Terraforming Neptune

Terraformer · 2008-01-16 12:53:10

I heard it rains diamonds on Neptune (seriously, the Methane in the atmosphere is transformed under pressure.) If nuclear rockets were used, the diamond could be scooped out of the atmosphere and used to build pipes to transport the Hydrogen (to Jupiter?) It would be interesting to see Jupiter become a Brown Dwarf.

JoshNH4H · 2008-01-16 15:40:21

There isn't enoug mass in the Solar system besides the sun to make jupiter a brown dwarf. And you just couldn't give it that much mass even if there was. Yes it rains diamonds there, but it would be much cheaper to just make them synthetically here on earth.

Terraformer · 2008-01-16 15:49:52

Scavenge it from the interstellar medium? The solar wind?

In another thread you were talking about mining stars. Taking the hydrogen from the sun would also increase its longetivity.

JoshNH4H · 2008-01-16 15:57:02

At risk of sounding a bit petulant, I'm going to say that this is different, as It seems like you plan on doing this in the next thousand years. Possible? Yes. Easy? no. Also, By the time someone can do this, you'll need permission that no one will ever give to remove mass from the sun.

Terraformer · 2008-01-17 04:28:19

And who's gonna stop me from just goig to the Sun and extracting matter?

Could there be antiparticles in the Solar Wind?

qraal · 2008-01-17 05:18:11

Hi All

And who's gonna stop me from just goig to the Sun and extracting matter?
Could there be antiparticles in the Solar Wind?

Answer to the second question is 'No' - but there is antimatter floating around in the magnetospheres of the big planets, made from cosmic rays. Up to a few grams worth or so, apparently. Look up the NIAC study on extracting the stuff for details.

As for mining the Sun, I think the only people stopping you will be space-lawyers with asteroid masses of red-tape headed your way. But seriously decreasing the Sun's mass enough to affect its evolution is probably only going to make it turn into a red giant. You'll collapse the core if you only remove the outer layers.

At the end of the Sun's Main Sequence it will have only burnt about 10% of its total hydrogen supply - the Core will "choke" on helium ash and slowly collapse until helium burning kicks in. The non-Core hydrogen burning during the Red Giant and Asymptotic Red Giant stages will burn up and/or blow away the rest of the hydrogen. What the Sun needs is for the Core to be mixed with the rest of the Sun's hydrogen mass - if we can do that then the Sun will burn ~ 60 billion more years before it only has helium left to burn. That would then last ~ 20 billion years.

Burning carbon is probably pointless as the net energy gain is small - instead convert the Sun into a white dwarf burning WIMPs (if we can create a WIMP Scoop to channel them in), or burning up its own mass via reverse baryogenesis. WIMP burning could last for billions of billions of years, if we can channel WIMPs. If not then the Sun's mass-energy would only last 14 trillion years at present power-levels.

Terraformer · 2008-01-17 05:36:18

Cool! By the time the Sun needs to have its life lengthened, humanity will be that far advanced we'll be able to make it last for ages.

So, extracting H from the Sun aside, what about the Solar Wind?

(New thread in Science and Tech., 'Ways of increasing Sols longetivity'.)

qraal · 2008-01-17 23:57:53

Hi Terraformer

The Solar Wind is typically about 5 protons per cc and travelling at ~ 300 km/s. That means the Sun is throwing out about ~ 4.2 E+35 protons a second, or just 710,000 tons of hydrogen a second. About 22.3 trillion tons a year - sounds like heaps, but Venus needs about 1,976 years worth of Solar Wind hydrogen (all of it) to turn its carbon dioxide into water and soot. Quicker to look for the stuff elsewhere.

Terraformer · 2008-01-18 14:09:45

The Oort cloud? The Kuiper Belt? Plenty of H2 there with Oxygen (water). Photodisassociation (my favourite word) could be used to split it.

qraal · 2008-01-18 15:56:07

Hi Terraformer

Dropping cometoids from 100 AU out takes a minimum 176.8 years via gravity alone. Going out to 1,000 AU and the waiting time is 5,600 years. Getting them to Venus quicker would consume more reaction mass, perhaps too much.

Terraformer · 2008-01-19 05:04:14

I was talking about adding mass to Juipiter, not Venus.

qraal · 2008-01-20 05:18:14

I was talking about adding mass to Juipiter, not Venus.

That was a few posts back. I think I got lost. We were talking about Venus as well as Neptune etc...

But there's not enough mass in the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt to make Jupiter a brown dwarf, by the usual definition i.e. deuterium burning mass of 13 Jupiters. Turning Jupiter into a brown dwarf isn't such a "hot" idea with the Galileans so close by.

Problem with Jupiter, and to a lesser extent Neptune, is too much hydrogen for comfort. On Neptune we might be able to do something about it via turning hydrogen into carbon/oxygen and making a diamondoid/carbonia shell for a seafloor. Jupiter, however, is too damned hot and too dry. Perhaps it can be cooled, or perhaps we should kindle its fires and make it into a real star.

Of course any big ocean planet faces the problem of the ocean freezing when it gets cool enough. At about a million bars water probably turns into ice XII or some other high-temperature polytrope, somewhere over 2500 K or so.

Terraformer · 2008-01-20 07:43:51

Turning Jupiter into a star, or even just a brown dwarf, will still provide heat for the outer solar system.

By that time we'll be able to make sails for the Galliens worth saving that will ride the blast of Jupiters ignition to boost them into a decent orbit. Then we arrange them into a model of the inner solar system (just a pet project to do when we're more advanced)..

Gregori · 2008-02-03 11:12:03

Terraforming neptune is hopeless. Its not an earth like enviroment and no matter how much time and energy you wated on it, It will never become one.

We could however adapt to living in its upper atmosphere using clever technology and engineering. Bacteria that are independant of sunlight for energy may be a possible food source, that or plants grown indoors under artificial light.

I reckon that Fusion power is the key technology to make this all possible.

qraal · 2008-02-04 03:56:23

Hi Gregori

Terraforming neptune is hopeless. Its not an earth like enviroment and no matter how much time and energy you wated on it, It will never become one.
We could however adapt to living in its upper atmosphere using clever technology and engineering. Bacteria that are independant of sunlight for energy may be a possible food source, that or plants grown indoors under artificial light.
I reckon that Fusion power is the key technology to make this all possible.

You're probably right, but I guess my definition of "terraform" is to create an open-air habitat for terran life - or come as close to that as you can. If that means balloon-borne habitats on a landless planet, that's pretty good if the air is breathable.

Terraforming Ice & Gas Giants is an ultra-tech prospect, not anything like Mars or the Moon. But it's an interesting speculation, if only for planetological reasons.

Terraformer · 2008-02-06 07:16:37

Plus useful for when we finally get out of this Star System. 41 ly away there is a System with a Sun like Star. It has a few Neptunes in its habitable zone that we may be able to Terraform.

Terraformer · 2012-02-16 06:26:25

Ah, my old, 2008 posts...

There's an interesting comment on this Rocketpunk Manifesto post - http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/201 … rings.html:

Luke wrote:

If the air outside is 80% H-2 and 20% He at 100 kPa and 70 K, then simply by heating outside air to 300 K and releasing it inside your lifting volume, you get a buoyancy offsetting 0.3 kg/m^3. Your lifting ability drops as you descend because the temperature difference decreases, but rises as you descend because the air gets thicker. Assuming dry adiabatic compression/expansion of the atmosphere, I find that you get a maximum of about 1.4 kg/m^3 at pressures of between 2 MPa and 5.8 MPa (173 K and 240 K, respectively) with the actual maximum of 1.55 kg/m^3 located at depths where the pressure is 3.7 MPa (209 K).

Obviously, we'll be using Hydrogen for our lifting gas. If we go for the 10 bar level, perhaps, we can get away with Trimix for our breathing mixture. Though we may want to not use heated hydrogen; while it would severely reduce the lifting capacity to not use it, at least the colony will not fall into the planets depths if something goes wrong with the heating apparatus for a few hours.

karov · 2012-03-02 15:24:45

Terraforming Neptune? Easy like sunday morning.

The surface gravity ( at the optic syrface ) is 1.14g. The supra-planetary habitat may even lie directly ontop the atmosphere. Floating continents, islands, or even ( best ) global continuous crust. The ( www.paulbirch.net , http://paulbirch.net/SupramundanePlanets.zip ) toposphere may provide support of the aka "geosphere" ( land and water surfaces ) aerostatically, inertially, electromagnetically levitating, or even utilizing the planetary spin ... or combination of some or of all.

The territory of supra-Neptune would be 15-17 times bigger than the total Earth's one, i.e. about 8 billion square kilometres. Choose arbitrary 50% for landmass and generously sprincle on the globe, say, 50 Eurasias and 100 North Americas ...

Multiplied by say 1 mile average tickness of the "bark" ( toposphere and geosphere masses together ) at usual densities ( 1000-3000 kg per m3 ) we are talking about ONLY 10-ish billion cubic kilometres or 10^19 tonnes of material used to build the supra-Neptune -- just ONE THIRD of the mass of Nereid, a quarter of the mass of Proteus ... the Neptune's lunar system possesses ALL the mass ( in the desired chemical variety ) and ALL the energy ( in form of gravitational one ) for making the supra-planet.

Illuminosphere - Neptune is 3.883 times wider than Earth, and is only 30 times father than Earth of the Sun -- ( I say "only" compared with the distance of the these Oort cloud or Nomadic / interstellar "neptunes" located on thousands or dozens or hundreds of thousands of AU from luminous fusor )... .

In order the terrestrial level of insolation / illumination to be achieved the supra-Neptune needs a optical device with an aperture 30 times wider than Neptune ( or 100+ times wider than the Earth ).

A million miles wide ( thin as butterfly wings ) concentrating mirror lense would consume only a "spoon-ful" of cometary or lunar material. 10^17 = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neso_(moon) ?

Void · 2012-03-24 13:16:53

I want to participate, but it will be weird. Just warning you.

One thing that is noticible is that most of the time when we speculate on the future, we leave out the probabable part where the humans change into something else.

Cyborg seems the most likely, so I will include that.

Supposing that the biological mush that composes our bodies and brains is to be kept alive by extrordinary methods. Then there must be vastly expanded places to put people, and they must be provided at an economical cost, but to be moral in on sense the quality of life must be good.

So, for big planets, I propose that a human upon becomming very old, might have a modified biological body, one with the purpose of surviving in zero gee, and also for supporting itself off of sunlight power. The body designed to run down deer, and escape from lions would be set aside.

An organic "Host" would be manufactured. It would perhaps be created in part from the subjects own cell lines. However photosynthis, or the ability to digest Hydrogen would be added. The host would be very large.

The subject might exist in the following ways.
Case 1 -It could be entirely inside of the host, and needing no bones. No calcium to loose. The wole thing in a canister, the canister inside of a big "Transformer Robot". I don't think it could be a car or a truck though.
Case 2 -It could be like a human body, but with bones replaced by artificial bones attachment to the host would be with an umbilicle, and this might limit mobility, unless the host moves with you.
Case 3 -It could be a detachable human like body, with a real human referbished brain, and would share blood with the host. As disgusting as this might seem to others, drinking blood from the host, and the returning the blood to the host, is more moral than eating other organisms in my opinion. I only say blood, because it would be a fluid containing hemoglobin. Oxygen being the need to satisfy. Many things would be modified. No bowels, no feces. No urine. Just the exchange of fluid.
The host would of course recycle the materials passed back to it, producing sugars and so on. This organism would be eaten by lions if their were lions in orbit of Neptune, but since the predator prey relationship we had in the past is gone, the shape of us may change.

So to power this, either solar concentrators, or tethers dipping into the atmosphere of Neptune. The tethers, orbital motion would be a compromise between Magnetic field, and the motion of the atmosphere. If the teather was part of a bigger system of a ring circling the entire planet geosynchronis, (Very big and star treck), it could conduct electricty from one part of the atmopshere to another, using the power. It also could have windmills within the atmophere, perahaps Nano-Windmills on the tethers. At the bottom ends of the tethers, substances in the atmosphere could be collected, and conveyed upwards to the orbital ring. The needed products to conduct Fusion for instance.

So, not enough room on Earth for all the "People" living to be 300 years old? Send them to orbit Neptune and other places.

Then some very bazarr inventions are needed to produce avatars that can function in whatever lies below. That is if that can be done and has value.

So, a "Human" could have various avenues of mobility in orbit, and could also perhaps have an avatar deep down in Neptune. However machines to do that would be completely different. They would opperate in a much different way with different physical properties than anything we currently do.

Make it into an Earth? Well go star treck go, but once the human race changes into something else, that is not needed.

Last edited by Void (2012-03-24 13:20:04)

Terraformer · 2012-03-24 15:39:15

I suspect that very few people will actually go in for such modification, when they don't have to. There doesn't seem to be much of an appetite for extreme body modification today, so I see no reason why the 22nd century will be any different.

That said, "very few" can mean quite a lot when it's very few of 10 billion people. I still think we'll see Cybermen, just not all that widespread. I don't think everyone will converge on a common design.

Void · 2012-03-24 18:29:52

Well on that part at least you have some grounds for complaint.

However, I am working towards the notion that the human race by doing what I described will no longer need an Oxygen atmosphere. That would be big for star travel, since few if any habitable planets without life will have Oxygen atmopsheres. Further, if by having a host body, you could extend your life span by 300-1000 years, the time to travel between stars at a reasonable speed becomes possible to do.

If you could have another part of your body that you could plug into that could do a detailed diagonostic on your body, and make detailed repairs to it, see cancer cell by cell, and destroy it, that might help you change your mind.

It is a radical idea. One form of it I thought of was a very large transparent jar to put the human remains in and also the host. Another transparent jar could surround that. That whole thing would be in a metal container. Inside the metal container would be light emitting devices to "Feed" the host.

As far as awareness, that would be in virtual reality, and perhaps a robotic avatar.

So the only part of the ship that has to be kept at temperate temperatures would be inside the Jar. So, a starship would be at a very low energy budget. And it's interior would not be pressurized with an atmosphre.

A further but a bit creepy addition would be humanoid tiny avatars. No biological brain, just a brain chip and an internal antenna. These could be replaca's of humans, but at a very small scale. Normally run by a computer sustem until a Jar person wanted to log on to them. To avoid ethical concerns, the little avatars would not be composed of human cells, but some other animals cells. They would be useful for doing tiny work. Perhaps a tiny space in a starship would be pressurized with Oxygen, and they would be there. Keep in mind these creatures would not be any more concious than your laptop computer.

I told you this one was weird.

However it might be more real than virtual reality.

So, these jar people might be crossing the gap between stars for 100 years, and be at virtual parties, and the beach and so on. All the while not really requiring the expense account that such activites normally require.

As for old folks, if you gave them the choice between a coffin, or such a rebuild, some would choose the rebuild.

In my opinion the Earth should be left to the current generation to use, and the old people should move out to the planets.

Just an opionion. I have serious doulbts that humans will actually ever get their dirty diapers changed let alone go to the stars, but one can hope.

SpaceNut · 2012-03-25 11:49:22

The only way I see to discribe this thread of discusion is to say it is off, to way off the topic.

Void · 2012-03-25 21:38:22

I suppose the little tiny brainchip human replica's and the notion of interstellar travel where out there. Actually I was hopeing for an explaination of why this should not be done if it could be done.

I spoke of Lions. In my view, the human race has exceded limits which have defined it's nature, and so like people who have an abundant food supply and no self control, unsightly consequences are possible and even likely.

The question is manipulation or adaptation. I will confess, I lean towards a compromise of both, where most people here are all about manipulation, or mechanical adaptation. However, if biology is a machine, that that is also mechanical adaptions.

To steer towards the topic as you have requested, I would say that at many stars have "Ice Giant Planets". Many free floaters may be out there as well. What to do with them if anything? I think the notion of making them into Earths is not out of the question for very advanced life forms, but very advanced life forms would be what the decendants of humans would be, if the human race has a biological or perhaps even a mechanical continuation.

I would say that the adaptations for Neptune I suggested did include a manipulation, a tether system to collect energy. That would be a starter. Further manipulations would be options. However I was making the point that those doing it are likely to have a altered nature and perhaps altered motivations.

But since you have requested orthydoxy, then I ask if GWJohnson's suggestion about a hemispheric fusion explosion to strip off the atmosphere could be used?

Beyond that I wonder if you could do that, might you indeed make Neptune or Jupiter work like a controlled star. Drop a special type of Fusion bomb into it periodically to induce a fusion flash of the atmosphere or slushy oceans of whatever?

Then couild you construct a dyson sphere around Neptune? (Free orbital eliments, not a big metal shell).

I have thought that perhaps if you did put a dyson sphere around Ice Giants or Gas Giants, perhaps the infared light reflecting back would raise the atmospheric temperature and cause the to glow at a shorter wavelength. If we cold see down in the lower layers, I am sure it would glow in visible light.

Still I am not sure what that gets you.

However this is sort of a way to Soliform Neptune, not Terraform it. I'm sorry.

The gravitation not being that much greater than Earth, and the spin being more (I believe) could it happen that a space elivator could give access to the thicker atmosphere, and that useful slushy materials from the deep down hot could be extracted and brought up to that space elivator, and moved to orbit, to construct a whatever, leaving behind a gass ball like Saturn?

Or just the reverse, could a process turn Neptune into a binary planet, one a gas runt, and the other a terrestrial? Perhaps starting with a fusion kaboom, and blowing knot of gas into orbit of Neptune, and if it would condense into a gas midget, then repeat the process? Then the Hydrogen would be available for future use for energy production.

Anyway, perhaps that puts you closer to where you want the thread to be. My appologies for the earlier deviation.

Last edited by Void (2012-03-25 21:40:44)

Terraformer · 2012-03-29 12:46:55

I believe there was a suggestion that we could sink much of the hydrogen and helium in the supercritical oceans that may exist... personally, I think the way to go would be a biomechanical organism which would "colonise" the planet and transform it into a supramundane world, held up by the atmosphere below it. Tap energy from the thermal stockpiles and perhaps the magnetic field, and you could make it self-repairing. Perhaps build it at the 200bar level, so that you can oxygenate above that level to create a 1g, landless environment of flying colonies. Sequester the hydrogen below the layer so that the atmosphere is predominantly (>90%) helium, and you should be able to inhabit down to 20 bars quite well. Clouds, but no oceans. Hmmm, would a 5% O2 5% H2 90% He atmosphere be flammable...?

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#64 2008-02-03 11:12:03

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#67 2012-02-16 06:26:25

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