BepiColombo

[brokencomputer]

You forgot to mention the BepiColombo that will laucnh on 2011-01-01: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=BEPICLMBO

The real question is WHY

[KingOfBLASH]

I find this article funny. Mars can be inhabited and explored by humans, and there are a lot of possibilities about what could be done there. The martian gravity is weaker then earths, so it becomes much cheaper in fuel costs to launch missions from mars. Add the proximity to the jovian asteroid belts, and we have all the resources we need to do a lot of neat stuff. Venus isn't habitable by humans. Now this doesn't mean that we shouldn't send any probes there, but first thing is first.

Re:The real question is WHY

[Chapium]

The reason my friend is, that everyone believed Venus was inhabitable around the time the Soviets began exploring it. Their initial lander they sent there got fried because they thought it was only going to be about 80-100 degrees Farenheit on the surface; not 3-5x that.

Re:The real question is WHY

[Graff]

first thing is first... fixing problems on earth.

Opening up new horizons is part of fixing the problems on Earth. Not only is the space program generating research that is highly applicable to current Earthly problems*, it is also providing for an eventual safety valve where disaffected members of society can go off to a Moon or Mars colony to start a new life rather than remaining on crowded Earth.

An example of this can be seen in the early pioneering days of the United States. Sure it was a tough, difficult, and often deadly trip west but many people did it anyways in order to start off new. Many of those people had been feeling stifled in the eastern cities and so they went west, relieving the social caldrons which were beginning to boil over.

The fact that there was an open frontier allowed people to be innovative and to take a chance that they might get a piece of land of their own and maybe even have their own business. It provided the poorest person with the opportunity to be successful and to pass their success on to their children. When there are no frontiers this is much harder to do.

* Such as medicine, hydroponics, closed ecosystems, energy sources, micro-mechanization, robotics, etc.

Re:The real question is WHY

[kels]

Well, scientifically Venus is at least as intriguing as Mars, at least in terms of the big picture. It is much closer in size & mass to Earth, and so would be expected to evolve geologically in a very similar way. From what we know, Venus does not seem to work like Earth at all, with no signs of plate tectonics. Why not? Was it different in the past? Is it due to the different surface conditions (temperature, presence of water)?

The planet is thought to have been completely resurfaced around 500 million years ago, with relatively little geological activity since then. Why?

And the biggest question of all, how did the atmosphere & surface temperature of Venus evolve? Was it ever a place that had Earth-like surface conditions (liquid water)? Could it ever have supported life? Was a runaway greenhouse effect an inescapable consequence of receiving ~2x the solar radiation of Earth, or did Earth escape that fate due to the fact that biological activity has been sequestering CO2 for hundreds of millions of years?

In terms of planetary evolution, Venus, Mars & Earth seem to be the too hot, too cold, just right examples. Is the hospitibility of our planet due completely to the luck of its position at 1 AU from the sun, or did other factors come into play (stabilization of Earth's rotation & climate by our large Moon, for example)?

There's a lot we still don't know about our solar system, and Venus is a vital piece of that puzzle. If it's all about resources or human habitation, no, Venus isn't an attractive destination. But scientifically, it is key.

Re:The real question is WHY

[Tablizer]

The planet is thought to have been completely resurfaced around 500 million years ago, with relatively little geological activity since then. Why?

The aliens screwed up their first attempt at planting humans, and decided to flush Venus clean and try a new colony on Earth. I think they are reaching for the handle again.

Mars is a Prospect for Money

[Qweezle]

People look at Mars these days, almost as the "next Earth"...dreams and hopes from businesses the world over of exotic minerals, huge deposits of iron and whatnot, and this drives many to support Mars exploration

There are also those who of course, believe that Mars is chiefly where we will dump those extra billions of people we are going to have in the next 100 years.

But Venus should not be forgotten, it is a legitimate testing ground for technology and a potential "gold mine" in itself.

Re:Mars is a Prospect for Money

[styrotech]

This is questionable. Mars is substantially warmer, for one.

Mars would be colder than Antarctica most of the time.

Mars
Antarctica

And Antarctica does better in the oxygen and water availability stakes.

Re:Mars is a Prospect for Money

[ajagci]

There are also those who of course, believe that Mars is chiefly where we will dump those extra billions of people we are going to have in the next 100 years.

You're gonna ship African and Indian street kids to Mars by the billions? Because that's where those "extra billions" come from. It's not going to happen.

There are only two ways we will deal with the population explosion: family planning and social changes on the one hand, or disease and starvation on the other.

Landing on Venus

[eluusive]

Landing is not currently possible with the level of technology you puny earthlings currently possess. Our atmosphere would crush you faster than you can say Venusian.

There's a good reason we choose Mars, not Venus

[CrystalFalcon]

The most compelling reason to not send bots to Venus, but to Mars, would be Venus' surface temperature. If you think the greenhouse effect is bad on Earth, try an atmosphere comprised almost exclusively of greenhouse gases, and hop in a notch towards the Sun.

Try surface temperatures in the range of 400-500 degrees C, and watch closely as that poor overclocked Pentium powering the robot overheats like an Eskimo who's in Rio de Janiero to watch the carneval.

Thanks, I'd rather try for Mars first, with temperatures in the much more comfortable range for Earth-invented technology. Hell, we don't even have to shield it for temperature most of the time, as it is just marginally cooler on Mars and the electronics gives off some heat by itself to stay warm.

Reflects Rational Use of Resources

[reallocate]

No, the lack of a stampede to Venus is not evidence of a loss of "advanced space travel capabiilty".

It is a function of limited resources and the obvious sense that Mars is more likely to have been, or be, hospitable to life than Venus.

Venus isn't as interesting as Mars...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the short term, at least. Consider: the conditions on Venus are very inimical to human life; we'd have to invest in some serious tech to counteract the atmosphere and the heat.

In contrast, Mars is much simpler: domes to hold atmosphere in (with the possibility of terraforming to make a breathable atmosphere), and you're pretty much there.

After Mars, there is a good prospect of moving on to Jovian moons, possibly Saturn's moons as well. Venus, however, doesn't have much to offer us until we've had a chance to refine our space-going technology with Mars and Jovian adventures.

Amazing

[M0b1u5]

Excellent to see old, crappy images reworked with hi-tech to reveal things the original science team were never capable of seeing! What amazes me about the images is that there's enough light on the surface to actually see ANYTHING! I mean, isn't the surface pressure on the order of hundreds of atmospheres? To me, that implied some sort of soupy and only partly transparent atmosphere. The radar map of the surface is remarkable in that there are no craters visible - evidence of extreme and recent volcanic activity I assume. All together a very interesting planet - but one unlikely to see human footprints until we've throughly explored the Jupiter system I susppect. Just how on Venus would you design and use a pressure suit that can take the rather dangerous and corrosive Venusian Atmosphere, at ridiculous temeratures and pressures?

Re:Amazing

[kwan3217]

Its not even that complicated. The thing which killed all the Venera landers wasn't temperature or pressure, but battery life. The batteries only lasted two hours on the surface. Next probably would have been temperature. Pressure doesn't seem to be a problem, since Venera lives inside a pressure vessel and that worked just fine.

I have seen a design for a long-lived lander which uses an RTG (nuclear power) instead of batteries, to run a refrigerator and the rest of the gadgets for months or years.

Good reasons to not land on Venus.

[THotze]

Look at all the problems we've had with landing a craft on Mars - a planet whose surface we can see, which isn't THAT much farther away than Venus (both are too far to do say, human controlled robotics directly). And Mars is just a cold mound of rock, with some relatively flat spots. Its not a huge strecth of existing terrestrial technology to build a Mars rover - all you need to do is keep the electornics warm, and use low power so that you can use solar.

Now, on Venus, the surface temperature is about 750'K - 900'F. now, a server room conks out at a LOT lower temperatures than that. And... did you want to build the lander out of mostly metal? Might not be so smart - it rains sulfuric acid all the time on Venus. That's nasty stuff if you're a lander. Oh, and solar power is out - that sulfuric acid rain comes from a pretty thick cloud cover.

We're also exploring Mars because it seems to be a RELATIVElY Earth-like planet - in that, maybe we can make it work for permanent human habitation.

Venus would just require radically new technology to land on, which isn't smart because the scientific benefits, while real, could be eclipsed in terms of */$ (bang per buck) on other places. And it doesn't look like humans are EVER going to live there. IMHO, the biggest problem that the space program now has is capturing our imagination - a preparing for humans on Mars does it, studying volcanoes on Venus is interesting, but doesn't scratch the human itch for exploration as well.

Re:Good reasons to not land on Venus.

[rodgerd]

Venus would just require radically new technology to land on,

Or you could ask the Russians how the Venera landers worked. I know NIH is a big problem for some people, but overcoming a bit of parochialism never hurt anyone.

The real reason they haven't explored Venus

[foidulus]

It's sexism pure and simple. Mars is the male god of war, and Venus is a goddess. The male chauvenists are the REAL reason almost nobody cares about Venus, and to think, I thought sexism was dead. It's a male dominated solar system.

Name a crater?

[Aardpig]

I had a friend working with NASA when they were naming geological features on the surface of Venus. Since all features were named after women, I managed him to persuade him to name a crater after my girlfriend, as a birthday present to her. Not bad, Venus being the planet of love and all that -- and certainly better than naming a star (star-naming companies are scammers, their catalogues are not recognised by the IAU).

The only drawback, of course, is she's not my girlfriend anymore. However, every time I see Venus on my evening cycle home from work, I'm reminded of her and the crater. Fond memories indeed!

Possibly offtopic, but

[Threni]

shouldn't we be taking care of Earth? Check this out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0, 12 374,1153530,00.html

Scary.

Re:Venus: An Enigma

[heptapod]

Perhaps this page may shed a little light upon your question.

Maybe we could go and live there

[eclectro]

I know that the continual 1200 F sulfuric acid rain is a bummer.

Maybe we could nuke the planet into a nuclear winter to cool it down?

I think I'm going to patent it.

Venus - The forgotten planet!

[Borg453b]

THRILL at its seductive mistresses of mayhem!

MARVEL at the wonders of the future!

EXPERIENCE the mysteries of the forgotten planet.

Our biggest threat came from our very own solar system.

Arrive 30 minutes prior to the movie to receive a FREE stale popcorn and a lukewarm coke

Did anyone anyone think cheap sci-fi feature when reading the heading?

Why are there no Venus landers?

[Xabraxas]

Apparently, no landings on Venus are planned - is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo?

Perhaps this is the reason why we have not seen Venus landers:

Venus today is a scorching, hell-like place -- totally dry, with a surface temperature hotter than the melting point of zinc (800 degrees F) and an enormously heavy, largely carbon dioxide atmosphere, 100 times as dense as Earth's.

I don't know for certain but I imagine that would complicate things enourmously.

Re:Venus harbors life?

[RoLi]

Could the Soviet explorers have found primitive life there and for fear of starting widespread panic decided to keep the whole thing quiet.

The most stupidest conspiracy theories are governments keeping alien life "quiet".

If there would be any evidence for alien life - or even intelligent life out there, the governments would profit the most because it's a good reason to raise taxes for military, etc.

The thought that the government would keep the cover over something that a) clearly isn't their fault, b) is possibly an external threat for which c) only the government has an adequate fix, is pretty dumb, IMO.

I'm all for conspiracies, but there must be some kind of motive behind it.

Venus is a difficult target...

[wizz0bang]

Venus is far more difficult to land on than Mars. We have successfully sent several probes to orbit Venus, and even a few that "landed" on the surface. They lasted a very short time due to: high concentrations of Sulfuric acid (just like in your car battery), high atmospheric pressure, roughly 1500 pounds per square inch to the Earth's roughly 15 pounds per square inch, and not least of all temperatures hot enough to melt lead... up to 450 degrees C.

If we can learn to land on Mars with a much better track record, than perhapds will we be advanced enough to start building probes to explore Venus. But at 400 million a pop, I don't think anyone will want to pay for a whole five minutes of time on Venus just yet.

see:

http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/ headlines/2001/venus.html

Interesting stuff at the website not just Venus

[Tandoori Haggis]

The annonymous contributor from Winnipeg has given us a really cool link: http://www.mentallandscape.com/

Theres much more to it than just Venus - though the material supplied on that subject is pretty damn good.
Nikola Tesla; Rockets; Ion engines; lots of cool stuff. Explore the site - really fascinating stuff.

Easy to land, hard to survive

[Evil Pete]

Its actually ridiculously easy to land on Venus. You don't even need a parachute. The Venera craft didn't use parachutes they just had a dish shaped structure at the top like an umbrella and in the enormously dense atmosphere that was enough to slow the craft to landing speed. However, once there surviving is very difficult, the major problem is the heat. We can build craft to go down 11 km in our oceans, and survive sulphuric acid environments no problem ... but you can't keep an object permanently cold (or cold for extended periods) in such a hot environment.

I'm sure Venus has an interesting history and is worth exploring one day. But probably not for a while. Though the pics are very intriguing.

Re:Venus: An Enigma

[Entropy Unleashed]

Your conspiracy theory, like almost all conspiracy theories, contains elements of both truth and falsehood. No, we almost certainly won't polar bears cavorting over the poles of Venus. However, Venus is undubitably friendly to Earth life. The question is to which types of Earth life it is friendly. We know that thermophiles and other such extremophiles can survive in similarly challenging environments on Earth. However, it would likely require some fairly major bio-engineering in order to prepare such Earth organisms to live on Venus.

Beyond even just the well publicized extremes of temperature and pressure, any life-form on Venus would have to contend with heavy metal snow and clouds made of sulfuric acid. While I'm sure that we have separate varieties of extremophiles on Earth that can cope with each of these challenges separately, creating a synthesis of these traits would require significantly greater experience with practical genetic engineering as well as significant funding. We just don't have the funds right now to return Venus' friendship, which I'm sure is a situation that /.ers have experienced before.

Probe Eater Plus

[Mulletproof]

"...is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo?"

No, I think it's more a case of space agencies not wanting to toss their multi-million dollar probes into a nintey atmosphere, 850 F (450 C) cloud of sulphuric acid 850 F (450 C)where probe lifespans are measured in hours. The cost to knowledge-gain ratio is staggeringly out of proportion on those missions. At least on mars you stand a decent chance of getting a return on your investment.

It's more a case of space agencies saying "Yep, that's nasty stuff. Let's move on for now."

Moon & Venus Pairing

[nacturation]

Don't forget to watch for the pairing of the Moon and Venus tomorrow night at 6:30 - 7:00pm (Eastern Time) in the West sky. They'll only be about three degrees apart in the night sky.

Re:Venus: An Enigma

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that hard to find information on the lander on the web. Read up on it.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/venera75.html

As for it being "stripped down", consider that they used a Proton to launch the thing, and could send over 5 tons of payload to Venus. Both Venera-9 and -10 were around 5,000 kg mass. The lander proper was about 660 kg, with a 900 kg protective shell. Put stuff in a one-ton steel sphere, and it tends to be protected from pressure. The surface temperature of 450 C is not really all that high, nowhere near enough to melt iron or steel, and certainly not much compared to the temperature during entry. (I'd say "re-entry", but of course the lander hadn't been there before...)

One interesting feature of the lander was that it was in free fall from 50 kilometers up, and hit the ground doing about 7 meters/sec. Airbags? We don't need no stinkin' airbags!

the outer outer planets...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree, as another poster noted, it's the planets beyond Saturn that really get neglected: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

At least Cassini is going to Saturn. I can't wait for that, especially the probe to Titan.

I really wish more probes would go to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. I find them absolutely fascinating. I guess it's a cold temperature thing--I'm fascinated by cold.

I really hope I'm alive to see the New Horizons misson arrive at Pluto. I think I've come to the decision that I'm going to make every effort to keep myself alive until I can see pictures of Pluto. That's going to be absolutely amazing.

Not that Pluto is such an impressive planet--or planetoid?--just that to actually see it would be such an impressive feat.

Re:venus is a forgotten planet?

[sniggly]

Nobody's going to venus because the temperature on the planet is over 400 centigrade.

So it's pretty much totally worthless for the coming centuries. Mars is a different story. While its atmosphere is toxic and its air pressure too low the temperature around the equator wouldn't bother a Canadian (gets above freezing at times). It also has water. Pretty decent planet.

Terraforming ain't so easy.

[Jafafa Hots]

That's what amazes me about people who talk about terraforming Mars, etc. They talk like it would be so simple. Even if we had the tech to move comets, etc., and the various other things we would need to do - we DON'T have the knowledge of WHAT to do.

We can't seem to understand our OWN atmosphere enough to know what things (good or bad) we are doing to it even unintentionally. We can't agree on Global Warming, etc...

So what makes us think we will know just the right recipe for a cozy atmophere on Mars? We don't even know the right recipe for one here on Earth yet.

Re:Terraforming ain't so easy.

[AKAImBatman]

That's what amazes me about people who talk about terraforming Mars, etc. They talk like it would be so simple. Even if we had the tech to move comets, etc., and the various other things we would need to do - we DON'T have the knowledge of WHAT to do.

We *do* have the tech. Sort of. We can generate enough energy to be zipping around the solar system, displacing asteroids and comets. We have even built some of the engine designs that give us that kind of power. (Although only the weaker ones have been built.) Most of the resistance to these technologies is poltical. (Don't dare mention "nuclear" as a propulsion method. Even if you're talking about using it in space, some people are whacked enough to start complaining about "polluting space". Sheesh.)

As for knowledge, most of the terraforming ideas are based on a "close enough" approach. It's assumed that once we get things to that state, then some of the more exotic Earth lifeforms could begin to get a foothold. (i.e. extremophiles) Whether it would actually pan out or not would be "the great experiment".

Interestingly enough, Venus may be easier to terraform than Mars. Mars has less atmosphere and little ability to hold more. Venus on the other hand, has too much atmosphere. Microbes exist that could exist on Venus (at least flosting, perhaps actually on the ground). As they convert CO2 to O2, the soil would begin to absorb the excess O2. In theory, Venus's atmosphere could be thinned greatly just by making it more habitable for Earth life.

There's also the asteroid-to-rip-away-atmosphere idea that I gave in another post. Personally, I'd be a little reluctant to try that route until it was shown that other methods fail.

Re:Venus harbors life?

[JayBlalock]

His entire point was that, if you asked oceanologists or biologists in the 60s about the possibility of life at the bottom of oceanic abyssal trenches, they would have given the exact same arguments about why it was impossible. Just replace "sulfuric acid" with "near-boiling temperatures" or "2,500 PSI of pressure" and you'd be similarly laughed at for suggesting life.

The discovery and study of extremophiles has actually been a huge boon to those advancing theories of life on other worlds. The range of life on Earth is mind-boggling, with many organisms and animals which are at least as "alien" as anything that might be found on Venus or Jupiter or whereever. The basic point being, if they can go into places on Earth where life absolutely, positively, could not possibly be, and find life anyway, it suddenly becomes hard to summarily rule out ANY location.

Time for some re-evaluation

[Anonymous Coward]

For electronics to work in high heat conditions like on Venus, it's time to go back to vacuum tubes... They like heat. For memory, we can use magnetic cores with a high Curie point. I wouldn't mind working on a Nuvistor-based computer, or even integrated thermionics with welded wiring and ceramic substrates. Anyone want to hire a 32 year old 'old style' electronics expert?
TIMMs

Venus is the obvious choice

[Sir Foxx]

I don't get it when it comes to picking which planet to terraform. Mars will never work, its core is dead, which is why the planet is dead with little to no atmosphere. Venus's core is still kicking, we just need to bleed off some of the atmosphere and increase its rotation a little. Still a monumental task but doable, whereas Mars is dead and will remain that way without an active core.

Venus and Bio-teraformation

[GeneralEmergency]

Venus will be the first extraterestrial body that we will terraform.

This will be accomplished by bio-engineering a class of organisms that will have the following characteristics:

1) Asexual reproduction.
2) Sulphur/oxygen/carbon based metaboism.
3) Builds "Balloon" cells so it can "float" in the CO2 sea that is the venusian atmosphere.
4) Short life span.
5) The discarded Carbon/Sulphur/Nitrogen skeleton must not ignite, returning the CO2 back into the atmosphere.

These organisms will be introduced into the the Venusian atmosphere by floating, automated seeding ships. In a few hundred years we oughtta be able to move in there.

What we can do about the crappy weak magnetic field and the six month long days and nights, I haven't got a fucking clue.