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Tom Kalbfus,
I agree 100% on that.
Terra forming is in the stone age right now.
100 years from now they might look back at the best ideas and simply have a good laugh.
The fun part is the fact that we are now looking at things like terra forming and star travel, we might be way off in the way either actually happen.
Or both might prove to be near impossible and those dreams die.
I wouldn't want to be living at that time.
I personally don't believe either are impossible, just a question of when and how and how long to wait before we are ready.
Science facts are only as good as knowledge.
Knowledge is only as good as the facts.
New knowledge is only as good as the ones that don't respect the first two.
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I think achieving some method of Suspended Animation would put the stars within our reach. With the near infinite patience that suspended animation would bring we could wait as long as it takes to get there. I do not believe that the idea of Suspended Animation violates any laws of physics, its just that we don't know how to do it.
A more exotic possibility is wormholes. As you know its theoretically possible to move one end of a wormhole independently of another while the distance on the inside of the wormhole remains the same. Using relativity, you can make a wormhole that is a two way passage to the future and back, you can go as far into the future as you like and yet travel back to the present when your done. You can "fast-forward" time this way and speed up the process of terraforming a planet at the far end of a wormhole, or you may do the same with a wormhole that leads to another Universe with the same set of laws of physics.
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Samy;
Sticking a straw into Venus and expecting the atmosphere to "self-suck" itself out of the gravity well will not work, for the very same reason that when you stick a straw into a glass of juice, the juice does not self-suck itself up the straw and into the "space" above it. The gas will just rise up the straw to the same level and pressure as the gas of the surrounding atmosphere and then stop. The whole planet of Venus is exposed to the vacuum of space, all the more so because Venus lacks protection against the solar wind and other forces, but gravity still holds all that gas in place. The planet is slowly losing gas to space and the planet even has a comet-tail of gas streaming out behind it, away from the Sun. It just isn't that simple.
What you need is a solar-powered tanker in orbit, dragging a pipe. Or a tanker dragging a pipe with electromagnetic conductivity, so that the planet's very weak magnetic field would induce a current in the pipe and power the pump at the top of the pipe-straw. That's the best you could hope for.
~~ Bryan
[color=darkred][b]~~Bryan[/b][/color]
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Might I suggest simply adding water, up to a point, and letting photosynthetic bacteria fix the CO2 and H2O into organic compounds? Allow any excess oxygen to collect, so it will oxidize the crust at high temperatures, forming rust and salts and mostly taking care of itself.
If there's too much O2 left, THEN we consider eliminating it with imported hydrogen. I guess we could mine it from asteroids.
Don't forget that extra O2 is needed to dissolve in the oceans that form, and to form an ozone layer that's considerably thicker than Earth's. O2 is a bit of an anti-greenhouse gas; it'll push heat higher in the atmosphere than CO2.
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Might I suggest simply adding water (...) If there's too much O2 left, THEN we consider eliminating it with imported hydrogen.
"Adding water" is even more complex than importing hydrogen, because "adding water" is importing hydrogen *and* oxygen.
And Venus doesn't really need any more oxygen, so importing water rather than importing only the hydrogen seems to be a waste of resources. We don't need to import any more oxygen.
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It actually does need the oxygen for fixing the carbon into better solid forms.
Look at it this way, if we import hydrogen, using the bosch reaction to form water and carbon from the carbon dioxide atmosphere, we'll be left with a pretty thick carbon layer on the crust that's essentially dead. It's also black, and it would really bring up the surface and atmospheric temperatures. How do you propose to get rid of it?
And just where are you going to get hydrogen from? Electrolysis? Don't be silly.
Import water and aerobic microbes, and they'll eat the atmosphere up, fix all the carbon and some of the oxygen into their organic chemistry. Extra oxygen will have somewhat of an anti-greenhouse effect; it will form an ozone layer, and it will dissolve in the planetary ocean when it forms. But most importantly, we're not just importing pure water. It's actually dirty water, from comets. The metals from these comets, along with the planet's surface, will help to eat up extra oxygen, forming minerals.
When we think about terraforming, we often only think about the first half of it - 'giving it an Earth-like atmosphere'. Part of terraforming is also getting enough life onto a planet to keep it in ecopoiesis. A lot of methods people propose for terraforming Mars and Venus result in a dead world. Part of the trick is giving life a jump-start while the process is still occurring.
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No excess CO2 on Venus. The same amount we have here on Earth`s crust and fluo-spheres. Just the carbon is in non-proper form on Venus. To expell the CO2 off-planet is pure waste of resources. Venus needs H, to sequester the carbon into rocks, carbohydrates, etc... This H, may come from the planetary mantle or from the Outer System or from the Sun... Imagine "atomic laser" solar -powered, harvesting H from the solar atmosphere and precisely dumping it into the Venusian atmosphere. the "atomic lasers" spit with velocities of 10-100 km/s - hence the receiver on/around Venus also would work as powerfull powerplant for the other necessary works of global environmental conditioning... Like a MHD converter...
The column density of Venus' atmosphere is 1000 tonnes CO2 per m2. If it were liquified, it would form a global CO2 ocean with a depth averaging 500 metres. That is a lot more carbon than we have here on Earth, even taking into account things like deep limestone deposits. The biosphere is a relatively thin layer, confined to the top few inches of the Earth's surface, on average. And it would be impossible to start a biosphere on Venus of any meaningful scale on Venus.
I really do believe that the idea of terraforming Venus is a non-starter.
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It actually does need the oxygen for fixing the carbon into better solid forms.
And Venus already has more than enough oxygen for that.
Look at it this way, if we import hydrogen, using the bosch reaction to form water and carbon from the carbon dioxide atmosphere, we'll be left with a pretty thick carbon layer on the crust that's essentially dead. It's also black, and it would really bring up the surface and atmospheric temperatures. How do you propose to get rid of it?
Using the 60 bars of leftover oxygen to "fix carbon into better solid forms".
And just where are you going to get hydrogen from? Electrolysis? Don't be silly.
Same place you're going to get your water from, except it'll be a lot easier to transport without the attached oxygen.
Import water and aerobic microbes, and they'll eat the atmosphere up, fix all the carbon and some of the oxygen into their organic chemistry.
Import hydrogen and aerobic microbes, and combining with the 60 bars of oxygen on Venus, you'll get water and aerobic microbes. From there, we can follow your plan.
If you want to me to believe that your scenario requires more oxygen than Venus currently already has, you're going to have to show me some math for it.
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The column density of Venus' atmosphere is 1000 tonnes CO2 per m2. If it were liquified, it would form a global CO2 ocean with a depth averaging 500 metres. That is a lot more carbon than we have here on Earth, even taking into account things like deep limestone deposits. The biosphere is a relatively thin layer, confined to the top few inches of the Earth's surface, on average. And it would be impossible to start a biosphere on Venus of any meaningful scale on Venus.
I really do believe that the idea of terraforming Venus is a non-starter.
That's the same amount of CO2 we have on Earth, all over the crust. Otherwise known as dirt. Big ingredient in carbonates. CO2 is the basic building unit in organic chemistry. It's essentially a dehydrated carboxylic acid. Chain them together and you've got a sugar.
The abundance of CO2 will make things a lot easier for us, as it would on Mars. Instead of building massive factories to convert things on a planetary scale, we can use bacteria to do all the heavy work.
Using the 60 bars of leftover oxygen to "fix carbon into better solid forms".
That leftover oxygen won't exist unless you import water. And it would not be easier to import hydrogen, since you'd have to construct ships to hold it. Water is already locked into solid forms in comets. Just give it a little push so that their orbits intersect Venus.
Look, we probably will have to use hydrogen imports at some point to sequester extra oxygen as it piles up, but if we converted all of the oxygen in the atmosphere into water, we'd get a hydrosphere that was maybe 10% the size of Earth's if we're lucky. We're going to need a bit more water after that. And by a bit, I mean a lot. No matter how you cut it, most of the imported material to Venus is going to be water.
Math... hmm. The best I can do is show that you're not going to get a 1:1 ratio of CO2 to O2 conversion in the atmosphere, from organic processes.
Phosphates, carbonates, silicates, sugars, all have more oxygen than carbon, overall.
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