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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?

#231

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

a3w wrote: post #229
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…

Venus is room temperature with low radiation, if you dig in. Living on Venus was floating around as an easier alternative to living on the Mars surface. Room temperature is 21°C, I have no idea how many freedom fries units that is.

> Room temperature is 21°C

Debated, was 23 or 25 in my college textbooks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature

> I have no idea how many freedom fries units that is.

Kind of a bad attempt at humor? Imperial units is fine.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#233

Post by blueflow »

yazantapuz wrote: post #116
rdtsc wrote: post #62

> For a time, the mantle would get hotter, since the shell around it would trap heat generated by radioactively decaying compounds inside it. As heat accumulates in the interior, the Earth in Kane’s simulations would experience an uptick in volcanism lasting for about 15 million years. That totally surprised to me. I had no idea radioactive decay played such a role for earth. It turns out I must have fallen sleep in…

If i remember right, according to one of Asimov's Foundation sequels, the Earth was unique due to its high level natural radioactivity, which allowed it to develop an ecosystem more vibrant than any other planet in the galaxy.

Wasn't Asimov a science fiction writer?

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#234

Post by potato3732842 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #207
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>What is their buoyancy-management system?

Some of y'all have never seen a marina with floating docks and it shows. More of the same.

This entire problem is basically ye-olde spaceX barge only with different factors in the equation and running in both directions (instead of just landing).

Yes, without a hard cut in buoyancy like you get with something that's way denser than air floating in something way denser than it all the math gets a little wonky but it's all still fundamentally the same. When you load a few million pounds of shit you sink a few thousand feet instead of a few inches like a barge in water would, and when that weight turns out to be a rocket that yeets itself you move around thousands of feet or miles instead of feet like a barge, but when you're floating in the air with nothing to crash into who cares.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#235

Post by tim333 »

Peteragain wrote: post #129

I can't believe people haven't read James Lovelock's works re the Gaia hypothesis. The feedback loop is that plants produce an oxygen rich atmosphere right up to the point where lightning strikes would start fires that kill off enough plant life, reducing the oxygen in the atmosphere. Send plants to Venus now and in 500 billion years we can move there.

I've heard of if but am put off by the flaws as suggested in the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis#Criticism_in_t...

I liked the nyt microbes in the crust article https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/magazine/earth-geomicrobi... along those lines.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#236

Post by esseph »

a3w wrote: post #229
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…

Venus is room temperature with low radiation, if you dig in. Living on Venus was floating around as an easier alternative to living on the Mars surface. Room temperature is 21°C, I have no idea how many freedom fries units that is.

68.9deg F

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#237

Post by potato3732842 »

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's a loss of 2/3 of production to non-scrap effluvia

Considering that the amount of stuff in our world made from steel at any one time is steadily increasing this makes sense.

>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.

There's little to no "post consumer pre-recycler" use for lead whereas every tom dick and harry can find a use for some old pipes or beams or whatever.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#238

Post by close04 »

stavros wrote: post #205
wartywhoa23 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This puts the cart before the horse. At least one important question to answer before. Does something absolutely needs to be done? Then we start looking into the best alternative.

What's the concrete threat scenario you avoid by moving to the Venusian clouds? Global warming? Fix it on Earth and if you can't convince people to agree on a solution here, how will you convince them that a Venusian balloon is the best way forward? Nuclear annihilation? Probably digging deep underground is better. Total planetary annihilation? Maybe stations in Earth orbit, or Moon's poles, or L point, etc.

Are we looking for options for which we have the technology and capabilities today, or a few centuries from now? That changes your options from "balloon on Venus" to "terraforming Venus".

The engineering and other practical considerations needed to get such a "station" a realistic chance at long term survival are about as sci-fi for us today as the starship Enterprise. We aren't even at the point where we can sustain an isolated Earth based colony indefinitely in an inhospitable environment. They all need constant maintenance and resupply from the the hospitable environment just a stone's throw away.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#239

Post by dredmorbius »

teekert wrote: post #220
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't because you need to be encapsulated in a balloon to keep the toxic atmosphere out.

EVAs are still likely necessary. Tethering would be useful.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#240

Post by dredmorbius »

potato3732842 wrote: post #234
dredmorbius wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>What is their buoyancy-management system? Some of y'all have never seen a marina with floating docks and it shows. More of the same. This entire problem is basically ye-olde spaceX barge only with different factors in the equation and running in both directions (instead of just landing). Yes, without a hard cut in buoyancy like you get with something that's way denser than air floating in something way denser than i…

The dock/barge case is addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45330638>

An aerostat doesn't float on a liquid at stable equilibrium through draft displacement, it is suspended in a fluid, with the problems noted previously.

Docks and barges (along with general watercraft) may be constructed arbitrarily robustly from strong and resilient materials. Aerostats somewhat less so.

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