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Colonization of Venus

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Re: Colonization of Venus

#31

Post by FrustratedMonky »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

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...

They are all impossible without supplies from Earth.

But wonder if a floating balloon contraption isn't more likely than a base on Mars. Which is more deadly?

Venus seems to have more potentially useful compounds in the atmosphere.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#32

Post by jmyeet »

Obligatory Isaac Arthur reference [1].

I still think humanity's far future is in orbitals in space, not on planets and certainly not on planets as hostile as Venus is. I'm not sure how well living at 50km above the surface would work. You still need a lot of buoyance to float large structures.

The atmosphere is also a solvable problem. One idea I've heard is using so-called "fusion candles". That is a fusion-powered device in the atmosphere that sends waste gas into space and waste matter to the ground in an equilibrium that keeps them airborne, all powered by fusion. You could extract carbon and/or oxygen this way from the plentiful atmospheric CO2.

Still, if you ever got the atmosphere down to a non-hellish level at surface, the surface would still be covered with all sorts of exotics and metals, many of them toxic. You'd probably be looking at geologic timescales to rehabilitate it.

But whenever these terraforming questions come up (often with respect to Mars), people really don't appreciate the scale and the energy budget required. The energy budget is many orders of magntidue what our civilization currently uses. If you have access to that much energy, there are far better options.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I

Re: Colonization of Venus

#34

Post by PaulHoule »

sl-1 wrote: post #20
empath75 wrote: post #10

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.

I agree. And how all of our meager steps towards trying to learn the pre-requisites of sustainable colonies (eg. closed cycle ecology) have failed miserably. For example Biosphere program ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 ). And the only working ecological system we can study is being destroyed by humanity and capital on record pace.

Biosphere 2 had the problem, not least, that it didn't have enough of an atmosphere to buffer swings of CO2 concentration between day and night. It's like "what did they think would happen?"

Re: Colonization of Venus

#35

Post by t_mahmood »

surgical_fire wrote: post #23
Robotbeat wrote: post #4

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…

> 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.

No shit! We are probably dead even before we can build a habitat on our own orbit.

We are failing the great filter very hard.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#36

Post by pavel_lishin »

p2detar wrote: post #6
Robotbeat wrote: post #4

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…

Terraforming is possible but colonizing worlds hostile to humans has always meant genetic engineering to me. We need to drop the Star Trek idea that we can explore space in the sacks of water we call bodies.

Let's take the idea further, and borrow cstross's belief that canned apes will never colonize or explore anything, and only digital uploads into mechanical bodies will be destined for space.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#37

Post by pavel_lishin »

adrian_b wrote: post #19
seszett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 50 km altitude above Venus (where pressure is about 1 bar) you are not really in the "upper atmosphere" as there is still about as much atmosphere above you as on ground level on Earth. So UV radiation is not a problem. The atmosphere of Venus is just very thick. Also it contains many useful elements, C, O and H, which can be used to build basically anything if you have enough solar energy. The problem is the (com…

From the point of view of exploitable resources, Venus is the opposite of Mars. On Mars, metals are very abundant and easy to extract, and also minerals suitable for making glass or ceramic materials are abundant, but the raw materials for making food and organic materials, like plastics, are very scarce and expensive to concentrate. On Venus, there are abundant resources for making organic materials and food (except…

> If not enough water would be found underground on Mars, that would be really difficult to transport from elsewhere.

I was under the (uneducated) impression that there was a fair amount of water ice locked up in asteroids that are fairly easy to redirect into a Mars capture orbit.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#38

Post by pavel_lishin »

Robotbeat wrote: post #5
thijson wrote: 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.

Yes, geologic times, so like 100 million years or more, not relevant to human life timescales. But even Venus has substantial atmosphere still, including substantial amounts of hydrogen still (with enhanced deuterium concentration due to the atmospheric loss… which could actually be worth mining for nuclear power export). Making a magnetic field on those timescales is easy, tho, compared to the other challenges. If y…

Would it be possible to have the wires floating in space, instead of placed down on the surface?

Re: Colonization of Venus

#39

Post by marcosdumay »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #31
1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

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...

They are all impossible without supplies from Earth. But wonder if a floating balloon contraption isn't more likely than a base on Mars. Which is more deadly? Venus seems to have more potentially useful compounds in the atmosphere.

Mars is more deadly. Easily so.

Venus atmosphere has the right amounts of radiation, temperature, and pressure. And close to the right gravity.

Re: Colonization of Venus

#40

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

gwbas1c wrote: post #22
Robotbeat wrote: post #4

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.

From my experience there is a correlation between people who think science is nonsense while also believing in terraforming. I don’t think anybody can even remotely predict the outcomes of a terraforming project.
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