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You don't need to own a planet to terraform it. You just need to make sure everyone who owns property on that planet won't be negatively impacted by the terraforming. If you expand your fence, there won't be any legal challenges unless your neighbour disagrees with you.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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I don't see how Chlorine or Bromine are removed by addition of Hydrogen, both are already bound with Hydrogen in acids. I agree that encouraging an Ozone layer would be of significant benefit though and that Chlorine generally acts to degrade Ozone here on Earth, the question is how much Chlorine is at the altitude at which the Ozone layer would form and how much degradation is it causing, how much Chlorine reduction is necessary to get the natural Ozone creation rate to win out and produce an adequate layer. I suspect it would be a rather logarithmic function and that 99% removal is what would be needed to get a significant change because just a little Chlorine will destroy vast amounts of Ozone.
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There is a never addressed issue about cloud cities: start up. We cannot build a floating colony, using CO2 for synthesizing carbon composite, without a big base with industrial machinery and we cannot build a big base with industrial machinery without using local materials. So how to start-up?
The only way may be to build a modular floating base in Earth's Lagrange points using asteroids or Moon's resources, then send it to Venus, perform an atmospheric entry for every module (that can be inflated at the opening of the aeroshell) and dock them.
Very very expensive and risky: build a base on Mars is almost three order of magnitude easier and cheep.
Last edited by Quaoar (2014-12-29 16:43:32)
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Impaler,
http://theconversation.com/what-venus-h … layer-9200
Hydrogen Chloride is inactive Chlorine, but yes easily is decomposed to release damaging Chlorine. The hope, but not the proof is that somehow by adding Hydrogen, the Chlorine can be encouraged to be less active, and I think it might be at least on the night side of the planet.
But you do poke some holes in the idea. Chlorine does it's damage though, 1 Chlorine is apparently thought to destroy 100,000 Ozone molecules before it is removed from service by combining with some other substance.
So thanks for the prompt. Perhaps an equivalent amount of Sodium-Oxide of some sort injected would be better and more permanent. The hope would be that the Sodium bond would be more lasting, and the molecule more heavy, but of course that does not guarantee that it would precipitate downwards, although it will be table salt.
Obviously I am hoping the more reactive Chlorine will displace Oxygen from the Sodium Oxide dust.
And obviously I am grasping at straws. I know what I want, but very likely don't have the best solution yet.
But I am perhaps working on it.
You of course are not going to like anything that is not fully packaged and proved, which leads one to wonder how anything is discovered if you are afraid to try for fear of being wrong?
Or do I have you wrong. You really seem to have good intellectual qualities, but your presentation sometimes makes you seem like an Impaler
If we may be about to have another little slap-fight session, I am willing to confess that I am stupid and step down instead.
Meanwhile here is an interesting read:
http://theconversation.com/what-venus-h … layer-9200
Last edited by Void (2014-12-29 18:02:15)
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Terraformer & Quaoar
I see your stuff, and I support your views.
Yes, the chicken and egg thing. How to get it started. I have had something similar going on in my mind Quaoar, but I really don't want do direct the flow of this thread. I am sure there are many good thoughts here.
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That's not a fair comparison, ANY colony needs to have lots of equipment shipped in before it gets an industrial base sufficient to grow with local materials but you just glaze over that challenge of moving equipment to Mars.
The difficulty of getting equipment down to the cloud city is LESS then getting equipment to the surface of Mars because Martian EDL is a bitch, where on Venus it can just come in on conventional capsule with a balloon to float it, some kind of inflatable decelerator is very likely to be able to do both jobs at the same time and make decent of bulk cargo to the Venus colony nearly free (after it's in orbit which is going to be comparable cost for Mars and Venus). It is easier then re-entering something like a Dragon capsule from LEO which still needs rockets and landing gear. On Mars you need a complex set of parachutes, retro-rockets, landing gear etc etc which we have yet to design or validate and which add up to huge amounts of parasitic mass.
If the mass of equipment needed on Venus for manufacturing and crew turned out to be vastly greater then the equipment of Mars THEN you might have an argument, but because we see atmospheric mining of the key CHON elements to be on par and the crew accommodations are less, that means Venus may actually come out ahead. Mining and smelting metal on Mars is not going to be easy or doable without a huge equipment transfer, until a Mars colony is large enough to produce metal it has no raw material advantage over Venus.
I do agree that descending the initial 'city' blocks directly into the Venus atmosphere is a necessary boot-strapping maneuver. I'm Imagining these are modular and have a long tubular condom shaped support balloon attached to the top so they can be clustered together and the habitable base sections bolted together by very short telescoping hallways not unlike the sections between train cars. By leaving a hole in the middle of the configuration, say they are hexagonal and you start with 6 leaving a hole in the middle, then a new modules can be built their and then lowered/floated back up and re-attached to the side of the city.
The initial hexagon size might be quite small, just big enough to fit inside something like the 10-15m fairing of SpaceX BFR, and would mass 100+ tons. Starting with 6 for the first ring and then once they have replicated enough times (14 more to make a total of 20) you re-arrange to create a BIGGER hole equal to 7 of the small hexes for a bigger building area and make a newer larger size block module and start a second ring of these and transition to building only the new size module. And you just keep expanding in this fractal manor, which newer blocks likely being deeper and taller too. Each level would have a modules diameter increase of 2.64 (square-root of 7), so if initial modules are 15m they progress to 39.6m, 105m, 277m 733m. That's nearly a kilometer across in just 4 generations.
Note that this kind of mid-air construction is very simple and safe being much like the construction of a sky-scraper or bridge, not at all like orbital construction, a safety net would be strung below the construction area for worker safety, and it may be simple to tent the whole work area to avoid any breathing-mask needs. Building materials come in directly from the surrounding modules and the outer modules provide all the support scaffolding needed during construction. The module frames are probably aluminum which is certainly an import from Earth, but 90% of the interiors and exteriors would be plastics along with the support balloons. The additional height of each generation can be accommodated by building one level above the level of the last generation, if the first generation is 3 decks high then the 4th generation is 7 decks high and has an interior of ~1 million m^3, compared to 675 for the first generation.
This pattern of construction is also far more like how we build cities on Earth, they are modular and consist of single purpose buildings rather then being fantastical monolithic structures as has often been depicted in science fiction. The block modules of a Venus cloud city would be much like buildings, some will be housing, some manufacturing etc etc. As the generations progress they will likely become more specialized and develop a bit of a top-bottom layer-cake arrangement.
Last edited by Impaler (2014-12-30 15:04:35)
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The out dated Outer Space Treaty pretty much sums up the ownership possibility and the reasons why nations and even individuals can not afford to even think of creating a colony let alone a one way mission even if funds could be found for one.
Other items to take into account for the cooled atmosphere is to send it to mars or even the moon as bagged ice balls to give needed materials to either place.
As for making ozone use an ionic breeze as when it cleans the air on a home it create some alone the way...
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Good stuff Spacenut, from my point of view. High altitude balloons? Additive Ozone. That's a good notion.
Thanks for patience to all.
I am wondering about Hydrogen Sulfide as a rocket fuel for Venus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide
Properties[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2012)
Hydrogen sulfide is slightly heavier than air; a mixture of H2S and air is explosive. Hydrogen sulfide and oxygen burn with a blue flame to form sulfur dioxide (SO
2) and water. In general, hydrogen sulfide acts as a reducing agent.
At high temperature or in the presence of catalysts, sulfur dioxide can be made to react with hydrogen sulfide to form elemental sulfur and water. This is exploited in the Claus process, the main way to convert hydrogen sulfide into elemental sulfur.
Hydrogen sulfide is slightly soluble in water and acts as a weak acid, giving the hydrosulfide ion HS− (pKa = 6.9 in 0.01-0.1 mol/litre solutions at 18 °C). A solution of hydrogen sulfide in water, known as sulfhydric acid or hydrosulfuric acid, is initially clear but over time turns cloudy. This is due to the slow reaction of hydrogen sulfide with the oxygen dissolved in water, yielding elemental sulfur, which precipitates out. The sulfide dianion S2− exists only in strongly alkaline aqueous solutions; it is exceptionally basic with a pKa > 14.
Hydrogen sulfide reacts with metal ions to form metal sulfides, which may be considered the salts of hydrogen sulfide. Some ores are sulfides. Metal sulfides often have a dark color. Lead(II) acetate paper is used to detect hydrogen sulfide because it turns grey in the presence of the gas as lead(II) sulfide is produced. Reacting metal sulfides with strong acid liberates hydrogen sulfide.
If gaseous hydrogen sulfide is put into contact with concentrated nitric acid, it explodes.
Hydrogen sulfide reacts with alcohols to form thiols, an important class of organosulfur compounds.
So, I am thinking that temperature keeps SO and H20 out of the upper atmosphere of Venus. If it were actually a useful rocket fuel, then it would also be a pollutant for the upper atmosphere as a consequence. It is not good to mix Chlorine and water, but I am supposing the H20 would be split quite quickly, into it's components, and of course it is wishful thinking, but perhaps make CL less damaging to O3 by bonding to HCl?
I did consider Sodium compounds, and Magnesium rocket exhaust, but perhaps SO might be displace by Cl to form Sulfur dichloride or maybe something else since the atmosphere is full of other chemicals that might interfere, and has a high UV flux. Unfortunately, it is not likely that the particle size from a rocket exhaust can be regulated.
So, I don't discount also dumping metal compound particles of a desired size into the upper atmosphere. The hope there would be that Sodium and/or Magnesium compound particles might attract Cl and Fluorine and Bromine (If any), and that the particle size would also limit the time of suspension in the atmosphere to an ideal where it is present long enough to absorb Cl and other O3 depleters, but will also precipitate out of the upper atmosphere by gravitation at a desired rate of time.
So, good idea, add O3 in addition from high altitude balloons, or jets. Maybe jets that burn Magnesium?
Well, this should give you a gigle if there is no other value to Hydrogen Sulfide Rockets:
https://twitter.com/charizardi/status/5 … 4565610496
Last edited by Void (2014-12-30 09:22:40)
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Magnesium will burn in CO2, creating Magnesium Oxide, which will then form Magnesium Carbonate. It's been suggested as a means to dispose of the Venusian atmosphere (by strip mining Mercury).
I wonder how difficult it would be to trial airship reentry using a cubesat? Can an airship survive Mach 24 when the air is really thin?
Use what is abundant and build to last
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The out dated Outer Space Treaty pretty much sums up the ownership possibility and the reasons why nations and even individuals can not afford to even think of creating a colony let alone a one way mission even if funds could be found for one.
Other items to take into account for the cooled atmosphere is to send it to mars or even the moon as bagged ice balls to give needed materials to either place.
As for making ozone use an ionic breeze as when it cleans the air on a home it create some alone the way...
Don't people get squatters rights if they live there and get to call themselves "Venusians"? Also isn't it a violation of one's civil right is a UN treaty says they cannot own property just because they happen to live on a planet other than Earth?
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Tom,
At the start I concluded that there would be no point to sending a personed mission to the atmosphere of Venus, unless you planned to inhabit it. It would be better to send automation.
If you do plan to inhabit the atmosphere of Venus, true, you have to have methods compatible with what will be encountered. However, if you have to make processed materials to expand your habitation, I see nothing wrong with altering the environment, if you can find a pressure point, and it fits with your economic/process model.
Small alterations such as removing Chlorine and Bromine from the upper atmosphere by adding Hydrogen to it (Or water which will add hydrogen), may be of a reasonable cost effort to justify. If an Ozone layer does develop as a consequence, it then reduces the Sulfuric Acid production in the atmosphere. It also as a consequence reduces the rigors imposed on your equipment by reducing U.V. and reducing the acid nature of the atmosphere.
Further tweeks such as containerizing as much water as possible into expanding habitats will also reduce the production of Sulfuric Acid.
Seeding the Sulfuric Acid clouds to cause them to rain out more (And be heated and decompose to water and Sulfur Trioxide), are contingent on the economic value of such an action. If you prefer water to Sulfuric Acid then you might want to make the effort.
No idea how much Venus is worth. Who owns it? "B.S.ers" according to them.
I keep thinking its the second biggest terrestrial planet in the Solar System, yet Mars is considered more valuable, I think there maybe some hidden value in the second planet that people aren't seeing. It would be nice if someone were to send a balloon probe that wasn't blind like the one the Russians sent. The only atmospheric probe that wasn't blind was the Huygens probe to Titan. It would be nice if we got a good look at the upper atmosphere of Venus instead of all the telemetry that the scientists seem to prefer. I have an idea, what if we were to send disposable animals to the Venusian atmosphere and enclose them in oxygen bubbles to see how long they would survive, and to test out various life support systems of course, and install remote cameras to check on their progress? We could send bubble greenhouses that float around in the atmosphere completely recycling the water and so forth. Since Oxygen and nitrogen float in the CO2 atmosphere, then greenhouses are balloons.
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Tom,
At the start I concluded that there would be no point to sending a personed mission to the atmosphere of Venus, unless you planned to inhabit it. It would be better to send automation.
If you do plan to inhabit the atmosphere of Venus, true, you have to have methods compatible with what will be encountered. However, if you have to make processed materials to expand your habitation, I see nothing wrong with altering the environment, if you can find a pressure point, and it fits with your economic/process model.
Small alterations such as removing Chlorine and Bromine from the upper atmosphere by adding Hydrogen to it (Or water which will add hydrogen), may be of a reasonable cost effort to justify. If an Ozone layer does develop as a consequence, it then reduces the Sulfuric Acid production in the atmosphere. It also as a consequence reduces the rigors imposed on your equipment by reducing U.V. and reducing the acid nature of the atmosphere.
Further tweeks such as containerizing as much water as possible into expanding habitats will also reduce the production of Sulfuric Acid.
Seeding the Sulfuric Acid clouds to cause them to rain out more (And be heated and decompose to water and Sulfur Trioxide), are contingent on the economic value of such an action. If you prefer water to Sulfuric Acid then you might want to make the effort.
No idea how much Venus is worth. Who owns it? "B.S.ers" according to them.
How much would it cost to divert a comet so it hits Venus. Certain outer asteroids might work as well. so since Venus has very little water, how big an asteroid would we need to double it?
http://www.universetoday.com/36291/is-t … -on-venus/
It’s estimated that Earth’s atmosphere and surface has 100,000 times as much water as Venus. And if we didn’t have our protective magnetosphere, we’d be losing our water too.
I guess the easier task would be to hydrate the Venusian atmosphere, since Venus' surface is too hot to hold water, any water we add to Venus' atmosphere would tend to stay in the atmosphere for a time at least. I think a comet bombardment would be the thing to do this. maybe blow up each comet before it hits the atmosphere, that way it wouldn't make craters.
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Anything you do in the atmosphere of Venus could be done in the vacuum of space. The only resources in the upper atmosphere will be atmosphere. And people criticise me for suggesting genetically engineering terraforming microbes to use retinal for photodye instead of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll requires one atom of magnesium for every molecule. Plants require nitrate, phosphate, and potassium fertilizer, as well as a lot of micro-nutrients. There's lots of nitrogen, carbon, and water in the clouds, but phosphate is only a trace element. And I don't know of any potassium. There's certainly no iron, or silicon, or copper, or zinc, or other micro-nutrients. Where are you going to get those?
And there's no raw material for construction. You could make plastic from Venusian atmosphere, but that's all.
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Anything you do in the atmosphere of Venus could be done in the vacuum of space. The only resources in the upper atmosphere will be atmosphere. And people criticise me for suggesting genetically engineering terraforming microbes to use retinal for photodye instead of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll requires one atom of magnesium for every molecule. Plants require nitrate, phosphate, and potassium fertilizer, as well as a lot of micro-nutrients. There's lots of nitrogen, carbon, and water in the clouds, but phosphate is only a trace element. And I don't know of any potassium. There's certainly no iron, or silicon, or copper, or zinc, or other micro-nutrients. Where are you going to get those?
And there's no raw material for construction. You could make plastic from Venusian atmosphere, but that's all.
There is the ground, The ground can be more easily reached from the atmosphere than from orbit, and lifting things from the ground can be done with balloons with no expenditure of rocket propellants whatsoever. Lets do an analogy, where is the bottom of the ocean more accessible, from the surface of the Ocean or from orbit? It would be very hard to mine the ocean bottom from orbit, don't you think? The pressure on the surface of Venus is equivalent to the water pressure 1 km below the surface of the ocean, and the way to get stuff from the bottom of the ocean to its surface would be through buoyancy.
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RobertDyke
From my point of view, it not that your plan cannot be considered, rather that other options might deliver goods sooner.
For instance atmosphric habitation may allow the surface of Venus to function mostly like it does now, which I am beginning to think could be a valuable thing.
Here is some reading if you are bored:
http://news.discovery.com/space/the-met … 130610.htm
http://www.academia.edu/8290772/Structu … enkel_Line
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=74121
http://www.space.com/27777-alien-life-s … oxide.html
I think most of us agree that there would be means to robotically access surface materials. It does not matter the method. The people who would do it will select the method of their choice. Tom suggests something, Impaler suggests something, and of course I tried something. It is not important, there would be a method.
The "Snow" on the mountains apparently may be Lead Sulphate and Bismuth Sulphate, which would be so abundant, that I don't know what useful purpose they would serve to humans, but I am thinking that perhaps there could be other mineral processes which have provided minerals humans would be glad to have. The Supercritical CO2 situation on the surface, and not at altitude in the mountains, begins to suggest as well that surface actions might be possible that would benefit from Supercritical CO2. Mineral extractions of course is what I am saying.
The machines to do it would have to be radically different, but then designing them might be fun.
We have chances of retaining the Earth as a human home, and also adding Mars. But Mars will be somewhat Earth-Like. Venus is an oportunity to do somthing different, that might be easier than trying to turn Venus into another Earth.
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And then there is this:
http://www.space.com/19537-venus-comet-atmosphere.html
http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/51315- … olar-wind/
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2013/01 … 359491116/
So, I might be wrong, but I am thinking (Again) that a artificial hab in orbit could use solar wind to accumulate orbital energy, and orbital energy to capture materials from the tail of Venus. That would be important for keeping the habitats supplied with volitiles.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 … 7/abstract
Then the atmosphere could be inhabited, and the surface mined for deposites of types that do not occur in the same way on Earth.
If so, then it is very, very good.
I really think that if you cooled the surface of Venus down, (Which would take forever as far as humans are concerned), and put a layer of water on it, you would get lots of super volcano's. Not so nice.
Last edited by Void (2014-12-30 17:36:44)
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Doing some calculations on what a Venus city infrastructure might look like, first the density of the pressurized habitation areas. ISS Destiny module is 136 kg/m^3
A big modern luxury cruise ship (Voyager of the Seas) is made of steel and displaces 64,400 mt. The Length of 311 m, beam of 38.6 m, and a height of 63 m, as modern cruise ships are quite box like simply multiplying these dimensions gives a very close approximation of 75k m^3. Thus density of 85 kg/m^3 which makes sense.
Thus a density of around 100 kg/m^3 is a reasonable estimate for the density of a habitable pressurized Venus module that could be initially sent to Venus. For every mt the launch vehicle is capable of would translate to 10 m^3 of volume in habitat. If the SpaceX BFR can accommodate a 15 m fairing that is 176.7 m^3 cross-section, as this is to be a pressurized module it would not need a payload fairing except on it's top, a nose cone in essence. Thus the 176.7 area becomes the whole area cross-section of the habitat, each side of the hexagon would 8.2 m long. Now we have a hexagonal prism with known base area, the height will be limited by the launch mass limit of the rocket, if it is 100 mt then height is only 5.6 m, which would accommodate just 2 decks.
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Doing some calculations on what a Venus city infrastructure might look like, first the density of the pressurized habitation areas. ISS Destiny module is 136 kg/m^3
A big modern luxury cruise ship (Voyager of the Seas) is made of steel and displaces 64,400 mt. The Length of 311 m, beam of 38.6 m, and a height of 63 m, as modern cruise ships are quite box like simply multiplying these dimensions gives a very close approximation of 75k m^3. Thus density of 85 kg/m^3 which makes sense.
Thus a density of around 100 kg/m^3 is a reasonable estimate for the density of a habitable pressurized Venus module that could be initially sent to Venus. For every mt the launch vehicle is capable of would translate to 10 m^3 of volume in habitat. If the SpaceX BFR can accommodate a 15 m fairing that is 176.7 m^3 cross-section, as this is to be a pressurized module it would not need a payload fairing except on it's top, a nose cone in essence. Thus the 176.7 area becomes the whole area cross-section of the habitat, each side of the hexagon would 8.2 m long. Now we have a hexagonal prism with known base area, the height will be limited by the launch mass limit of the rocket, if it is 100 mt then height is only 5.6 m, which would accommodate just 2 decks.
First thing we need to do is perfect the art of making permanent balloons or airships that stay in the air and never land, because that is what a Venusian airship is going to have to do.
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The thoughts of a balloon brings to mind a Bigelow Inflateable might be the perfect choice to bring for a starting point as these are not metal for the habitat area inside the lifting balloon.
Source of image http://www.space.com/19290-private-infl … gelow.html lots of info
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One thing to consider, does Venus have hurricanes, and what happens if an inflatable hab gets caught in one?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Studying … 4146.shtml
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/ … 10926.html
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I am interested.
Spacenut,
Perhaps a good plan would be to make environment chambers, maybe the size of a phone booth. No significant differential pressure, but if possible maybe at higher elevations.
Then put scale model of a device into such a chamber where it will be challenged by the environment it is expected to endure. Then hope to figure out materials that can endure such an acid environment with U.V. flux.
Tom Kalbfus,
If such models can be made to endure for a reasonable time, then send copies to Venus to float about, confirming that they can endure, and finding out about the weather. Also perhaps seeking evidence of life in the clouds?
Wind storms will be a concern, even though the lower layers of atmosphere appear to be relatively static. Further, I am concerned about lightning, even though I have read that Venus appears to have less than 50% as much as Earth.
On the side, I would like to know if anything can be figured out on how to capture ions from the tail of Venus when in orbit of Venus.
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Good to create a test environment (R&D) to make sure that what we create will tolerate the useage location. The current Bigelow habitat will tolerate UV so one test down...
Was thinking about lowering the air ship from orbit on a cable, which also had the hoses for returning air and fuel in for the orbiting return ship station. Then adding to the blimp drop tanks that hold the inflation gasses needed to give the craft bounancy plus adding wings and a tail rudder that would also inflate on arriving to the altitude for use.
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Easier just to have a rapidly inflating balloon, lowering a cable is even harder for Venus because it rotates much more slowly.
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Then do we believe that a blimp could be rocket powered back into orbit to rendevous with an orbiting station and ERV for Earth bound crew to return home after there mission.
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Then do we believe that a blimp could be rocket powered back into orbit to rendevous with an orbiting station and ERV for Earth bound crew to return home after there mission.
Why would you want to take the blimp back? seems like a waste of fuel, all you really want to take into orbit are the astronauts and whatever rock samples remote probes had managed to collect on the surface and bring back to the blimp. Also I wonder if allowing rock samples to cool down to room temperature would constitute "Contamination". the natural environment Venusian rocks are could in can only be preserved with a pressurized oven.
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