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Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

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Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#201

Post by HPsquared »

stavros wrote: post #192
eloisant wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we can figure out stuff, but I guess my point is, why would we do that at all? How fucked up Earth needs to be than living on a floating oil platform above Venus is better? The point is already hard to make for the Moon or Mars.

It's less about the earth being uninhabitable and more about redundancy of species.

Living on a ship at sea, or underground / underwater, should give enough protection against whatever post-apocalyptic situation exists on Earth, it's pretty much always going to be more survivable than Mars or outer space. You might need a protective suit, air filters etc. Still 100x easier than having no atmosphere at all.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#202

Post by somenameforme »

rebolek wrote: post #167
somenameforme wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people misunderstand this goal. It's not 'backup' as in, 'ok, Earth is toast - everybody go live on Mars now.' One of the thing critics get right is that in the overwhelming majority of species ending events on Earth, Mars would still be less hospitable than Earth would. For instance take a massive asteroid impact. It's not the impact that kills you, at least not most people. But what would happen following a…

2033 is really not conservative estimate for crewed Mars mission.

It's simply a flyby, not a landing, which will likely happen in 2035 for them. NASA was laying out various plans for exactly this in the 60s, with a timeline of the first crewed flight to Mars somewhere between the mid 70s and early 80s. And it was completely viable. The only reason this didn't happen is because Nixon defacto cancelled human spaceflight in 1972, in part because he was worried that a loss of life in space would imperil his reelection chances. So we get to live in the timeline where space stagnated for decades.

The only fundamental tech we're missing is a heavier launch vessel, which we've already developed in the past - and have actively in development in the present via Starship. China is also developing their own super heavy vessels. But these developments taking 8 years is quite conservative. We went from practically nothing in 1962 (having only just put a man into orbit, and barely at that) when Kennedy gave his to the Moon speech. 7 years later in 1969 - we'd be landing on the Moon. And that landing posed far greater difficulties than just an extended flight, let alone when they were building from nothing, and we have all of this knowledge and prior experience to build from.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#203

Post by stavros »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #200
stavros wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are tides a forcing function? Marine life has been perfectly content just not going near a beach.

> Why are tides a forcing function? "Nucleotide formation and polymerization are both more favored thermodynamically when subunit and nucleotide concentrations increase and the water concentration decreases (i.e., at low water activity)" [1]. Tide pools provide a regularly-cycling low-water and high-water environment. (And you get thermocycling, nutrient refreshment, and a path to the oceans, too.) They're not a forc…

Very interesting, thank you!

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#204

Post by wartywhoa23 »

stavros wrote: post #192
eloisant wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we can figure out stuff, but I guess my point is, why would we do that at all? How fucked up Earth needs to be than living on a floating oil platform above Venus is better? The point is already hard to make for the Moon or Mars.

It's less about the earth being uninhabitable and more about redundancy of species.

Aye, this! Redundancy of species...

As in sending a part of species to a hostile place where all living is confined into a one big life support machine, without fresh air (which is very different from freshly uncanned or chemically generated air), without fresh and varied food (which is very different from artificially grown), without open sky and Sun above, without seas, rivers, forests, mountains, without anywhere to wander to find inner peace, in a setting for a psychologic horror where one deranged member of expedition is enough to bring it down.

That is going to contribute so greatly to the redundancy of our species.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#205

Post by stavros »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #204
stavros wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less about the earth being uninhabitable and more about redundancy of species.

Aye, this! Redundancy of species... As in sending a part of species to a hostile place where all living is confined into a one big life support machine, without fresh air (which is very different from freshly uncanned or chemically generated air), without fresh and varied food (which is very different from artificially grown), without open sky and Sun above, without seas, rivers, forests, mountains, without anywhere…

Got a better alternative?

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#206

Post by dredmorbius »

meindnoch wrote: post #197
dredmorbius wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't concentrate itself, at scale. That's what ores are. Ores are useful because they are concentrated , the result of some ore-formation or ore genesis process. The "not going anywhere", after it's been dispersed throughout the lithosphere, is precisely the problem . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis >

But scrap metal is still purer than any ore.

And ferrous mineral recycling accounts for roughly 33% of present production (2018 data, most current available):

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...>

That's a loss of 2/3 of production to non-scrap effluvia on an annual basis. I'll let you work out the ultimate resource depletion cycle from that. Recycling is useful, but it's no magic bullet, and there are always losses.

The most heavily recycled metal in the US is lead, per USGS data and prior comments of mine, with recovery rates of about 75%, accounting for 40% of net production.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20164506>

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26412585>

Source citation: "USGS 2020 Minerals Yearbook: Recycling — Metals"

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics-and-i...>

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#207

Post by dredmorbius »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #199
dredmorbius wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floating on a liquid surface is markedly different from floating within a fluid (liquid or gaseous). To float on a liquid, one merely needs to maintain a lower average density within the vessel than the surrounding liquid. Assuming a largely hollow vessel (as with a ship or barge), it's possible to add or remove considerable payload without losing stable flotation characteristics as the draft of the vessel automatica…

> To float in a fluid, one must maintain precise neutral buoyancy, which is an entirely different animal You're right, I was oversimplifying. An aerial or submerged launch platform, then. > the tendency is for a vessel to contract as it sinks and expand as it rises, leading to a runaway buoyancy shift (increasingly negative with depth, increasingly positive with height) This is inherent to the cloud city design. Rock…

How do those offboard propellent storage and/or launch platforms keep from plummeting to the planetary surface?

What is their buoyancy-management system?

You're offloading the problem, not solving it.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#208

Post by meindnoch »

dredmorbius wrote: post #206
meindnoch wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But scrap metal is still purer than any ore.

And ferrous mineral recycling accounts for roughly 33% of present production (2018 data, most current available): https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-... > That's a loss of 2/3 of production to non-scrap effluvia on an annual basis. I'll let you work out the ultimate resource depletion cycle from that. Recycling is useful, but it's no magic bullet, and there are always losses. The most heavily…

That just means it's currently more economical to mine iron ore than it is to mine landfills.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#209

Post by xorcist »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #155
baq wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many dickheads with a bright idea of putting nuclear warheads on submersibles with a dead man’s switch on this planet.

> Too many dickheads with a bright idea of putting nuclear warheads on submersibles with a dead man’s switch on this planet If we're nuking each other on Earth, I find it unlikely we wouldn't aim a nuke or two at that group's colony on Mars. The only thing a Martian colony is a hedge against is ecological collapse on Earth. Because we did something exceptionally stupid accidentally. Or because a rock came by to say h…

A nuked Earth is still more habitable than Mars, even on their best day.

Wouldn't it be far easier and much more useful to colonize the ocean floor than other planets? It is, after all, 70% of the surface area that just sits there.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#210

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

rkagerer wrote: post #124

Venus is arguably the worst place in the solar system From another perspective, its atmosphere is "one of the most Earth-like in the solar system", and scientists long ago postulated the idea of establishing floating cloud cities. Big balloons filled with nitrogen and oxygen would naturally settle at the right altitude, 30 miles above the surface, where gravity, ambient pressure, and radiation aren't far off that of…

Just don't fall off the side of those platforms.

It'd be interesting to see what additional "personal atmospheric floatation" devices would be needed.

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