I really wonder if we'd be likely to find fossils underground there. Of course landing long enough without melting to find them would be hard.
Momentum is building to explore Venus
81–90 of 179 posts
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is debate within the scientific community about changing other planets in general. Not everyone is convinced that we should alter or terraform to suit our needs. Some related links: https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/intpolicy/ https://www.astrobio.net/mars/should-we-terraform/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_terraforming
This is like nimbyism on steroids. "No one build anything what if there is Rare Science in our backyards". I mean yes I do kinda see your point, but priorities man. There are ridiculously large advantages to colonizing the universe and destroying a few samples is a low price.
It's not that we can't or won't. It's that we should study and debate it before we do anything to change the environment. Given how humans have run roughshod over so many environments, I think carefulness might be warranted.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#83I wonder why there isn't a balloon mission being studied. The upper atmosphere has temperature and pressure similar to Earth at sea level. Maybe the wind is a big problem? Or insertion from orbit?
I think upper atmosphere study would be great. There are some colony designs that suggest an oxygen filled colony would float at earth pressure. And with the sulfuric acid and co2 you have everything you need to make water air and fuel. Not to mention protection from asteroids and deadly rays. It would be a challenge but all of the planets and other bodies present their own challenges.
At the same ambient pressure, an O2 would float, but just barely. It wouldn't float like a hydrogen/helium balloon does on earth. If the pressure is the same on either side of the balloon, lift comes from different atomic weights of the gasses. Helium weights much less than air. But the O2 inside the Venus habitat doesn't weigh all that much less than the CO2 outside. As a practical matter, you would probably need lift balloons filled with something other than breathable air/O2. [1]
Then think about what you want to do in this habitat. A solar/nuke-powered refinery for producing rocket fuel? It would need lift bags the size of cities. Not the Goodyear blimp. Think bags filled with cubic kilometers of lifting gas.
[1] This is why balloons wouldn't work on Jupiter/Saturn etc. No balloon can float in a sea of hydrogen. We would need a 'balloon' filled with vacuum, or at least hydrogen under vacuum pressure in comparison to the hydrogen outside. Soft-sided bags wouldn't work.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to James Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren , Venus-level warming is far beyond anything we could achieve on Earth. Given our greater distance from the sun we don't have enough carbon to pull it off. (The worst we could do is still enough to destroy us, though.)
Does that imply that an advanced enough Venusian life form could have triggered global warming there more easily?
Seems reasonable. Interesting thought.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#85I'm glad Venus is getting more attention. Mars seems to get the most attention as a place to visit, but we seem to ignore Venus. Venus has a few things going for it that I think make it a better choice for permanent human habitation than Mars. * Venus has nearly Earth-like gravity (8.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²) * The atmosphere 50 km above the surface is the right temperature for liquid water, and has a similar atmos…
well you said it: we know exactly how to heat up mars (greenhouse gases) but its not so clear how to cool down venus. also mars has water.
I wouldn't say we know exactly how to heat up Mars. Without a magnetic field, any atmosphere we conjure out of the polar regions would escape into space. We are far, far closer to completely reversing the effects of climate change on Earth than we are to teraforming Mars.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't need to cool it down. We could float a platform about 49.5 km above the surface of Venus, where the temperature and pressure nearly match the earth at sea level. To launch a probe, we could simply drop it from the platform. This article about Venus is very enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
How would we float a platform at that height?
We can float things in the earth atmosphere at sea level. My completely ignorant prior is that we should be able to do it there too, if the temp and pressure are the same.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
well you said it: we know exactly how to heat up mars (greenhouse gases) but its not so clear how to cool down venus. also mars has water.
We don't need to cool it down. We could float a platform about 49.5 km above the surface of Venus, where the temperature and pressure nearly match the earth at sea level. To launch a probe, we could simply drop it from the platform. This article about Venus is very enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
Just because you are at sea level, you can't suddenly float stuff in the air. I like your optimism though. :) I was imaging a floating city like cloud city in star wars [0].
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't need to cool it down. We could float a platform about 49.5 km above the surface of Venus, where the temperature and pressure nearly match the earth at sea level. To launch a probe, we could simply drop it from the platform. This article about Venus is very enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
How would we float a platform at that height?
By attaching it to a steel balloon filled with breathing gas, which can provide lift in the Venusian atmosphere.
Inside the baloon you get a really nice habitat with the correct Temperature, pressure and gas composition for humans to live in.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#89I'm glad Venus is getting more attention. Mars seems to get the most attention as a place to visit, but we seem to ignore Venus. Venus has a few things going for it that I think make it a better choice for permanent human habitation than Mars. * Venus has nearly Earth-like gravity (8.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²) * The atmosphere 50 km above the surface is the right temperature for liquid water, and has a similar atmos…
well you said it: we know exactly how to heat up mars (greenhouse gases) but its not so clear how to cool down venus. also mars has water.
Mars' atmosphere is 95.3% carbon dioxide, which means that the problem we have to solve is not "how do we inject craptons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere" but "how do we stop the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere," which is not a problem we have a clear idea as to how to solve.
Re: Momentum is building to explore Venus
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't need to cool it down. We could float a platform about 49.5 km above the surface of Venus, where the temperature and pressure nearly match the earth at sea level. To launch a probe, we could simply drop it from the platform. This article about Venus is very enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
How would we float a platform at that height?
Most methods of flying things through Earth's lower atmosphere should apply well to Venus at 50 km: balloons, planes, helicopters, etc. To gather energy for rotors, maybe we could siphon heat from below to power a generator or other type of converter.
Just playing with ideas. :-)