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Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#191

Post by hutzlibu »

bloopernova wrote: post #176
hutzlibu wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ..

My big idea for Venus, assuming infinite power, would be to shoot a series of big asteroids past it and use the gravity/inertia drag to make it 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 f…

I assume, once you have allmost self replicating robots, who can do mining asteroids and building factories to build more of them and mine more and build more .. you would not need ten of thousands of years. Maybe even only some decades.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#192

Post by protomyth »

hutzlibu wrote: post #173
xerox13ster wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would bombard with comets. Bring down the temperature and deposit water on the planet.

Are there so many ice comets avaiable? 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.

Isn't the common scifi solution to drop some engineered bacteria into the atmosphere to convert the CO2 and generate a think ozone layer?

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#194

Post by Insanity »

djohnston wrote: post #92
Insanity wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I am, with my (Mexican) wife mentioning almost daily how horribly cold it is here in Europe. I'm also not sure what kind of warm clothing they'd mean lol.

goretex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e58SiFSxLs :p

oh man I'm looking forward to watch Seinfeld again when it's on Netflix!

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#195

Post by robotresearcher »

war1025 wrote: post #139
unethical_ban wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simulating a land-based, completely sealed off mars- or moon-base in Antarctica is one thing. Simulating the conditions of a base floating in an atmosphere of CO2 is quite another.

Wouldn't it come down to basically just a boat / submarine?

That floats in a fluid at 75C. That’s a sub with a major AC challenge.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#196

Post by throwaway894345 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #191
bloopernova wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My big idea for Venus, assuming infinite power, would be to shoot a series of big asteroids past it and use the gravity/inertia drag to make it 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 f…

I assume, once you have allmost self replicating robots, who can do mining asteroids and building factories to build more of them and mine more and build more .. you would not need ten of thousands of years. Maybe even only some decades.

Maybe this is what Factorio has been preparing me for all this time! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorio

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#197

Post by hutzlibu »

chr1 wrote: post #186
hutzlibu wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes. Here on earth there are indeed many people who think they want that. Mars one proved at least that. But I am not so sure, if they will be also so happy on mars, if they really have to be underground allmost the whole time and teleoperate the robotic exploration and mining on the surface etc. For me the dark winter already is every year challenging. But being in a dark winter so to say forever, would not be…

Not having good lighting is indeed a dealbreaker, but there's no real reason why we can't make artificial lights that look close enough to the sun. Similarly if some caves are street sized, being there would not feel like being underground. Add to that better vr, and ability to jump really high due to low gravity and living in martian cave will be almost better than living in many cities here on earth (of course this…

Sure. I also see no reason why we could not engineer domes that shield us from the radiation. Or at least shield good enough to allow for some hours every day "outside".

But the first pioneers will be probably cave dwellers or will die of cancer after a few years. Which is probably exepteble for quite some people, if they get those pioneer years instead...

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#198

Post by throwaway894345 »

protomyth wrote: post #192
hutzlibu wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there so many ice comets avaiable? 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.

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

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#199

Post by Vysero »

It all seems like a huge waste of resources and effort to me. Personally, I would rather see all that money/resources going into developing some kind of FTLT. There are planets out there, way out there, which are much more suitable for life. Even without FTLT even if it takes us 2 generations to get there.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#200

Post by mynegation »

rbanffy wrote: post #147
aaron695 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> floating cities We have decided on Mars, can we stop forking it. Have we learning nothing from Linux? But if you have to, could you hurry up and make a floating city on earth to practice ? People would pay a tonne of money for that, and having floating cities (In reality small communal groups, so more a village) would be very very neat.

> make a floating city on earth to practice? Earth's atmosphere is lighter than the Venusian one at that altitude. A balloon filled with breathable air would float naturally. You can't do that on Earth.

You can make pressure inside just a little bit decreased and make this thing fly 1 mile high, for practice. Call it “Denver” or something.
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