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Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

quantamagazine.org

291–300 of 358 posts

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#291
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those guys Who do you think are "those guys"? Talking Musk? NASA? All the people who have dreamt of traveling the stars the last 100 years? Remember, we landed on the moon before Elon Musk was born. He's also not the first to talk about landing or living on Mars. And it's not to hedge against us destroying the planet. It's to hedge against an asteroid or other occurrence we can't control.

Musk has a proven track record of using govt subsidies to fund companies to enrich himself immeasurably, and his Nazi turn proves that personal enrichment, not technological advancement, is what is at stake. I don't mean to be preachy but anyone who is providing support for the most racist and perfidious elements of society in Germany and the UK should be disavowed in the strongest terms.

Wow Musk really lives rent free in your head eh? My comment literally about the fact that space travel predates Musk's ambitions by generations, and y'all just double down...

Fun fact, the first person to mention colonising other planets is John Wilkens in the 17th century. I'm sure you'll find a way to connect that to Musk though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#292

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…

>As in sending a part of species to a hostile place where all living is confined into a one big life support machine

At first, I thought you were describing the settling of Australia

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#293
post #152
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…

> It turns out I must have fallen sleep in one of the classes when that was explained. Unless you've studied this at a post-secondary level, I'm afraid that it's quite likely that you've never had it explained to you. My highschool discussed at length the role that the sun, the greenhouse effect, oceans, forests, agriculture, mountain ranges, etc, play on weather and climate, but never actually went through the exerc…

While radioactive decay plays a significant role in the internal temperature of the Earth, the internal temperature of the Earth plays only a tiny role in the temperature of the surface and atmosphere of the Earth—about 0.03% of the climate energy budget. So for high school geoscience, it’s not worth more than a mention.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Literally how floating works. Yes, ignoring momentum. Do parachutes just get stuck in the air halfway down? When do you inflate it? If you inflate it, can you even deorbit? Do those pop when you deorbit? Do you cover the balloon with big heavy heat shield tiles? I'm not claiming I understand this at all, but you seem to have some child's grasp of "how floating works". > By launching your rocket from the ballon city…

> If I can't get the materials to repair my building in a hurry, I go outside and I wait. Or I stay inside and I wait. And if I can't do that for my Venusian balloon city, I slowly sink into a zone that melts lead and bakes me alive. And if I get the materials after it has stared sinking, repairing it won't reinflate the balloon and have it rise again, because some significant fraction of the air has leaked out. It's…

>Yet we've managed to do it relatively reliably.

Sure. Do that when you're in the middle of an ocean that's a few trillion miles wide. It's not as if you can just dive down to the bottom of the ocean there, mine some bauxite, take it back up to your sinking ship, refine it, manufacture new repair materials for the boat, then repair it, is it?

No, you have to have it shipped from a coast a trillion miles away. So again, where are they manufactured, and how long do they take to get there? Can any of this shit even be made in the vicinity of Venus, where transit times might be non-absurd? There are no recoverable materials on the planet itself, are there?

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#295
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shockingly useful "quick and dirty" estimate for C to F for temps humans are likely to encounter is 2x + 30. It's not precise at all, but for purposes of "what does that feel like outside" or "should I bring a sweater" it works pretty well. 21C would, by this estimate, be 72F. The true conversion is just shy of 70F, so, again, it's not correct but it's close enough for this kind of conversation.

for what it's worth: add 9 degrees F (or 18 if it's easier to remember) for every 5 degrees C (10 C, easier), and peg 32F to 0C. You get: -40F=-40C -22F=-30C -4F =-20C 14F =-10C 32F = 0C 50F = 10C 68F = 20C 86F = 30C 104F= 40C and then approximate in between from there. It's quick enough for me now that I skip the 2x+30.

These points make it easy to remember for me, adding ~5C for 10 F.

40 F = 4 C (forty is four)

50 F = 10 C

60 F = 16 C (sixty is sixteen)

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such a way that your inflatable balloon city comes to a gentle stop, 30 miles up, and just floats there? Literally how floating works. > Worse still, when people need to leave and return to Earth, how do you launch a rocket from the balloon city and return to orbit? By launching your rocket from the ballon city and returning to orbit. (I'm struggling to see the novel problem.) > Where are materials manufactured for…

>Literally how floating works. Yes, ignoring momentum. Do parachutes just get stuck in the air halfway down? When do you inflate it? If you inflate it, can you even deorbit? Do those pop when you deorbit? Do you cover the balloon with big heavy heat shield tiles? I'm not claiming I understand this at all, but you seem to have some child's grasp of "how floating works". > By launching your rocket from the ballon city…

>If I can't get the materials to repair my building in a hurry

At that point you might as well be asking "what if they forgot to put fuel in the space ship" or "what if the astronaut missed launch because he forgot to set his alarm". That would be bad but that's not about Venus.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#297
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The irony is that (at least I'm pretty sure) the concept of "room temperature" was originally pinned to 70° Freedom Degrees. Your 21°C reference unit is probably a rounded conversion, which explains the sibling comment arguing 23°-25°C as potentially inferior alternatives. An accurate conversion would be 21.1̅°C.

[deleted]

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#298
post #229

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.

[dead]

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#299
post #23
post #8

Venus does not have a molten core, and there is no magnetic field protecting the atmosphere from the solar winds. This is not likely the sole reason, but it must be a factor. Mercury does have a magnetic field, Mars does not.

> no magnetic field protecting the atmosphere Venus has too much atmosphere. That's the problem.

A huge problem, it's also part of the solution. Venus protects itself from radiation even better than Earth due to its atmosphere.

Re: Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such a way that your inflatable balloon city comes to a gentle stop, 30 miles up, and just floats there? Literally how floating works. > Worse still, when people need to leave and return to Earth, how do you launch a rocket from the balloon city and return to orbit? By launching your rocket from the ballon city and returning to orbit. (I'm struggling to see the novel problem.) > Where are materials manufactured for…

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.

pretty fucked up if it runs into an asteroid or a comet!
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