Venus' Resources...

[emudude]

This is a carry over from another thread, but has anyone considered the benefits of colonizing Venus and using its resources? Floating cities (kept aloft with the air we breathe) would be surprisingly successful high up in its atmosphere, which is rich with useful elements. Check out this page (I love Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus

 

[Boris_Badenov]

I didn't look too close at that Wiki article, I just browsed it. I did look a little closer at the external links & who has edited it. I think somebody that used to post here put it together. While it's an interesting article & I'm sure it contains many facts, I have difficulty trusting too much of what you get from Wiki. Generally, you should dig into the external links an article provides, & this one is very short on those.
At any rate, Venus does have substantial resources in it's atmosphere, but not anything you couldn't get elsewhere at considerably less cost.
Let's say you wanted to use CO2 to create a greenhouse effect in Mars atmosphere. The Venusian atmosphere contains massive amounts of it. So we could construct ships to scoop it out of the atmosphere & ship it off to Mars. But it is also in the Martian regolith. Designing a method of releasing from there would be a much more cost effective solution.
Building floating cities in the Venusian atmosphere or even terraforming Venus are interesting thought exercises & may very well be possible in the distant future, but for the time being they are well beyond our reach & not even very desirable goals.

 

[emudude]

While wikipedia is not a guaranteed source, it's a great place to look into a topic and see a great number of ideas, which you can explore elsewhere if you need credible sources I agree with you on looking up the external links 100%. I just thought it was neat that Venus is so close and that air is a lifting gas at a level in the atmosphere which would be equal to the pressure levels seen at the surface of earth. Extraction of materials from regolith, such as that found on the moon, requires enough energy to create molten rock; if this is less than the energy required to harvest the vast amount of C02 readily available at high pressures in Venus' atmosphere I would be pretty surprised. As well, sufuric acid, H2 S O4, has many useful chemical reactions, and contains hydrogen and oxygen, both used for rocket fuel and for sustaining life.

While the surface conditions on Venus are extremely inhospitable, having something like 90x surface pressure on earth, or about 1km underwater (I think), as well as temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Having floating colonies (even small house sized modules to begin with) would provide a crucial stepping stone towards using these conditions to our advantage; we expend a great deal of energy heating up metals for industrial purposes here, but on Venus (which potentially has many metals of value), the amount of energy required to heat metals would be reduced due to the already stifling surface temperatures and pressures. Getting finished products off the surface is as simple as taking an air balloon up to your nearest floating colony

 

[emudude]

Thanks for the info dung2h! I had no idea that there were active volcanoes on Venus. The surface of Venus, while inhospitable, would be very interesting for geologists to study, and make comparisons with Earth's geological properties. The ESA's Venus Express mission has found out a great deal of cool stuff...I hope more missions are sent here in the future, perhaps a weather balloon? With all that air pressure keeping it aloft and powered by the sun wouldn't be too hard

 

[MarkStanaway]

emudude wrote: Getting finished products off the surface is as simple as taking an air balloon up to your nearest floating colony

Of course then there is the little problem of getting your finished products up to orbital velocity and then Venus escape velocity to send them to earth. This would take approximately the same rocket power as launching the same mass from earth.

 

[emudude]

emudude wrote: Getting finished products off the surface is as simple as taking an air balloon up to your nearest floating colony

Of course then there is the little problem of getting your finished products up to orbital velocity and then Venus escape velocity to send them to earth. This would take approximately the same rocket power as launching the same mass from earth.

Yep, using conventional launch technologies that is. Floating colonies (remember, the air we breathe is a lifting gas on Venus!!) would have significant access to resources though, not to mention a free oven below them...A device as simple as a compressed air cylinder with a payload attached to the bottom which releases air into a balloon at a certain altitude would be sufficient to send stuff down...not to mention some cool new extreme sports while we're at it :ugeek:

"uh, my balloon isn't inflating...help?"

 

[LogicianSolutions]

The problem with Venus is it's too close to the sun. It's this extra heat which has prolonged it's vocanic life span. The core just can't cool fast enough to decrease this. Either move Venus out closer to earth's orbit or vent some of the extra atmosphere or some of both. The mathmaticle abilities we have today are astronomical in scope. We could cause meteors to strike the planet at various points and push it to whatever orbit and what ever rotation we'd like. This is at most a 300 year project if we actually begin to work on developing our in system space craft. There is a conection between earth's moon and our mental state. Think of it like man made polution, we don't have a clue of what the impact it's having world wide but we're sure it must be doing something. The moon's gravity is the same way. A example is we know it causes the ocean tides. Our minds and bodies our mostly water, there for it's a good guess the moon is steadily effecting us, even if we've got little clue how. That is why I support any terra formed world to also get a large satalite blown into it's orbit for a similiar gravitational pull. Of corse if it's a runt planet like Mars, it should have a runt moon which one of it's moons/meteors may be just perfect for already. Anyways, unless you're terra forming Venus it makes no sense to "harvest" anything from it. As for floating cities? Did I miss the discovery of practicle working anti gravity? I'm sure it would have atleast made FNN.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Your post shows an extreme lack of logic.

We do not posess the ability to cause meteors (sic) to strike Venus, and even if we did, none of that would have any substantial effect on it's orbit. In fact, we don't even at the moment have a way to deflect a meteor (sic) that could wipe out life on earth, much less move Venus' orbit. I'd suggest you do some research on the actual physics involved.

And even if we could, have you considered what the effect would be on the earth's orbit? If Venus could be moved, there would be repercussions throughout the solar system; we (earth) could wind up crashing into the sun, or being ejected to beyond Pluto's orbit!

The assertion that the moon's gravity affects human behaviour is purely anecdotal, and all scientific studies have repeatedly shown that it has no effect on human behaviour. Pure urban myth.

The rest of your statement is such incoherent babble, it's hard to even tell what you are saying.

The post belongs in The Unexplained, not a real science forum like SETI.

 

[scottb50]

And even if we could, have you considered what the effect would be on the earth's orbit? If Venus could be moved, there would be repercussions throughout the solar system; we (earth) could wind up crashing into the sun, or being ejected to beyond Pluto's orbit!

While I agree with pretty much everything else this seems a little overblown. If it was moved to an identical Earth orbit at a far enough distance it would not have any effect on Earths orbit, too close it would, but to the extremes you suggest it would have to be a celestial pool game.

That we could even alter the orbit of a Planet is as far fetched as predicting the outcome. Even a moon sized body would have minimal orbital effects.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Well it's not really overblown, since we can't say what the effects would be. Shifting Venus' orbit could have wide ranging consequences. All orbits in the solar system are chaotic as it is, (unpredictable in detail for long periods), so moving a massive (well relatively massive, since the solar system is really the Sun, Jupiter and some rubble) object like Venus could affect all the other orbits, particularly in the inner solar system (inside Jupiter's orbit)