Terraforming Venus - methods anyone?

kippy · 2004-05-05 17:16:19

58 days would be a lot better but I think the plants would just deal with it as the best summer ever followed by a warm dark winter.

It might not make for a pretty world but wouldn't it make sense to drop tons of weed seed (not pot) on the planet? they grow madly on earth and they would probably be out of control on Venus. they would pretty aggressively fix some of the last few milibars of CO2. That's for the biologists to figure out I guess.

You're right about the 58 day um... day. That's twice as fast as I had been assuming. With that in mind would it still take over 5000 years to spin the planet into a 30 or 40 hour day or would it "only" take 2,500? I don't know, the spinning thing comes up now and then but I think it would just make more sense to curb the incoming sunlight with some shades in orbit, white sand on the ground and basically tough it out with respect to a long day and night. Humans are pretty adaptable. Hell, we have people who deal with 6 month days and nights here on earth. As long as the temperature is controlled so they don't cook, they can deal with blackout curtains and streetlights.

Spinning the planet might get a magnetosphere going again since it has a molten iron core. Perhaps it would be work it after all if you could get that. Thoughts?

In case anyone was wondering, I have a very long comute.

chat · 2004-05-05 17:57:17

Kippy

Another solution.

As you say the L1 is a technical challenge, getting a comet to L1 and stopping and keeping it there are very different things.
If a hefty size comet wont do the trick for the planets needs then...

How about this idea, i large water ice asteroid from the k belt, say 20-30 km in size that takes us 50 years to deliver.

Lets not attempt to teraform Venus, lets simply smash small iron asteroids in close Venus orbit, the re entry will make it molten.
Keep sending iron asteroids until most of Venus atmosphere is locked away.
As soon as machines can be on the surface, get them to mine iron and other fixing elements, and pump it into the atmosphere with large smokestacks.

When the water ice asteroid finally arrives to low Venus orbit, we explode it with the last iron asteroid.
All the water gets to a Venus with a thin native co2 and co atmosphere, and only small impacts from debris.
It wont be earthlike, and will take some time to unlock the O from everywhere, but it will be wet and cool, and nearly ready for some plants.

Its wasteful but works.
I also think non molten iron reacts with co2, just a much slower reaction.

A good question is what amount of water on Venus would be acceptable.
1% of earth 5%, 25%.

1% would probably suffice, 5% would be great, but might have to wait for asteroid 2.
Earth would probably work with only 1% of its water.
Since the water cycle at Venus will probably be 10 times what it is on earths equator, maybe far less than 1% will be acceptable on Venus.

I agree 100%, that last 10% will be 90% of the work, the first 90% i think wont be that big a challenge.
And you are totally correct, even a 5c difference can amount to a huge difference to a planet.

Mining hydrogen from the gas giants is an elegant solution for Venus, but back to being the long haul approach.

REB

I believe even with the meager amount of water already on Venus, as soon as its cool enough to rain it would, it would scrub the sulphur if the puddles last for any length of time.
Venus doesn't have much water, but to make a puddle it only takes 1/2 inch of water

chat · 2004-05-05 18:08:55

Kippy,

Maybe the magnets we put at the poles will start up the core of venus again, or atleast the core helps the magnets.

We might not have to do anything else.

dicktice · 2004-05-06 09:54:37

I'm surprised no one picked up on the consequences of a nearly year-long day, and the lack of coriolis induced trade winds, resulting in (?) weather patterns. Frigid nighttime and hot daytime, gradually moving around the planet would be a novelty. Plant life adaptations an interesting challenge. I'll have to look up the inclination before considering the "seasonal" daylight effects. Anything else, besides oceans and bird migrations, and. . .?

Pardon me, if I continue to stretch my imagination, assuming Venus is already "terraformed"--meaning the atmospheric constituants and partial pressures are the same as Earth's, while the period of rotation (225 days) and orbital period (243 days) remain unchanged. The inclination of the equator is only 2-degrees, by the way, and the surface gravity about one gee. Looking straight down from the North polar axis, the planet rotates retrograde, so the Sun rises in the west. Oddly enough, this results in dawn-to-dusk daylight duration of only 58 Earth days at any latitude, leaving 185 days of darkness from dusk-to-dawn. So it could be mighty cold overnight. I leave the wind patterns, ocean life conditions, plant cycles and bird migratory routes, if any, to any potential repliers.

REB · 2004-05-06 13:34:17

Chat, don't forget about Venus' Nitrogen (About 3 times that of Earth's)

chat · 2004-05-06 15:12:15

Reb,

Large quantities of N02 when the water asteroid arives.
I'm going to Venus just for the laughs.

kippy · 2004-05-06 16:40:42

Sorry chat but I’m still anti-iron asteroid. Here’s the thing, the only thing preventing humans from being able to make it on Venus is the heat. We could deal with the pressure in the same way that we deal with the pressure of the deep sea or lack of it in space. It would be like Mars where for the first hundred years or so you’d need a spacesuit or rover.

If we can get a comet to cool the planet down to 25-50 C we should be able to start settlements. If that’s the case, we can also get all the iron we need locally. I’m against fixing the oxygen into rust but if it were done that way, you could just dig it up, grind it and toss it out into the open air. Pretty low tech and cheap. If we can get it locally, it should be mined. The only thing that you can’t get locally is hydrogen.

I actually think that 10% of the water on Earth is on the light side. Wouldn’t a lot of is sink straight into the ground right off the bat? It also would depend on how much land you would be left with for how much water. If 10% leaves you with only 100 km^2 then that’s obviously a bad idea. However to support a biosphere, I think that you’ll need a lot more than a few percent or earth’s water. Also, a warm atmosphere could suck up a sizable percentage. That’s just conjecture on my part.

Back to the comet. Shouldn’t there be an analogue to a geosynchronous orbit where an object revolves around a body with the same speed as the planet’s rotation but in the opposite direction? A “high noon” like that orbit would keep a comet smack dab between the sun and planet but since it would be a real orbit rather than an L1 point balancing act it would be more stable. Can someone with a better understanding of orbital physics comment?

To harp on the hydrogen thing again, someone suggested before that a hollowed out asteroid might be a good idea. I’m beginning to think that’s the only way to go. If an O’Neil colony was made out of one of the bigger balls of rock, and we could push it around, it would be perfect. A small portion of it could house a couple hundred people and the rest of it could be bored out as storage space for gas. Just park it around Jupiter, extend an elevator down, pump hydrogen and He3 up. One of the bigger asteroids might be able to haul all the hydrogen in one shot. Then push back to Venus, lower the elevator again. It should be cooled by the comet by that time so the people can go to the surface it they want. At that point you can start dropping your gigatons or H and make the oceans. Yeah, it’s just a long weekend of work, simple as that.

One last thing. If Venus had an atmosphere with similar greenhouse properties as Earth wouldn’t it be enough to just block the “extra” sunlight that Venus gets? How much more powerful is the sunlight on Venus? If it’s say 25% stronger wouldn’t we just have to block 25% of the incoming light in the long run? The long day might mess that up…

chat · 2004-05-06 17:30:03

Kippy,

I'm not a big fan of the iron meteorites either, but it might be the tool to use to cool things enough to get the machines in place.
We will probably find all sorts of help mining Venus if we could cool it enough for machines to function.

I guess you could probably rework all of Venus with just the iron, then deal with the lack of O later.
It will need hydrogen or water at some point without doubt if we expect it to be more than a hot mars.

Most of life on earth doesn't really need much O anyway.

I'm not sure what would be a good water % on Venus.
My thinking is that since the water cycle will be much faster than on earth, less would be needed.

Its probably somewhere in the middle of 1% and 10%, so lets pretend that 5% is probably a decent amount.

As you point out with a warmer climate the water will get recycled quicker than on earth, and that means more in the atmosphere at any given time.

The maximum a stable Venus temperature can be is 99c on the equator, so lets guess at 2x the amount of water in Venus atmosphere compared to earth.
That also equates to 2x the cloud and 2x the rain.

Venus receives 1.8x earth sunlight.
Blocking 50% at Venus is an absolute minimum, 85% would be much better.
I believe if you block 85% of in incoming sunlight you get similar earth temperatures, even with the much thicker co2 atmosphere.

I think a few places exist other than the L1 to park a comet between Venus and the sun.
Not familiar with them, but most planets have 2 or more.

Back to the weekend work

An easy way to get the hydrogen back to Venus is a blowup structure.
(giant balloon filled with hydrogen at the gas giant)
A big blowup balloon in the atmosphere of a gas giant shouldn't be to tough to obtain escape velocity.

With some reworking of the balloon idea, the balloon could just barley escape the atmosphere of a gas giant.
Have the balloons hydrogen pumped out and compressed to a holding tank in low orbit.
Then send the balloon back for more.

If hydrogen is a must for Venus, then lets do it low tech as we can.

chat · 2004-05-07 06:26:57

Kippy,

I'm thinking that even with a few comets placed in all the available geo orbits of Venus that blocking 85% of the light isn't a realistic goal.

50% is a maybe, but 50% of the current sunlight will still leave the surface temperature at intolerable levels.

If we shipped gigatons of hydrogen to Venus with the current atmosphere and 50% of the sunlight, it converts into steam, and not water.

Probably how Venus got the way it is now.
h20 oceans converted to steam, steam and radiation to h and O and O, free C binds with O and O to create co2, h is slowly stripped from the atmosphere due to radiation and solar wind.
As the quantity of co2 grows, the faster the process of water conversion.

If we think of earth with 1.8x solar radiation and earths current atmoshphere, we get dangerously close to 100c at the equator.

The more i look at Venus, the more i think it requires less water and more atmosphere fixing before adding water or hydrogen.

If we could fix 85% of the co2 and block 50% of the light before adding the water or hydrogen i think we can avoid a steam cycle.
Then it will be a game of fixing co2 ASAP before the sun shade starts to wear out.

If we could simply fix 85% of the co2 with no water added, it acts the same as the sun shade.
Its permanent though, and just requires water to make a habitable planet.
The thicker nitrogen atmosphere left over wont be much of an impact to the planet, in fact earth probably has similar levels of nitrogen but locked up in things.
If the nitrogen is a problem, then nitrogen fixing bacteria, we have a lot of them to choose from.

I agree that most of the problem at Venus is heat.
Not a pressure so high that humans couldn't live there though.
I think the pressure and heat are one in the same thing, if you reduce 1 you reduce both.

Everything seems to point to a combination of, iron asteroids that block sunlight and fix co2.
Comets that block sunlight and deliver h20.
Water asteroids to wet the planet.
Lots of fine tuning after that point.

Or someone could just turn the thermostat down a bit at Venus

dicktice · 2004-05-07 07:37:34

If the clouds surrounding Venus are composed of sulfuric acid droplets, comprised of sulfur and water, and the atmosphere is composed of 97% carbon dioxide . . . isn't there a way to neutralize the acid by means of bicarbonate of soda derived somehow (using sunlight?) from the atmosphere, to release the water? My kitchen chemistry bogs down beyond that tiny thought. Anyone care to shoot it down?

dicktice · 2004-05-07 07:44:02

Chat, don't forget about Venus' Nitrogen (About 3 times that of Earth's)

I didn't know that. I read that it was 97% CO2. Where is the 3X Earth's N2 content? (I'd better look that up myself.)

REB · 2004-05-07 09:14:44

It is not quiet 3 times of Earth’s. Probably closer to 2 and a half times.

97% of Venus Atmosphere is CO2. The majority of the remaining 3% is Nitrogen. Venus’ total atmosphere is around 90 times that of the Earth. 3% of 90 times the Earth is 2.7 times.

I had never really thought about Venus 3% of Nitrogen as being a great amount until I read Isaac Asimov book about Venus. He pointed out that Venus’ Nitrogen was just under three time the amount of Earth’s total atmosphere.

REB · 2004-05-07 09:22:29

I saw a Venus Sulfur Cycle in a book or magazine a few years ago. I wish I could find it on the Internet.

In this cycle, Venus’ Sulfuric acid (H2 SO4)was broken down by UV radiation (Maybe explaining the unaccounted for UV absorption) into water (H2O)and the leftover SO3. I forgot what the 1 S and 3 O atoms do but they get cycled down into the rock. They are replenished by volcanoes, according to the theory.

Here is an interesting page on Sulfuric Acid;

http://www.ausetute.com.au/sulfacid.htm … facid.html

chat · 2004-05-07 16:55:27

dicktice,

I'm not 100% certain of this, but i believe that already happens on Venus.

The water and sulphur is stuck in a loop in the clouds though, and it simply reforms to what it was.

On a cooler Venus that cycle would be changed naturally.

chat · 2004-05-09 05:25:12

dicktice,

I would love to see a simulation of a sun shaded iron enriched Venus.
I bet all sorts of weird chemistry starts to happen as you lower the temperature and thin the atmosphere.
Especially the sulphur clouds, if that converted h2o can make it to the ground it starts to scrub the atmosphere.

Altering Venus with iron asteroids and comets and water asteroids would equate to a 21st century pyramid building.

All just at the fridge of what we could do though.

Its hard to say how the planet would react to any of them.
Each one might not do exactly what we expect.

A good thought example.
We collide 2 small iron asteroids in orbit.
Since Venus at the surface is so hot, not only does it bind O from the co2, it also has a strange chemistry with sulphur or something else and binds with it.
The products left over create a catalyst that binds large quantities of C from the co2.

Now we get a runaway O atmosphere from trying to fix O.
We reach a O flash point, and its right back to what it was since the C wont stay locked away at the surface.

That sort of weird chemistry might happen with everything we try.

Even the sunshade comet can have an unexpected result.

We reduce the sunlight and add h and o from the tail, it immediately creates steam and thickens the atmosphere by more than the sunshade %.
Now we have a less well lit planet that is a small percent warmer.
When the comet wears out the planet gets 25% warmer than when it started.

Same sort of thing could happen with a water asteroid.

Who said it was going to be simple though

chat · 2004-05-10 07:26:07

dicktice,

Just conjecture here on the high wind speeds at Venus.

1.8x sunlight and a pretty uniform atmosphere probably equate to weather patterns that persist on Venus.

If the wind gets to 250 mph, then it takes much longer to change on Venus than it does on earth.

Or the jet stream on Venus is a totally different mechanism than earths.

Earthfirst · 2004-05-10 16:55:21

I think that with out a sunscreen of some kind terraforming venus would be impossible. Wheather it is a solar sail, dust, or comet vapor does not matter. The most important thing is that it provide 100% blockage of the sun rays, venus has too much of a greenhouse effect to let in light. Also the night side most be exposed to space so it can loss heat.
One advantage of a sail is that it could be moved, the same with the comet. If you had your screen in a geo orbit then durning the year it would end up on the night side making it useless untill its back on the day light again.
I guess if the screen was at a L 1 point then it would not be goe orbit, but at a fixed inbetween the sun gravity and venus, then it would alswise block the sun. It would have to be a dust cloud as large as venus it self 6000 mile wide and long. One way to make a big dust screen is instead of hiting two astorodes together. Just use one small one, Use the dust on it to propell it but flinging it off the back, back going back and worth you could make a thin dust screen.
Its like you could easly wrab a wire around the earth because it is so thin, it is better than using two realy big atrorides two make a big thick dust cloud. You could make a just as effective screen witha thin sheet of dust, and you just use a small rock that is easy to move around.

chat · 2004-05-12 04:41:17

Earthfirst,

I agree that some form of sun block is needed before anything can happen on Venus.

I think that your idea of making it in the lowest tech way possible will be a must.

We would probably have to replenish whatever we put in place as a sun block a few times, before anything else we do has any impact to help change Venus.

So the lower tech the better.

Maybe those smog producing satellites will be the ultimate way to block the sun.

12 or so smog belching satellites in different orbits could have an effect at blocking sunlight.

Then something that reduces the amount of the atmosphere ASAP.

The bulk of the atmosphere is C and O and O, so we probably need to fix 80-90 bars of them, or simply locking 60 bars of O will lock it all.

If the sun block is good enough to produce surface temperatures below 100c then hydrogen will go a long way to fixing O.
If the sun block cant get it below 100 c, then we need to fix more atmosphere until we have 99c at surface.

If little free O or co2 is left at that point, then we need a good sized water asteroid to re wet Venus.

Whatever is done, we have to avoid a steam cycle on Venus, water steam will un do whatever progress we make.

dicktice · 2004-05-17 18:40:24

Regarding the possibility of life on--wait for it--Venus. [Take a look at New Scientist, 1 May 2004, pp 14-15.] There's a plan suggested for the European Space Agency, to orbit a probe around Venus to sample the atmosphere, recapture it and return it to Earth for analysis. Why, for God's sake?

Patterns of absorption in the UV spectra of the planet suggest that the atmosphere may contain lots of "cycloocta-sulfer," rings of eight sulphur atoms. These have double bonds that readily absorb UV light, then re-radiate the energy at relatively harmless visible wavelengths. This could mean that the atmosphere provides a sunscreen for any Venusian bugs. Critics of the idea say there is not enough free water on the planet for microbes to survive. But Venusian microbes could suck water from hydrated sulphur compounds in the clouds. Many probes visited the planet in the 1960s and 1070s, but there was no search for life. At that time, we didn't know about terrestrial life in extreme environments, in hot springs or deep beneath the crust of Earth. Now that we do, it's time to design missions to look for life in the clouds of Venus. The planet is thought to once have been warm and wet, and a potential breeding ground for life, but at some point a runaway greenhouse effect dried it out and heated its surface to more than 480C. A few scientists have argued that, if Venus's climate change was slow enough for life to adapt, microbes could survive there today, living in acidic clouds at altitudes of about 50 km, where the pressure is one Earth atmosphere and the temperature only about 50C: conditions terrestrial microbes can endure. The chemistry of the atmosphere is hard to explain, unless microbes are influencing its composition. But unlike Earth, Venus doesn't have a protective shield of ozone. How could bugs survive the intense UV light from the Sun, which should by rights fatally damage proteins and DNA?

Enter, the eight-sulfer-atom ring solution hypothesis. Now, I'm not one of you who would endorse bringing anything back to Earth from interplanetary space, however tempting. I'd want to check out any samples off-Earth first. Using a glove chamber within a capsule, in parking orbit near the ISS. for example.

MarsDog · 2004-05-18 12:59:13

On Earth we have the Carbon Cycle, Water Cycle, Oxygen Cycle, Nitrogen Cycle, etc.
-
We do not know what cycles exist on Venus, and within an unknown cycle of Sulfur compounds may exist life at high temperatures.

REB · 2004-05-18 13:06:10

Dicktice, if they do send a probe to scoop out some atmophere, I hope they take some pictures.

The skies above the clouds should be blue. If they catch the sun at a low angle, they could get some really nice pictures above the clouds.

dicktice · 2004-05-18 18:48:22

I'd like to recommend the following site/report:
Google "venus colony"
Click on "colonization of Venus"
This is a six-page report, presented in 2003. Here are two samples:

Abstract. Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike (other than Earth itself) in the Solar System. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanet settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float about at 50 kilometers altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.

And just to make you want to read more, here is the intriguing conclusion of the Introduction:

. . . Most recently, the case for colonizing the surface of Mars has been argued by Zubrin (1996). However, at least compared to the benign environment of Earth, the surface of Mars has several disadvantages. It has low atmospheric pressure, low temperatures, and high exposure to cosmic radiation, and while it is not a zero-gravity environmnet, it is not yet known whether the roughly one-third Earth-normal-gravity of Mars is sufficient to avoid bone decalcification and muscle tone loss experienced by astronauts in microgravity. So let's colonize Venus.

Now, my purpose is not to turn away from Mars First, but there sits Venus every night, so bright and so accessible. I've/we've been ignoring that planet stupidly, it seems, when it could be of great use (1) orbital-mechanically speaking for getting stuff to and from Mars, and (2) as another place, in its atmosphere, to settle. The report is very readable, and makes a convincing case--to me at least.

REB · 2004-05-19 07:56:45

We seem to have more to say about terraforming Venus than Mars. Maybe it is because there are more options with Venus?

dicktice · 2004-05-19 08:21:02

No, no: Perish the thought. It's just that the Mars rovers have to proceed so slowly, that my/our interest tends to wander while awaiting the next astounding disclosure. Venus is only food for thought: What did you think of the report?

REB · 2004-05-19 08:40:50

I liked the report.

The thing about Mars is that humans can live there now. Terraformation will only make life easier on Mars and there are several levels of Terraformation from getting plants to grow and water to flow, to getting a breathable atmosphere.

Terraforming Mars is a more attainable goal, IMO, than Venus- with our current technology.

But for some reason I am drawn to Venus. Mars can become a good home for Earth life. It has the potential to be very near Earth-like, but Venus has the potential to be a copy of the Earth. Venus is also close to the Earth. A trip there would be short compared to going to Mars. Venus has a lot to work with. I want to see Venus terraformed.

In conclusion, I think Humans will settle Mars and terraform Mars first. What we learn terraforming Mars will help us take on Venus. What we learn from Venus will help us keep Earth habitable.

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Re: Terraforming Venus - methods anyone?

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Re: Terraforming Venus - methods anyone?

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#189 2004-05-07 16:55:27

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