This is probably a good move. Incremental changes in weaponry tend to have better long term pay-off than super-weapon development. Especially since most super-weapons are reliant on hundreds of untested systems. Plugging in upgrades to current systems and revising the platform as time goes on, allows failed systems to be backed out. With super-weapons, you have to throw away the entire weapon. (Hundreds of billions potentially down the drain!)
...maintain their technological lead, goodwill toward them will give them some breathing room. I continued to use Altavista for quite a long time after Google came out. It was what I was familiar with, I liked it, and it worked. Why switch? Eventually, I realized that Google had keen "read your mind" powers and finally switched.:-)
Imagine yourself considering this kind of issue a little over 100 years ago. What if you were a scientist in 1890 and somebody came along and asserted that we physical laws are weirder than anyone can imagine and as a consequence it's possible to generate 1 million times as much energy from a fuel than you get from chemical combustion. Given how preposterous that would have sounded, you might have made the exact same reply. You might say: You read too much Jules Verne. We've just been focusing on safety; in fact, steam engines hardly ever explode anymore!
Poppycock. True scientists knew how strange the Universe actually was. They didn't yet know the extent of its strangeness, but they did know that it wasn't as clear cut as previously thought. Now, think of this. We understand the Quantum level, the Relativistic level, have nuclear power (fission, fusion, and antimatter), and have built machines that take advantage of these concepts. Where are we now?
According to your logic, we should already be flying across the Solar System. And by all rights we should. But the social and political factors have to be figured into the equation. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE CHANGE. And that is why we're not going to suddenly disappear into a dimensional tunnel.
Just as a hypothetical example: It is very fortunate that a fission chain reaction only works in certain rare isotopes.
It's hardly "rare". There's plenty of U235 in common coal. The trick is having the resources to extract and purify the U235, then having the resources to build a proper shaping mechanism so that you get a contained Super-Critical fission reaction. These are the difficult feats. Building a simple fission pile is easy.
What if someone were to discover a chain reaction based on synthetic configurations of quarks that works in ordinary matter? I don't see why we would be any less likely to discover something along those lines than some of the weird things we've already discovered.
If they did, it wouldn't be easy to replicate. If it was, it would already be happening in nature. It's possible we've overlooked massive natural explosions from quark chains, but it's unlikely. We *have* observed evidence of fission fires, fusion furnaces (the Sun), and matter/antimatter collisions.
Probably the most likely candidates to attempt something like this would be a weird doomsday-obsessed religion or religious state. The MAD would be the whole appeal; they would be taking assertive steps to fulfill some prophecy.
That's a bit like saying that religious nuts will destroy us all with nuclear bombs. Where are they going to get the resources to accomplish this feat? It's hard enough just to push a few humans around. Pushing an asteroid around requires a tremendous amount of energy. That much energy is exceedingly costly. Far beyond what a bunch of nuts could afford.
There are less explosive ways to move things in space.
Such as? Anything you do to move something large enough to cause wanton destruction is going to make a pretty big blip on defense grids. Hell, our observatories today couldn't miss it! The only way you could move an asteroid with little energy, is if it was already on an "almost" collision course with the Earth. If it's already on an "almost" collision course with Earth, it would cause plenty of destruction without hitting. I think we'd want to do something about that.
I'm just extrapolating from the obvious question: If civilizations last millions of years, and if these civilizations still care about the physical world as we currently see it, then why wasn't this planet colonized by aliens eons ago? My answer: They've either died off or moved on.
You're making a flawed assumption. That assumption is that there is life elsewhere in the Universe, and that the life is close enough to us to come visit. Considering the difficulties we face in just getting to the next star, how can we even consider that we'd be hearing from our ne
At any rate, I'm actually not too worried about this scenario. The lack of success of SETI efforts indicates to me that civilization as we know it will come to an end much sooner than that. I'd guess that within the next few hundred years we'll either find a new physics phenomenon that allows an individual to intentionally or accidently destroy our little area of space/time, or we'll figure out a way to tunnel out of this overly constrictive level of reality into something better. Either way, we may not be around here long enough to worry about terraforming or asteroids
You read way to much Sci-Fi. Scientific progress has *slowed* over the past 20 years! We've been focusing 100% of our attention on perfecting existing technologies and making things "safer" for the general populace.
Given the natural progression of the human race, we're not going anywhere soon. I'm not ruling out interference by some super-being, but that's really the domain of religions instead of science.
Surely you've heard of stealth technology. Wrap it up in a black plastic cube.
Yep. I'm sure that will mask the various thermonuclear explosions used to redirect the rock. Or the radiation bursts put out by said explosions. We can barely stealth a plane, for crying out loud, how do you think we'll stealth an asteroid?!
Plastic? Heh. I wonder where you're going to get an organic material out where no organics exist? Speaking of which, throwing rocks at Earth would be an excellent example of Mutually Assured Destruction. Not only is it the only natural biosphere known to exist, but space colonies would be dependent on Earth's biosphere for a variety of materials. Especially organic ones.
There probably isn't going to be a "U.S. government" 10,000 years from now.
Long term I don't think it will really matter.Trying to stop these technologies from developing is like trying to keep the secrets of nuclear fission under wraps. Kind of hard when it's already published in textbooks and journals around the world.
Try going from pessimistic to pragmatic sometime. The world will look slightly more sane.
ColaMan has it right. I just wanted to add something for you to think about. Venus's atmosphere is already surrounded by a vacuum, why isn't it being pulled away? If it's not being pulled away now, how would a straw make any difference?
In the end, the energy to move the mass has to come from somewhere. The vacuum effects you see on Earth are not so much because of the lack of something, as it is the pressure from the atmosphere pushing things. (A bit like those water balloon snakes that are difficult to hold onto. As you apply pressure on one end, the snake flows toward the other.)
Designs are feasible that would seal off the nuclear material in a super-hard casing. A couple of the RTGs NASA has sent up have come crashing to Earth in a fireball and have survived just fine. One was even reused.
Forget about the nuclear issue. If we develop the technology to aim asteroids and comets at a planet, would then have the ability to wipe out every living thing on this planet larger than a mouse. That is going to face some political resistance, and probably with good reason.
And the fact that we can see it coming years in advance will do nothing to sway fears? And that the U.S. government has more technology to redirect the asteriods than anyone who gets out there to redirect the thing at us?
It is the CAUSES of global warming that is the souce of disagreement. I love how you discount '15-20%' as a 'fringe' group, too. Talk about political! 'Oh he disagrees with me he must be a fringe nut' is a typical liberal mantra.
Especially when one considers that the Earth is currently colder than at any other point in history. I can buy that we're helping things along a bit, but I don't buy that we're the only cause. Or that melting of ice caps will kill millions. Just watch people run from that shoreline creep of half an inch per year.
I think the space elevator is a piece of the puzzle since it will allow very low cost orbital deployment.
Development of a nuclear Ramjet spaceplane would be more within our current technological reach. It would take off and land horizontally, use nothing but air for fuel inside the atmosphere, and stored hydrogen or oxygen for initial takeoff and spaceflight. Such a craft would have to burn less fuel thanks to the lift given by the atmosphere in horizontal takeoff mode and would have enough fuel (especially since it's free inside the atmosphere) to do a slow aerobraking manuever.
The Space Shuttle has to have heat shielding because it comes in unpowered at a very sharp trajectory. It doesn't actually glide very well, either. (Hits the runway at hundreds of miles per hour.) As a result, the shuttle pilots jokingly call the shuttle "a falling refrigerator".
Traditional nuclear rockets may be just as feasible, but they'd need to heat a lot more plasa (more thrust), and as a result they present a much tougher engineering challenge.
Another option is the fabled "Sea Dragon" booster. The damn thing was supposed to be sunk in the ocean, and then launched from water with some 8 million pounds of thrust. It seems that it was a very viable booster and cost about the same as our smaller Titans. Unfortunately, the whole thing was always on a shoe string budget, and wasn't able to wrangle enough money for actual tests. (Plus NASA couldn't figure out what to do with a heavy booster. No one was using the Shuttle, and the Saturn V was decommisioned for want of a use.)
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.
Assuming you could find a good chemical that would produce inert results, you'd have to ship a hell of a lot of it. Microbes already have chemicals to extract carbon, plus they reproduce. What's not to like?
If you're really set on the idea of extracting a portion of Venus's atmosphere, there's a better (and more feasible) way than nanotubes or chemicals. Simply look for an asteroid on a near-pass course. If you catch it early enough, you should be able to use a couple of nukes to "nudge" its orbit so that it passes extremely close. As it passes, the asteroid's gravity will cause a extremely strong gravitational tide that will litterally rip away part of the atmosphere.
Here's the tough part. The asteroid has to be large enough to have a strong enough gravitational pull, plus it has to have a high enough initial velocity to not get trapped in Venus's gravity and become another moon. Given the close proximity of Venus to the Sun, it may take awhile before a good one shows up.
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.
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.
Exactly. If we wanted to actually colonize Venus, we'd have to terraform it in one way or another. Otherwise, the extreme pressures would make it difficult to explore without some form of space infrastructure already in place. *After* we have an infrastructure, it will be more like deep sea exploration. Right now it's like Romans talking about diving for sea monsters.
You'd probably send probes and various pieces of infrastructure there before you attempted a manned mission. Otherwise, it would be kind of silly to waste 40 years on human life for a simple slingshot around a star.
but judging from what used to be unacceptable human behaviour a hundred years ago, a hundred years from now is going to be a little out there, too.
For all that people would have you believe, sex hasn't changed in thousands of years. Prostitutes, orgies, polygamy, etc. are all written down in history. Despite the moral dilemmas in our society today, we're nowhere near as bad as early Britain. Treatment of fellow humans was so poor, that it lead to the development of a set of manners and etiquette. Many of these manners (e.g. Open a door for a lady, curtsy when introduced to a gentleman, etc.) have survived to this day.
Taking the stance that the future will lead to extreme sexual relationships as the norm is silly. Especially when you're dealing with closed communities where the emotions attached to sex can make people feel uncomfortable. Most of the bizarre sexual behavior has and will developed in heavily populated areas where people are not afraid of rebuke from the community whole.
Dude, you're weirding me out here. It never "became" about sex on Mars. That's not part of the story at all.
So I'm just imagining the part where half the settlers started weirding everyone out by having secret meetings in the nude? How many of the early Western settlers did crazy stuff like that? The closest I can imagine is the Mormon settlers. (e.g. The Sherlock Holmes story of "A Study in Scarlet") Some of them may have been less than civil in the stories (disclaimer: most of the Mormons I've met are actually nice people), but things never turned into free-for-alls, or secret meetings that bar clothes.
*shrugs* It sounds like you want a story without the word "sex" in it. Good luck.
Not quite. I really enjoyed Carver's "Eternity's End". Sex, normal sex inside a relationship BTW, was touched upon, but was by no means a central focus. Pioneers to new worlds would be too busy trying to survive to worry about creating cabals of nudist terrorists. History has shown this out. It's ridiculous to assume that people who are trying to survive would have so much time on their hands to do anything else.
About the worst any story should have is prostitutes. Those are always around, even in the old west. Otherwise, keep it real, will you?
The primary reason I tend to gravitate toward nuclear engines, is that it's the only technology with a high enough energy output. I've done some research, and the chemical with the highest (viable) energy density is Cryogenic H2 with a density of 2.5E7 J/Kg. Fission of U235 Oxide makes H2 look tame. It has an energy density of 1.5E12 J/Kg! That's five orders of magnitude higher than our best chemicals!
A lot of people keep waiting for methods like Fusion and Antimatter. My response is simply: "It ain't gonna happen." Nearly all Fusion reactors self-destruct during operation, and not one has produced so much as 1 joule of net power. Antimatter is even worse, costing trillions of dollars per gram! I hate to say it, but these are technologies we'll need to develop in space. Out there, you can create a tiny star for a reactor (fusion) and no one will care. Once you have that cheap power, you can use it to create antimatter as fuel.
Our existence depends on progress. The most progress can be made by going to space. Space infrastructure requires power. The only method we currently have to supply that power is Nuclear Fission.
You mean "Red Mars"? That was another book I put down after it became weird freaks/terrorists/Martian Gia lovers having sex on Mars.
Sex is a very normal part of human existence. However, it is not the be all to end all of that existence. Most of this #### is akin to stories of western frontier's men heading west just so they could get women to have sex with them! It's pathetic!
I'm sure many people don't agree with me, but that's my feelings on the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably a good move. Incremental changes in weaponry tend to have better long term pay-off than super-weapon development. Especially since most super-weapons are reliant on hundreds of untested systems. Plugging in upgrades to current systems and revising the platform as time goes on, allows failed systems to be backed out. With super-weapons, you have to throw away the entire weapon. (Hundreds of billions potentially down the drain!)
That's
just
too
bad
Wrong game. You "bunt" in baseball, and "punt" in football.
...maintain their technological lead, goodwill toward them will give them some breathing room. I continued to use Altavista for quite a long time after Google came out. It was what I was familiar with, I liked it, and it worked. Why switch? Eventually, I realized that Google had keen "read your mind" powers and finally switched. :-)
Imagine yourself considering this kind of issue a little over 100 years ago. What if you were a scientist in 1890 and somebody came along and asserted that we physical laws are weirder than anyone can imagine and as a consequence it's possible to generate 1 million times as much energy from a fuel than you get from chemical combustion. Given how preposterous that would have sounded, you might have made the exact same reply. You might say: You read too much Jules Verne. We've just been focusing on safety; in fact, steam engines hardly ever explode anymore!
Poppycock. True scientists knew how strange the Universe actually was. They didn't yet know the extent of its strangeness, but they did know that it wasn't as clear cut as previously thought. Now, think of this. We understand the Quantum level, the Relativistic level, have nuclear power (fission, fusion, and antimatter), and have built machines that take advantage of these concepts. Where are we now?
According to your logic, we should already be flying across the Solar System. And by all rights we should. But the social and political factors have to be figured into the equation. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE CHANGE. And that is why we're not going to suddenly disappear into a dimensional tunnel.
Just as a hypothetical example: It is very fortunate that a fission chain reaction only works in certain rare isotopes.
It's hardly "rare". There's plenty of U235 in common coal. The trick is having the resources to extract and purify the U235, then having the resources to build a proper shaping mechanism so that you get a contained Super-Critical fission reaction. These are the difficult feats. Building a simple fission pile is easy.
What if someone were to discover a chain reaction based on synthetic configurations of quarks that works in ordinary matter? I don't see why we would be any less likely to discover something along those lines than some of the weird things we've already discovered.
If they did, it wouldn't be easy to replicate. If it was, it would already be happening in nature. It's possible we've overlooked massive natural explosions from quark chains, but it's unlikely. We *have* observed evidence of fission fires, fusion furnaces (the Sun), and matter/antimatter collisions.
Probably the most likely candidates to attempt something like this would be a weird doomsday-obsessed religion or religious state. The MAD would be the whole appeal; they would be taking assertive steps to fulfill some prophecy.
That's a bit like saying that religious nuts will destroy us all with nuclear bombs. Where are they going to get the resources to accomplish this feat? It's hard enough just to push a few humans around. Pushing an asteroid around requires a tremendous amount of energy. That much energy is exceedingly costly. Far beyond what a bunch of nuts could afford.
There are less explosive ways to move things in space.
Such as? Anything you do to move something large enough to cause wanton destruction is going to make a pretty big blip on defense grids. Hell, our observatories today couldn't miss it! The only way you could move an asteroid with little energy, is if it was already on an "almost" collision course with the Earth. If it's already on an "almost" collision course with Earth, it would cause plenty of destruction without hitting. I think we'd want to do something about that.
I'm just extrapolating from the obvious question: If civilizations last millions of years, and if these civilizations still care about the physical world as we currently see it, then why wasn't this planet colonized by aliens eons ago? My answer: They've either died off or moved on.
You're making a flawed assumption. That assumption is that there is life elsewhere in the Universe, and that the life is close enough to us to come visit. Considering the difficulties we face in just getting to the next star, how can we even consider that we'd be hearing from our ne
I wasn't aware that much water existed on Venus. As far as I knew, the atmosphere had a high sulfur content instead.
:-)
BTW, I'm not a big fan of KSR, so don't expect to win any arguments that way.
At any rate, I'm actually not too worried about this scenario. The lack of success of SETI efforts indicates to me that civilization as we know it will come to an end much sooner than that. I'd guess that within the next few hundred years we'll either find a new physics phenomenon that allows an individual to intentionally or accidently destroy our little area of space/time, or we'll figure out a way to tunnel out of this overly constrictive level of reality into something better. Either way, we may not be around here long enough to worry about terraforming or asteroids
You read way to much Sci-Fi. Scientific progress has *slowed* over the past 20 years! We've been focusing 100% of our attention on perfecting existing technologies and making things "safer" for the general populace.
Given the natural progression of the human race, we're not going anywhere soon. I'm not ruling out interference by some super-being, but that's really the domain of religions instead of science.
Surely you've heard of stealth technology. Wrap it up in a black plastic cube.
Yep. I'm sure that will mask the various thermonuclear explosions used to redirect the rock. Or the radiation bursts put out by said explosions. We can barely stealth a plane, for crying out loud, how do you think we'll stealth an asteroid?!
Plastic? Heh. I wonder where you're going to get an organic material out where no organics exist? Speaking of which, throwing rocks at Earth would be an excellent example of Mutually Assured Destruction. Not only is it the only natural biosphere known to exist, but space colonies would be dependent on Earth's biosphere for a variety of materials. Especially organic ones.
There probably isn't going to be a "U.S. government" 10,000 years from now.
Long term I don't think it will really matter.Trying to stop these technologies from developing is like trying to keep the secrets of nuclear fission under wraps. Kind of hard when it's already published in textbooks and journals around the world.
Try going from pessimistic to pragmatic sometime. The world will look slightly more sane.
ColaMan has it right. I just wanted to add something for you to think about. Venus's atmosphere is already surrounded by a vacuum, why isn't it being pulled away? If it's not being pulled away now, how would a straw make any difference?
In the end, the energy to move the mass has to come from somewhere. The vacuum effects you see on Earth are not so much because of the lack of something, as it is the pressure from the atmosphere pushing things. (A bit like those water balloon snakes that are difficult to hold onto. As you apply pressure on one end, the snake flows toward the other.)
Designs are feasible that would seal off the nuclear material in a super-hard casing. A couple of the RTGs NASA has sent up have come crashing to Earth in a fireball and have survived just fine. One was even reused.
Forget about the nuclear issue. If we develop the technology to aim asteroids and comets at a planet, would then have the ability to wipe out every living thing on this planet larger than a mouse. That is going to face some political resistance, and probably with good reason.
And the fact that we can see it coming years in advance will do nothing to sway fears? And that the U.S. government has more technology to redirect the asteriods than anyone who gets out there to redirect the thing at us?
*sigh*
Sounds about right.
I'd be concerned about calculating a *stable* orbit. If it isn't close to escape velocity, it will eventually come crashing down and undo everything.
It is the CAUSES of global warming that is the souce of disagreement. I love how you discount '15-20%' as a 'fringe' group, too. Talk about political! 'Oh he disagrees with me he must be a fringe nut' is a typical liberal mantra.
Especially when one considers that the Earth is currently colder than at any other point in history. I can buy that we're helping things along a bit, but I don't buy that we're the only cause. Or that melting of ice caps will kill millions. Just watch people run from that shoreline creep of half an inch per year.
I think the space elevator is a piece of the puzzle since it will allow very low cost orbital deployment.
Development of a nuclear Ramjet spaceplane would be more within our current technological reach. It would take off and land horizontally, use nothing but air for fuel inside the atmosphere, and stored hydrogen or oxygen for initial takeoff and spaceflight. Such a craft would have to burn less fuel thanks to the lift given by the atmosphere in horizontal takeoff mode and would have enough fuel (especially since it's free inside the atmosphere) to do a slow aerobraking manuever.
The Space Shuttle has to have heat shielding because it comes in unpowered at a very sharp trajectory. It doesn't actually glide very well, either. (Hits the runway at hundreds of miles per hour.) As a result, the shuttle pilots jokingly call the shuttle "a falling refrigerator".
Traditional nuclear rockets may be just as feasible, but they'd need to heat a lot more plasa (more thrust), and as a result they present a much tougher engineering challenge.
Another option is the fabled "Sea Dragon" booster. The damn thing was supposed to be sunk in the ocean, and then launched from water with some 8 million pounds of thrust. It seems that it was a very viable booster and cost about the same as our smaller Titans. Unfortunately, the whole thing was always on a shoe string budget, and wasn't able to wrangle enough money for actual tests. (Plus NASA couldn't figure out what to do with a heavy booster. No one was using the Shuttle, and the Saturn V was decommisioned for want of a use.)
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.
Assuming you could find a good chemical that would produce inert results, you'd have to ship a hell of a lot of it. Microbes already have chemicals to extract carbon, plus they reproduce. What's not to like?
If you're really set on the idea of extracting a portion of Venus's atmosphere, there's a better (and more feasible) way than nanotubes or chemicals. Simply look for an asteroid on a near-pass course. If you catch it early enough, you should be able to use a couple of nukes to "nudge" its orbit so that it passes extremely close. As it passes, the asteroid's gravity will cause a extremely strong gravitational tide that will litterally rip away part of the atmosphere.
Here's the tough part. The asteroid has to be large enough to have a strong enough gravitational pull, plus it has to have a high enough initial velocity to not get trapped in Venus's gravity and become another moon. Given the close proximity of Venus to the Sun, it may take awhile before a good one shows up.
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.
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.
Exactly. If we wanted to actually colonize Venus, we'd have to terraform it in one way or another. Otherwise, the extreme pressures would make it difficult to explore without some form of space infrastructure already in place. *After* we have an infrastructure, it will be more like deep sea exploration. Right now it's like Romans talking about diving for sea monsters.
You'd probably send probes and various pieces of infrastructure there before you attempted a manned mission. Otherwise, it would be kind of silly to waste 40 years on human life for a simple slingshot around a star.
but judging from what used to be unacceptable human behaviour a hundred years ago, a hundred years from now is going to be a little out there, too.
For all that people would have you believe, sex hasn't changed in thousands of years. Prostitutes, orgies, polygamy, etc. are all written down in history. Despite the moral dilemmas in our society today, we're nowhere near as bad as early Britain. Treatment of fellow humans was so poor, that it lead to the development of a set of manners and etiquette. Many of these manners (e.g. Open a door for a lady, curtsy when introduced to a gentleman, etc.) have survived to this day.
Taking the stance that the future will lead to extreme sexual relationships as the norm is silly. Especially when you're dealing with closed communities where the emotions attached to sex can make people feel uncomfortable. Most of the bizarre sexual behavior has and will developed in heavily populated areas where people are not afraid of rebuke from the community whole.
Are you serious? Got a link or something? I'd love to hear about it!
Dude, you're weirding me out here. It never "became" about sex on Mars. That's not part of the story at all.
So I'm just imagining the part where half the settlers started weirding everyone out by having secret meetings in the nude? How many of the early Western settlers did crazy stuff like that? The closest I can imagine is the Mormon settlers. (e.g. The Sherlock Holmes story of "A Study in Scarlet") Some of them may have been less than civil in the stories (disclaimer: most of the Mormons I've met are actually nice people), but things never turned into free-for-alls, or secret meetings that bar clothes.
*shrugs* It sounds like you want a story without the word "sex" in it. Good luck.
Not quite. I really enjoyed Carver's "Eternity's End". Sex, normal sex inside a relationship BTW, was touched upon, but was by no means a central focus. Pioneers to new worlds would be too busy trying to survive to worry about creating cabals of nudist terrorists. History has shown this out. It's ridiculous to assume that people who are trying to survive would have so much time on their hands to do anything else.
About the worst any story should have is prostitutes. Those are always around, even in the old west. Otherwise, keep it real, will you?
I'll check it out. :-)
The primary reason I tend to gravitate toward nuclear engines, is that it's the only technology with a high enough energy output. I've done some research, and the chemical with the highest (viable) energy density is Cryogenic H2 with a density of 2.5E7 J/Kg. Fission of U235 Oxide makes H2 look tame. It has an energy density of 1.5E12 J/Kg! That's five orders of magnitude higher than our best chemicals!
A lot of people keep waiting for methods like Fusion and Antimatter. My response is simply: "It ain't gonna happen." Nearly all Fusion reactors self-destruct during operation, and not one has produced so much as 1 joule of net power. Antimatter is even worse, costing trillions of dollars per gram! I hate to say it, but these are technologies we'll need to develop in space. Out there, you can create a tiny star for a reactor (fusion) and no one will care. Once you have that cheap power, you can use it to create antimatter as fuel.
Our existence depends on progress. The most progress can be made by going to space. Space infrastructure requires power. The only method we currently have to supply that power is Nuclear Fission.
You mean "Red Mars"? That was another book I put down after it became weird freaks/terrorists/Martian Gia lovers having sex on Mars.
Sex is a very normal part of human existence. However, it is not the be all to end all of that existence. Most of this #### is akin to stories of western frontier's men heading west just so they could get women to have sex with them! It's pathetic!
I'm sure many people don't agree with me, but that's my feelings on the issue.
The ONLY Heinlein adult novel that I could think of that might fit that category is Time Enough for Love.
Hello? Friday? Love "groups"?
I made the mistake of picking that book up thinking it would be as good as his juveniles. I didn't get very far.