Colonizing Venus - looking for sources

[vandivx]

"Lots of big ifs, and lots of expense, which suggest that it will not be done for many thousands of years, if ever. No organization could afford it."<br /><br />We as in 'We the people of Earth' can afford anything that we can possibly do and if we want to do that, the question on which everything hinges in this particular case is 'would we want to' provided that know how to do that was here, why would anyone want to settle other planets in the solar system<br /><br />Earth is what, 3/5th ocean? I dare say it would be far easier and cheaper and desirable to settle either the surface of that water or even the depths of it if somehow we found there is not place enough for all of us on the firm shores of Earth<br /><br />once conditions in the solar system change so we would be pushed off Earth, it likely won't happen that other planets would be somehow exempt from those changes which are billions of years in future anyway and who knows what will be then with mankind<br /><br />any 'baloon living quarters' in Venus atmosphere would be only temporary and purely scientific endeavour, ie no settling of Venus because there is no reason to settle there in foreseeable future<br /><br />people only go settle someplace else for two reasons, either because it is cheaper in the colony relative to current place (settling of America) or because they get pushed out by something, be it tyrany or famine etc<br /><br />IMO, people would seriously consider colonizing other planets only after they would be pushed off Earth for some reason, simply to save their lives, not for economic reasons (even if somehow it was cheaper to live in those Venus clouds in a baloon which I doubt very much), untill that happens all presence of mankind on other planets will always be in the exploratory/expeditionary nature, sort of like current arctic polar stations, although they have permanent human presence all year round, they are not what could be called 'colonization of arctic' by any means (and needles to say, <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[green_meklar]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>As it's been stated so many times before, the conditions on Venus are too hot to sustain ANY kind of life & the atmosphere is so toxic and acidic that all life would be sterilized there within seconds if not minutes.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Well, about how acidic is it at the higher, cooler levels? I've read that some extremophiles on Earth can survive at a PH level of 3, although they aren't photosynthesizers. I'm not sure exactly what photosynthesizing life form can survive the highest PH level. :<br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Lots of big ifs, and lots of expense, which suggest that it will not be done for many thousands of years, if ever.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Well, not in the very near future, no. But 'many thousands of years' is a hell of a long time considering the rate at which our technology is advancing. I think if we wanted to terraform Venus it could probably be started within the next few hundred years and probably finished within, say, 1000 years (although the end result would not have used the starting technology). Of course, if we end up nuking ourselves or releasing some kind of superdisease, then all bets are off. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>________________</p><p>Repent! Repent! The technological singularity is coming!</p> </div>

 

[rlb2]

<font color="orange">Rdl idea of using rotation to counter the inward pull from sideward position towards the true lagrange point however is very good.<font color="white"><br /><br />Thanks.<br /><br />The point that Steve must not be aware of was we were already using the L1 position to orbit satellites in. It was common knowledge to some of us already. SOHO's orbiting Earth's L1 position without a central mass is a good example of what we can do. <br /><br />Since Venuses L1 position is on the Suns side of Venus all the time the resultant scattered mass would be confined to orbit the sun at the L1 position from Venus. As a result of the mass being confined to the L1 position no harm would come to any space traveler from the space debris created by scattering the mass at the Venuses L1 position. This can be done to block some of the sunlight from ever reaching Venus - the earth side or the area around Venus would not be affected.<br /><br />A good example today is the confidence we have in a L1 halo orbit by the amount of satellites planned for the future missions to go there. There may be 4 satellites or more orbiting Earth’s L1 position within the next several years. Note there are no requirements to have a central mass at the L1 point to make this work. This can be done with what they call a halo orbit. So a solid looking ring of material, whatever material that may be made out of, is not something that hasn't ever been attempted before on a much smaller scale. SOHO spent several years orbiting around the L1 position perpendicular to the <font color="yellow"> line connecting the sun and the Earth. It stays in this plane, tracing out an elliptical orbit centered about L1<br /><br /> <font color="orange">Although sometimes described as being at L1, the SOHO satellite is not exactly at L1 as this would make communication difficult due to radio interference generated by the Sun, and because this would not be a stable orbit. Rather it lies in the (constantly moving) plane which passes</font></font></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[nexium]

Excellent thread, and good inputs. Even the SteveHw redundent negativity chalanges us to find answers. The most valid criticism, in my opinion, is a trillion dollar annual cost for many centuries to achieve marginal colonies but workable solutions may be found if we persist. According to a long ago source (which has mostly survived rebutals). All the carbon in the atmosphere would cover all of Venus to a depth of 600 meters. My thinking is the polar vortex of Venus will drop most of the dead algae close to the poles, building two great plateaus. Snow fence could prevent the surface winds from blowing the dead algae off the plateaus. When the oxygen reached about 1% iron from asteroids could be sprinkled on the plateaus to scavenge the oxygen, thus discouaging algae fires.<br />Algae that falls outside the plateaus will burn, delaying somewhat the producing of an oxygen atmosphere. Statites would shade the polar region cooling it, so that sulpheric acid rain would fall. Just before the first rain falls, an impervious layer would be installed over both plateaus to prevent the sulpheric acid from sinking deep into the polar plateaus. Some of the water in the sulpheric would evaporate, but mostly water would need to be brought by comet to allow the algae to thrive. More impervious layers will be needed as the algae and acid rain continue. When the atmospheric acid nears zero and the oxygen reaches about 3% genetically altered humans, with a prothesis to dispose of carbon dioxide in their blood, can likely thrive on the plateau, with the help of water from comets and soil from asteroids. A moderate amount of dead algae in the soil should not interfer with agriculture but the statite shades will need to be modified to allow the light best for photosythesis to pass to the polar plateaus, while blocking other wavelengths, otherwise the polar regions will again get too hot. The rest of Venus will remain as hot as ever, but perhaps a billion humans can live on the pola

 

[vandivx]

"That one other suggestion in an above post, 'we can do anything we want to'. In the case of Venus, no one has that much money. If they treid to spend it, then tens of millions of their citizens would die and there would be a general rebellion against the government which spent all that & bankrupted the nation."<br /><br />well, in that case we really wouldn't want to and what I said applies too, that's why I said 'we, the people of Earth', not 'we the governments of Earth that hold pple by the scruff of their necks and tax them untill they rebel...'<br /><br />whole point is that if there was really good reason to move elsewhere (life or death), there would be general agreement from all quarters coming from people, if not, then let them croak<br /><br />I said that colonizing won't happen for some frivolous reasons like some astronomy pundits desire for romantic venture<br /><br />when Europeans discovered America, they went there but that was only because of the real promise of land, fertile land etc, when they discovered African Sahara, nobody started emigration there because they were better off at home no matter how hard it was to make living there, it still wasn't as hard to make do than in Sahara LOL, that's the whole point why pple went to America but not to Sahara desert, same with colonizing planets, it will be a while before some planet will be able to compete with Earth in terms of providing more favourable conditions for life, untill that happens its all just romantic driven pipe dream<br /><br />vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[rlb2]

<font color="orange">And stating that 'we will find a way' is very interesting. The question is, then what is that way? There are huge numbers of technological & scientific problems which simply resist solutions, and have for centuries.<font color="white"><br /><br />First you must know that everyone is aware that we don’t have the technology to make it work today, although as I mentioned above we have 4 satellites orbiting the Earths L1 position soon. When we get to the moon and learn how to move asteroids around then we will have a chance of making it work. Transporting Moon-dust is another option that we can use as the reflective ring, whatever the most inexpensive method that we can come up with is what we will end up using. We also can learn from Saturn about how gravitational forces of its small moons effect its rings. One thought may be to place several pieces of larger mass from the captured asteroid in orbit around Venuses L1 position to stabilize the orbit of the ring materials. <br /><br />The diameter of the orbit around the Earths L1 position can be as high as 200,000 kilometers in what is called a Lissajous orbit around the L1 position. To stop most all the solar radiation from reaching Venus we would need a 22,000 kilometers ring in a halo orbit around its L1 position. I see approximately 50 years before we start moving asteroids / comets around, we would start trying this not for tarraforming reasons but for self preservation, future mass extinction type impacts will be the motivator. Reaching the moon again is only 15 years away. <br /><br />Here is a rendered AutoCAD 3-D drawing I just cooked up for a planet that needs to wear shades to show about how it may work, the ring may end up looking more like a ellipse than circular. In this image you are looking away from the sun at Venus towards the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The scale is not to size, if it was then you wouldn’t be able to visualize it because of the distances.<br /><br /><font color="orange</safety_wrapper"></font></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[nexium]

My guess is the importance of a magnetic field is exagerated. Some people who who live in Canada and elsewhere inside the Arctic Circle receive more radiation than Denver, Colorado, and yet have a lower cancer rate. Earth's magnetic field tends to concentrate space radiation into a circle surounding the North magnetic pole. The thick atmosphere of Venus likely provides more protection from radiation and small meteors than Earth's thiner atmosphere. You are correct, the upper Venus atmosphere balloon outposts will be at high cancer risk, but some will reguard the risk acceptable.<br />The ISS = international space station indicates that we can build off planet outposts, but it has not demonstrated that human colonies are possible off planet as the ISS is not even close to self sufficient. Personally, I think the poles of Mercury may be the safest outposts in our solar system, and agree that Venus will likely be too costly very long term. Neil

 

[nexium]

A transit of Venus (11000 kilometers in diameter) occurs periodically with Venus a bit less than 40 million kilometers from Earth. Since the cooling of Earth is tiny during these transits, the shade needs to be much closer and/or bigger than 11,000 kilometers in diameter. How far is the Venus L1 point from Venus? Worse the shadow will often miss Venus unless the shade has considerable station keeping energy. Neil

 

[mithridates]

Yes, that's right. The atmosphere of Venus provides enough protection that radiation is not a problem. That was also dealt with in the original Landis paper:<br /><br />"The thick atmosphere provides about one kilogram per square centimeter of mass shielding from galactic cosmicradiation and from solar particle event radiation, eliminating a key difficulty in many other proposed space settlement locations." <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[silylene old]

<font color="yellow">The atmosphere of Venus provides enough protection that radiation is not a problem. </font><br /><br />Unless:<br />1) you have a balloon city flying above 97% of the atmosphere,<br />or<br />2) you terraform Venus by removing 97% of the atmosphere.<br /><br />No one is going to live on the current Venus surface hellhole under its current atmosphere! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[superluminal]

<br />Of all the obvious reasons to inhabit this hellish world of Venusian high sulfur acidic pressure, I'll bet there are the hardest diamonds and rarest Venusian ores in it's crust and mantle.<br /><br />We can have a Venusian gold rush. If only a new Einstein would invent a substance that could protect the ship and humans while in the hottest acidic pressure cooker known.<br /><br /> If technology does allow us one day to land humans on the surface, I postulate it would be a ship like so.<br /><br />I self contained robot and human crew ship, that could withstand the high acidic pressure and temperature long enough to land and then burrow the entire ship three to five meters below the surface and cover itself over in the process of burrowing.<br /><br />The temperature below the surface should be somewhat cooler than surface and thus allow heat dispersion for electronics aboard ship inward below 5 meters depth. <br /><br />The five meter burrow depth will easily allow access to needed surface gasses, while a crew of miners start excavating tunnels that could be turned into living quarters below ground.<br /><br />I guarantee there are Diamonds and Gold on Venus.<br /><br />Possibly even anti-gravity jewels.<br /><br />I predict, possibly by year 2400, we'll have the proper progressed technology to accomplish this worthy goal. <br /><br />Maybe Venusians do live underground ?<br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><br /><strong><font size="3" color="#3366ff">Columbia and Challenger </font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="3" color="#3366ff">Starships of Heroes</font></strong></p> </div>

 

[casualphilosoph]

As Venus atmosphere has been hot for a very long time even on its night side its unlikely that the underground would be any cooler as the heat can not escape and as such has dispersed underground for along long time and as Venus is volcanic active there is even less room for heat to disperse so the underground will likely have the same temperature as the armosphere directly avove it maybe even hotter.<br />Well and if you do not glue together the ground trough which you dug to get underground it well not lessen the pressure that rest on you even slightly, then however you also would be unable to dispose the spoil created by mining.

 

[mithridates]

The easiest way to explore the surface would be with rovers like the ones on Mars, except they would be dummy rovers that have all their inner circuitry in a small plane flying above that would relay signals back and forth. The rover on the bottom would just accept and relay commands and information.<br /><br />The ideal location would be a mountainous range / plateau some 5 km or so above the surface where the pressure is a dozen or two bars less than at "sea" level and the temperature slightly cooler (50 degrees or so). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[superluminal]

As Venus atmosphere has been hot for a very long time even on its night side its unlikely that the underground would be any cooler as the heat can not escape and as such has dispersed underground for along long time and as Venus is volcanic active there is even less room for heat to disperse so the underground will likely have the same temperature as the atmosphere directly above it maybe even hotter. <br />Well and if you do not glue together the ground trough which you dug to get underground it well not lessen the pressure that rest on you even slightly, then however you also would be unable to dispose the spoil created by mining. <br />-----------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />I surmise, that depending on the compaction of the soil and the proper location, that the 900 degree Fahrenheit temperature and 90 plus atmospheric pressure, would only permeate the soil five meters before it began to cool considerably.<br /> Certainly I'd have to support the soil above my craft but once sealed underground and an excavation tunnel built, with an airlock I could control pressure and simulate earth pressure and atmosphere below ground. <br /><br /><br />-------------------------------------------------------------------<br />Mithredates <br /><br />The easiest way to explore the surface would be with rovers like the ones on Mars, except they would be dummy rovers that have all their inner circuitry in a small plane flying above that would relay signals back and forth. The rover on the bottom would just accept and relay commands and information. <br /><br />The ideal location would be a mountainous range / plateau some 5 km or so above the surface where the pressure is a dozen or two bars less than at "sea" level and the temperature slightly cooler (50 degrees or so). <br /><br />-------- <br />re <br /><br />You're so right about robots exploring higher elevations.<br /><br />I don't think it's possible to build a surface rover without motors and circ <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><br /><strong><font size="3" color="#3366ff">Columbia and Challenger </font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="3" color="#3366ff">Starships of Heroes</font></strong></p> </div>

 

[casualphilosoph]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p> I surmise, that depending on the compaction of the soil and the proper location, that the 900 degree Fahrenheit temperature and 90 plus atmospheric pressure, would only permeate the soil five meters before it began to cool considerably.<br />Certainly I'd have to support the soil above my craft but once sealed underground and an excavation tunnel built, with an airlock I could control pressure and simulate earth pressure and atmosphere below ground. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Excuse me but you seem to have some quite warped understanding why here on earth its cooler underground then above ground. Basically the underground is cooler cause the slow movement of heat averages the overall temperature of the year and additionally the temperature will be cooled down by evaporating water.

 

[superluminal]

I suppose I do tend to ask unanswerable questions. <br /> However, there's no need to label me as warped just because I am curious and read a lot.<br /><br />Truth is, when it comes to Venus, there are many unanswered questions because of the volatile environment at surface level.<br /><br />And below the surface, there is even less known about Venus.<br /><br /><br /><br />Here's something you can read in your leisure. <br /><br />Greenkouse Atmospheres vs. Plate Tectonics<br /><br />Have a nice Sunday.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><br /><strong><font size="3" color="#3366ff">Columbia and Challenger </font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="3" color="#3366ff">Starships of Heroes</font></strong></p> </div>

 

[casualphilosoph]

I did not mean you where warped only your understanding of the facts is or was warped. I am not a guy that likes to insult people ^-^

 

[nexium]

If Venus was much cooler a few thousand years ago, then it may be a bit cooler 5 meters below the surface in some locations. A bit cooler, however is not much help at 900 degrees f. It is reasonable to suppose that Venus was one or two degrees cooler a thousand years ago and/or a million years ago, but the massive collisions in that time period likely did not occur or warmed the temperature less than two degrees. Neil

 

[ecitonburchelli]

I think a question would be what would be the purpose of human colonization? We don't need to be floating above to send robots there to explore the planet. Our main goal is for our species to be somewhere else and live on if something happened to Earth. The ideal places seem to be Mars or Titan. Let's say we have a floating colony on Venus and something happens to the Earth. What they going to do? They can't ever go down- what materials are they going to use to build anything or even maintain the structure they are in. It would just be one long "wait" until their structure collapsed and they all died. As solid beings, we need solid materials- and you can't get that floating around in some cloud.<br /><br />Survival should be our first goal in colonization- and that points to Mars or Titan- the atmosphere of Venus doesn't cut it- we can do that later, but first things first.

 

[mithridates]

Sure you can. Carbon nanotubes, the strongest structure there is. There's a thread on the subject here:<br /><br />http://uplink.space.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=businesstech&Number=436878&page=12&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&vc=1<br /><br />As for survival, consider the shorter distance, Earth-like air pressure and more frequent launch windows as well. One hole in your living structure on Mars could spell the end; on Venus you use an oxygen tank and walk over to repair the hole. The atmosphere of Titan is also poisonous if I remember correctly, not just unbreathable.<br />There's no reason not to colonize Mars as well, but the arguments against Venus have never seemed to be much more than a fear of the hot surface, which we're not going to anyway. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[mithridates]

I did notice some speculation on the Wikipedia article before it got removed about using a comet to create a ring around the planet to block the sunlight. Bringing a comet close enough would cause it to disintegrate and apparently that would be a better way for a long-term effect on the atmosphere. I don't know exactly what the effect of it would be though. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[colbourne]

I like the idea of terraforming Venus. I would go ahead with a large sun shield , and design some kind of microbe that could convert the atmosphere to a solid which would reduce the greenhouse effect.<br />Once the atmosphere had been cooled and the greenhouse effect reduced , with a large part of the atmosphere solidified out let say with a ground pressure of 1 bar what are the other serious problems for a manned landing .<br />If our sun shield was destroyed , what ground level air temperture would result assumming a 1 bar atmosphere.<br /><br />I obviously would not want to go ahead with the terraforming until we had found out more about the history of Venus. whether any life forms ever existed there, although I guess the remains would probably have been destroyed by now. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[chesh]

Venus is hot because it's so near the sun. Were it not receiving the solar heat radiation it receives, it'd not be so hot, regardless of the composition of the atmosphere.<br /><br />So, blocking the incident solar radiation is a must. The cost would be immense however, and the dust particle shield would have to block at least 1/2 of the incident radiation. The mass of a particle cloud surrounding Venus would be huge and is totally theoretical and out of reach of our finances & technologies.<br /><br />and it would have to be continuously regenerated, again, more cost which would doom any such project. The returns on such a project would have to reimburse the $10's of trillions cost. One does not see how that could be done. There's nothin on Venus worth $10's of trillions which could not be obtained elsewhere many magnitudes of order times over, for far less cost.<br /><br />Least energy rules the universe, as well as human activities..<br /><br />Second, the massive, thick Atmosphere of Venus would have to be removed, and cometary impacts would do that. Altho how many and for how long it would have to be sustained are also unknowns. It's also a project which would require a substantial portion of the US' GDP to do. So, again, not practical. And where did the atmosphere come from? It's highly likely in equilibrium with the crust which is deeper and carries as much gas as the atmosphere.<br /><br />So one gets rid of the atmosphere & the crust simply regenerates it. Then one has to get rid of it again, and obviously, one cannot have cometary impacts coming down around a human colony on Venus.<br /><br />Let's face it. Venus is a h-ll hole and is unlikely EVER to be colonized because the costs are inconceivably great. <br /><br />But Venus does sit there showing us the great range of planets that could exist, esp. too far inwards to the sun from the liquid water zone, which our earth probably inhabits.

 

[mithridates]

Oh, it's the "Venus is a hell hole" argument again. Take a look at the few first pages of this thread and you'll see that nowhere does the op suggest a terraforming of the planet before colonization of the clouds. The talk in the past few posts about terraforming is just speculation about the far future.<br />Also, who said anything about the US doing the terraforming anyway? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[saurc]

Right now it's really weird to think of the US terraforming Venus, when NASA is really cramped for funds..