Venus powerplant

[dragonous]

I'm still working on the structure of the entire thing. <br /><br />Trouble is how am I going to have adaquate air locks and yet maintain normal acceptable environmental limits as well as having to entire thing structural sound. That and building the entire thing for an elevator is good too. Actually there is an underground subway proposed to the site, to land above would be too hazadous. The entire facality is sealed from the outside air up to a proposed 100-150 miles all around, underground wires too. The problem with Venus is the length of the source of an acceptable cooling method. Well that and I have to intricate the radiator design so the heat would not melt the piping and make the facility useless. That and the details for the airlock for making external repairs to the station. Well, as for redirecting power, the station would actually have a modified design. A lot of excess power would come from Venus, and the other source would come from the solar panels on the station.<br /><br />The next step is to figure out would to do with that amount of extra power. I just have a plan to just terraform Venus into a desert or a more temperate earth. The only problem would be the addition of more pollution on an ecosystem that has no sources of polar ice. Well that an if I find there is no adaquate resources, then there would be a problem of shipping materials. Unlike Mars and the Moon, Venus has a more robust atmosphere. The problem is the mass amounts of greenhouse gases in the air, which my plant does supply to cover. The problem would be not only the amount of heat and the worry of supplies and structural support, but the possiblity that Venus's crust might not be able to support the weight. You guys have any other ideas?

 

[tap_sa]

If I understood correctly the original post was about using heat energy of venusian atmosphere to terraform it. If terraforming Venus really is the goal the first thing to do is to <i>spin it up</i>. Before that all attempts to make the atmosphere more habitable are pretty much moot. Venusian day is long, <i>very</i> long. In fact it is longer than venusian year. If it wasn't for the thick atmosphere the surface of Venus would be like Mercury, fiery hot on the day side and cryogenic on the night side. Another thing is the lack of magnetic field, Venus is theorized to have molten iron core similar to Earth's and it should generate a protective field if it just would spin fast enough. Without that protection the solar wind would wreck havoc to Earth type atmosphere. <br /><br />So first smash a few Quaoars and Sednas into Venus with proper angle. Those Kuiper belt objects would also bring nice amount of water with them. And additional mass. I recently read somewhere that Earth has just barely enough mass to keep it's hydrogen in balance. Venus needs more, it can hold deuterium but not plain hydrogen.

 

[yurkin]

Morris<br /><font color="yellow"> satellites in Venusian orbit and beam the power to the surface.</font><br />I don’t think you can beam power through the Cytherean atmosphere, not without a great deal of loss.<br /><br />I have some idea’s though.<br /><br />Instead of going up go down. We can know the thermal radiation from Venus and if we know the surface material we could estimate how far down you have to go to reach a cool region. So you could have almost a reverse geo-thermal plant, where the cool sink is below and the heat sink is above. This would also keep the heat sink from melting because it would constantly be being cooled. And the cold sink area deep below the surface would be ideal for habitation. Well a lot better then the surface anyway. <br />I believe this would work unless Venus is so volcanic active that there is no cool zone as I described.<br /><br />Maybe you don’t need to go all the way to the top of the cloud deck. Something like this could be built to go twenty high. Just the tube would be needed not the green house area below. A few well timed explosives could pump air through it and after that the process would be automatic. Spare power could be used to keep the lower levels from melting.<br />

 

[tap_sa]

Why would Venus be any cooler below ground? The surface temperature is at least +400C everywhere.

 

[Leovinus]

Rather than using heat, perhaps we could harness wind power. Isn't it very windy on Venus? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[bushuser]

Very interesting link, probably not directly applicable to Venusian environment. I was thinking the bedrock a few feet below the surface is probably much cooler than Venusian atmosphere, and can serve as a useful heat sink for a Stirling engine or a convective turbine energy source. [Gee, I guess your link IS a convective turbine!]<br /><br />Of course, neither of these removes CO2 from the atmosphere, which seems to be where this thread started. If you are terraforming, this power source could be used to run the industrial machinery to split CO2, releasing O2 into the atmosphere.

 

[dragonous]

Very interesting too, the proposed plan was to be built on earth not on venus. It's just a first step plans, and the pollution absorbing tower is just there to get the entire ecosystem at the plant near to that of Venus's atmosphere. <br /><br />The biggest trouble is not Venus's heat, it's just finding an adquate cooling source as well as the thin crust. The lower orbiting satillite with the necessary specs is good enough, but comes the problem of maintaining orbit. That I fear the design would look something like a dip stick. The way the power is going to be distributed the power is going to run a couple of air purifying facillites that would do just as you would say, the extra power would go to the station. The pollution absorbing static tower would just be a just like a humungous smoke stack for the entire plant!! But since pollution would be high, I had to implement some additional features that I thought would be necessary. I'm still working on the plant propose for Venus. And if this would work, I could just make a bundle off of the power this plant would produce. Besides a 400 temperature gradiant would be more than enough to produce 500 Megawatts, especially by land that 100 square miles set aside for just the facillites and the power plant.

 

[nexium]

Hi Steve: How about a reasonable compromise? We will evaluate every proposal on space.com If some hot shot like you reads a comment that seems slightly promising they should try to get serious researchers busy doing R&D.<br /> I understand the temperature on the night side of Mercury is -133c, so likely it is about the same temperature (not 3 degrees k) about 200 miles above the surface of Venus in the shade of both Venus and the Sun. 400 miles round trip is likely too long to get useful energy from thermocouples unless we can use super conductors (unlikely near term)<br />We can practice here on Earth where the average surface temperature is about 35 c with -40 degrees c at about 12,000 meters altitude. If we can't make that work significately, Venus is improbable. Both planets have wind loading, lightening, chemical corrosion, about the same gravity.<br /> We might however figure a way to get energy from the rather narrow sulpheric acid layers in the Venus atmosphere. Neil

 

[nexium]

Assuming carbon dioxide does damage, how could carbon in the environment do either more or less damage than new carbon such as oil and coal? You are perhaps refering to polutants that accompany the carbon dioxide? Neil

 

[nexium]

I don't know of any "radio type tower" or "geothermal plant" that would "absorb" carbon dioxide or any other polutants. What does the tower do with the atoms removed from the atmosphere? Has any one even a far out idea? <br />Is that ten million TONS that raises the temperature 10 degrees? You expect your tower to warm an entire planet 10 degrees? Neil

 

[dragonous]

From my earlier post no. The ten degree for every 10 million or billion or so absorb to that one location where that plant is would lower the amount of CO2 in the air alone. The static tower works like a gigantic smoke stack that smoke stacks nearly the entire world, still working on a prototype. THe greenhouse gas in the area would raise the surrounding temperature a lot more than what would be sustaining life, also because of the CO2 concentration. Then the modifed geothermal plant would make used of the heat and provide power off of the incresed heat output from the CO2. The other facilites from the earlier posts would purify the air. I'm still reading some books on Venus and some others and what I might need.

 

[thalion]

I'm not so sure a basic wind turbine on Venus would be fruitless. If we're talking about a bare-bones generator with iron magnets and copper wire, and an overall steel construction, it should be fine--the link below states that the Curie point of iron is at 1043 K, well above Venus's surface temperature, and not hot enough to melt copper either. Who knows--it could even be open to the atmosphere. I think the difficulties emerge when one tries to keep sophisticated electronics, with their wires, motherboards, capacitors and whatnot functional in Venusian temperatures.<br /><br />Though winds on Venus's surface are weak, as others have stated the density would make up for it somewhat. I don't know if the power generated would be worth the effort, though.

 

[mooware]

<font color="yellow"> One should NOT reject every proposal instantly, no matter how stupid they seem. Every proposal must be evaluated</font><br /><br />It was evaluated, and it was deemed stupid.. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br />

 

[tomnackid]

Jeez, crack open a physics text will ya guys!

 

[mikejz]

JPL Did a study a while ago about a Venus Lander with a 1-year life. I can't find the link off hand, but it appeared that it was very doable. Basically it used it a RTG with most of the power going to to active cooling--cooling a very small electrionics box.<br /><br />It should also be noted that while modern electionics are not up the temp, good old Vacuum Tubes do not have that problem, and can would at over 1000 degrees. <br /><br /><br />As far as cooling Venus down, why not do it by heating it up? After all if we can get the upper atomosphere to expand, more of it will escape into space. So i propose that we nuke the crap out of Venues upper atmosphere until it has expanded so much that it would just drift away.

 

[le3119]

I had to jump in here! Venus is as hot as a furnace because it is over 30% closer to the Sun than the Earth, comparing seasons on the two worlds is not possible. Even if we could terraform Venus (and I hope we do), she'd still be quite hot, as in Death Valley. <br /><br />Trouble is, Venus' day is LONGER than it's year, it's almost in tidal lock with the Sun, so I guess the night side would be cooler after all.

 

[lunatio_gordin]

that's not the only reason. venus' atmosphere is 96% CO2, the infamous greenhouse gas. The heat gets trapped and stays in the atmosphere, and that is why venus is so hot.

 

[majornature]

If Nasa can successfully get a radio tower through Venus' harmful atmosphere then that idea of yours may work.<br /><br /><b> True Knowledge Exists in Knowing That You Know NOTHING!!!!!</b> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#14ea50"><strong><font size="1">We are born.  We live.  We experiment.  We rot.  We die.  and the whole process starts all over again!  Imagine That!</font><br /><br /><br /><img id="6e5c6b4c-0657-47dd-9476-1fbb47938264" style="width:176px;height:247px" src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/14/4/6e5c6b4c-0657-47dd-9476-1fbb47938264.Large.jpg" alt="blog post photo" width="276" height="440" /><br /></strong></font> </div>

 

[joncee1949]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but here it goes anyway. I you were able to land a craft on the surface and find ways to deal with the adverse heat, would it be possible to use solar cells to trickle charge a battery? I know the cloud cover is pretty dense, but would enough solar energy get through the atmosphere to be of any use? I am not looking for a solution to power anything large, maybe only a probe. Any other suggestions of ways to recharge the on-board probe batteries?<br /><br />

 

[mlorrey]

Yes, pressure is the bigger problem, because it alters the material properties of items sent down there: resistances, capacitances, etc all change, so your electronics need to be inside a vacuum pressure vessel (much smarter than building your electronics out of individual vacuum tubes). As soon as the vacuum is lost, the electronics stop operating as they should. <br /><br />Optimally, one would design electronics that would be able to operate normally at such high temps and pressures (and likely wouldn't work at all in our environment).

 

[josh_simonson]

The pressure and dense atmosphere make venus an ideal place to send airborne probes, either gliders or balloons that float around in the atmosphere. At 50km altitude, the temperature of venus' atmosphere is around room temperature, and the pressure is coincedentally close to earth sea level pressure. A balloon or glider could survive in this zone without elaborate protection.

 

[mlorrey]

Quite right, Josh. This is a good altitude to lower orbital tether ends to, provided you can orbit one so the lower end is traveling at the same speed as the ambient winds at that altitude. Once you've got the tether in place, you can drop water too it from orbit, and use the water to bind CO2 into carbonate, though you'd need a supply of calcium and/or potassium to make lime out of it. This can be brought from the surface, or from stony asteroids, or may exist as dust in the air that can be collected.

 

[vogon13]

But why do I find the idea so compelling?<br /><br />Bwa, ha ha!<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[rocketman5000]

So you are saying Venus is a good place to build a cloud city much like in Star Wars.... hmmm... who was it on these boards that worked for the company planning to build a high altitude launch station?