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Floating Cities On Venus
Geoffrey.landis writes "Some of you may have heard me talk about colonizing Venus. Well, for those who haven't, Universe Today is running story about floating cities on Venus. It's a reasonable alternative for space colonies — after all, the atmosphere of Venus (at about 50 km) is the most Earth-like environment in the solar system (other than Earth, of course). '50 km above the surface, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0C-50C range, a quite comfortable environment for humans. Humans wouldn't require pressurized suits when outside, but it wouldn't quite be a shirtsleeves environment. We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.'"
Just move closer to the Sun.
Yes yes, and while we're at it, why don't we get IPv6 rolled out too, hmmmm?
I wonder if they will have flying cars like they did in the Jetsons.
Do we know enough about the atmospheric dynamics of Venus? Is there something similar to a jet stream that might catch your city and throw it around?
And our reason for going to Venus is...?
We can mine the Moon and possibly Mars, but what does Venus offer us? Fuel? I would think it is too hot for mining the surface (robotic miners capable of operating in the heat may not be cost-effective)
So it's going to be like the Earth in 100 years.
protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere
C'mon! It's no worse than the acid rain in L.A.!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cool idea, but until we have much more economical rockets, I can't see us sending nearly enough material to Venus to be supporting a manned expedition, much less a semi-permanent settlement.
How do I get protection from sulfuric acid in the atmo and air to breath without a pressurized suit?
We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.
Well, we'd need all that plus the floating cities. Plus a way to get there would be nice, and a regular ferry to keep the supplies like food and such arriving. But aside from all that we are ready to move in.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
sulfuric acid in the atmosphere"
Next!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
...that turn to goo in a few months!
The game.
Me: *One fine morning, wakes up yawning, opens the door while in my sleeping gown, steps outsi ...
Wife: *Shouts* Honey, you forgot your anti-grav slippers!
I wonder if we should be spending money making other worlds livable when our own world needs it so badly to make it a place worth living in.
http://projectleader.wordpress.com
We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.
It's so simple!
Wait a minute...
Your ad here.
they'll betray you and freeze you in kryptonite as soon as the empire comes knocking on their door.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
>We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere
Gee, is that all? I guess we'd best pack an extra layer of clothing then, along with the hang gliders we'd be living on, right?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
It is always this way. I've been saying that we should attempt manned missions to Venus using balloons for years, and now that somebody else suggests it I feel compelled to start poking holes in the idea.
It is quite nice as a there-and-back science mission but for a long term colony it's a terrible environment. The local resources are incredibly difficult to get hold of if you have to send a balloon down to get them, remember that the record for longest lasting machine on the Venusian surface is slightly over an hour.
The only reason to go there and take humans along is if space travel has become cheap and easy enough that you can do it on a whim.
Rather than try to change planets, it may be easier to genetically engineer people who are resistant to sulfuric acid ( or they may evolve naturally in China if nothing is done about their acid rain which is reaching a pH of 3.5 )
[ Please, no jokes about acid-resistant Chinese overlords ]
Don't inhale the brown acid... it's a bummer.
1) Wear suits to protect us from the poisonous atmosphere and lack of oxygen.
2) Stay under cover to protect us from the various radiation (no magnetic field as I understand it).
3) Keep a complex life support system functioning in a complex artificial environment where failure means death.
So how exactly is this different from the moon, mars or even space itself? It actually seems more difficult and worse environment for humans than any of those.
I can't wait for people to explain to, you know, the homeless and people who need medicine...
"Please I just need... my children have terrible asthma, we live next to a refinery, and my daughter is dying and we need medicine, please, can we have some?"
"No.... we're going to send a robot to the moon."
"Oh... that is comforting news. Thank you."
-David Cross
>> We'd need air to breathe and protection from the >> sulfuric acid in the atmosphere Umm. Ok, nice to get full disclosure in tourist brochures.
I think before we talk about other places, we should probably get the kinks out of everything by putting something on our own moon. A lot of science could be done on a moon base, as well as learning just HOW to put something on another large rock. Lots of reasons why the moon is reasonable:
1) We can already get to the moon. We've been there already. So there's not real jump in tech needed to get there.
2) We can get OFF the moon. The big gotcha with any other landing. Go to Mars? Yeah, could probably get there and land now. Getting off is the hard part. Don't have that problem with the moon.
3) It's speedy to get there. No months of travel. Need to swap people out or something goes horribly wrong--can get there pretty quickly.
Landing on Mars, or floating cities on Venus sound nice. But I'd like to see something a bit more practical in my lifetime of a moon base. It's possible, but there haven't been any major plans to do it.
<misquote>sulfuric ass is in the atmosphere</misquote>
I for one welcome our new cheese cutting planet.
What's on Venus that's worth putting a floating city there? Bespin at least had something worth mining.
Not enough vespene gas.
"That's right R2, gonna set a new course, we're going to Cloud City (ahhh) That's mighty good gin and tonic, why don't ya fix me up another? Thing's are bout to get ugly."
Weird Al
Uh, I think the *biggest* challenge would be making an entire city fly. At 0.9Gs, keeping a city afloat would be only slightly more possible than it is on Earth (hint: it's not).
We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.
Oh, and floating cities. We'll need those, too.
Honestly, now... one of these problems sounds solvable. The other one... slightly less so.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
is how exactly do you get them to float? The article mentions using oxygen and nitrogen, because they are lighter than the atmosphere in venus. But how in the heck do you get enough of that to make a colony float to venus? In any case I find all the colonization stories pretty speculative since it costs so much money just to get into orbit, let alone to other planets. Until/unless propulsion technology gets a lot cheaper, I simply don't think we have the resources to colonize outside of earth.
if it gets too hot we can just pour some lime filled oceans on it.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Alternative housing developments are a staple of Science Fiction, but any good piece of SciFi is Science first, Fiction second. Floating balloons, underwater bubbles, and massive archologies are simply a way of getting more people to survive in places they couldn't/shouldn't normally. Landis' idea may be bordering on absurdist for the mainstream world right now, but in 200, 300, and 500 years things will start to look a lot less silly. It may be harder, but it's far better for all parties involved to take advantage of unique environments and our intelligence to minimize impact and maximize living ability instead of brute-forcing our way on to places by nuking everything and then throwing down some bacteria and algae.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
We can't spend 100% of our resources on one project, otherwise you wouldn't be wasting money on a computer or time on /. when you could be saving the world instead. How dare we discuss the future when the present isn't perfect?
We must always explore, search, try to make a better world. Here and/or elsewhere.
If you want to bring about solutions to the things that make this planet unlivable, then change the root problem: human governance.
Women!
Queue the +1 Insightful mod...
I venture to say that in fifty odd years there will be less sulfuric acid in Venus' atmosphere than the Earth's.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
It sounds good, but what happens when Jinn and Efreet slap a lawsuit on Halliburton-Venus Inc. for stealing their city design concept?
It reminds me of that fake destination from the marching moron story where they were sending all the stupid people off in rocket ships to live (wink wink).
(Am I the only one that this occurred to?)
We could just send all the women there. Then us men could go to Mars. Then we could write a book series on the difficulties of communicating with each other and...oh wait...
If you sold your car, cut back on your power bill, stopped flying to visit your mother every second week ... think how much money you'd be saving towards that big trip :-)
While possible in theory, I think it is incredibly unlikely that humans will build any kind of colony on other planets. Simply put : the projected technological growth curve suggests that we will have self replicating robots (and possibly artificial intelligence smart enough to control them) within a century.
Why would we go to the hassle of creating compromise habitats on other planets (moon, mars, the rest) when we could simply place linear accelerators (aka railguns) to launch raw materials into orbit? Self-replicating factories on the moon would mine materials and manufacture more robots and parts. The finished bots as well as raw materials would be launched into orbit, to be used to manufacture gigantic rotating habitats.
The habitats would be MUCH posh-er than anything that could be made on a planet, with near perfect control of the internal environment.
This kind of sounds like it would have the same problem that ruled out the probability of using flying cars (for popular use, not that they can't be made). I mean, if the city has some kind of malfunction and falls, any survivors from the crash would soon die from the horrible conditions of the atmosphere on planet side.
Why are we bothering with colonizing Venus? It's only about the same size as the Earth, which means if we've overrun the Earth exponential growth will mean we'll overrun Venus too shortly afterwards.
If we're going to be building floating cities, we should look at our friendly gas giants instead. Thousands of Earths worth of surface area means we'll have enough elbow room, at least for a while.
I'm not alone in this thinking, either; I got the idea from Charles Stross.
I bet you could set up a hell of a generator using the temperature differential between the surface (~690 K) and the inky blackness of space (2.725 K).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
He's talking about the far future.. of course, you probably think human-kind doesn't have a far future.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well if women are from Venus and we do manage to colonize it (heh, colon is in that word) Perhaps I may then have a shot at getting a girl friend! I mean men are from Mars, right? RIGHT???
When the article mentions "We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere", it's not referring individual persons.
It's referring to floating a city within an oversized balloon. Since the majority of the atmosphere is CO2 the oxygen would keep it aloft.
There are numerous hurdles with this, the biggest being the "single point of failure" issue with what he envisions.
One person going off his rocker and tossing a standard grenade at this bubble would cause the entire city to crash to the surface and melt.
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Or does it still scare you?
I'd like to say I'm surprised by the pessimism regarding a Venusian colony, but really I'm not. For the past 50 years people have been continually told we're going to Mars, that after we get to the moon, Mars will be our first colony.
And yet, in almost every way, Venus is a superior colonization target compared to Mars. Let's look at what Venus has that Mars doesn't:
-Nearly Earth normal gravity.
-An Atmosphere.
-A lot more sunlight.
-Easily extractable elements from the atmosphere.
-A nearly Earth-normal band of pressure and temperature in the upper atmosphere.
What's Mars got that Venus doesn't? Easy access [comparatively] to its mineral wealth on the surface... and that's really about it. They both lack proper magnetic fields, they're both really far away, they're both hostile environments, etc. etc.
I personally feel that we should focus on setting up scientific outposts on the Moon first. Then move on to building space stations in the Lagrange points around the Earth, then go and mine ourselves some Near Earth Asteroids, and then maybe think about doing some colonizing on another actual planet.
they just will not last that long. And the flying time lasts about 50KM.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ceramic balloons sound like SUCH a good idea!
I was thinking. Because there is such a strong pressure difference on Venus, wouldn't it be possible to float in the atmosphere there much like a ship floats on water here?
Obviously with bigger floats, possibly filled with things, but it's not like the structure would have to literally hold the thing up by the belt loops or something, the natural physics of the place would help a little bit with properly constructed facilities and equipment.
...You put de Lime in de Venus and She drink it all up
You put de Lime in de Venus and it stop de Global Warming.
Doctor...
Any "colony" we might establish must, for simple practical reasons, be able to rely on at least some local natural resources. And maybe even bring some back.
For many reasons, most already given, the moon and even Europa qualify a lot more than Venus.
Is who shot first. Han or Greedo?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
As many people have pointed out this is obviously infeasible in the foreseeable future (and I believe we're talking at the very least 50 years here), however it may be an interesting idea as a space probe. Technically gets there like a lander probe, except that at some point during the descent after the parachute slowed things down enough the probe would inflate a blimp, and thus float in the atmosphere at tolerable temperatures and pressures.
That would be good to study the atmosphere and also study the surface a bit closer, but what would be really really neat is if it could be the "aircraft carrier" for a UAV or two specially designed to go fly close to the surface, take pictures, and come back for a refuelling, which would be electrical, the source of energy being the solar panels on the blimp (or "solar paint") during day time (which would last I believe about 120 days). It should work fairly well because the skies must be pretty clear at a 50 km altitude, and a blimp can be pretty large so if its entire surface can be covered in "solar paint".. And during night the whole thing could stay idle.
Scientifically this would be very interesting as it would allow to study the atmosphere in situ for an extended period of time (several Venus days) on distances (since the blimp would be carried by the winds, but also the UAVs would explore up and down thereby teaching us so much about the atmosphere, its temperatures, pressures, winds, clouds, chemical compositions) and also we would get to see a lot of Venus' geology thanks to the UAV that would fly close enough to the ground. The question would be how hard would it be to conceive an electrical UAV that could fly in such an atmosphere with the chemistry it has under pressures of up to 95 bars and temperatures of up to 500 C? If it's impossible, would there be any chance to have a camera on the end of a 50 km long cable? (the question being I believe how much would such a long cable weight, considered it can't melt at 500 C or be corroded)
You just got troll'd!
Why not build them someplace nicer, and easier, like say...Earth? I, for one, enjoy my breathable air that already lacks sulfuric acid.
Maybe there is primitive life up in Venus atmosphere already?
Why not a song for the rest of us pastafarians! Arrr, maties!
Aboard the good ship Venus,
You really should have seen us,
With a figurehead of a whore in bed,
And a mast of a phallic penis.
The captain of the lugger,
Was known as a filthy bugger,
Declared unfit to shovel shit,
From one ship to another.
The cabin boys name was Chipper,
A Randy little nipper,
He made a pass with a broken glass,
And circumcised the skipper.
The first mate's name was Morgan,
By gosh, he was a gorgon,
From half past eight he played till late,
Upon the captain's organ
The captain's wife was Charlotte,
Born and bred a harlot,
Her thighs at night were lily white,
By morning they were scarlet.
The captain's daughter, Mabel,
Though young, was fresh and able,
To fornicate with the second mate,
Upon the chartroom table.
The captain's younger daughter,
Was washed into the water,
Her plaintive squeals announced that eels,
Had found her sexual quarter.
The ship's dog's name was Rover,
We turned that poor thing over,
And ground and ground that faithful hound
From Teneriff to Dover.
And when we reached our station,
Through skillful navigation,
The ship got sunk, in a wave of spunk,
From too much fornication.
I am glad that slashdot has a/c
A man by the name of Landis proposes cities suspended high in the sky above a bright yellow planet, and not a single star wars joke is cracked?
You guys aren't on the top of your game.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
I think if humans are going to one day seriously consider terraforming other bodies in the solar system (we've already been doing that to our own for about 12,000 yrs) we ought to start long term terraformation on Venus as soon as possible.
Venus, although nearly identical in gravity, size and distance from the sun to Earth, does not contain any native water and has severe atmospheric issues. Mars, has water and serious atmospheric issues (such as insufficient gravity to retain one) and no magnetic field.
To successfully transform Venus would require first to construct large scale reflectors to reduce the sunlight reaching Venus thus cooling it down, implement a process to sequester the excess carbon in the atmospher, direct large numbers of comets at Venus to introduce sufficient water and then seed the planet with simple anaerobic biotic life to begin to oxygenate the atmosphere. Of course these are outstanding complex and far-future possibilities, but not impossible so far as I know.
In the long run (thousands of years or even tens of thousands), I speculate Venus will likely be Earth II to a greater extent that mars will; it may take Venus a bit longer to become habitable, but once it does payoff in quality of environment would be significant. All the more incentive to encourage twin terraforming endeavors rather than simply focus on Mars.
with less traffic and air pollution.
No magnetosphere on Venus = fatal cosmic radiation
Possibly even getting fried by radiation from the sun.
All of us cowboys will just have to watch out for those blinding flying plant spores.
This is one of those plots to get rid of all the gullible people, isn't it?
Don't say that too loud, there are still people in office who will see that and claim you're advocating a new form of terrorism.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This must be after we over-populate the floating cities here in Earth... ...although we may die because of Global Warming before something like this becomes real.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
The author, Yukito Kishiro always documents himself a lot before drawing and has the humans on Venus use floating cities in the "Last Order" series of his manga.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Angel_Alita:_Last_Order
I believe the standard they will use to convict me is the new "active inducement" standard their friends at the MPAA bought.
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Well, that's actually the point: they did strip it of all hydrogen, for example. The solar winds ionize the atmosphere something fierce and break the molecules all the time. Heavier elements like C, N and O recombine, but H from (H20 or CH4) escaped into space.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you make parts that are currently unlivable livable, then guess what, people will breed and fill them to the point where they're unlivable again. If anything, this planet needs birth control, Chinese style.
But why bother even to colonize Mars or Venus? That's like trying to run or jump before learning to stand.
;).
What we should do is learn to build practical and sustainable space stations with artificial gravity (the classical spinning wheels, or the tethered ones, or whatever that _works_).
It's not as difficult as colonizing another planet since:
1) you don't have to fight yet another gravity well.
2) you can do it just "outside" your planet - much cheaper.
And you're going to have to do it anyway. If you send people to Venus/Mars - it will take months for them to get there, where will they live during those months? My answer is a space station. Not a NASA Suicide Vessel.
Once you've worked out how to build a practical and sustainable space station, you can use such space stations to go elsewhere in the Solar System - Mars, Venus, the asteroid belts and beyond. There is no _rush_ then. And it stops sounding like a "one way" trip.
To me it is a really stupid idea to try to colonize other planets before we figure out how to do space colonies.
Once people work out how to do space colonies, I bet most colonizers would rather live in a space station than live on inhospitable planets in something that is just as restrictive as a space station ( if not more so - it's trapped on the planet and can't move) - it's not like you'd be able to walk outside in Venus without a protective suit. So what's the difference?
If you want to send people on one way trips to other planets, maybe you should start with certain politicians (you could hold a reality show - Vote Them Off The Planet or something), in that case there could be a significant benefit
Anyway, I find it telling that the NASA and other "space" people keep talking about sending humans to Mars without seriously developing and advancing space station technology. So many stupid people making stupid decisions.
Learn to stand first, then walk, then run, then jump. Not the other way round.
He mentioned it was a "thought exercise", not that I RTFA. So I thought it would obviously be easier to build a structure that size in space to begin with, there's some potential for thinking about what exactly it would entail to be capable of constructing what he's suggesting. What infrastructure would we need? We can work constructively towards such a lofty goal and decide what aspect appear to hold the most near-term benefit and start working on them now.
Bah!
All this is utter BS. The last time I've read about Venus, I was told that its atmospheric pressure is about 90 times heavier than that of Earth. A quick verification on the Internet will tell you that the atmospheric pressure on Earth is about 101 kPa (also called as 1 atm) whereas that on Venus is about 9.3 MPa (about 90 atm).
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
How about building cities that float in the oceans on earth first?
We have already. They are called Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.
"This is really just a thought exercise," said Landis, "an exercise in imagination rather than something we're likely to do in the near term. I don't expect people will be building cities on Venus, at least probably not in this century."
That's not what I would call a reasonable alternative.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Of course, this leads to megaconstructions like space elevators or magnetic rails spanning hundreds of miles and going tens of miles up. They're not only engineering challenges, but also political ones (can you say NIMBYNIMBYNIMBY?).
Once we're able to build those, colonies on other planets should be within reach, too.
Hate to sound like a hippy here, but instead of travelling to other planets to try and colonize it with humans, why dont we just make the most out of our resources here on earth and make more inventions to better our life here instead of going to other planets?
Mars or Venus... choosing between 1 bar of acidic gas (sulphuric acid) or 0.007 bar of CO2... that's like choosing between death by hanging or drowning. Not sure which is the worst, but at least Mars offers some soil to stand on. Floating around on Venus on the other hand makes waste disposal quite easy... Pollution coming from humans is likely to only dilute the real nastiness in Venus' atmosphere and actually make it more habitable).
Actually, the choice is "CO2 at 1 bar, droplets of sulfuric acid, pleasant temperatures, close to 1g" and "CO2 at 0.007 bar, (dry-)ice cold, 1/3g".
At the time you have the technological capabilities to start building cities that float in the atmosphere of Venus, one is probably well into the era of molecular nanotechology. That means one probably already has restrictions on the removal of CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere (don't want to kill all the plants, cyanobacteria, plankton, fish, etc.) and one is well along on stripping the ice-caps from Mars and the atmosphere of Venus of the easily available carbon. This is because carbon availability becomes a limiting resource and of significant concern in the nanotech era.
Depending upon how much carbon is stripped from the atmosphere of Venus, one doesn't have the hellish temperature problem which exists now and it can be made quite comfortable on the surface. The magnetic field problem and lack of water are more significant problems and one may need to consider a phase of planetary comet bombardment to replenish the water. And unless means are developed to restart core circulation to beef up the magnetic field one is facing the problem of a very dry planet (all water circulating in pipes rather than streams or rivers). Though one could speculate as to whether sufficient particle accelerators could be developed to split the available C or O back into H so one could maintain the atmospheric H2O content even with a solar wind stripping away the H.
Now, of course if one has the capabilities to play with planets and the solar system as a whole like this, as I discuss in my chapter in "Year Million", then one is also likely to have the resources which can dismantle the whole planet, presumably to contribute to the construction of our solar system's Matrioshka Brain. Now whether to use the material in Venus for this purpose, or whether to turn it into a water world with lots of islands upon which many different evolutionary scenarios are played out (using real matter as the computronium for evolution). [For those of you who don't see this, think hundreds of thousands to millions of independent "Jurassic Park"s] is going to be one of the fierce debates we have later in this century or perhaps the next one.
This is the most "Earth like" atmosphere because it is around one atmosphere and just kinda cold? Sure, that whole sulfuric acid thing is fairly normal, more so any place else.
I mean we have *no* experience with heating buildings and having pressurized structures - none whatsoever floating around in space at all. However we have a number of decades with dealing with floating cities in sulfuric acid - yep, easy to do. Sure we wouldn't need pressurized suits to move around, that makes me feel so much better since I'm used to that sulfuric acid everywhere.
Does this even remotely qualify as Science? I mean really, this even sucks for non-reputable sources. I guess I can't be too surprised given the crap that supposedly reputable and refereed journals produce today, but wow this one is bad. Even though the source appears to be credentialed this one is crazy.
But then I note that Mr Landis (the source material for the articles author) is a SF writer, maybe he gets confused between fiction and non-fiction (been around Slashdot long enough to know our editors here do that on a regular basis so no real surprise there).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
In the future if/when we do have colonies off world, floating cities in atmospheres will be a low priorty, they may happen still though. We may need to mine HE-3 and hydrocarbons from the atmospheres of the gas giants. By that time robots would be able to do the task (if they haven't already thoroughly taken over and biological humans are marginalised), why go to all the effort of a habitat? IMHO the future is with orbiting habitats for permanent settlement, as there are many advantages to not being at the bottom of a gravity well. It makes it easy to mine asteroids and comets for everything you need. It's clear that 'free' roaming habitats will be rather advantaged and resource-rich in a future interplanetary economy compared to their gravity well bound counterparts who would come to depend on goods manufactured in space.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
the Olympics, and with the same levels of sulphuric acid and other noxious substances in the air. I'd move to Venus right now, unless they expect a sub-prime house financing problem there.
"floating trees to convert all the CO2 to oxygen"
... http://www.physorg.com/news135820173.html). It would only be a partial solution as its more complex than just CO2, but its a step in the right direction.
You would need to develop a way to filter out the acids but trees on their own, don't seem a likely way to remove that much CO2. However I think you are on to something about finding a way to deal with its CO2. One solution to Venus maybe to engineer a way to deal with its overall chemistry rather than trying to endure its current state. The planet is in some ways similar to Earth, but would require some awesome advances in technology, not least terraforming to alter its chemical composition.
Maybe in the distant future, humans could combine billions of tonnes of lime with an artificially created seawater like solution and then bombard/rain the planet with it, over the course of a few centuries. (Its an idea thats been suggested to deal with CO2 on earth
Its engineering way beyond anything we could do I guess for many centuries, but its theoretically possible to deal with the CO2, plus it would give us small ocean like lakes over time. Plus once there are more favorable conditions for some life on the surface, then I think plant life, like your ideas about trees, would then add to the process of terraforming the planet. It would be an awesome engineering project.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
If we're going to Venus, we can mine the crystals there for energy, but we need to look out for the lizard men...
is it just me, or does the story need a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag? we couldnt do flying cars for numerous reasons, or the osprey without killing quite a few people. but we think we can float an entire city above a gaseous acid bath!?
Good people go to bed earlier.
The cost of getting anything to Venus is somewhere around $200,000 per kilogram.
A "space colony", to be any fun, would need as a rough guess, maybe 3,000 people.
To be comfortable, they'd require something like the size of the Queen Mary to live in.
That's about 20 million kilos.
So just to loft it you better have $4 trillion just for the boosters.
And the more basic problem: how is it going to stay up? Floating in sulfuric acid drizzle and CO2 will be quite a trick.
Sulfuric acid...yes, that's quite a pickle, that atmospheric sulfuric acid...gets you every time...might want to think carefully about ways to deal with that one....
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
We have a space faring capability which is sufficient to allow us to move LARGE masses of material to Venus and construct massive structures there. That would presuppose we had already a very large scale space based manufacturing capability (or else an equivalent which would be the ability to manufacture under the surface conditions prevalent on Venus).
What would motivate a society with that kind of technological and industrial capability to want to live on the surface of ANY planet? I don't see it. You would just live in space! Space, where practically limitless energy is free for the taking, construction is simple and easy, and whatever goods you need or produce can be shipped anywhere without needing to go up a massive gravity well.
The same argument applies for ANY planetary surface. Perhaps the Moon, being close to Earth and possessing a gravity well 1/81st as deep as that of Earth is a bit different case, but colonizing either Mars or Venus fails, under any conditions I can imagine, to be an economically sensible scenario.
In fact I will propose Tod's Laws of space exploitation.
1) The viability of colonization or exploitation of any area of space is inversely proportional to the energy required to enter or leave that region of space, and directly proportional to the amount of raw material and energy available in that location.
2) No autonomous space based facility can remain under the control of Earth.
Think about it, if you were 'the Republic of The Moon' why would you need anything from Earth? What would Earth have that was of value they could exchange with you? Not raw materials, they will ALWAYS be cheaper to obtain outside the Earth's gravity well (in that sense the main belt asteroids are cheaper sources of raw materials even from LEO than the Earth itself is). Energy? Obviously Earth has nothing to provide there. People? Maybe to some extent at first, but once a population existed in space that grew on its own there would be little incentive to import 'landlubbers'. Culture? Yeah, but in the longer term that isn't a substantive basis for trade. Luxury Goods? This is the only category I can think of, it probably would be hard to produce a good Merlot on the Moon...
The same arguments would apply to any other planet. Planetary surfaces are actually the SLUM real estate of the Solar System. They're 'dirty', they come with stupidly expensive gravity wells, and the more valuable raw materials all sank to the core billions of years ago.
No, space itself, and the minor bodies found in it are the natural home of technological spacefaring civilization.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
...floating cities on the oceans of THIS planet...
I remember reading in a book as a kid a bold plan someone thought up to seed the Venetian atmosphere with billions of bacteria and lichen that would thrive on the sulphuric acid environment. Over time the bacteria would actually change the atmosphere and make it more hospitable and earth like.
What is all-important is the composition of Venus' atmosphere, which is largely made up of C02 and other greenhouse forcing gases.
What does CO2 have to do with planetary warming? I thought that was still a theory? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm surprised I haven't seen a copy & paste from a wiki...this is my favorite topic and I frequently refer people to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities
Some of the difficulties that /. posters have mentioned have been dealt with in the wiki, but there are some others that have not been mentioned that the wiki deals with.
Personally I think the most difficult aspect would be mining the surface (and that is mentioned in the wiki.) Until we get more data I think this is a pipe dream (that I really want to happen.)
Speaking as someone t
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Mars as lots of c02, it aint god damn hot.
You could have HIGH PRESSURE fart gas or xenon gas, its still going to get HOT if its 800 PSI.
If only 30% light gets to the surface, then even less than that gets absorbed / reflected.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"My attitude is, if they're still writing about(number) one, 43 doesn't need to worry about it."
--George W. Bush, on his legacy, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007
Putting aside the *immense* technical difficulties of building a "floating city" (even on Earth, much less on a planet 40 million kilometers away), I would think the sulfuric acid atmosphere and the intense solar radiation might present a BIT of a problem. Doesn't really strike me as a tourist hotspot, or even particularly useful. Any speculation on such an outlandish idea strikes me as little more than writing science fiction under the guise serious speculation.
But hey, if you're going to dream, dream big!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
According to Wikipedia, the mass of Venus's atmosphere is roughly 93 times that of the earth, and Venus's atmosphere is 97% CO2 while the earth's atmosphere is 400ppm or 0.04% CO2. So, we're looking at 2250 times as much CO2 as on the earth.
Thus, the curious mind might be tempted to reasonably ask, why is Venus not 2250 times as hot as the earth? Or, conversely, if we examine the two knowns of CO2 planetary heating in the entire human experience, we could probably conclude that a doubling of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere would yield a fraction of a degree in heating, not the massive amounts of heating preached to us by the IPCC.
This is my sig.
At first couldn't see how cities on Venus could be relevant, but then on second thought I realized that given republicans affinity to very high levels of C02 in the atmosphere, how they have no problem with global warming, seem eager to drill and drill and drill to raise CO2 levels, and hate any kind of regulations that might actually reduce pollution of earth's atmosphere, I've come to realize that cities on Venus could be marketed as paradise communities for republicans. Most everyone else might complain about high levels of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere, but not republicans as they would no doubt see it as good for business.
Quick what we need is a crash program to send republicans to Venus. All that we need now are a few bold republicans to get things started. Will the real republicans please stand up?
At last, I can live like the Hawk People from Flash Gordon...
yea, i love a quiet stroll in the evening sun watching my skin and bones denigrate due to the acid rain like the next guy.
wtf?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If we're going to build floating cities, why go all the way to Venus? Why not just build them here?
I'm so excited I just made water in my pantaloons!
OK, which idiot packed the grenades?
Also, bubble-wrap is a much better idea than a single bubble.
IBM doesn't play chess with the Universe.
Can anyone tell me if anyone's looked into the possibilities of these excessive pressurized rock planets having superconductors on the surface considering the recent advances in presurized metals becoming superconductors at room temps? Comebined with the fact there's a lot of acid, how electrically active is such a planet?
First off, a sort of correction, our current space station has artificial gravity in one of the modules, so we already know how to do artificial gravity and have for a long time.
Second, I don't think we need to wait to colonize, although I like your idea of round about suggesting assembling our inter-planetary craft in orbit. It makes sense to build a large comfortable ship that can have the advantage of having an orbiting platform around the destined planet.
I haven't read TFA, but I think colonizing Venus is just plain nuts. One, any craft you build will have to be acid proof or have a very limited life. Good luck with that! Secondly, Venus is blood-boiling hot day and night, ok so 50Km up maybe it's not as bad. Not a great place to live but it would make a great prison, well ... except for Riddick. Can't kill that SOB.
Next, we already know how to stand and walk, we've put people on another world (okay so the Moon is just a pile of valuable rock - but it still counts).
I say it's time we colonized Mars.
Here's my reasoning.
1)The time to travel there can be as short as three months, if you time it right. This is the same timeframe it took to colonize America (as little as two months to sail to New England). So we know we can do this in ships that were really crowded (109 people on a 110' ship - see Mayflower).
2) Mars has an atmosphere that could be used to extract breathable "air" by using plants (lots and lots of plants, especially trees).
3) Not as even close to the extreme temperatures as Venus or the Moon at the surface , but something we'd have to deal with.
4) Not as toxic an atmosphere as Venus.
5) we could actually mine Mars and build things on the surface. Hence we could build cities and then expand cities and build mega-metropolitan cities and slowly encompass the planet, all the while terraforming the surface. Terraforming Venus would require venting atmosphere. Terraforming Mars would require thickening the atmosphere, with guess what? The polluting chemicals from manufacturing and mining. I think any colony should have an ultimate goal to make it self-supporting. I can't see that on the Moon or Venus.
Venus' only advantage is closer to Earth gravity at the surface, and closer than Mars.
But let me know when you have a substance you can float in an acid bath for years on end with no ability to have any more manufacturing capabilities than what you can carry with you.
Mars is the logical choice, or possibly the Moon first. A lunar base makes a lot of sense, in addition to being a fantastic launch site, but nit so much for a colony.
You can have plenty of air chambers and redundancy. Just like you can't get a (helium-filled) airship to crash just by puncturing one or two of the helium chambers.
Sure, it might be possible, but why? Why the hell would humans colonize Venus when we have a perfectly good moon and Mars to colonize? Why would we float around on bubbles in a toxic atmosphere far above a planet, knowing that if something goes wrong we'll either be thrown into space or come crashing to the ground on a planet that melts spacecraft in minutes? It's a great sci-fi, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Id rather explore Uranus. (Sorry, I had to include the obligatory anal sex joke)
Well, it's working. According to CIA facts book, the population growth rate is 0.625% and birth rate is 13 births per 1000 people, which is fairly low for a third world country with booming economy. As the country gets more industrialized and children get more expensive to raise, the number will cross into the negative territory. Compare that to India with its 1.578% and 22 births per 1000 people.
I would advocate that folks in Africa should stop fucking like rabbits, too. There's not enough food there as it is, and it's not going to get better anytime soon.
All your base are belong to venus.
Why couldn't we just "seed" the 50Km-high atmosphere with some Earth organisms- maybe some Algae or some of those Sulphuric-Acid-eating worms in the deep ocean? ... its a GO!
After a couple of years (or maybe a coupla months) Venus will come around to OUR way of living.
And a few high-atmosphere balloon colonies of ours, designed by Virgin Galactic, and
I will bring my own Pinoqachole and even brew it on Venus!
Sorry for the extant Venusian life.. but I doubt there is any.
Lissening, Richard Branson?
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- aqk
F U
Sounds like this guy should be renamed Geoffrey Lando-Calrissian...
IF McBUSH WINS, COUNT ME IN! I'll spark the celebratory blunt when we get there!
Sounds fantastic! Who needs to retire in Florida when you can go where the atmosphere is always trying to kill you?
So simple genetically engineer a type of floating giant algae plant similar to some seaweeds that have air nodules to help support them - or water plants which float on the surface of water - only with much bigger gas nodules. they can float like little ballons , soak up sunlight and collect nutrients dispersed from baloon supported fertalizer platforms which drill or scrape up minerals from the hot surface (like ocean based oil platforms)- to terraform the atmosphere.