Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

Earthfirst · 2003-09-29 17:47:02

Looking at the stand point of teraforming venus and merury to be like earth requires a great deal of effort and advance tech that does not exist yet. I herd all sorts of things from a gaint electric motor in orbit, to gaint blinds. This all fun read about because it scfi as of right now. The problem we have now is that we have two good rock planets to work with but every thing is so exterme with venus and mercury that for now are best hope for new home is mars, even mars is a very harsh place its like Antartica but with no pigwins, brathable atmosphere and even more deadly hole in the ozen layer.
What I think we should do about Venus and Mercury may seem a bit exterme but they are exterme places. Unlike dealing with mars which todays tech can be easly teraformed Venus and Mercury will require ann exterme solution. What that solution goes back to killing two birds with one stone, that is that care of the problem at the same time. The solution I thought up is something similiar that happen to the earth a long time ago. It is some people think that the moon formed when a planet the size of mars hit the earth, it hit at a very right angle almost missing the earth not head on, they also think a similiar head on collision happened to mercury causing it to lose its mantel. With the earth because of the angle was just right a lot of material ended up in orbit to form our moon. Now Mercury is simliar to mars in mass, and venus to the earth in mass and size. " So lets slam Mercury into Venus" if we slam the two bodies into each other at the right angle we will end up with a new Venus with one or two moons. Since this be a random collision like it was with the earth and mars size planet we can get it just right. Depending on what we want. We could try to earth moon tiwn but maybe a larger moon just a little bite smaller than mercury. it could a moon with an atmosphere and oceans, or two small moons.
You might be wondering but wont like destory venus and Mercury? Yes it will, the result will a new world.
By destorying venus will get rid of that thick atmosphere, and can can it spin to be faster so one day wont take all year, give lot of energy to the new planet so it will have magnetsphere. Now the atmoshere wont be blown off into space rather it will be disolved by the vapor rock of venus and mercury, and get released later on the new worlds that form threw volcanic out gasing. In effect to teraform you fully recreate what happened to the earth and that means having a large moon. Were would the water come from? Thats the easy part, comits or an small ice moon from staren could be added after the new worlds have been created, just the right amount to get big oceans. Then add life to make oxygen like what happened on earth. The hard part of this plan is moving Mercury onto just the right collosion crouse with Venus, Mercury could be moved by having an astored in just the right orbit to move it on crouse.
Its killing two birds with one stone, its not imposible because it happened to the earth.
Just think of an earth tiwn with blues skys and sea and a large moon with it own air and seas, or two small moons.
Now thats what I call teraforming on a grand scale!
What do you think of my ideas? Do you have any grand ideas of huge collisions? Please tell me about them.

Free Spirit · 2003-09-29 22:21:39

What happens though if Mercury misses Venus? Would we suddenly have a giant comet flying around in the inner Solar System threatening to slam into Earth? I've heard of ways to move a planet over a very long timescale using massive asteroids to loop around the target planet occassionally but I'm not sure you could get the process precise enough to get Mercury to slam into Venus.

I think a better way to prep Venus for terraforming would be to put a small version of Clark's sun shutter around it to reduce the sunlight and temperature. It would take awhile for sure but so would moving Mercury into a position to collide with Venus.

Josh Cryer · 2003-10-01 15:46:07

If nanotubes could be created cheaply using automated processes, we could conceivably weave a cloth of sorts using several asteroids. This could orbit at the L1 lagrangian point, and I don't think it would have to be much larger than the diameter of Venus, due to the distance of the Sun in relation.

Free Spirit · 2003-10-01 15:59:36

A lot of the carbon could probably be extracted from Venus' atmosphere since it's mostly CO2. That might also help to cool the planet down a bit or at least reduce the amount of material you'd need to import.

Earthfirst · 2003-10-01 18:53:59

I think you don't realize how co2 venus has, 90 bars thats a lot of atmosphere. If you did cool venus down using a gaint screen, the pressure is so great that you could seas of liquid co2 on venus. Now that would a starge sea fish in.
I thought slaming merury into venus was a good idea it is certianly more creative than just using small astorads to get rid of the thick atmosphere. My way you dont loss the atmosphere most of it gets disolved in the rock vapour from the collision. later to come back by volcanoes on the new worlds.
A new solution to venus terraforming is to add back the water venus lost. I am not talking about just little old comets, i want to give it ann ocean!
I would do this by using an large ice moon from the outer solar system or a kelper belt object that very large. Minus of Staren is a good one, its not too large to move, and its mostly made up of ice. I might cover the surface with plastic so it does not turn into a gaint comet when it get close to the sun. The ice would be slamed into venus, the ice would melt an evaporate fast. There a lot water in an large ice moon more than enough to competly cover venus in a golbal oncean. At first all that water end up into the atmosphere but water good at cooling things off, so venus would cool down to the point a gobal rain storm would happen cover it with an gobal ocean. Water is good at disloving stuff, so a lot the atmospheric co2 would turned into carbonic acdic in acid rain, rectic with venus to form carbonite rocks, this is what happen on earth and keep the co2 level from getting to high. On venus it might bean just a little hotter so the ocean never got as large it the co2 just keep bluilding up to all the ocean boiled away. Leading to the hell it is now. But by adding a huge amount of water we can reverse what happened, and repeat what happened on earth.
With a gaint sun shade to cool venus down plus a lot of water from a ice moon, we could get ride of the thick co2 atmosphere and replace it with a golbal ocean, we then can split the water water apart to make oxygen and bring down the ocean level to expose some land, plus algea in the ocean co2 will not over over heat venus again. With an goble oncean you dont have the problem of the long day and noght you could just sail ships bak and forth between the night and day, and ocean current would also carry algea around. this seem a good solution, the only prolem is finding the right short of ice moon one not large because it take long time to move it to venus, with an ice moon you could melt the ice and use it as thrusters, it could take several large ice moon to to take of venus thick atmosphere.
That my idea sun shade plus lots of water and plants when venus got oceans. This one realistic way to terra form venus.

alokmohan · 2003-10-11 05:18:45

gOOD IDEA.bUT CATCHING SO MANY COMETS IS IMPOSSIBLE IN NEAR FUTURE.tECHNOLOGY DOES NOT PERMIT IT.

el scorcho · 2003-10-11 12:33:47

Mine Venus' atmosphere for CO2 for Martian terraforming, as well as ammonia and acids. Have constant transit between Mars and Venus to transfer terraforming materials. Build huge electromagnets in space to orbit Venus; these will pull on the planet's core and cause the planet to speed up. Maneuver Mercury into position orbiting Venus, ship CO2 from Venus to its new moon to begin terraforming there, crash ice-rich asteroids or maybe Jovian moons into Venus, and voila...three new worlds for the price of two.

alokmohan · 2003-10-13 04:52:45

Mine Venus' atmosphere for CO2 for Martian terraforming, as well as ammonia and acids. Have constant transit between Mars and Venus to transfer terraforming materials. Build huge electromagnets in space to orbit Venus; these will pull on the planet's core and cause the planet to speed up. Maneuver Mercury into position orbiting Venus, ship CO2 from Venus to its new moon to begin terraforming there, crash ice-rich asteroids or maybe Jovian moons into Venus, and voila...three new worlds for the price of two.

Its so easy!

Mad Grad Student · 2003-12-05 20:54:52

Well, there are two problems with this plan. One is that it would take a phenomenal amount of energy to move an object like Mercury into a different orbit. I did the math once, and it turns out that Ceres, less than half the diameter (And one fifth mass) of Mercury weighs over 5 quadrillion tons. That's a 5 followed by 12 zeroes, if you didn't know that. The amount of energy needed is staggering, more than that needed to reach Alpha Centauri in 15 years, I dare say! Unless we find a way to harness the sun directly for power, there's no way that'l happen.

The other problem is time. It took the Earth millions of years to cool after the event, and the Moon took over half a billion to coalese into something familiar today. Most people lack that kind of patience.

Here's my idea, why not take a smaller object, like Ceres (That's why I made the calculations), and somehow put it into an orbit that intersects with Venus. I assume that this would be around 500-700 years in the future, so methods like ion drive or M2P2 can maintain steady thrust for decades. Over the course of 30 years Ceres is slowly but surely transitioned into an eliptical orbit that intersects with Venus' atmosphere, but not it's crust.

Still maintaing an increadible amount of orbital energy, Ceres collides with the Venusian atmosphere, dropping as low as 5,000 feet AGL at one point. I think that Ceres would be able to withstand the titanic deceleration, but the pressure difference between the surface and space would cause it to spin so wildly it might tear itself apart. Meanwhile, a massive shock wave is formed from the asteroid's encounter, shooting 80-full-% of it out into a high terrestrial orbit.

Large bits of Ceres certainly would have broken off and impacted the surface. However, within a year or so the dust would settle, and for the first time in billions of years the sun shines on Venus' surface. I assume that the centrifugal force of Ceres' mad spinning would break it apart into millions of tiny chunks, also settling into an orbit like that of the former atmosphere. The result is a tourus of carbon dioxide like that around Io and the firs tever observed rings of a terrestrial planet.

With the atmosphere greatly reduced, huge spore coulds of genetically engineered bacteria could be released. These would then breathe in the carbon dioxide and release water vapor, a twist on photosynthesis. Granted, this would take quite some time, but perhaps it could be spead up by refiniries that do the same thing. I estimate that the entire job could be done in about 500 years, which is actually pretty good by terraformation standards. The problem, of course, is the ungodly high price and the "Why?" factor. Any thoughts?

Shaun Barrett · 2003-12-06 06:18:02

If I understand you correctly, you've pushed 80% of the Venusian atmosphere into a high orbit, where it will probably be blown away by the solar wind (?).
Without going into the mathematics of how you did that, and assuming it could be done, you're still left with about 18 atmospheres worth of CO2 around Venus. Wouldn't that much CO2 be enough, still, to maintain a very efficient greenhouse effect and keep temperatures very high on the surface?
???

~Eternal~ · 2003-12-06 13:41:40

Eh that seems like a massive waste of CO2, Nitrogen, Sulfur, and Amonia.
Surely we could use the 89 extra bars for terraforming Mercury, Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, Titan, and possibly Pluto and still have around 79 bars for terraforming outside our solar system ??? .

Mad Grad Student · 2003-12-06 17:22:13

Okay, so I did next to none of the math. In fact, the only math I actually did was how much acceleration it would take to move Ceres into an eliptical orbit. But the point remains that this could work, in theory.

Yes, I realise that there still would be almost 20 atmospheres of pressure on the surface, but that's a much better environment than 90. It was implied (I think) that a solar shade would be used at the LaGrange point, as without some measure like this Venus will always be a hellhole. Even Earth will need one in about a billion years, as the sun heats up. The idea of using gas from Venus to terraform other planets/moons is, well, pretty ridiculous. It would cost such an astronomically high amount just to ship one millibar of CO2 from Venus to another planet there's no way you could justify it.

Of course, we always come back to the problem of Why? Doing things like exploring the solar system, both manned and unmanned, and observing the universe have obvious scientific gains. I cannot see a huge gain in terraforming a planet besides us having more elbow room in the solar system. Of course, there the benefit that if something happens to Earth there are still other humans to carry the evolutionary torch, but beyond that most of terraformings gains are overhyped. Turning other planets into clones of Earth makes them great to live on, but it destroys all scientific value of exploring them, and we may forever loose insights into big issues like life, water, and the formation of the system.

And despite what I've heard from a lot of people, new stuff to mine is NOT a justification of terraforming. Sure, there may be huge amounts of resources rare on Earth in Mars, Venus, and elswhere, but again the price of it comes into play. It would only be profitable to mine extraterrestrially if the price of mining and shipping goods becomes cheaper than just mining them here. This may actually happen one day, and that may be the final killer app of terraformation, but as of now there's no way.

So what's my stand? If we have the technology some day to terraform we should pick one planet, study it as hard as we can for about a century, and then make the most minimally invasive terraform possible. Sure, the price tag would be immense, but we'd be buying insurance for the human race, and in my opinion that would be worth it. Perhaps it may even be possible to terraform a planet and not change it so much it's completely new.

Earthfirst · 2003-12-09 11:58:45

Since it is very hard to move an object with a large mass like even an comet or and small ice moon. One way to get water to venus or mucery would be to contrust your own ice object. On jupitor moon ganymede the surive gravity is low desipte beening nearly as large as mars, because it almost half made up of water ice. With all that ice on the surface it could be easly mined. With the low gravity ice cubes the size of house could be easy lanched into orbit. In orbit the ice chucks could be fused together to from gaint ice ship. Maybe as big as the empire state building. Then the ice could be melted and used as rocket thurst. We handle ships that large now easly. The ice ship would lined the reflective plastic to prevent melting, solar cells could line the plastice and provide the energe need to melt the ice for thrust.
Now it would take millions of such ships to give an ocean to venus but it is easy than moving large object.
Although a simialer technege could work with an small ice moon. Also Satern ring are filled with easy to move ice chucks from and moon that brook apart.

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#1 2003-09-29 17:47:02

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#2 2003-09-29 22:21:39

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#3 2003-10-01 15:46:07

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#4 2003-10-01 15:59:36

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#5 2003-10-01 18:53:59

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#6 2003-10-11 05:18:45

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#7 2003-10-11 12:33:47

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#8 2003-10-13 04:52:45

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#9 2003-12-05 20:54:52

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#10 2003-12-06 06:18:02

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#11 2003-12-06 13:41:40

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#12 2003-12-06 17:22:13

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

#13 2003-12-09 11:58:45

Re: Venus Mercury solution! - Kill two birds with one stone

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