201–210 of 393 posts
A floating habitat on Venus is harder and less attractive in every way than a rotating space station, which is clearly our next milestone in space. In terms of planets though, there's a reason Mars gets the most attention: it's obviously the best choice.
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Isn't the common scifi solution to drop some engineered bacteria into the atmosphere to convert the CO2 and generate a think ozone layer?
Let’s sort that out on Earth first. :p
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Getting stuff to mercury is hard though. IIRC it takes around 16,000 m/s of dV to get from LEO to the surface of mercury. Titan would take even more (19,000) but a huge chunk of it can be reduced by making use of aerobraking.
Going to mercury on rockets alone is a non-starter, because when you drop your perihelion low enough to rendezvous with it, your velocity near Mercury will be ridiculous, and there is not enough atmosphere at Mercury to shed the velocity so you have to do it the hard way. However, there is a very efficient trajectory that could be used by solar sailing ships for a fast, cheap route to Mercury once every 16 months. Yo…
"On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel." [my emphasis.]
They are proposing splitting water to get oxygen for burning hydrocarbons to produce energy - but splitting water itself takes a lot of energy, and low-entropy energy at that. Could this process possibly result in a net increase in useful energy?
Sincere question: Anyone know what would be involved in igniting Jupiter, and what kind of heating that would provide to it's moons?
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> Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature 0 being the freezing point of a mix of water, ice and ammonium chloride and 100 being almost the average human body temperature - or to put it another way, "a random number fixed to a variable". Neither of these are things I can instinctively understand as a human. Celcius on the other hand uses extremely hard to grasp concepts f…
0 degrees is "really fucking cold outside" and 100 degrees is "really fucking hot outside". Celsius resorts to negative numbers even for a normal snowy day while wasting about half of the positive two-digit numbers for temperatures that have never been recorded on Earth. It's a terrible scale for weather.
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…
>> We reached this conclusion after looking at the planets in a new way: ecologically
then, why can he say :
>> Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested
Ecology is also about realizing that resources are limited.
> It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators. I'm no space colony expert but am I missing something here? -180°C sounds like constant space suit level, not "just warm clothing".
It Remains to be Seen if we have Spoiled the Nest. <--