171–180 of 393 posts
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Colonize the top of Mt Everest first? Even closer to Earth. Similar challenged. 250,000 miles closer to resupply. Very hard, a good test of colonizing technology.
Won't develop space travel and sustainment technologies much. With that logic, we can colonize oceans (and probably discover a thing or two about our origins and new life forms)
As a doctrine, colonization hasn't worked too well for humanity. It assumes an ethnocentric view where the colonizer has the right to take or use resources that they believe they "discovered". Just because there aren't any humans there, doesn't mean it doesn't already belong to someone. And just because we are able to take over a moon, doesn't mean we have the right to. Instead of colonizing, we should be talking abo…
There isn't anyone there, human or otherwise.
> And just because we are able to take over a moon, doesn't mean we have the right to.
Sure it does.
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Venus has the very big advantage of having allmost earths g. That is a big deal. The very big disadvantage except the atmosphere is the lenght of a venus day: 116 earth days and 18 hours. So a science fiction solution is asteroid bombardment to make venus spin faster ..
I personally would bombard with comets. Bring down the temperature and deposit water on the planet.
Also, would the temperature really go down and not be negated by the kinetic impact?
Apart from that, more water probably helps, if we do not need that water more urgently on mars.
Serious question, since this is out of my swim lane. The Author keeps talking about the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays, do we have any usable materials we can build habitats out of that can block them? I mean usable in the sense we can produce in scale and they are non toxic to humans.
Outside of that, there is a 'graded Z' shield. Here, you make a layer cake of various atomic nuclei (the Zs), going from heavier to lighter. Typically Tantalum down to Tin and down to Aluminum. They physics here aren't super important, but for lower energy radiation, you can get down to a 60% mass reduction for similar shielding protection.
The problem is that it's the higher energy radiation that you are worried about, the Cosmic Rays. Graded Z shields pretty much work like anything else at those energies. Under our current physics mumbo-jumbo, you just need nuclei.
Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but…
Venus has the very big advantage of having allmost earths g. That is a big deal. The very big disadvantage except the atmosphere is the lenght of a venus day: 116 earth days and 18 hours. So a science fiction solution is asteroid bombardment to make venus spin faster ..
Then, when Venus is spinning fast enough, collide the asteroids together to give Venus a moon and tides.
While all that is going on, use some sort of huge electromagnet to spin Venus' internal heavy core to provide a strong magnetic field to deflect nasty stuff from the Sun and elsewhere.
Also build a shield to stop all sunlight reaching Venus, thus freezing the atmosphere onto the surface. That makes reprocessing the crust into something Earth-like much easier.
Comets could then be used to provide oceans.
Shouldn't take more than a few tens of thousands of years! Seems like something a few humans, downloaded into robots, could do.
Mars would remain a scientific research station like Antarctica, assuming that life is found there. I'd treat Europa and anywhere else with life the same way.
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You have to work pretty hard to take the perspective that Vincent dies. Vincent nearly fails the treadmill scene because he is on the edge of panicking under the stress of being revealed to be prime suspect in a murder case that might put him in jail wrongly and will blow his life's dream of getting to Titan. It doesn't matter if they check his ID at Titan, whatever that means. He commented he is outside the police's…
> Vincent nearly fails the treadmill scene because he is on the edge of panicking under the stress of being revealed to be prime suspect in a murder case that might put him in jail wrongly and will blow his life's dream of getting to Titan. The impression that it was 'the stress of being found out' is a novel interpretation to me. I always thought it was about the fact that he has a 'garbage' heart and he's basically…
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I thought you were discussing rocketry? Releasing the exhaust is the point of the whole endeavor.
The exhaust is CO2 and H2O. CH4 + O2 -> CO2 + H2O
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True Venus' atmosphere is quite hostile, but from what I briefly read Venus quite probably have had a similar atmosphere with Earth (along with Mars) in the early days, before the runaway green-house effect got the best of it, so at least in theory it should be possible to transform it back. With autonomous robots perhaps it could be done in a span of million years. Maybe. A relatable analogue might be removing liqui…
I've often wondered if crashing a metropolis-sized piece of ice into Venus might help? Deflected from Saturn's rings or some such. The water vapor could cool it/reflect sunlight.
https://sciencing.com/albedo-planets-5203.html
https://www.universetoday.com/36833/albedo-of-venus/
Also, I doubt an insignificant chunk of ice (relatively speaking) could help cool it, or increase albedo.
I think the first order of business on Venus, if one wanted to colonize the surface (rather than colonize the atmosphere, which I think is doable), would be to "harvest" the gases of the atmosphere and thin it out to something more resembling Earth's.