61–70 of 111 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wouldn't do Mars any good. Lacking a magnetosphere, any atmosphere you add will get stripped away by the Sun.
I’ve read that a large asteroid could be positioned at a particular Mars L point and it would protect the planets atmosphere from being stripped by the sun.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the commenters are discussing diverting enough meteors to terraform Venus, there's enough fantasy to consider using nukes to apply the necessary torque to speed the orbit up
If we're spitballing, one could simply angle the impacts of asteroids to add momentum in the desired direction.
But the question. Is do you spin it backward or slow it down to spin it the right way, creating a situation where one side of the planet always faces the sun for a while. Might be an opportunity to freeze and cart off the other side of the atmosphere…
I wonder if Venus could be terraformed via a sun shield placed in orbit around it. How big would it have to be to reverse the runaway greenhouse effect?
Part of the problem is having too much atmosphere. In the original Cosmos Carl Sagan talked about a hypothetical solution where we capture asteroids, and throw them at Venus in such a way that they just nick the atmosphere and knock large quantities of atmosphere out into space. One you reduce atmospheric pressure to a certain level, things could become habitable. Then throw in iron form the atseroid belt to react wi…
I thought the Venus theory was runaway greenhouse driven initially by water vapor. Going off memory, H2O is roughly 10 times as effective a greenhouse gas as CO2, with Venus being closer to the sun A larger percentage of water ended up in vapor form, leading to a feed back loop where the increased heat pushes more water to vapor leading to more heat, eventually liberating the co2 from the rock, making everything worse, ending up with the current situation where venus has way too much atmosphere.
Which is the long way to say, I think there is a lot of water on venus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is having too much atmosphere. In the original Cosmos Carl Sagan talked about a hypothetical solution where we capture asteroids, and throw them at Venus in such a way that they just nick the atmosphere and knock large quantities of atmosphere out into space. One you reduce atmospheric pressure to a certain level, things could become habitable. Then throw in iron form the atseroid belt to react wi…
"Venus is dry" I thought the Venus theory was runaway greenhouse driven initially by water vapor. Going off memory, H2O is roughly 10 times as effective a greenhouse gas as CO2, with Venus being closer to the sun A larger percentage of water ended up in vapor form, leading to a feed back loop where the increased heat pushes more water to vapor leading to more heat, eventually liberating the co2 from the rock, making…
> Lighter gases, including water vapour, are continuously blown away by the solar wind through the induced magnetotail.
There used to be a lot of water on Venus.
I wonder if Venus could be terraformed via a sun shield placed in orbit around it. How big would it have to be to reverse the runaway greenhouse effect?
I've read a crazy proposal: 1. "Humidify" the atmosphere by crashing comets into Venus. This will also allow us to create a temporary "cloud" around Venus that can shield it from the Sun and lower down the temperature. 2. Once the temperature is low enough, Venus will get oceans on its surface. 3. At this point, CO2 can be split into carbon and oxygen. Oxygen will be immediately bound by the huge amount of under-oxid…
Which is to say, putting a ring around venus to block the sun may have merit, but adding more water sounds like pouring petrol on a fire.
I wonder if Venus could be terraformed via a sun shield placed in orbit around it. How big would it have to be to reverse the runaway greenhouse effect?
See, the atmosphere at ~50 altitude... happens to be about 1 bar (which happens to be Earth's atmospheric pressure ASL)... and happens to have temperatures that can support human and plant life!
And better still, the atmosphere being mostly co2 with a little nitrogen actually means normal Earth air is a lifting gas! Starting to see where this is going?
It's not too hard to imagine the skies of Venus full of floating habitats that move to stay in the sunlight, or occasionally dock with tethers or balloons carrying cargo from extremely reinforced mining facilities deep underground (where they could be much more protected most of the time from the pressure/temperature/corrosion) -- a future where people (or machines!) might scoff at the idea of cooling off Venus and losing out on such an excellent habitation zone, one which could also fairly easily support elevated runways or launch platforms to more cheaply reach space from.
With Venus also having 91% of Earth's gravity, and those atmospheric conditions at high altitudes that add some radiation shielding and would probably let a human worker only need a very limited suit more akin to a hazmat or firefighting suit with SCBA to work outside habitats... Venus is actually easily the single best planet for humans to live on after Earth!
(Can you tell I'm writing a story set there? Hehehe)
I wonder if Venus could be terraformed via a sun shield placed in orbit around it. How big would it have to be to reverse the runaway greenhouse effect?
If you're interested in human habitation of Venus overall, you may find it interesting to learn Venus is probably preferable kept at about its current temperature or only made a little colder. See, the atmosphere at ~50 altitude... happens to be about 1 bar (which happens to be Earth's atmospheric pressure ASL)... and happens to have temperatures that can support human and plant life! And better still, the atmosphere…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read a crazy proposal: 1. "Humidify" the atmosphere by crashing comets into Venus. This will also allow us to create a temporary "cloud" around Venus that can shield it from the Sun and lower down the temperature. 2. Once the temperature is low enough, Venus will get oceans on its surface. 3. At this point, CO2 can be split into carbon and oxygen. Oxygen will be immediately bound by the huge amount of under-oxid…
My understanding is that it was water that started the whole thing. water vapor is about ten times as effective a greenhouse gas as co2. and the runaway heat started with too much water vapor(closer to to the sun I think), leading to more heat, leading to more water vapor. eventually it got hot enough to start liberating co2 out of the rocks. leading to the current situation today where venus has way too much atmosph…
I wonder if Venus could be terraformed via a sun shield placed in orbit around it. How big would it have to be to reverse the runaway greenhouse effect?
If you're interested in human habitation of Venus overall, you may find it interesting to learn Venus is probably preferable kept at about its current temperature or only made a little colder. See, the atmosphere at ~50 altitude... happens to be about 1 bar (which happens to be Earth's atmospheric pressure ASL)... and happens to have temperatures that can support human and plant life! And better still, the atmosphere…
- "Several upcoming missions, including NASA’s DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging)" DAVINCI is actually cancelled in the latest budget request. For obvious reasons, the NASA press office (the OP) won't talk about this. But 50% of NASA's science funding is gone. https://spacenews.com/white-house-proposal-would-slash-nasa-...
> But 50% of NASA's science funding is gone. The proposed cuts to science are catastrophic, but there’s still time to call your Congressperson. https://aas.org/posts/news/2025/05/week-of-action