Venus

SpaceNut · 2014-04-26 16:39:37

Spatula wrote:

Regarding all this talk about changing the planet's spin, I'm not sure this is necessary.

Since Venus is closer to the Sun, you would obviously expect it to receive more solar radiation than Earth. In fact, sunlight striking Venus is 93% stronger than sunlight striking Earth, thus we would expect Venus to be warmer. 93% is considerably more solar radiation. That is almost double what the Earth receives which is about 1100 watts per square meter...

http://www.ess.uci.edu/~yu/class/ess5/C … rature.pdf

With earth having a surface temp of 5C while venus would be 55c. if all of it were obsorbed by the surface but that is not the case.

Venus' thick atmosphere reflects more than 60% of the solar but even that is still not enough of a reduction so we need to block even more.

How about creating a revolving blind that acts like a shell that wraps the planet with a blocking effect lowering the amount of solar striking the planets surface thus causing it to cool.

RobertDyck · 2014-04-26 16:46:46

Earth's Early Atmosphere --New Clues to Origin of Life on Earth and Beyond (Today's Most Popular)
This article talks about efforts to quantify the early atmosphere by measuring rocks.

For decades, scientists believed that the atmosphere of early Earth was highly reduced, meaning that oxygen was greatly limited. Such oxygen-poor conditions would have resulted in an atmosphere filled with noxious methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia.
...
Scientists at Rensselaer turned these atmospheric assumptions on their heads with findings that prove the conditions on early Earth were simply not conducive to the formation of this type of atmosphere, but rather to an atmosphere dominated by the more oxygen-rich compounds found within our current atmosphere — including water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide.

Again, Duh! I have long heard the scientific belief that early Earth had an atmosphere with 95% CO2, just like Mars and Venus today. That Earth's atmosphere was much hotter and higher pressure. It contained all the nitrogen we have now, but much more CO2. By the way, Venus has 6 times the mass of nitrogn as Earth, but 95% CO2. I'm sure much of Earth's nitrogen has been consumed by plants: trees, animals, etc. That reinforces understanding the pressure on Venus, and tells you Earth used to have something similar. So why is this a "new" finding?

SpaceNut · 2014-04-26 17:23:11

So mars lost its atmosphere to solar wind, flares due to weaker gravity via this errosion process. So Earth lost its via volcanic eruption and collision with rocks possibly with the creation of the moon. With venus not being so lucky....

RobertDyck · 2014-04-26 18:27:13

No.

Most of Mars atmosphere is still there. If you warm Mars, it will have 30% of Earth's pressure. And Mars still has water, just frozen. The south polar ice cap alone is 3.7km thick, extending to 60° latitude. If the south polar ice cap were to melt, it would cover Mars 11 metres deep. But it wouldn't cover the planet evenly, tops of mountains would remain dry while low areas such as the ancient ocean basin would fill deeper. And that doesn't count the north polar ice cap, ice likes in craters, glaciers, frozen pack ice, permafrost, etc.

Earth didn't lose its atmosphere to space either. When the Sun cooled, Earth cooled sufficiently to permit rain to fall. It formed an ocean, but since Earth had a 95% CO2 atmosphere like Venus, it formed carbonic acid. That's a mild acid, but dissolved rock more quickly that clean water or salt water. Dissolved rock forms clay, leaving salts dissolved in solution: sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium. The calcium and magnesium combined with carbonic acid to form calcium carbonate (calcite) and calcium-magnesium carbonate (dolomite). They precipitated out of solution. That's limestone, white and grey speckles. So Earth's thick atmosphere is still here as well, as limestone. Every time we bake limestone to make Portland Cement, we release a little of that primordial CO2.

Venus is closer to the Sun. And Venus doesn't have a magnetic field, so lost the hydrogen of water in its upper atmosphere.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-04-27 09:17:47

RobertDyck wrote:

The planet Venus has a mass of 4.869e+24 kg, which means 4,869,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg! Do you realize how heavy that is? What makes you think you can change the spin of a planet? When settling another planet, one goal is to find a planet different than ours. The goal of Terraforming is to make the planet capable of supporting human life, not making it exactly the same as Earth. You can't change it's diameter, you can't change it's surface area, you can't change how close it is to the Sun, you can't change it's orbit, and you can't change it's spin. What you can change is it's atmosphere and hydrosphere.
Venus has a length of day longer than it's year. Work with that. Venus rotates retrograde, which is backward to the other planets. It rotates once every 243.0187 Earth days, so its siderial day is that long. But solar day is the time it takes from Sun rise to Sun rise; one solar day on Venus is 116.75 Earth days. It's orbit is 224.65 Earth days, so that is its length of year. Again, get over it, work with it.

You will need a sun shade anyway, as Venus receives too much sunlight! You can reflect that sunlight by manipulating much less mass than would be required to spin up the planet. You are not going to terraform Venus without blocking some of that Sunlight. Changing the paths of light reaching Venus is how we create a 24-hour day night cycle.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-04-27 09:20:30

SpaceNut wrote:

Spatula wrote:
Regarding all this talk about changing the planet's spin, I'm not sure this is necessary.
Since Venus is closer to the Sun, you would obviously expect it to receive more solar radiation than Earth. In fact, sunlight striking Venus is 93% stronger than sunlight striking Earth, thus we would expect Venus to be warmer. 93% is considerably more solar radiation. That is almost double what the Earth receives which is about 1100 watts per square meter...
http://www.ess.uci.edu/~yu/class/ess5/C … rature.pdf
With earth having a surface temp of 5C while venus would be 55c. if all of it were obsorbed by the surface but that is not the case.
Venus' thick atmosphere reflects more than 60% of the solar but even that is still not enough of a reduction so we need to block even more.
How about creating a revolving blind that acts like a shell that wraps the planet with a blocking effect lowering the amount of solar striking the planets surface thus causing it to cool.

that is basically my idea, the revolving blind is in orbit around Venus and is composed of reflective panels that redirect the sunlight to parts of Venus that aren't facing the Sun at a given particular time. Since we have all this excess sunshine, those panels can afford to be less than 100% reflective and still deliver the same amount of sunlight that the Earth receives.

RobertDyck · 2014-04-27 10:35:47

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

You will need a sun shade anyway

The best idea is to engineer the clouds to be the sunshade. Not anything physical, just clouds.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Changing the paths of light reaching Venus is how we create a 24-hour day night cycle.

You don't need a 24-hour cycle. One reason to go to another planet is to experience different living conditions. We don't want to make it a perfect copy of Earth, just something humans can live on. Venus has a solar day that is 116.75 Earth days, which means 58 days and 9 hours of diffuse overcast sunlight, followed by 58 days and 9 hours of night. Don't fight it, work with it.

Antius wrote:

But terraforming Venus? A project that requires planetary engineering on a scale orders of magnitude greater and will not provide benefits for a millenia.

Mars must be terraformed by mechanical/chemical/industrial methods. Build mines to feed chemical factories that spew greenhouse gasses. But Venus will be terraformed with biological means. That is, genetically engineer a microorganism to terraform Venus, then stand back and wait. No further action until rain starts to fall. Once there is rain, then seed endolithic bacteria and lichen on mountain tops. Expand that with other pioneering organisms. It's a matter of seed, then just wait. It will be long term, but doesn't cost a lot. Low cost up-front investment, then long term wait. Returns will be a planet with 90% surface area of Earth, and 90% gravity.

Terraformer · 2014-04-27 10:57:02

Importing water will provide benefits to those living in the cloudtops.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-04-27 12:24:54

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
You will need a sun shade anyway
The best idea is to engineer the clouds to be the sunshade. Not anything physical, just clouds.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Changing the paths of light reaching Venus is how we create a 24-hour day night cycle.
You don't need a 24-hour cycle. One reason to go to another planet is to experience different living conditions. We don't want to make it a perfect copy of Earth, just something humans can live on. Venus has a solar day that is 116.75 Earth days, which means 58 days and 9 hours of diffuse overcast sunlight, followed by 58 days and 9 hours of night. Don't fight it, work with it.
Antius wrote:
But terraforming Venus? A project that requires planetary engineering on a scale orders of magnitude greater and will not provide benefits for a millenia.
Mars must be terraformed by mechanical/chemical/industrial methods. Build mines to feed chemical factories that spew greenhouse gasses. But Venus will be terraformed with biological means. That is, genetically engineer a microorganism to terraform Venus, then stand back and wait. No further action until rain starts to fall. Once there is rain, then seed endolithic bacteria and lichen on mountain tops. Expand that with other pioneering organisms. It's a matter of seed, then just wait. It will be long term, but doesn't cost a lot. Low cost up-front investment, then long term wait. Returns will be a planet with 90% surface area of Earth, and 90% gravity.

Clouds are subject to the weather, orbital structures aren't.

RobertDyck · 2014-04-27 13:10:12

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Clouds are subject to the weather, orbital structures aren't.

Planetary average is the only thing that's important. It doesn't have to be a rigid structure. And structures can be damaged by meteorite strikes. Or meteoroid in space. Clouds are fluid, reform, so can't be damaged.

SpaceNut · 2014-04-27 16:38:27

and yet venus is surrounded by nothing but clouds and is still in runaway mode.... as much as something solid might get stuck what else can be done....

RobertDyck · 2014-04-27 17:10:28

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Venus has a lot. Scientists studied Venus, the paradox that it's farther from the Sun that Mercury, yet higher temperature. That is how they learned of the greenhouse effect. We need to dramatically reduce CO2. Carl Segan suggested seeding the clouds of Venus with algae. That paper was the first to seriously address terraforming. It was written in 1961, when it was believed Venus had 6 bar surface pressure. With 92 bar pressure, the job is a lot more complicated. I've suggested archaea, genetically engineered with flaps to "fly", a feature taken from aerial plankton on Earth. Yup, there are bacteria that do that. And a taxis (single cell version of instinct) to seek nutrients it needs: water, warmth/cold, phosphorus, etc. Use retinal for its photodye, because retinal is composed of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, all available in the atmosphere: CO2, H2O, N2. Chlorophyll requires one atom of magnesium for each molecule, so just don't use chlorophyll. Halobacteria use retinal, so take genes from that organism. Start with an archaea extremophyle that can endure both extreme heat and extreme cold (boiling, freezing). And anaerobic (doesn't need oxygen). In fact pick a starting organism that is poisoned by oxygen, so we can stop it by converting the atmosphere to oxygen. The big thing is to engineer right into its energy processing system something that produces polyanhydride as a by-product. Have it excrete polyanhydride through exocytosis. (That's how single cell organisms shit.) Ensure polyanhydride is a pure polymer, not a co-polymer with something weak. And add something strong to each end of the molecule. The idea is to make it endure current conditions on Venus.

Once concentration of CO2 drops low enough, the planet should cool. Once rain falls on mountains, seed endolithic bacteria and lichen. About that time, seed Venus with algae to produce oxygen. This will start producing oxygen for humans to breathe, and oxygen will stop the archaea from converting the atmosphere into powder.

RobertDyck · 2014-04-27 17:15:44

Ideal cloud control would be heavy cloud cover during daylight, and clear sky during dark/night. Any way to get clouds to rain at dusk? Remember dusk occurs every 116.75 Earth days. Visualize a wall of heavy rain that your town passed through at dusk. Clear sky would let infrared radiation (radiant heat) escape into space at night. Heavy cloud cover would reflect sunlight, reducing heat gain. Clouds reflect on both their top and bottom surface.

A long winded discussion of clouds at NASA's website. here

Last edited by RobertDyck (2014-04-27 17:16:13)

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-04-27 18:40:48

In other words your talking about nanotech foglets. Problem is they are too close to the surface of Venus to reflect light around the planet.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-04-27 18:42:40

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Clouds are subject to the weather, orbital structures aren't.
Planetary average is the only thing that's important. It doesn't have to be a rigid structure. And structures can be damaged by meteorite strikes. Or meteoroid in space. Clouds are fluid, reform, so can't be damaged.

that is one form of nanotech, another form could operate in space and build reflectors, if there is a meteor strike in space, it will only produce a small hole until the nanotech machines move in and repair the damage.

RobertDyck · 2014-04-27 18:56:24

No. Not nanotech. No tech. I'm talking about climate.

SpaceNut · 2014-04-27 19:01:11

http://www.awakening-healing.com/Planets/venus.htm

Surprisingly, the night side of Venus is extremely cold. (Day-side temperatures are 40° C/104° F, compared to night-side temperatures of -170° C/-274° F.) Scientists suspect that strong winds blow from the day side toward the near vacuum that is caused by the low temperatures on the night side. Such winds would carry along light gases, such as hydrogen and helium, which are concentrated in a night-side "bulge."

The Unexpected Temperature Profile Of Venus's Atmosphere

Venus has thick clouds of sulphuric acid that extend between altitudes of 40 to 60 km. Above this, the region between 60 to 100 km is known as the mesosphere, and is a transition region between the lower winds, which whip the cloud tops around the planet in four days,...
warm layer of air on the planet's night-side. It sits between the altitudes of 90-120 km, a region that is generally so cold at night that scientists often refer to it as Venus's cryosphere. The new measurements show that the temperature excess ranges from 30 to 70C and peaks at an altitude of 100 km.

Night-time on Venus

Astronomers observing the night side of Venus were surprised to find emissions from oxygen atoms as strong as those from aurora in the Earth's atmosphere. The discovery is puzzling because the Venusian atmosphere is very different to our own - it contains very little oxygen and is dominated by carbon dioxide.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-04-27 19:23:23

RobertDyck wrote:

No. Not nanotech. No tech. I'm talking about climate.

You won't have a cloud layer like Venus already has without what's beneath being very hot. Venus is now in thermal equilibrium, part of that is the cloud cover that reflects light back into space. Now on Earth you never get the 100% cloud cover that Venus has, clouds rain out and they are never anywhere. Now what you are suggesting is making everywhere on Venus into an overcast day with grey skies, the problem is water clouds won't do that on their own. The thermal equilibrium is with a surface temperature of about 700 degrees centigrade. Venus doesn't get any hotter or cooler, every thing is in balance, the problem is, its the wrong balance for us! We need a thermal equilibrium where the surface temperature is 15 degrees centigrade, not 700! Water clouds won't do this on Venus if they won't do it for Earth. Any clouds you propose will have to be artificial, and thus not natural, my first thought is nanotech foglets, they reproduce themselves as needed and do what they are designed to do, which is provide 100% cloud cove for the day side of Venus, the problem is, they can't give you a 24-hour day, and if we are going to all this trouble, we may as well have one!

karov · 2014-04-28 04:06:22

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

RobertDyck wrote:
No. Not nanotech. No tech. I'm talking about climate.
Any clouds you propose will have to be artificial, and thus not natural, my first thought is nanotech foglets, they reproduce themselves as needed and do what they are designed to do, which is provide 100% cloud cove for the day side of Venus, the problem is, they can't give you a 24-hour day, and if we are going to all this trouble, we may as well have one!

Of course they can. The whole sky turns into holographic screen projecting in 4D.

JoshNH4H · 2014-04-28 08:48:38

RobertDyck wrote:

No. Not nanotech. No tech. I'm talking about climate.

Only on Newmars

With regards to Venus, something worth remembering is that any plan for Venus, biological or technological, is going to take one hell of a long time. Venus is currently in what I consider to be a very stable state and will be hard to change without a significant effort. An example of this would be building a sunshade to block sunlight from reaching the surface entirely, or something radical of that nature.

By the way, if you assume that Hydrogen bombarding the Venusian atmosphere will react with CO2 to form Carbon monoxide and water, it will be exothermic for organisms to do the reaction:

CO2+H2O+CO -> H2C2O4

Which is sightly exothermic by the amount of 36 kJ/mol of Oxalic acid produced.

RobertDyck · 2014-04-28 10:09:36

Is oxalic acid stable in current conditions on Mars. How much water will it consume? Is there enough water on Venus? Remember the goal is to remove enough CO2 to reduce greenhouse warming sufficiently that rain can reach the surface.

Void · 2014-04-28 10:33:33

Venus is currently in what I consider to be a very stable state and will be hard to change without a significant effort.

The significant effort I would try at this time not knowing a better plan would be to eliminate the Sulphuric Acid and water clouds and vapors.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped … atmos.html

Cold layer
Although the surface of Venus swelters at an average temperature of 467°C, and much of the planet's atmosphere is also hot, there is a layer within the atmosphere that is surprisingly cold – colder, in fact, than anywhere in the Earth's atmosphere.[1] At an altitude of about 125 kilometers above the surface, measurements by the Venus Express probe have shown, the temperature drops to an amazingly low -175°C, cool enough in theory for carbon dioxide ice or snow to form.

I would like to poke a hole in the greenhouse Venus with hopes to cause CO2 percipitation. This could destabalize Venus by causing a disruption of the stratification of the atmosphere.

I agree that under most plans there are no short term payoffs. However with the plan to have floating habitats, then a payoff is possible in the nearer term.

Make enought of those, and extract the components of the Sulphuric Acid, and you can fill them in part with the water leaving the atmosphere of Venus "Dry". In the nightime it may be possible that solid or even liquid percipitant could increase and fall downwards causing a downdraft, and also pushing hot air on the sun side upwards to be exposed to an increasing amount to the cooling effects of space.

I don't actually like the notion of habitats in an acid environment like that, but perhaps with materials on the Moon these could be constructed, and then moved to Venus and with heat shields survive entry.

The Sulphur if it could be brought to orbit I believes makes a good metal, if it is in a vacuum.

None of this would be easy, but I like it best.

Beyond the habitats, if the surface could become half as hot, perhaps a machine mining industry could be remotely run from the floating habitats.

None of it easy, but I have yet to hear anyone come up with an easy plan that could actually work. Usually the plans call for hundreds and thousands of years before there could be a possibility of a payoff at all, so I like this one because payoffs are more available during the improvement process.

JoshNH4H · 2014-04-28 11:16:20

RobertDyck wrote:

Is oxalic acid stable in current conditions on Mars. How much water will it consume? Is there enough water on Venus? Remember the goal is to remove enough CO2 to reduce greenhouse warming sufficiently that rain can reach the surface.

I would assume it's pretty stable in current conditions on Mars. It may not be on Venus, though. Because each molecule of oxalic acid (solid at STP) takes in two molecules of gas and one of liquid, I would expect that at Venus' temperature decomposition to its component molecules would be preferred from a gibbs energy perspective. I don't have a table of standard molar entropies on me, and Wkipedia doesn't say much of anything about its behavior at higher temperatures

SpaceNut · 2014-04-28 20:02:13

The key to venus temperatures and acid atmospher will be in what we chose to send for nuetralizing agents to the shaded side of the planet. I do feel that it will take more than just one base to nuetralize the acid nature of venus.
One of the reaction would be to create water while breaking the acid bond but also to lock up the sulfur with some of the carbon dioxide that is part of the problem as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutralization_(chemistry)

Sulfuric acid reacting with ammonium hydroxide to produce ammonium sulfate and water
H2SO4 + 2NH4OH → (NH4)2SO4 + 2H2O
CO2 is absorbed by an alkaline NaOH solution to produce dissolved sodium carbonate. The absorption reaction is a gas liquid reaction, strongly exothermic, (below)
2NaOH(aq) + CO2(g) → Na2CO3(aq) + H2O(l)
lithium hydroxide is used aboard spacecraft to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It reacts with carbon dioxide to make lithium carbonate
2 LiOH(s) + CO2(g) → Li2CO3(s) + H2O(g)
Carbon dioxide reacts with quicklime (calcium oxide), to form limestone (calcium carbonate).

JoshNH4H · 2014-04-28 21:25:10

When the planet cools, the sulfuric acid will probably come down from the clouds and react with the soil to form sulfates

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