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Colonization of Venus

en.wikipedia.org

21–30 of 115 posts

Re: Colonization of Venus

#21

Every time I read about colonizing another planet, I think about how we correctly don't want to colonize the bottom of the ocean or the Sahara desert because it would be completely uneconomical, and yet either would be much easier than this.

That and we'd soon do the same things to a new planet that we're doing to this planet. The more time humanity has to mature from a cooperation-over-conflict perspective (both with each other and other beings/the environment) before it starts spreading to other planets, the better.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#22

It would be a colony constantly depending on Earth supplies and you would be constantly rebuilding it. Just like every other planet, nothing can permanently survive in upper atmosphere. It would be easier to have a massive ISS-style station in orbit, with a tethered cable elevator for research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposing_Microorganisms_in_the...

Untrue. You can actually mine the Venusian surface for metals. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (the vast majority of the elements used by life) can be extracted from the atmosphere, as well as sulfur. So from an elemental standpoint, it actually could be self-sufficient. Not that you’d WANT to avoid trade with other planets, but it is possible. It is also possible to terraform Venus, although much more difficu…

> although much more difficult than

Terraforming is so conceptual at this point that I wouldn't take a hard stance on either being easier or harder. You never know what a few generations of studies will teach us; and what misconceptions we hold dearly that our descendants will laugh at us for.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#23

It would be a colony constantly depending on Earth supplies and you would be constantly rebuilding it. Just like every other planet, nothing can permanently survive in upper atmosphere. It would be easier to have a massive ISS-style station in orbit, with a tethered cable elevator for research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposing_Microorganisms_in_the...

Untrue. You can actually mine the Venusian surface for metals. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (the vast majority of the elements used by life) can be extracted from the atmosphere, as well as sulfur. So from an elemental standpoint, it actually could be self-sufficient. Not that you’d WANT to avoid trade with other planets, but it is possible. It is also possible to terraform Venus, although much more difficu…

> It is also possible to terraform Venus

We can't even properly terraform inhospitable places within Earth.

Hell, if anything we are very quickly un-terraforming Earth into a place inhospitable to human life.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#24

Every time I read about colonizing another planet, I think about how we correctly don't want to colonize the bottom of the ocean or the Sahara desert because it would be completely uneconomical, and yet either would be much easier than this.

It would be akin to a city floating on Earth's open ocean. With all food, household items etc, and even construction materials produced via extraction from the surrounding ocean.

For Earthlings, the open ocean is harder to survive on long-term than deserts like the Sahara. Maybe on par with living off the land on Antarctic. Never mind all that corrosive stuff in Venus' atmosphere.

Doable in theory, yes. But HARD (and then some). That's ignoring the economics of such an enterprise.

On the upside: still easier than interstellar travel.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#25

It would be a colony constantly depending on Earth supplies and you would be constantly rebuilding it. Just like every other planet, nothing can permanently survive in upper atmosphere. It would be easier to have a massive ISS-style station in orbit, with a tethered cable elevator for research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposing_Microorganisms_in_the...

Untrue. You can actually mine the Venusian surface for metals. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (the vast majority of the elements used by life) can be extracted from the atmosphere, as well as sulfur. So from an elemental standpoint, it actually could be self-sufficient. Not that you’d WANT to avoid trade with other planets, but it is possible. It is also possible to terraform Venus, although much more difficu…

Yes, but! It's very hard. But you are a million percent right that the Venusian surface has lots of fantastic metals, largely tied up in basalt and volcanic ash. The bad news to my understanding is that they're kind of pulverized and evenly spread out and requires lots of refining/processing, and not necessarily so much in the way of veins/ore deposits ripe for harvesting (though I could be mistaken).

But back to how hard it is. There's mid-atmosphere winds that are effectively persistent hurricanes. It's hotter than a pizza oven, and the thick co2 air might as well be an ocean, because it has that much crushing force.

In my opinion, people should get excited about the thick atmosphere, because it's also the secret superpower that unlocks all the near term possibilities. Floating in the upper atmosphere is more like being a ship in an ocean, and if we ever got materials strong enough (graphite-carbon composites?) we could do some really cool passive dragnet + air balloon lift kinds of things to recover surface resources and lift them to a hypothetical settlement.

The one need-to-have resource that, as far as I know, there's none of on Venus whatsoever, is iodine. So even in the best case you'd have to import that. Oh, and water. You can get some out of the sulfuric acid rain but probably not as much as you want.

Granted, these are all assuming technology advances and big time scales, but trying to practice a golden rule here and be as charitable to the exercise as possible and not bean soup the discussion to death, which is a pet peeve of mine.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#26
post #2

The issue with Venus and Mars is that there is no magnetosphere. Over geological time periods the hydrogen is slowly lost into space. All that CO2 in the atmosphere could become H20 given enough introduced hydrogen, and photosynthesis.

My understanding is, insofar as we're talking about protection from radiation, Venus compensates for its lack of a magnetosphere with incredibly thick atmospheric cover that does the same work, in fact does it better than here on Earth. That's not to say we would say no to a magnetosphere if such a thing could ever be achievable.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#27

Every time I read about colonizing another planet, I think about how we correctly don't want to colonize the bottom of the ocean or the Sahara desert because it would be completely uneconomical, and yet either would be much easier than this.

It would be akin to a city floating on Earth's open ocean. With all food, household items etc, and even construction materials produced via extraction from the surrounding ocean. For Earthlings, the open ocean is harder to survive on long-term than deserts like the Sahara. Maybe on par with living off the land on Antarctic. Never mind all that corrosive stuff in Venus' atmosphere. Doable in theory, yes. But HARD (and…

I think atmospheric extraction is very important and valuable but we'd be missing heavy metals and some critical elements. You do have carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, a little bit of hydrogen, a little bit of chlorine and flourine, and you can do a lot with those. Not as much hydrogen as you would want or need.

But potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, silica, iron oxides, nickel, titanium etc. are available on the surface.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untrue. You can actually mine the Venusian surface for metals. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (the vast majority of the elements used by life) can be extracted from the atmosphere, as well as sulfur. So from an elemental standpoint, it actually could be self-sufficient. Not that you’d WANT to avoid trade with other planets, but it is possible. It is also possible to terraform Venus, although much more difficu…

> although much more difficult than Terraforming is so conceptual at this point that I wouldn't take a hard stance on either being easier or harder. You never know what a few generations of studies will teach us; and what misconceptions we hold dearly that our descendants will laugh at us for.

At this point we're so deep into the science fiction that it might be easier to just hop into a time machine and colonize Mars before its atmosphere boiled off.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#29
post #2

The issue with Venus and Mars is that there is no magnetosphere. Over geological time periods the hydrogen is slowly lost into space. All that CO2 in the atmosphere could become H20 given enough introduced hydrogen, and photosynthesis.

Venus has a lot of atmosphere but very little water, maybe 1/1,000,000 as much in the atmosphere as we have in the atmosphere + ocean.

If you are interested in hyperlarge structures you could maybe spread out a really big foil to catch hydrogen from the solar wind and react it with oxygen in one form or another to make a large ocean.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> although much more difficult than Terraforming is so conceptual at this point that I wouldn't take a hard stance on either being easier or harder. You never know what a few generations of studies will teach us; and what misconceptions we hold dearly that our descendants will laugh at us for.

At this point we're so deep into the science fiction that it might be easier to just hop into a time machine and colonize Mars before its atmosphere boiled off.

Some infinities are bigger than others.
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