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Momentum is building to explore Venus

nature.com

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Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#51

Post by hsnewman »

thebooktocome wrote: post #39
theandrewbailey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which environments are you referring to? Venus is the closest planet to Earth. The Moon is the only significant body between the two. And by 'we've failed to terraform', did you mean 'we haven't tried yet'?

As far as I'm aware, nobody's succeeded in turning deserts into farm land on a large scale. Various parties keep trying but the water, fertilizer, and maintenance costs are astronomical.

Israel has turned much of it's desert into farmland and forests. For example, the Yatir forest is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yatir_Forest

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#52

Post by maxxxxx »

stcredzero wrote: post #28
gdubs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered the same thing! A little while back two NASA scientists published a paper on how you would detect the existence of a previous advanced society on Earth. Apparently, over a long time scale it's actually fairly difficult. Not at all my area, but it doesn't seem like we can actually answer that question you posed. It's fascinating. Carl Sagan's COSMOS might be the first time I'd ever heard about Glob…

A little while back two NASA scientists published a paper on how you would detect the existence of a previous advanced society on Earth. Apparently, over a long time scale it's actually fairly difficult. Now imagine detecting one, when the entire planet is covered in a 90 bar atmosphere with sulphuric acid clouds. I'll update my downer Sci-fi novel premise. Humanity makes its first Alcubierre drive warp ship. On its…

That's a little like Planet Of the Apes where they find out that they are actually on Earth.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#53

Post by stronglikedan »

DennisP wrote: post #30
empath75 wrote: post #12

So I had two thoughts while reading it: Is it possible that in the 3 billion years that it had liquid water, Venus evolved advanced life that managed to trigger runaway greenhouse warming? Secondly, is Venus’s atmosphere a worst case scenario for global warming here or is there something that would prevent it happening?

According to James Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren , Venus-level warming is far beyond anything we could achieve on Earth. Given our greater distance from the sun we don't have enough carbon to pull it off. (The worst we could do is still enough to destroy us, though.)

Does that imply that an advanced enough Venusian life form could have triggered global warming there more easily?

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#54

Post by SaberTail »

I'm glad Venus is getting more attention. Mars seems to get the most attention as a place to visit, but we seem to ignore Venus.

Venus has a few things going for it that I think make it a better choice for permanent human habitation than Mars.

* Venus has nearly Earth-like gravity (8.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²)

* The atmosphere 50 km above the surface is the right temperature for liquid water, and has a similar atmospheric pressure to Earth at sea level. [1]

* Venus has suffered a runaway greenhouse effect. It's a good place to experiment on how to mitigate or reverse that without risking Earth. And what we do learn may be applicable to Earth in the not-too-distant future.

[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200300...

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#55

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

Isamu wrote: post #32

Stay tuned for the Venus mechanical maker challenge: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-make... >With its sulfuric acid clouds, temperatures over 450°C, and 92 times the surface pressure of Earth, Venus is one of the most hostile planetary environments in the solar system. Prior missions have only survived hours! But an automaton (or clockwork mechanical robot) could solve this problem. By utiliz…

It’s called an autoclave...

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#56

Post by m0zg »

empath75 wrote: post #20
hsnewman wrote: post #4

I've always wondered why we don't seed it with some biology that can eat the components of the Venusian atmosphere (ie: sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide) to make a more habitable planet over time.

We can’t even fix the climate where we live, with much easier solutions.

Technically we can. We just can't do it (currently) without ruining the living standards for 90% of the world's population.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#57

Post by Isamu »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #55
Isamu wrote: post #32

Stay tuned for the Venus mechanical maker challenge: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-make... >With its sulfuric acid clouds, temperatures over 450°C, and 92 times the surface pressure of Earth, Venus is one of the most hostile planetary environments in the solar system. Prior missions have only survived hours! But an automaton (or clockwork mechanical robot) could solve this problem. By utiliz…

It’s called an autoclave...

Ha! If it's roomy, plus 92 atmospheres (plus hot acid clouds!)

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#58

Post by scottlocklin »

Robotbeat wrote: post #45
Isamu wrote: post #32

Stay tuned for the Venus mechanical maker challenge: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/events/2019/3/1/mechanical-make... >With its sulfuric acid clouds, temperatures over 450°C, and 92 times the surface pressure of Earth, Venus is one of the most hostile planetary environments in the solar system. Prior missions have only survived hours! But an automaton (or clockwork mechanical robot) could solve this problem. By utiliz…

Yes. NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio has one, I believe. They were building it when I was an intern ~6 years ago. Of course, Glenn also has high temperature electronics. Memory is hard to come by, but simple analog and digital circuits are feasible (enough for data digitization, multiplexing, some forward error correction, and transmission to orbital assets). Here are a couple papers on the idea of all-high-temper…

Cool stuff. One of my roomies in collitch got his Ph.D. with Choyke who I think is still the godfather of high-bandgap semiconductor physics.

Looks like NASA wants to make cpus with Gallium Nitride now:

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-gallium-nitride-processornext-...

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#59

Post by jlarocco »

theseadroid wrote: post #41
gnulinux wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know? Can we go to Mars today? What if earth gets destroyed before we can emigrate to Mars? (assume that Mars is a clone of earth i.e. the same conditions we have in Earth) Also it's possible earth wasn't suitable for Venisian life back then.

Say if we suddenly realize earth is going to be unsuitable for all life forms in a year. What would we do? I would fire as many rockets as possible to Mars, carrying all kind of life forms on earth, and hope a few of them will survive and possibly evolve to Mars' environment.

That's easy to say, but how would you actually do it?

To use myself as a counterexample, I don't see the point, and wouldn't be inclined to help.

Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus

#60

Post by eloff »

Why couldn't you vacuum insulate the electronics and place some kind of radiative cooling on top of them? You'd need the cooler to be able to radiate all the radiative energy coming into the chamber from outside it, plus what the electronics generate. You'd want the thermos type chamber to be reflective to radiation from one side only.

It would depend on how low energy you can get the electronics, plus how efficient your black body cooler is. I have no idea if the latter could be done practically.

Might be a lot easier than high temperature electronics or mechanical alternatives.

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