Atmospheric Mining For Mars - Veneran Siphon

[h2ouniverse]

nnrusher,<br /><br />The capsules are indeed a less disastrous way to make it. And in that case your upper station does not need to be as high as L1.<br /><br />What you seem not to realize is the fact that Venus's gravity applies to anything inside your pipe in the same way as it applies outside. That something is flowing in whatever direction does not change anything to that.<br /><br />1) The gravity well slope is upward from ground to L1. The pressure of a column of gas from L1 to ground would be tremendously high at the bottom (close to Venus ground).<br />So to make gas flow up in your tube, you will need to compress it at the bottom to pressures even higher than those tremendous pressures, so that the top of the column of gas can get beyond L1 (the nearest pass in a locally saddle-shaped gravity potential) and be evacuated to space. But then this is not a siphon at all, just a giant gas-duct.<br />Btw, in that [desperate] option, you do not need to bother going up to L1. An intermediate altitude will probably be enough to prevent the gas molecules you reject to space from falling back on Venus: the Solar wind should blow them away out of the gravity well.<br /><br />2) Don't count on centrifugal force. Remember it is taken into account in the value of equivalent ground gravity. In the case of very slowly-rotating Venus, this is negligible vs gravity. For it to help your case, you would need planetary speed rotations far far higher. Like on 2003 EL61 for instance.<br /><br />3) Since we are in pipe dreams (pun intended!!!), a far far more energy-efficient way to get rid of Venus's atmosphere would be to bio-engineer something to force carbon deposition, despite hyper-acid hyper-hot environment.<br /><br />Regards.