Cooling Venus - Mission Possible ?

MarsDog · 2004-06-09 19:17:38

With 400 degree greenhouse effect;
what percentage of the sunlight would have to be blocked?

chat · 2004-06-09 20:11:33

MarsDog,

Just an educated guess here.

400c heating.
100c max allowable temperature.
=1/4
or
75% sun block.

The best scheme i could produce to block sunlight, was around 50%, so some co2 fixing is a must as well to get to the 75% cooler temperatures.

I still believe co2 fixing iron, and sun blocking is the key to Venus.

Hazer · 2004-06-09 21:09:06

Well, for starters you could try and speed up its rotation by hitting it with big rocks (Or big bombs).
If the rotation was faster, then the planet might actually cool down as the speed at which the planet rotates outstrips the speed at which the extreme winds around the planet.

The CO2 is going to be a problem though.
Perhaps you could bombard the atmosphere with a substance that binds itself to CO2 under heat and pressure; it forms a carbonate causing the carbon dioxide to fall out of the solution of the atmosphere.

From asking on Space.com

“Winds at the surface of Venus are sluggish (a few kilometers per hour) but they rise sharply in the cloud deck to around 400 kilometers per hour. The uppermost clouds circle the planet in a period of about four days (60 times faster than the planet itself rotates), and this rapid rotation, combined with the flow of high-altitude air from the equator to the poles, produces characteristic Y and C-shaped cloud patterns and raised polar “collars.” - “The World of Science,” 1991, Volume 7 “The Solar System,” page 58.

Speeding up the rotation first seems the order of the day though. Ideally, Venus's closer proximity to the sun might be accounted for by speeding up its rotation to one faster than that of Earth.

Now...Anyone else have plausible ideas on speeding up the rotation of something that is 4.869e+24 kilograms?

chat · 2004-06-10 04:01:50

This is a bit of a twist on cloud city to cool Venus.

Send a small robot chemical factory to Venus, that stops at 50km altitude with a balloon to stop decent.

Inside the robot factory have co2 broken into c and o2, use the o2 as fuel to send c or carbon soot into escape velocity.
But make the escape velocity exactly match a geo orbit of Venus.

Now we have a machine that is cooling Venus using Venus.
If the cooling is not having a big enough impact, send another and another until it is.

Geo smog machines

REB · 2004-06-10 06:41:17

Here is an idea I have been toying with;

http://startrektng.freewebspace.com/ima … 20Ring.JPG

It is a very thick ring (Or a sphere with its north and south end cut off) It is divided into quarters. Two quarters opposite each other are solid, and likewise, the other two are transparent (Letting in only a certain percentage of sunlight) This ring rotates once every 48 hours.

The outside of the solid part of the ring could be used for collecting the sun’s energy.

The idea could even be expanded on to where the solid part of the ring is habitable. Of course it would have to be more massive.

This takes care of Venus rotation problem and too much sunlight problem. Plus it could provide massive amounts of energy.

The scale of this project is grand, but I don’t think it is out of our reach.

REB · 2004-06-10 06:43:07

Darn, my link is not working. Anyone know of a good site to post pictures?

REB · 2004-06-10 06:48:54

I put it at the bottom of my photo page. Sorry about that.

http://startrektng.freewebspace.com/pho … photo.html

Hazer · 2004-06-10 15:44:15

Whoa...That's a big ring.
Now anyone have any ideas on how to build this ring (In the next 100 years)?

atitarev · 2004-06-10 21:23:54

Spinning and shifting planets are theoretically possible but IMHO not realistic - too expensive. Even building rings. I am not sure if any government/organization will ever consider this.

The key problem with the hot Venus is in its amosphere, not its rotation. If Venus could get Earth's atmosphere - its structure and amount - it's going to be much cooler - we will be able to land on Venus and build habitats. It will be hot during the long days and cold during the long nights but it may be tolerable. If a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, thicker than on Earth is created and enough water to create a cycle - the impact of 56 days long days/nights will be softened. (solar day, not rotational period, which is twice as long). Winds will spread the temperature more evenly, clouds will protect from overheating. The atmopshere should be rid of CO2 and CO.

chat · 2004-06-11 04:23:35

REB,

That is going to take some work, and the union that builds it will be nasty

It does point to the inevitable sun blocking scheme though.

atitarev,
i agree 100% on that.
The heat is most of the problem, and that heat is a direct cause from the co2.

I always wondered what would happen to Venus if we didn't try to cool it.
What if we added super greenhouse gasses to an already very hot place?
At some temperature Venus should start to loose its co2 to space as the atmosphere expands.

REB · 2004-06-11 07:44:02

What would really help build such grand structures would be robots (I don’t think they would go on strike ). Self replicating type robots, or nano-bots could do most of the work. I don’t know how close we are to having such technology, but if it ever comes about, it will open up space.

REB · 2004-06-11 10:03:38

Hazer, it is a big ring, but, IMO, it falls in the same range as a planet size sun shade. Both, of which, could be build out of asteroid resources. Having robots to do the work would make it more feasible.

We should not let the size of these projects scare us. Think about the project size of building highways across the world. Or even better, building a train track across America with 1800’s rechnology.

Hazer · 2004-06-12 23:29:57

We should not let the size of these projects scare us. Think about the project size of building highways across the world. Or even better, building a train track across America with 1800’s rechnology.

I think you may be understating things. Terraforming Venus or affecting the temperature/orbit/rotation period of something that large, with anything other than the "Bomb it" or "Hit it with a big rock and see what happens" aprroach; I just can't see us doing it in the next 200 years.
This is more like building the Space Shuttle in 1812.

Rxke · 2004-06-13 02:04:15

chat's idea of sequestering CO2 in combination with the 'ring'...

all that is needed is an unexisting nanofactory to make it really simple, but it might be possible to do it using more mundane tech...

Simplified:
-floating factory, cracking CO2 into C and O2,
-Use C to build parts of ring, launch em in GVO using O2 and (?)
-Assemble in orbit, using robots...

That way you both reduce the CO2 and build a shade, no use for asteroids etc...

Pure C might be the buildingblocks used in a primitive nanofactory, as described in http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/Nanofactory.htm]this design

If such a factory could be built, 'just' send it up to Venus, program it and sit back...

chat · 2004-06-13 05:21:26

Rxke,

02 and ? is a good question.

I wonder how hard it would be to get the first factory to build a clone of itself?

If we could do that, then teraforming Venus is very possible with 1 initial machine.

Do we need to build a ring?
Send the canisters of c into orbit, then blow them up with an additional o2 charge and you have black smoke.

Or collect them for a trip to mars, and send a few o2 canisters up for fuel to do that.

I like the sitting back and waiting part, I'm a professional at that

Rxke · 2004-06-13 09:27:20

Ugh.. Me and my sloppiness.

I meant build 'Legoblocks' out of the C stuff, so that you can later 'simply' reuse it. Just sending out the C as dust would be a waste of processed stuff, IMO... You do all that refining work, and then give it to the solar-wind? I don't like that... Besides, a significant amount could re-enter Venus' atmosphere, making the operation less effective...

About the O2 and ??... Now i have second thoughts... It might be better to find something that doesn't use chemical propulsion at all... Again, it would be a sorry waste of the O2 and the precious Questionmarkanium

Self-copying (nano)factories... Some maintain it can't be done, at least using nanotech, some say it WILL be done within the next 5-10 years...
Self-replicators have been demonstrated, using... LEGO blocks, it's being mentioned on these boards, very recently, forgot (again) where...

atitarev · 2004-06-14 05:35:09

We should not let the size of these projects scare us. Think about the project size of building highways across the world. Or even better, building a train track across America with 1800’s rechnology.
I think you may be understating things. Terraforming Venus or affecting the temperature/orbit/rotation period of something that large, with anything other than the "Bomb it" or "Hit it with a big rock and see what happens" aprroach; I just can't see us doing it in the next 200 years.
This is more like building the Space Shuttle in 1812.

You're right. If people are pessimistic even in a simple discussion l like this, then it is impossible, of course.

I know only if people want something badly they can do it, if it's a low priority - this will never be done.

---
Changing Venusian atmosphere is the achievable minimum we should be concentrating, maybe with a temporary shield - all other projects - rings, spinning up Venus, shifting it - are pure fantasy with the current or near future technology.

I'd like to hear some opinion about Venus with the Earthlike atmosphere (maybe thicker) - I read some estimates that the average temperature would be only 15-20 degrees higher than on Earth. I think the polar regions and beyond might be quite comfortable - equatorial areas too hot. There is no axial tilt on Venus. So, there won't be seasonal changes due to the inclination but only due to long days and nights (56 days/56 days). Night - winter, day - summer. Long mornings and evenings - spring and autumn (fall). We might leave the Venusian rotation alone and adjust to it.

Liquid salty oceans will keep the temperatures warmer at night and it may not even freeze completely.

REB · 2004-06-14 05:48:14

There is a flaw in my ring. When I first proposed it, it was a solid ring that had fiber optic input on the Sun side, and fiber optic outputs on half of the inside. Basically, the fiber optic inputs on the outside all lead to the output on the inside. Sunlight is channeled to inside of the ring, which rotates once every 24 hours. The amount of light reaching the planet’s surface is controlled. Extra sunlight can be used for energy.

On the new ring, I tried to simplify it. I took care of the dayside ‘day’ but I forgot about Venus’s night side. Perhaps the inside of the sphere can be mirrored and reflect some of the sunlight to the night side?

REB · 2004-06-14 05:58:40

I updated my picture;

http://startrektng.freewebspace.com/pho … photo.html

lunarmark · 2004-06-14 09:39:30

To me the answer is to genetically engineer an organism that rapidly spreads (really rapidly spreads) and get it to bind up the Co2, the trick would be to build in a self destruct gene into the organism that stops when the pressure reaches something sensible, or better still an organism that cannot live below 100 deg C...

I see no reason why an organism couldnt be developed to do this, once the rapid reproduction was sorted it should be quite simple. Virus and bacterial strains exist on earth that can reproduce extreemly rapidly..

:band:

MarsDog · 2004-06-14 12:33:25

I, also, cannot see anything quicker or more cost effective than sun shields, as space colonies, generating beamed power for other purposes.
-
For smaller cooling effects, I looked for non thermal, anti greenhouse effects.
-
Dutch windmills, on the surface of Venus, to power microwave transmitters to send power through the Venusian atmosphere.
-
Frequency shifting, from heat radiation to microwave via Phosphorescence effects. Fluorescent phosphor is driven by Ultraviolet light but emits at visible through multielectron processes. The lower frequency equivalent is a subharmonic generator. Polar bear fur has small antenna structures tuned to IR radiation, if somehow, such antenna structures could be driven by IR radiation, to radiate more than simple black body radiation ?
-

karov · 2004-06-14 17:36:19

http://www.paulbirch.net/TerraformingVenusQuickly.zip

Excuse me for the crossposting, but in this link content you could see the "chimney" scheme for very fast venusian atmosphere cooling, in better way, than I could explain it.
------------------------------------------------------
Such "chimneys" could be used for C ( eventually +O) plasma channels, for lifting in orbit of almost the entire atmosphere of Venus. Carbon is the best biulding material for space colonies. With the amount containing in the original venusian atmosphere dozens of thousands of times the earth total area could be replicated in , let say, 1000 of miles wide tube-world. Such way the fast cooling in megascale manner becomes obsolete. From the planet could be pumped out even more -- because after the planet`s crust is liberated from the enormous ~90 Bars presure, it will expand and hence further outgassing could occur. This is very convenient from economical point of view, cause if the terraforming of Venus is considered as just a byproduct of incomparably bigger "domestication" problem, and if the outgassing occurs to be unsolvable in millennias to come task... the money expenditures will be justified... Energy -- from the solar pannels in the sun-shade or from solaser if it is decided that total L1-parasol shading is not necessary.
Some processes in the plasma (+ laser trap cooling?) and other quantum-thermodinamical means could be used, either, as MarsDog`s thoughts points to. Without "lighning guns" export of the gasses.

chat · 2004-06-14 18:58:00

karov,

That is a great way to decrease the 90 bars.

Once the bulk of the atmosphere is in orbit, i bet with a little inventive work you could create a stable moon out of it.

That locks that enormous atmosphere away for good, and might allow us a chance to speed up the spin at the same time.
It also buffers the night temperatures with a moon.

Then a few water asteroids on Venus, a few select bacteria for fine tuning, send the plants and let nature take its course.

MarsDog · 2004-06-15 08:37:14

Space colonies will be built, and we might as well build large ones, interlocked, as a Sun shield, at the Venus L1 point.
-
Once Venus is cooled, to permit liquid water to exist on the surface, add comets for the hydrogen, and plants to fix the carbon. The problem is that the geological carbon cycle is millions of years; so keep piling the carbon into a large mountain and let it sink. Then mine the diamonds.

karov · 2004-06-15 08:39:31

Cooling and getting rid of the thick planet`s atmosphere + spinning could be provided without necessity of massive asteroid or nuclear bombs canonade or super-laser puncturing of the litosphere in order to be released the mantle-confined water. In such way the terraforming of Venus could relly upon not almost utterly local resourses, but also makes Venus to be able as an material exporter to play the "keyest" role in the other 'competitive' to terraformnation way of space colonisation - the building tube worlds. We could sday that without the CO2 from Venus, we can`t build our megastructures. So:
========================================
1. Shade the entire planet with parasol covered with photovoltaics on the sunlit side, and an array of laser/maser emiters on the planet-side. Forced cooling by Burch`s chimneys in "slower" manner in mere decades timespan. We reach cold deep enough the atmosphere to freeze entirelly
---
2. Through millions of low-diameter drilled shafts reaching the mantle we extract all the enormous amount of hydrogen necessary. We use both the energy from the temperature difference (~1000 in the depths to ~500...50K on the surface) and the beamed down from the parasol to separate the hydrogen, to pump it up to the suface and to process it with the atmospherian CO2 ice. H2 + CO2 -> H2O + graffite (or complete spools of nanofibers). During this we doesn`t allow the gasses and heat from bellow the crust to escape and defreeze the surface. In order such enormous work to be done we use von Neuman style of machines, or self-replicating factories.
---
3. The produced water vapour is "aqueducted" towards the CO2-ice free lowlands where it freezes in icesheet -- future oceans. The carbon materials are stored separately. The rest of the atmosphere`s gasses are (N2, argon - air ballasts, are stored underground through the bored H-extracing shafts?)
----
4. At the end we have frozen world ocean covering about 80% of the planetary surface. Plus really ENORMOUS quantity of carbon nanofibers construction material. Underground reservoires of gaseous N2, Ar, other content, etc. Except the water in the ice oceans, we leave en situ enough carbon and other elements to be converted in biomass for the future ecology.
----
5. On the vacuumed and frozen surface we biuld wide equatorial band of maglev rails. Launch by escape velocity "train" system the amounts of nanofiber spools in the direction of the axial rotation. Together with the excess amount of other gasses. With certain velocity of the cargoes launching such mass will suffice the planet diurnal cycle to be increased to more normal one (a week long day`s? -- you calculate it! -- although that like Atatirev, I also like the notion of diurnal=seasonal cycle as it is, but launching of all this mass shall lead to spin shift unavoidably). The excess quantity of materials mainly carbon in nanofibers` form is FOR SALE and for biulding of these several dozens of thousands of earth`s areas in huge space colonies or single multibarrel sinlge-loop macaroni-habitat around the sun (~1000 km. in diam.?). So, tube worlds` construction and real estate sales in them will pay the terraforming of Venus. If the tube is roofed from inside, than the atmosphere requirements diminish significantly, so even the modest amount of only the venusian N2 will suffice.
----
6. Open the parasol as wide as you decide it would be proper for the spinned faster planet. Do not remove it entirelly because it provides for Venus such plenty of captured energy, that the planetary economics is main net energy exporter. Both beamed throughout the Solar system by lasers/masers and stored as antimatter, valuable fissible and fusable materials... on demand. The calmly spinned planet could anchor stationary beanstalks = easier transport. The millions of early-terraformation-stage shafts are used for volatiles control, waste disposal, mantle "weather" tickling, "geo"thermal exchanger facilty...
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7......

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#1 2004-06-09 19:17:38

Re: Cooling Venus - Mission Possible ?

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Re: Cooling Venus - Mission Possible ?

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Re: Cooling Venus - Mission Possible ?

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Re: Cooling Venus - Mission Possible ?

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Re: Cooling Venus - Mission Possible ?

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#15 2004-06-13 05:21:26

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#16 2004-06-13 09:27:20

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