Catalytic Enzymes and cleaning up Venus' atmosphere?

[sftommy]

In many ways Venus is a much better candidate for earth-like development.

Except for it's atmosphere. With current bateriological technologies could earth science devise a catalytic enzyme to change the chemical state of the more noxious chemicals. get sulphur, for example, to drop out as a particulate? Improve the habitability of the plant?

I appreciate everyones thoughts on this.

 

[neutrino78x]

I heard that the upper atmosphere of Venus is breathable by humans. Apparently it has the right composition and pressure.

See the wikipedia page on colonizing venus.

--Brian

 

[neutrino78x]

oops, I stand corrected. The pressure is the same as Earth, but the composition is still toxic. The temperature range is 0 to 50 C. 50 C is still a little hot...

--Brian

 

[rockett]

Personally, I have always thought terraforming Venus a better idea than Mars, if for no other reason that Mars would have a tough time holding onto it's atmosphere once created (and even then it would be thin and REALLY cold).

The problems are:
1. Cooling
2. Conversion of atmosphere
3. Rotation
4. Weak magnetic field

Unfortunatly, converting atmosphere is the easiest of the four.

They are detailed here:
http://terraformers.org/Terraforming-Venus

 

[EarthlingX]

I see no need for terraforming Venus to establish human presence there, perhaps even less new technology than Mars. It all depends on the approach.

Wiki : Colonization of Venus

Others suggest a different approach, however, claiming that rather than attempting to colonize Venus' hostile surface, humans might attempt to colonize the Venusian atmosphere (the most habitable known part of any planet outside Earth). This is because at an altitude of approximately 50 kilometers (in Venus's upper atmosphere), the pressure and temperature are Earth-like (1 bar and 0-50 degrees Celsius).

Adding a moon or two, sounds reasonable though, and not so far fetched, but not necessarily for terraforming reasons, more for orbital base, or resource exploitation.
Wiki : Gravity tractor

A Gravity tractor (GT) is a spacecraft that deflects another object in space, typically a potentially hazardous asteroid that might impact Earth, without physically contacting it, using only its gravitational field to transmit the required impulse.[1][2] The tractor spacecraft could either hover near the object being deflected or orbit near it. The concept has the advantage that essentially nothing need be known about the mechanical composition and structure of the asteroid in advance.

Another thread with more opinions and info :
If things had been different with Venus (SDC)

 

[neutrino78x]

Unfortunatly, converting atmosphere is the easiest of the four.

They are detailed here:
http://terraformers.org/Terraforming-Venus

Thanks, that is a very interesting web site!!! I will have to bookmark it!!!

I think the floating cities in the upper atmosphere are a good idea.

--Brian

 

[sftommy]

Thank you for the Terraforming Venus website, more food for thought there then I had envisioned when asking the question.

I like the idea of a gravity tractor; some very small movements of items in the Kuiper belt properly calculated might send small useful moons into the inner solar sytem.

 

[EarthlingX]

Thank you for the Terraforming Venus website, more food for thought there then I had envisioned when asking the question.

I like the idea of a gravity tractor; some very small movements of items in the Kuiper belt properly calculated might send small useful moons into the inner solar sytem.

Asteroid belt is much closer, and we have just begun finding NEO-s .. plenty of rocks much closer

 

[BenS1985]

I'm a big fan of the 'colonize Venus, not Mars' idea.

Aerostat cities make the most sense of any non-Lunar colony, IMO. It solves a decent number of ways you could terraform Venus, without the immense cost of undertaking the project - Aerostat cities are a highly scalable concept. As the cities grow larger, the ability to terraform Venus increases, making the end-game project more viable.

The real caveat with it is the sulfuric acid that exists in the clouds at 50km. Any city would need shielded from the acids, and any atmospheric content would need to be filtered before it entered the colony.

However, there is an economic advantage to having sulfuric acid in the atmosphere - sulfuric acid (from my understanding) can be converted into hydrogen gas. At 50km in the Venusian atmosphere, our breathable air is a lifting gas - comparatively, Hydrogen is a lifting gas on earth, so the lifting force of such hydrogen would be immense. That way, you have a native source of lifting gasses, rather than the need of importing Terran atmospheric resources.

As mentioned, you'd have a lot of other benefits - the cloud cities could process and diminish the crushing pressure and heat through shading (since the cloud cities would in and of themselves, shade the planet), and processing of the atmosphere.

 

[sftommy]

Asteroid belt is much closer, and we have just begun finding NEO-s .. plenty of rocks much closer [/quote]

Not sure why, but I usually think of the asteroid belt for rock mining,
but the Kuiper belts for getting frozen gasses.
It's the comets and their gas shedding I suppose
Inventories of both will be done eventually, sooner would promote development.

 

[EarthlingX]

Asteroid belt is much closer, and we have just begun finding NEO-s .. plenty of rocks much closer

Not sure why, but I usually think of the asteroid belt for rock mining,
but the Kuiper belts for getting frozen gasses.
It's the comets and their gas shedding I suppose
Inventories of both will be done eventually, sooner would promote development.

Here's some background from Wiki ( helps knowing what to ask :

Asteroid belt

Kuiper belt

Near-Earth object

edit:quoting

 

[Couerl]

With current bateriological technologies could earth science devise a catalytic enzyme to change the chemical state of the more noxious chemicals..

No, they'd cook. But even if we could introduce thermophiles/enzymes? or whatever it is you are talking about it would take around half a billion years for them to convert that amount of Co2 into an earth-like atmosphere and the reason we know this is because it already happened right here (more or less) with the stromatolites.. Even if we cooled Venus down immediately by deploying a solar shield of some sort it could take a million years for the SO2 to rain out of the upper atmosphere and so any or all of these neat ideas might simply be pointless. Virtually all metals, not to mention people succumb quickly to muriatic acid/So2 and so floating cities or whatever else all seem rather silly at the moment as well.

I would love to hear about anyone doing any actual research on the matter though, because I am interested to know more about the actual math that we're talking about. Perhaps as little as 20% of the surface (wild guess) might need to be shielded in order to promote a fairly rapid climate cool down and for all I know it could be as small as 100km in diameter.. Doable maybe, but I might try it on the Sahara first. :geek:

 

[Valcan]

While i like the idea of eventually terraforming and colonizing venus. Mars for right now and the immediate future is just 100% a better bet.

Compare: Super heavy atmosphere, acid everywhere, almost no available water, almost 1000k tempratures and well it dont look good

Mars: Cold, water but in ice underthe surface possibly in large amounts. Thin atmosphere but also means it wont be a force to fight like the same on venus yet it would feel like being at the bottom of the ocean.

MARS is just far easier. But we really need to consentrate on building the vehicles and technologies to work and thrive in space first in my opinion.

 

[BenS1985]

While i like the idea of eventually terraforming and colonizing venus. Mars for right now and the immediate future is just 100% a better bet.

Compare: Super heavy atmosphere, acid everywhere, almost no available water, almost 1000k tempratures and well it dont look good

Mars: Cold, water but in ice underthe surface possibly in large amounts. Thin atmosphere but also means it wont be a force to fight like the same on venus yet it would feel like being at the bottom of the ocean.

MARS is just far easier. But we really need to consentrate on building the vehicles and technologies to work and thrive in space first in my opinion.

It depends on how you look at it. Yes, if you wanted to colonize the surface of Venus, in comparison with Mars, Mars absolutely wins out.

However, if you compare Venus @ 50km and Mars.....It swings wildly and helps Venus become a better candidate:

- Venus has a more abundant supply of energy via solar arrays
- Mars is more supceptible to radiation than Venus is @ cloudtop
- No atmosphere on Mars
- Temperature on Venus is vastly more favorable (0-50c vs. -100-0c)
- Atmosphere can be processed into critical supplies (oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, ect)
- Surface is known to have resources for the expansion of bases

To sum it up, the advantage is that with a little bit of processing (leeching the sulfuric acid out of the atmosphere and turning it into hydrogen for lifting new expansions of the Venus cloud colonies), you could essentially 'walk outside' of the habitat with a breathing mask and be able to survive without major inhibitors. Can you do that on Mars? Luna? Titan?

Also of note is that if the habitat and lifting gasses (as per Landis) is filled with Terran air, a 2km diameter sphere can lift 6 million tons of colony. For comparison, that is the equivalent of 59 Nimitz-class nuclear carriers holding a population of roughly 357,000.

Those are critical things to think of before labeling Mars a better destination.

 

[rockett]

That's right. After the floating colonies, if we can eventually find a way process a lot of the venusian atmosphere, the net result would be a world 80% water (vs Earth's 70%). See my previous post for reference link. The main necessary ingredient is hydrogen, LOTS of it. If there was some way we could bring in some comets maybe, or harvest it from the solar wind, it would be possible.

The biggest challenge would be jumpstarting the magnetic field and altering the rotation. However, as EarthlingX points out, if we could nudge enough asteroids together to make a decent sized moon, that would have the desired effect. An alternative might be blasting enough chunks out of Venus with asteroid impacts (we have found Mars meteroids on Earth from such impacts). Though you might want to do that before colonizing. :?

 

[neutrino78x]

- Venus has a more abundant supply of energy via solar arrays

True. It is closer than Earth, so the solar energy will be more intense.

- Mars is more supceptible to radiation than Venus is @ cloudtop

I'm not sure about this part...

- No atmosphere on Mars
- Temperature on Venus is vastly more favorable (0-50c vs. -100-0c)
- Atmosphere can be processed into critical supplies (oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, ect)
- Surface is known to have resources for the expansion of bases

This is all true on Mars, too. Mars does, in fact, have an atmosphere. It is mostly CO2. This can be reacted with hydrogen to get oxygen. This is called the Sabatier (spell check) reaction. The atmosphere of Mars is actually -87 C to 20 C. 20 degrees centigrade is about 68 F, or room temperature. That is Mars in summer.

The surface of Mars has many resources for manufacturing, including iron, deuterium, etc. See Robert Zubrin's book The Case for Mars, and the Mars Society Home Page.

To sum it up, the advantage is that with a little bit of processing (leeching the sulfuric acid out of the atmosphere and turning it into hydrogen for lifting new expansions of the Venus cloud colonies), you could essentially 'walk outside' of the habitat with a breathing mask and be able to survive without major inhibitors. Can you do that on Mars? Luna? Titan?

After "a little bit of processing" yes you can. Plus, with Mars, you are on the surface already, you don't have to try to float.

--Brian

 

[rockett]

After "a little bit of processing" yes you can. Plus, with Mars, you are on the surface already, you don't have to try to float.

--Brian

Brian, please do your research. Your answers show that you are only interested in pushing Mars, and have not adequately researched the possibilities of Venus, to present a balanced viewpoint. Please use the links in previous posts and search engines to research the merits of Venus so that you can do a fair comparison.

If you had, you know that Venus atmosphere is also mostly CO2, and the Bosch reaction of using Hydrogen to create elemental carbon, and water was one proposed method for reducing the atmosphere, for example.

For another, you would also know that the venusian atmosphere, being denser than an Earth normal Nitrogen-Oxygen mix, would float a habitat at 60% of the lifting power of Helium. Add that to a pressure of Earth normal at 31 miles, any leaks would be very slow (a leak on Mars would kill you fast). Also, temperatures at that altitude range from 32 F to 122 F, all in all quite manageable.

Finally gravity is 80% Earth normal, so you would not have to deal with any unforseen gravitational effects on human development across generations.

I suspect that you also are not aware that Zubrin has also looked at the possibilities of Venus colonization, though his focus was on terraforming if I recall correctly.

There are many other points that actually do have a lot of advantages for Venus. Please give them fair consideration.

 

[EarthlingX]

Thank you rockett, very nicely put.

Some more fresh discussions and facts about Venus, from NewsScientist :

Are Venus and Earth in a long-distance relationship?

16:32 16 March 2010 by Rachel Courtland

The heart of Venus may belong to Earth. Our planet could be tugging on the core of Venus, exerting control over its spin.

Whenever Venus and Earth arrive at the closest point in their orbits, Venus always presents the same face to us. This could mean that Earth's gravity is tugging subtly on Venus, affecting its rotation rate. That idea, raised decades ago, was disregarded when it turned out that Venus is spinning too fast to be in such a gravitational "resonance".

But Earth could still be pulling on Venus by controlling its core, according to calculations by Gérard Caudal of the University of Versailles-Saint Quentin, France.

 

[BenS1985]

- Venus has a more abundant supply of energy via solar arrays

True. It is closer than Earth, so the solar energy will be more intense.

- Mars is more supceptible to radiation than Venus is @ cloudtop

I'm not sure about this part...

Mars has no thick atmosphere nor magnetic field in which to block solar radiation. Radiation is 25 millirads/day on Mars, and solar proton events occur which make radiation levels peak at 2,000 millirads/day. Comparatively, Venus has a thick enough atmosphere (at 1bar) to block most of the solar radiation. Venus has a very, very weak magnetosphere, but the addition of said atmosphere would provide much better protection against said radiation than no atmosphere, nor magnetic field that Mars has.

- No atmosphere on Mars
- Temperature on Venus is vastly more favorable (0-50c vs. -100-0c)
- Atmosphere can be processed into critical supplies (oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, ect)
- Surface is known to have resources for the expansion of bases

This is all true on Mars, too. Mars does, in fact, have an atmosphere. It is mostly CO2. This can be reacted with hydrogen to get oxygen. This is called the Sabatier (spell check) reaction. The atmosphere of Mars is actually -87 C to 20 C. 20 degrees centigrade is about 68 F, or room temperature. That is Mars in summer.

The surface of Mars has many resources for manufacturing, including iron, deuterium, etc. See Robert Zubrin's book The Case for Mars, and the Mars Society Home Page.

Mars' atmosphere is <1% of Earths. In a 'Martian Summer' you would still need a heavy suit to protect you from:

- Radiation (again, 25 millirads a day + solar events that have the potential to fry someone)
- Lack of atmosphere
- Lack of breathable atmosphere
- Temperature (if you weren't in the Martian summer)

To put it mildly, you could never walk outside of a habitat unless you or the atmosphere was significantly modified. In the event of a hull breach on a Martian habitat, you would die very quickly, much as you would in space. Comparatively, on Venus at 50km, you would merely need to grab a oxygen mask to ensure you had air to breath. Since the pressure would be 1:1, there would be very little worries outside of the diluted sulfuric acid, and the fact the room would eventually fill with Co2. Furthermore, if the acid was processed out of the atmosphere (into usable hydrogen for floatation), you could walk outside of the habitat with just a breathing mask on, and enjoy Venus' temperate climates at any time.

The reason I point to that is that if you have the ability to walk outside and survive - with Venus obviously being the only non-Terran place to provide that opportunity - you are going to have a lot less costs on building colonies. I'm not trying to bash Mars. Its the 3rd or 4th best location for a colony in the solar system. But looking at it objectively, its still the 3rd or 4th best place to colonize, meaning there are better places, and I think Venus is the best, or tied with the moon due to proximity/resources. When we're talking about trillions of dollars per colony, costs matter. If Venusian aerostat colonies can be built and funded for 10% less than Mars (and that's just a wild argument), then it will invariably be better.

To sum it up, the advantage is that with a little bit of processing (leeching the sulfuric acid out of the atmosphere and turning it into hydrogen for lifting new expansions of the Venus cloud colonies), you could essentially 'walk outside' of the habitat with a breathing mask and be able to survive without major inhibitors. Can you do that on Mars? Luna? Titan?

After "a little bit of processing" yes you can. Plus, with Mars, you are on the surface already, you don't have to try to float.

--Brian

Ah, but you don't have to 'try to float' on Venus. Let me put it this way:

If you were to take your living room, the place your in right now, and put it into Venus' atmosphere, it would float at 50km above the ground. As others stated, the breathable air we enjoy right at this second is a powerful lifting gas on Venus - about 60% of the power of helium on Earth. If you built a spheroid 'city' on Venus with city in the middle, breathable air on in the skyline, and some ballasts at the bottom (like a ship), it would float remarkably well. As I stated earlier, if you had a 2km spheroid and filled it entirely with our breathable air, it would have enough lifting power to hold 6 million tons of material. That is enough weight to hold 59 Nimitz class nuclear carriers with full armament and 350,000 sailors! And what material could you build parts of the cities out of? Materials far less expensive and exotic that would be needed for Mars. Heck, as far as I've seen, you could have glass windows on the hull to view the outside of the city. Not exotic glass, but a regular glass that would be a little bit thicker to ensure it wouldn't break due to wind speeds, or such.

So on Venus, rather than city-building (like you would on Earth, Mars or the moon), you would be 'ship building' - building floating colonies to sail and surf the clouds.

_____________

Put all that together, and it makes Venus very attractive than the colder, further out, less shielded Mars. I'm not saying Venus is perfect. But I think that comparatively to what else is out there, Venus is pretty nice, and far more manageable to colonize than any place other than the moon.

To me, the questions about an aerostat colony are:

- How difficult would the winds be at 50km? Could we manage to build cities without incredibly dense metals? Could metal foams help us with this?
- How powerful is acid rain at 50km? What kind of shielding is absolutely needed? How heavy is it?
- How can we obtain materials on the surface and bring them back to the colonies? Can we use such materials to expand the colony?
- Since Venus' gravity is ~88% that of Earths, how difficult will it be to build launch pads to ferry people to and from Venus? How does the wind play into this?

Nevertheless, I think those questions can be answered quicker and cheaper than a Martian colony. That is why I'm a big Venus fan - its Earth's twin for a reason. Just because we think she is the evil twin, doesn't mean that every quality she has is bad ;-)

 

[Couerl]

To me, the questions about an aerostat colony are:

- How difficult would the winds be at 50km? Could we manage to build cities without incredibly dense metals? Could metal foams help us with this?
- How powerful is acid rain at 50km? What kind of shielding is absolutely needed? How heavy is it?
- How can we obtain materials on the surface and bring them back to the colonies? Can we use such materials to expand the colony?
- Since Venus' gravity is ~88% that of Earths, how difficult will it be to build launch pads to ferry people to and from Venus? How does the wind play into this?

Nevertheless, I think those questions can be answered quicker and cheaper than a Martian colony. That is why I'm a big Venus fan - its Earth's twin for a reason. Just because we think she is the evil twin, doesn't mean that every quality she has is bad ;-)

My only question is how are we going to get 59 Nimits class Nukular boat thingies up there? :lol:

 

[rockett]

- How difficult would the winds be at 50km?

Roughly 300 to 400 km/hr, or 150 to 200 mph in the jetstream (which is probably way above the altitude we are discussing). It gets better the lower you go because of the thickness of the atmosphere down to 2 km/hr (1 mph) at the surface. But if you are traveling with the wind it is not a problem, depending on whether or not there is a lot of turbulence. This could be easily tested by dropping a floating probe.

- How powerful is acid rain at 50km? What kind of shielding is absolutely needed? How heavy is it?

That common misperception is based on old data. Newer information indicates it is a minor concentration.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/Solar/venusenv.html

- Since Venus' gravity is ~88% that of Earths

Thank you for the correction, I estimated 80%, but I was going from memory.

 

[menellom]

Your answers show that you are only interested in pushing Mars, and have not adequately researched the possibilities of Venus

And arguing that it's more likely and more feasible to build a giant floating city on Venus than to solve problems like radiation for Mars surface habitats shows just as much bias.

 

[rockett]

Your answers show that you are only interested in pushing Mars, and have not adequately researched the possibilities of Venus

And arguing that it's more likely and more feasible to build a giant floating city on Venus than to solve problems like radiation for Mars surface habitats shows just as much bias.

Actually, when you consider the temperature and pressure ranges, it really could make a lot more sense. The materials involved need not be more sophisticated than what we have in today's airliners. No pressurized construction required.

Did you read his original post, or for that matter the rest of this thread?

Just looking for balanced discussion, which means the pros and cons of both possibilities, if you are going to do a comparison. That means researching those possibilities (for each), and doing an accurate as possible comparison. This also means not championing one over the other, without being able to support my viewpoint of why it is has more potential than the other option.

To draw some simple positive illustrations:
Mars has water ice, Venus does not
Venus has an Earth normal zone of temperature and pressure, Mars does not.

A bad illustration would be:
Mars has water ice.

While the above is indeed true, it says nothing in comparison with Venus, which, in case you missed it, is the topic of this thread.

If you read the rest of the thread, you will also note that I pointed out some of the difficulties for Venus.

 

[strandedonearth]

My only question is how are we going to get 59 Nimits class Nukular boat thingies up there? :lol:

With Orion nuclear pulse propulsion, of course. Much like Niven and Pournelle's "Michael"

 

[Valcan]

No offense intended but the more i hear the more it is just science fiction until.

We get:
The ability to use materials found in space to build a enourmous 2 km habitat.
Just a few of the materials we'd need.
Carbon nanotubes in a INSANE amount. Tons of material that can withstand constant bombardment by high winds (erosion of the surface of such a structure by wind driven particles) and emersion in a acid enviroment. Tons of electronic and highly sofisticated machines of all types
Yes we have carbon nanotubes but in a stupidly tiny amount. The only other material that comes to mind is the entire structure made out of Lunar regolith turned into glass which if memory serves correctly could be made stronger than steel.

But all of this hooks on one huge thing. How to get it all there. You cant use the venusian surface for material. Too much pressure to much gravity to get a it back without ANOTHER super advanced form of transportation.

So it would all have to get there from space.

Look i LOVE the idea but i dont see it as viable for another 100 to 150 yrs.

Mars however has everything we would need there. We are currently working on many things to cut radiation so thats out. The Atmosphere is not much of a problem depending on what you make it out of and the right construction and engineering technics thats no longer a problem.

Power could be handled by nuclear reactors or maybe in the future fusion. Meanwhile the lighter gravity means its alot easier to launch things to space.

Look my point is that while Venus may be a better choice for colonization in the next century or more Mars could be done with present technology. And you could use the science behind terraforming mars (which isnt happening in the next 50 to 75 yrs im gonna b*t&h slap somebodies face off from beyond the grave! :evil: ) for use on venus.