161–170 of 179 posts
I wonder why there isn't a balloon mission being studied. The upper atmosphere has temperature and pressure similar to Earth at sea level. Maybe the wind is a big problem? Or insertion from orbit?
life exists here. let’s stop looking for exit strategies and stop wasting valuable time and money on far away rocks.
we need to put all that time and energy dreaming and solving for a better EARTH.
“But momentum is building to explore Venus, in part because scientists say it could hold the secret to understanding what makes a planet habitable. Once Earth’s twin, today Venus is a hellish abode where surface temperatures reach more than 400 °C, atmospheric pressures slam down with enough force to crush heavy machinery and clouds of sulfuric acid blow through the sky. If researchers could decipher why conditions o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would we float a platform at that height?
Most methods of flying things through Earth's lower atmosphere should apply well to Venus at 50 km: balloons, planes, helicopters, etc. To gather energy for rotors, maybe we could siphon heat from below to power a generator or other type of converter. Just playing with ideas. :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be a very wasteful use of precious volatiles though. But we could kick up a magnetic field with superconducting rings around the poles though.
Losing 0.00001% per year is not "very wasteful" to me. There are ideas for putting up a magnetic field based on putting a contraption in whichever L1/L2... point is between Mars and the Sun.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Particularly when we don't even know have reason to believe there are samples. If/when we detect life elsewhere we can talk about leaving it alone, but there are plenty of rocks in the universe with no life that we can work with.
We can still explore them. It's the contamination of them that is at question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see no reason why intelligent life with high technology could not have developed on Venus. Say, several hundred million years ago. And perhaps they triggered runaway greenhouse warming, which vaporized the oceans. And so perhaps it was the loss of the oceans that ended plate tectonics, not the other way around. I doubt that runaway greenhouse warming could get so extreme for Earth. I recall reading that solar input…
> I see no reason why intelligent life with high technology could not have developed on Venus. Say, several hundred million years ago. And perhaps they triggered runaway greenhouse warming, which vaporized the oceans. And so perhaps it was the loss of the oceans that ended plate tectonics, not the other way around. The only way that thought experiment could make sense is if they had the technology to do that, but not…
Maybe they DID get to Earth, and are currently busy transforming our atmosphere to generate cozier conditions for themselves?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see no reason why intelligent life with high technology could not have developed on Venus. Say, several hundred million years ago. And perhaps they triggered runaway greenhouse warming, which vaporized the oceans. And so perhaps it was the loss of the oceans that ended plate tectonics, not the other way around. The only way that thought experiment could make sense is if they had the technology to do that, but not…
Pure speculation, but agriculture or the the equivalent of the industrial revolution might have been enough to create a runaway greenhouse effect. I find it easy to imagine how our civilization could have gone extinct due to fossil fuel use without ever getting anything close to orbital velocity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Venus is closer to Earth.
Given a choice of death by fire and death by cold, death by cold is easier to mitigate against, and is the default problem in space. To survive Venus, you have to first survive the freezing trip to Venus. So you need heating and air conditioning. A lot. Of both. On Mars, you only need the heating systems that got you to Mars. Similar problem for radiation: going to Mars leads to less radiation. Going to Venus increas…
well, actually... you need lower-energy atoms for higher-energy ones to rub against to carry away the excess. there's not many atoms in vacuum, so the default problem in space is overheating. see eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Contro... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_cooling_and_ventilation...
> you have to first survive the freezing trip to Venus. So you need heating and air conditioning. A lot. Of both.
the heating part is very, very wrong. the AC would be Atmospheric Control, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Sy....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see no reason why intelligent life with high technology could not have developed on Venus. Say, several hundred million years ago. And perhaps they triggered runaway greenhouse warming, which vaporized the oceans. And so perhaps it was the loss of the oceans that ended plate tectonics, not the other way around. The only way that thought experiment could make sense is if they had the technology to do that, but not…
Who says they didn't escape to Earth, a billion years ago? It's not as if they would still be around ... unless they live at the sea bottom; then there is no reason we would know. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." But seriously, an invasion from Venus a billion years ago would leave no evidence we could reconstruct today. After they went extinc…
However, the Earth wasn't so hospitable, ~1000 Ma BP. There wasn't much free oxygen then. Not until 600-800 Ma BP, I gather. So if they were oxygen breathers, they would have been living in habitats. But maybe they made the move ~600 Ma BP. That would have been ~endgame on Venus.
I don't see how any of this is testable, however. Some have argued that Octopodidae aren't originally from Earth. But it's iffy.[0] Still, who knows? Maybe they did come from Venus ;)