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#1 2004-08-27 13:45:23

karov
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From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

The range of conditions livable by humans is quite wider than the earth`s atmosperic ones. The humans can tolerate ambient atmospheric pressure from, say 0.15 bars to hundreds of bars, depending on the air mixture. The point is the oxigen partial pressure to not exceed the toxicity level, the N2 partial to be less than 4-5 bars, and the rest to be filled with inert dilutant.

So, in short:

1. Add 30-40 bars of helium on Venus
2. Simultaneously, cool the whole atmosphere to ~300 K

in result:

The nowaday >90 bars of CO2 will liquify in carbon dioxide planetary ocean at room temperature ( CO2 becomes liquid isothermically at 35 bars in 300 K). Above it will remain atmosphere consisting of the 30-40 bars of He + 3-4 bars of N2 -- ~300K. Extract from the rocks and release in the atmosphere ~0.2 bars of O2. The resulting mixture is commersially called trimix used for very deep dives ( >300 meters = more than 30 bars, proved , theoretically much more... you need more than 1000 bars to smash the human organism`s cellular biochemistry). The CO2 is much heavy, so H2O oceans could be deployed above it without isolation between eachother. They`ll mix somehow...

To Anatolii Titartev -- what do you think..? This is another high pressure version but 10 times higher.

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#2 2004-08-29 11:53:38

karov
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From: Bulgaria
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Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

The most interesting feature of such shirt-sleeve human livable world is that both water and CO2 will exist predominantly in liquid form, which gives exotic niches for certain extremofiles, too. The L-CO2 is quite good solvent as the water, escpecially to organics. If no open water is added to this environment than we face in principle the quite interesting perpective the oceans to be stabile pools of liquid carbon dioxide and still the humans and other earthly biota to inhabit the dry land. It is possible the necesarry for the earth`s organisms water to be sequestered and moved in strange type of much more tight up ecosystem resembling the cardio-vascular aparatus.

Is it possible adapted our type of life (5 nucleatides, 20 aminoacids) to exist immersed in L-CO2 at room temperature?
I`ve never met this opportunity in the lists of alternative chemistries` based life, do some knows something about Alternative life, using liquid CO2 as a solvent? Comments?

see, "An image of liquid carbon dioxide spilling from a beaker on the ocean floor. The image was taken from video of a carbon sequestration experiment done by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute." from the "atmosphere" part of the article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2]http:/ … g/wiki/CO2

Of course, under 30-40 bars of ambient atmosphere pressure - the voices will sound like in a cartoon movie, the helium is much better termal carrier so other kind of clothes one needs there, also drugs or vacsines against the HPNS - high pressure nervous sindrome, due to long breathing of high presuure He... but all this is solvable as a problem, without need of constant genetic mutations or no mutations at all of the basic himan genetical design, or without measures of partial or full isolation of the body from the environment bigger than the custom ones on earth - cloths, glasses... In that sence it appears such wierd environment to be livable by standard human beings.

The idea for the Helium Compression Terraforming of Venus, appeared to me after reading about the recent very possible discovery of "Super Earth": http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/s … 40825.html

, it might be a rocky teluric ( terrestrial ) world with mass 14 times the earth`s - may be close to the upper possible bound for the solid surface rocky planets - hence if its mean density is close to the earthly 5 tonnes/m3, its surface gravity should be ~2.4 times stronger and surface area ~6 times bigger. 2.4 gees may be or not livable by standard humans ( I think it is possible) but the major point is that such surface gravity can hold helium or hydrogen atmosphere indeffinitelly, an on such super-earths it would be much more easier to use helium or even hydrogen as breathing mixture dilutant in the terraforming effort and design.

The same hechniques used to preserve the bone/muscle strenght in microgravity at 1 G level can be applied vice versa to give the human body even stronger muscles/bones and vascular walls in order they to live in higher gees without change of the basic genome. Only re-programing of the gene/protein circuits and whole processors should be enough.

On Venus or other planet with sirface gravity at the bottom threshold for H/He retention, we should use methods for artificial magnetosphere dissipation prevention of the lighter dilutants. The proposed helium-fill to liquify the CO2 original atmosphere at room temperature would need planetary mag-field designed to make the trying to escape He atoms and ions to fall-back in the troposphere, in order the TRIMIX atmosphere to stay around indeffinitelly.

The H/He in its primordial ratio of ~70/30 is the most common stuff in this universe and in this stellar system. The necesarry 30-40 bars of He could be minned from the Sun itself or from the outer giant planets. I think from the Sun will be easier in means of energy sourse and trasport method -- just built plenty of enormous particle accelerators in close proximity to the Sun ( almost immersed in the photosphere), where they as huge mag-sail statites to ride the magnetic fields of the star, to harvest helium and to fire it in tight beam of en gross neutral plasma towards Venus. Another host of venusian statites, driven by the He income, decelerates it and brings it down in the CO2 blanket... When the atmosphere pressure reaches another 30-40 bars more, and the temperature of it falls to ~300 K, the CO2 will form ocean at room temperature + potentially breathable atmosphere if 0.2 bars of O2 are added...

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#3 2004-08-30 20:18:42

atitarev
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2003-05-16
Posts: 203

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Maybe not related but I want to add a point that I read recently about Venus - want to add this into my future document - my selection of ideas about terraforming Venus.

Venus with a 3 bar nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere (90%/10%) would need about 10% of Earth water only to cover 80% of its surface - due to the flatness of most of its land. That is if the Venusian topography stays unchanged. Mostly shallow oceans (500 m at deepest points) would still perfectly balance the hydrological cycle on the planet - maybe even better than on Earth - provided Venus has also a strong magnetic field - similar or stronger than Earth's. The boiling point of water with 3 bars would be at about 150 C.

On Mars we have an opposite effect - where deep waters would cover 25 to 40% of the surface - due to the big difference between the highest and lowest points.

Approximate difference between the highest and lowest points:

Venus: 10 km
Earth: 20 km
Mars: 40 km

Although it's 10 km on Venus - the 3/5 of the planet has only 0.5 km between high and low! It's really flat!

People would need to be very careful with water resources on Venus - keeping the waters clean would be the highest priority.


Anatoli Titarev

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#4 2004-08-31 07:10:50

karov
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From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Hi Anatoli,

I replayed your personal message.

Regarding the scoop of your paper, do you want to elaborate my idea abot the high pressure helium dilutant terraforming of Venus and to send you detailed explanation and description by personal message.

I previously permit you to quote me in your 'selection/collection?/' of terraforming Venus ideas. If you ever meet this high pressure L-CO2 idea please let me know. As you perhubs understand my goal is to make rather general theory of the terraforming ( or of the environmental/organism engineering cause the cases of human organism modifications will be included in the scheme...), so the high pressure venusian teraforming is indeed private case of design, and there is no obsticle I to be cited before my actual paper is ready, if yours appears first.

On details I`ll send you personal mesages, too.

Do you agree on such degree of cooperation, where each idea is with determined autorship?

Where do you think will be most proper paper magazine where our works could be proposed for publishing?

I personally intend to contact Paul Birch and to ask him in the stage when my paper is near to completion.

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#5 2004-08-31 07:11:49

karov
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From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Anatoli,

Please, comment here the 30-40 bars helium design.

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#6 2004-09-04 07:03:23

Shaun Barrett
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From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Registered: 2001-12-28
Posts: 2,843

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Hi Karov!
    Excuse me butting in here but I'm puzzled.
    Earth can't retain helium because its gravitational field is too weak and it's too close to the Sun (too warm).
    Venus has a weaker gravitational field than that of Earth and greater solar heating, which means helium escapes from it even faster than it does here.

    Assuming you can somehow introduce 30-40 bars of He into the venusian atmosphere, what's the point? It would immediately start to leak away, quite quickly, into outer space.
    Or do you propose to replace the losses as quickly as they occur? If so, you will have to be sure of your technology because any breakdown in the re-supply of helium would allow its partial pressure to start  falling towards the point at which the oceans of liquid CO2 become unstable and begin explosive vapourisation, flooding the lower atmosphere with lethal concentrations of the gas and killing all the colonists.
    This constant heavy reliance on technology to maintain a planet's habitability seems to me to be less than prudent. The situation on such a 'terraformed' world is inherently unstable and therefore unsafe.
    I wouldn't want to live there!
                                                 sad


The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

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#7 2004-09-05 13:21:07

karov
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From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Venus has a weaker gravitational field than that of Earth and greater solar heating, which means helium escapes from it even faster than it does here.

    Assuming you can somehow introduce 30-40 bars of He into the venusian atmosphere, what's the point? It would immediately start to leak away, quite quickly, into outer space.
    Or do you propose to replace the losses as quickly as they occur? If so, you will have to be sure of your technology because any breakdown in the re-supply of helium would allow its partial pressure to start  falling towards the point at which the oceans of liquid CO2 become unstable and begin explosive vapourisation, flooding the lower atmosphere with lethal concentrations of the gas and killing all the colonists.

    This constant heavy reliance on technology to maintain a planet's habitability seems to me to be less than prudent. The situation on such a 'terraformed' world is inherently unstable and therefore unsafe.
    I wouldn't want to live there!
                                                 sad

1. Yes, the helium will leak away, but no so fast that you think. The rate of helium loss from the Earth`s atmosphere shows that it takes tens of millions years. On the Hugh Pressure version the ambient pressure will be several bars above the CO2 evaporation pressure. About no explosive CO2 vaporization we can talk. Other point is that as you know, any gas will eventually escape from any gravity well. This depends on the ratio between the escape velocity at the atmosphere`s exobase and the thermal velocity of the gas. If the thermal velocity is <20% the escape one, the gas will stay there indeffinitelly long. Even within our technological grasp there are some ideas how to manipulate the mesosphere in order to cool down the trying to escape gases. Even helium. Holding the imported stuff on place is better than resupply.

2. Any planet has lifetime. Eternal environment is not possible. The Earth itself will need maintenance in comperativelly short geological future. Without constant heavy reliance on tech, Earthy will also kill us sooner or later. An expression of such tech will be to design and start the necesarry chemical cycles in other way. You know - the CO2 cycle takes hundreds of millions of years on Earth - on High Pressure Helium Venus the L-CO2 at room temperature will faciliate new ways of CO2 cycle; the N2 cycle - 2 bln years!...

For Venus or other slowly rotating close to the central star planet to have as thicker as possible for breathing atmosphere is an advantage. With 30-40 times bigger total atmosphere mass the heat will be ~30-40 times better evenly distributed between the night and day and the equator and the poles. Mostly helium atmosphere is good also as anti-greenhouse measure -- it has low specific heat capacity, great thermal conductivity, no greenhouse effect as the three-atom molecules absorbing the IR as CO2, H2O...

I don`t stick to this scheme. Regard it just as wise way for CO2 sequesterization. And as widening of the habitability horizonts.

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#8 2004-09-06 18:59:41

MarsDog
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From: vancouver canada
Registered: 2004-03-24
Posts: 852

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

I`ve never met this opportunity in the lists of alternative chemistries` based life, do some knows something about Alternative life, using liquid CO2 as a solvent? Comments?

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ssb/w … html]Weird Life speculations from the experts are fascinating.

So little is known, and given the right vitamins, life in CO2 ?

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#9 2004-09-07 08:56:34

karov
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From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Indeed whether or not is possible earth-type life to use L-CO2 as solvent is not so important question in this thread.

Can anyone point me links to data about estimations and experiments of growing and breeding ordinary animals and plants in such He-rich 30-40 bars atmosphere?

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#10 2004-09-07 10:47:57

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 29,433

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

How hard would a solar sun shield like the one use for skylab be to made to block the suns rays from reaching Venus? How much area would it need to be or can it be made of multiple pieces in differing orbital longitudes to have the same effect.

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#11 2004-09-07 14:13:22

atomoid
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From: Santa Cruz, CA
Registered: 2004-02-13
Posts: 252

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

How hard would a solar sun shield like the one use for skylab be to made to block the suns rays from reaching Venus? How much area would it need to be or can it be made of multiple pieces in differing orbital longitudes to have the same effect.

I guess you could spin a solar-sail-like device (which could also generate solar power) a few thousand miles diameter and orbit at stable L point between Venus and the Sun. Since Venus doesnt spin very fast and its days is 243 earth days long (making its day longer than its 225 day year!) it could be either a bunch of spoke-like strips that could slowly spin to mimic a 24 hour day-night cycles across its sun-facing surface, optherwise it would just get too hot in the sunlight. It would seem to be a more technologically economical option than creating a huge Venus-orbiting shell of shields.

Without that sort of Nivenish "shadow-square" behemoth, you'd have to find a way to either strip atmsphere from Venus to minimize the greenhouse feedback (you'd have to do this in any case to get rid of all the extra sulfur, etc), maybe by processing it into minerals or finding a way to leak it off into space. It doesn't seem possible to me to accomplish this by merely increasing the albedo of Venus by generating certain types of high cloud layers, but maybe im wrong on that.

In Forge of God, Greg Bear talked about crashing half of Europa into it to help terraform it, but didnt go into much detail since he chose to focus on the other half which was dispatched to Mars. I didnt read the sequel, did he go back to Venus?


"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.

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#12 2004-09-07 19:31:17

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 29,433

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Change the shield to solar cell panels and focus the energy to any orbiting station that would vent gasses by slowly syphoning them from the upper atmosphere. May even be a ship designed to scoop the atmosphere as it glances though repeatedly until its bounty is off loaded to the station in orbit.

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#13 2004-09-08 15:47:15

atomoid
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From: Santa Cruz, CA
Registered: 2004-02-13
Posts: 252

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

I guess you could also probably use the abundant electical power to power a electromagnetic mass driver and shoot a stream particles (taken from asteroids) towards the top of the atmosphere, blowing off bit by bit, but i guess that would take eons, either deploying millions of atmosphere-skimming orbiters that would use captured solar to power to expel the captured atmophere mass regain their lost momentum each pass or by steering an heavy asteroid into an atmosphere-skimming path that should help plow away some extra mass, but this still just seems too slow of a process to be effective...

- I think some sort of new technology, either biogenetic atmospheric processing microbes that could chemically alter the atmosphere into more appropriate molecules using a solar or chemical gradient as an energy source, or devise devices to be deployed ubiquitously across the surface of Venus to do the same sort of chemical processing...

not to digress too far off-track this thread, but, basic question here, whatever happened to Venus' original water? did it get chemically combined into minerals or is it blended in the atmosphere?


"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.

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#14 2004-09-08 16:03:07

chat
Member
From: Ontario Canada
Registered: 2003-10-23
Posts: 371

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

atomoid,

How about no sun shield, but a high power particle beam in Geo orbit.
Focused 24/7 on one spot on Venus.

The local heating of the atmosphere will heat co2 well beyond Venus escape velocity.

The escaped gas could be used as the shield when reworked in high orbit, or it could be collected for a trip to mars.
Or leave it for the solar wind to push away.

Time scale? (guess)
Maybe 10-20 years of particle beam operation for a large change to Venus climate.


The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.

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#15 2004-09-09 17:13:34

atomoid
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From: Santa Cruz, CA
Registered: 2004-02-13
Posts: 252

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

I guess that might be plausible, but i know nothing about whether the heated CO2 and other gasses would tend to escape Venus or if it would just tend to dissipate much of the heat back to Venus.

The clincher is that Venus has a longer-than-year-long day and we need to figure out a way to minimize the sun-side heating once we get the atmosphere modified. Ringworld-style shadow-casting seems to do the trick economically. I tend to think that constructing a shield out of a thin film much like a solar sail would be pretty simple and is something that we basically have the technology to get started on today.

To get rid of the gasses, I also kind of like the Spacenuts idea to hang a very long hollow tube like some sort of space elevator from geosync orbiting station and siphon gas out into space using power generated by the solar shield, or maybe not quite geosyncronous but moving enough to scoop and friction heat the gasses up into the tube more energetically, or maybe your particle beam heater can push the gas up the chimney.


"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.

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#16 2004-09-09 19:55:12

chat
Member
From: Ontario Canada
Registered: 2003-10-23
Posts: 371

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

atomoid,

Everyone thinking about teraforming Venus gets stuck into that giant tech building project before things can start.

Building a ring around Venus, then removing gas from the upper atmosphere at first glance seems ideal.

But when you think about the solar wind/flare causing havoc with any man made sun shield, and the sheer tech challenge and effort to build it, it then becomes out of reach.

Also the amount of gas removal is staggering.

I believe the key to teraforming Venus is to get Venus to help us teraform itself.

If we cant make an effective sun shield from man made structures, then why not use Venus to shade itself.

Even if a particle beam cant obtain escape velocities it can expand the atmosphere locally.
With a very focused beam i believe we could create a hole in the atmosphere from ground to orbit.

One or two smog producing satellites in orbit turning that co2 into carbon soot would make an effective sun shield.
The smog producers could directly scoop up co2 from the beam expansion.

Adding heavy metals such as iron dust to the atmosphere will reduce the Venus bar pressure.
A few well planned small asteroids colliding in orbit will add to the sun shield and scatter iron dust planet wide.

Once the surface is cool enough for machines, hydrogen h20 and iron/heavy metal mining.
All co2 reducers.

Then we need super co2 fixing bacteria, and super co2 fixing plants.
And don't forget a couple of giant pole magnets powered by giant reactors to keep the radiation down to livable levels. smile

Just my thoughts though smile


The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.

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#17 2004-09-10 05:47:28

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 29,433

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

The system does not need to be complex or of large size but needs to run continuous. Remember we only need to start the change to happen after that it will begin to snow ball and self regulate downward in temperature as the atmospheric C02 is removed targeting what will make a change for gas collection and returning what will accelerate further change to occur.

In addition if steady cooling and gasses liquification system is implemented you will have all the oxygen and hydrogen as a bonus for when we do arrive to study and to explore our nearest neighbor.

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#18 2004-09-10 17:55:12

atomoid
Member
From: Santa Cruz, CA
Registered: 2004-02-13
Posts: 252

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

I still think the most daunting factor is the 243 day long day, which is just a killer for temperature stability. Spinning an enormous wheel of shadow-casting spokes at an L point between Venus and sun seems indispensible as it seems to be the only way to eliminate input heat and simulate a nominal day length across continually sweeping portions of the perennially sun-facing surface, a ring of shadow squares orbitting Venus would probably have to be much more massive since about 2/3 of it wouldnt be casting shadows onto Venus at any one time. I tend to think that such a shadow wheel could be stable if its made of the right stuff and given propulsion capability to reorient itself when solar storm scenarios threaten. Any type of shadow-casting solution would have to be ridiculously huge but i dont think thats much of a problem with the types of materials we'll be perfecting this century.

Unfortunately, at least on earth, soot particles have a net effect of warming the atmopshere, simply because theyre absorbent, in contrast to reflective particles such as sulfate aerosols. Since Venus has copious sulfuric acid cloud layers (though im not sure if that necessarily means the right kind of aerosols) and its albedo is so high, it seems that these cooling effects arent enough to make much of a dent in the wildly unbalanced heat budget. But perhaps with similar means to what you suggest the gasses must be reprocessed to have the properties we need. Surely, seeding the atmosphere with engineered bacteria and other bio-mechanical technologies will do most of the grunt work of processing the atmosphere.

If we keep the atmosphere dense enough (hence the original object of this thread) we can dispense with a need for a artificial magnetic field altogether, these problems of radiation and atmospheric loss due to solar activity arent as bad as one might imagine.

I prefer the idea of nudging one of Jupiter's icy moons into orbit around Venus to help tidally churn the core and induce some tectonic and magma cycling for a "natural" magnetic field. the moon could warm up and leak a beautiful ring of water vapor into orbit around Venus which would block out additional sunlight.


"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.

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#19 2004-09-10 20:04:10

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 29,433

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

A very long way to nudge an icy body it really needs to be more of a stoney one though to do what you are thinking of. But maybe multiple ones would do even if they are small ones. Maybe some of the other near earth objects would fill in for the icy jupiter body instead.

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#20 2004-09-11 04:43:03

karov
Member
From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

Guys, please let stick here in this topic on discussion the opportunities for 30-40 atm room temperature sequestration of CO2 via turning it in liquid with eventual introduction of helium on Venus!

How you envision the overall environment: colour of the sky, climatology, CO2 and H2O interaction and "hydrologies", biota, L-CO2 immersed life, human habitability...

BTW, I intend to ask the Worldbuilders in some forums, say Orions_arm yahoo one, and will post here some of the replies.

Thank you.

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#21 2004-09-11 05:09:36

chat
Member
From: Ontario Canada
Registered: 2003-10-23
Posts: 371

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

The long day length i don't think will be a big factor on Venus.

It wont be earthlike and you can expect to see 70c at mid day on a fully teraformed Venus, but that also means the temperatures on the night side will be just as drastic in the other direction on the other end of the planet.

With planetary opposing temperatures from day to night the winds will be very strong on Venus.
That will act as a planetary buffer for temperature stability.

Even with the meager amounts of water on Venus, as soon as you are below the steam point of water it will rain, and it will rain a lot on Venus as the hydro cycle will be 3 or 4 times what it is on earth.
That will also buffer the temperature swings.

I agree a small change in the way Venus works will have a large impact on what happens.

Blocking sunlight and chipping away at the atmosphere seems the way to go.

A simpler solution is to add the equivalent of 60 bars of iron dust to a non sun shaded  Venus, even with the surface temperatures and pressures on Venus the iron will rust and consume o2 from the co2.

That might be all Venus needs to be changed.


The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.

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#22 2004-09-11 07:38:26

karov
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From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

A simpler solution is to add the equivalent of 60 bars of iron dust to a non sun shaded  Venus, even with the surface temperatures and pressures on Venus the iron will rust and consume o2 from the co2.

That might be all Venus needs to be changed.

Or extract and refine on Mercury or in the outer from Venus system gygatonnes and gigatonnes of more strongly bonding with oxigen elements and fire them as microparticles (dust) or pellets in the nowaday thick atmosphere. AS result you have lots of Al, Mg, ... oxides and lots of Carbon... all solid residue + some excessive heat, but it leaks in the space faster due to the lack of atmosphere to retain it.

But how to sequester the carbon from the later introduced oxigen containing atmosphere - it will burn and re-release all the processed CO2 or big enough part of it making the planet uninhabitable again - asside from the fact that the metals are quite rare, i.e. expensive compared with the abundant, although more difficultly transportable H/He. Other thing is that all the Al, Mg... and almost all the Fe is chemically bounded, i.e. you need extra energy to have pure metals. The 1-H and 4-He, should only to be transported - in our cosmological era they represent >99% of the normal matter in the Universe, Sun, Jupiter... The astronomical "metals" ( CHON+metals ) are just rare impurities in the world-mixture. WE as often as possible should find use of H/He.

To process chemically en mass the venusian atmosphere better economically reaction is CO2 + H2 = H2O + C, accomlished in enormous "factories" in order the excess C to be removed from the transformed environment.

Chat, tell me what you think about the High pressure helium scenario?

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#23 2004-09-11 16:23:01

chat
Member
From: Ontario Canada
Registered: 2003-10-23
Posts: 371

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

karov,

I think we are thinking along the same line. smile
What is the easiest way to get Venus to change itself.

If we can cool it enough for the machines then the rest will follow relatively easily.

The main reason i picked iron over other more active fixers is the abundance of small iron asteroids.



Your idea for importing helium to convert the co2 into liquid co2 has some merit to it.

The importation of helium is no harder than hydrogen.

The same trouble happens with liquid co2 as it does for water on Venus though.
But i believe liquid co2 boiling point is higher, so less initial shielding of the sun would be required to keep it on the surface.

Bacteria would easily adapt to liquid co2, but animal life?
Probably not without engineering it.

With a liquid base i bet the bacteria would fix all the O and C from the liquid co2 at record speeds.
And with a liquid ocean the planet should reactivate itself.
Venus should also consume quite a percent of the co2 oceans into surface rock.

Moving 30 bars of helium wouldl be a tech feat though, something that would require a worldwide effort.

I'm also thinking about what impact liquid co2 rain would have?
Probably a high altitude rain as compared to earth.
Very quick scrubbing of everything below the cloud tops.

I would guess the sky color of a high pressure co2 world would be dominated by the strange co2 rain cycle.
My guess would be a very dark blue color from the 3x nitrogen and no color from co2.
All the other elements should end up rained out into in the co2 ocean.

A strange place for sure. smile


The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.

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#24 2004-09-16 00:56:47

karov
Member
From: Bulgaria
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 953

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

The costs for terraforming any astronomical body in reasonable term ( several centuries maximum) will be no less than several trillions of nowaday US$ per annum. Now this is substantial percent of the worlds GDP ( say ONE US economy-worth a year), and in the next few centuries shall be enormous amount of money. The terraforming efforts will be accomplished only after the economical grouth achieves figures and numbers, allowing the cost to be acceptable within the GDP frame, i.e. after a few centuries.

Terraforming is indeed massive transportation and processing of chemicals in 10exp18- range of tonnes, metters, watts, etc. The self-growing things as a biosphere for example are just the "cherry-on-the cake" , not atribute and method , but rather goal and consumer of the terrafoming.
---

Back to the Helium Venus scenario:

In short: we`d need dynamical orbital rings to extract and refine and process, package and ship the necesarry ~10exp18 tonnes of helium. Once lifted in jovian (saturn not, cause its helium is deeper due to 'helium raining', jupiter is well mixed) orbit it could be liquified and stored cryogenically at several degrees above the absolute zero in tanks combined with ablation aerobrake reentry shields and parachutes. The storage hardware made from solid materials ( SiC, metals...) extracted from Io or other lesser jovian moon. If one such container carries 10exp6 tonnes of L-He,for example, we need several trillion of them, hence some super-fast mass production facility, say, self-replicating systems. The energy for the work can come from the orbital dynamics of the jovian moon used for the containers` mateials. Amalthea is very convenient for use of electrodynamical tethers. The produced and filled with liquid He containers are designed so that they are able to deliver the cargo - He still liquid at the venusian surface or lower atmosphere. There they heat up and burst releasing the 3-4 K helium super-cold 1 000 000-tonne injection in the >700 K venusian environment. The necesarry amount of He for +30-40 bars is by mass from 1/3th to half the original atmosphere`s mass. This rude thermodynamical mix will lower the temperatures perhubs to the necesarry level for CO2 liquification... The greenhouse effect stops working.
The cooling of Venus thus doesn`t needs sunshades...

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#25 2004-09-17 03:46:16

chat
Member
From: Ontario Canada
Registered: 2003-10-23
Posts: 371

Re: High pressure 'terraforming' of Venus - trimix atmosphere and cooling

karov,

One big trouble with the liquid co2 Venus scenario is the rain cycle of liquid co2.

Such a fine line of temperatures are needed for liquid co2 to make it to the clouds and return back to the ocean.

I think with a liquid co2 ocean if it rains it scrubs all of the atmosphere, and if it can't rain then it ends up being a static system, or a degrading system.

But the liquid co2 could be used as a step in the teraformation process if we need to use all of the atmosphere for teraforming.


The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.

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