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#1 2006-06-21 00:42:37

srmeaney
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From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810
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Posts: 976

Re: Terrform Venus

A black hole eats the elements and releases hydrogen. So we place a small blackhole in the Venusian atmosphere and let it eat the CO2 and SO2

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#2 2006-06-21 22:14:35

Austin Stanley
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From: Texarkana, TX
Registered: 2002-03-18
Posts: 519
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Re: Terrform Venus

This is incorrect.  Black-holes do not release hydrogen, but rather more conventional forms of radiation.  Generaly gamma radiation. 

It might be possible to use a black-holes intense gravitational pull to fuse higher-weight elements though, but putting such a dangerous object in Venus's atmosphere is probably not the best way to do it.  I still think the best plan is to use large mirrors to bake of the excess CO2 in Venus's atmosphere.


He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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#3 2006-06-22 03:10:48

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

Re: Terrform Venus

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...

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#4 2006-06-22 06:39:34

Austin Stanley
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From: Texarkana, TX
Registered: 2002-03-18
Posts: 519
Website

Re: Terrform Venus

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...

I disagree here.  Venus has LOTS of excess CO2, and while a good portion of it could be absorbed into a biosphere or otherwise contained in the planet, the vast majority of the rest of it must simply be disposed of some how.  Venus is of similar size and mass as the Earth, yet has a CO2 atmosphere 90 times as thick (9.3MPa).  Removing the vast majority of this gas in some fashion is a primary step in making Venus liveable.

As for the removal of CO2 being wastefull, I disagree.  Especialy if we are taking it out of the atmosphere via solar-hydrogen.  If we realy needed vast amounts of carbon that much (and I don't see why we should), we could simply capture carbon from the sun via a similar process.  The sun has trace amounts of carbon in it, which is way more carbon in it then we would ever need.  Certianly blasting it off (via a enourmous impact), frying it off (via mirrors as I propose), or freezing it (with a huge shade) and tossing it off (via mass drivers I suppose), would all be far more expedient as well.


He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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#5 2006-06-22 07:11:49

nickname
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Posts: 354

Re: Terrform Venus

No additional carbon on Venus vs earth, just in a bad form as co2.
The two worlds have very similar amounts of carbon.

The black hole idea is rather non thinkable, but the radiation input has some possibilities.

Creating a constant radiation disaster on Venus or in orbit might be a promising way to lock co2 away or break the co2 bonds or create new heat resistant carbon chains.

With pretty high constant radiation in any spectrum we choose and a  free source of power in the sun we should be able to alter the chemistry of Venus atmosphere.?

Ideas?


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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#6 2006-06-22 23:35:05

Austin Stanley
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From: Texarkana, TX
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Posts: 519
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Re: Terrform Venus

No additional carbon on Venus vs earth, just in a bad form as co2.
The two worlds have very similar amounts of carbon.

Well I haven't run the exact numbers of mass of CO2 in Venus's atmosphere wrapped up in Earth's biosphere, so I'm willing to assume for now that the excess CO2 might be trapped up in that manner.  However, building a biosphere will be an incredibly slow process, so importing the CO2 for the plants when you need it is probably an easier solution.  We will have to import mass quantities of nitrogen and hydrogen anyways, so the small additional carbon is no great burden.

If we are just talking about converting the CO2 into other organic forms of carbon (alcohols, alkynes, ethers, and so on) then removing the CO2 is much more expedient.  Chemical fuel isn't terribly usefull, especialy in mega-giga quantities you would end up with it.  Creating it is an energy losing situation, and it's not like Venus is an energy poor planet.  In fact the problem with Venus is that there is TO much energy.  Furthermore, VAST quantites of hydrogen would need to be imported for this process.

Creating a constant radiation disaster on Venus or in orbit might be a promising way to lock co2 away or break the co2 bonds or create new heat resistant carbon chains.

With pretty high constant radiation in any spectrum we choose and a free source of power in the sun we should be able to alter the chemistry of Venus atmosphere.?

Trouble is, convert the CO2 to what?  Sure you could breakdown CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen with sufficent radiation.  It takes an incredible amount of energy to do this thermaly, but on Venus that's not that big a problem.  Big mirrors or lenses could do the trick.  I'm not sure about braking the bonds with radiation, the bonds are very strong so it would have to be very intense radiation, but I suppose that is possible as well.  Venus is energy rich enough to make that possible as well I suppose.

But what can you convert the CO2 into that won't react back into CO2 in the energy dense venutian atmosphere.  Especialy if there is any free oxygen floating around.  Oxygen is highly reactive and on venus would burn with most forms of carbon back into CO2.  Graphite, Buckyballs and tubes, and hydrocarbons are all far to reactive in a hot oxygenated enviroment to last.  They all would simply burn back up.  The only form of carbon that would work is diamond, which of course

For that matter even without the O2 to react with, Venus is to hot for almost all hydrocarbons.  You won't find many plastics that can withstand the 700K heat of Venus's surface for long.  Especialy not at 90atm of pressure.  And those that might (Teflon for example) replace the oxygen bonds common in many polymers with the stronger bonds in Flourine, which would also need to be imported.  OTOH you need to bring in huge quantites of hydrogen anyways, so maybe making some big blocks of PTFE or whatever isn't that big a deal.

But I still say simply dumping the stuff and starting fresh is the best solution.  Dump the CO2 atmosphere, spin Venus up somehow, and maybe lower the amount of sunlight it recives and you are starting to get somewhere.  Then just bring in a new atmosphere and you are set.  I think this approach is much better than trying to manufacture huge diamond or teflon bricks, since you still end up having to bring in a new atmosphere anyways.


He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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#7 2006-06-23 12:15:54

nickname
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Re: Terrform Venus

Austin,

Certainly dumping 95% of the co2 reduces the temperature and the atmospheric pressure problems.
Importation of the equivalent of 1 earth atmosphere of hydrogen at that point makes an earth like Venus.

The energy to dump 95 earth pressures and the time involved are seldom looked at.

Freezing Venus also creates the same problem of 95 earth pressures of co2 ice,  then what to do with it.

Heating Venus up a bit more might be the best solution of all to dump atmosphere.

relatively small quantities of super greenhouse gasses added to The Venusian atmosphere could really heat things up to the point that co2 escapes.

I came to the same problem with radiation to break the bonds of the co2.

The bonds do break easily with radiation, but with no input of energy the bonds rejoin.
Unless the o2 can bond to something else or the C can be locked into heat resistant things then its pointless.

Trying to transport 45 atmospheres of something for o2 to bond to is not realistic.

At best with something that makes many 02 bonds we would still need 10 or so atmospheres importation, again not realistic.


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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#8 2006-06-23 21:37:21

Austin Stanley
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From: Texarkana, TX
Registered: 2002-03-18
Posts: 519
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Re: Terrform Venus

Heating Venus up a bit more might be the best solution of all to dump atmosphere.

relatively small quantities of super greenhouse gasses added to The Venusian atmosphere could really heat things up to the point that co2 escapes.

I agree in general principle.  Heating up the atmosphere till it reaches escape velocity seems to be the best solution.  I worry about the time tables involved though.  Unless we get it increadibly hot this process would still take a long time.  But I agree that it is more pratical then trying to freeze then remove the CO2 (though freezing the CO2 out of the atmosphere could happen rather quickly).

I think mirrors are the best solution however.  I'm not sure how effective additional greenhouse gasses would be.  Venus's thick CO2 atmosphere already acts as a very powerfull greenhouse effect.  Another approach would be to decrease the amount of sunlight the planet reflects by some method (I'm not exactly sure what).  The planet reflects some 60% of the suns light, so reducing that percentage would scale up the heat and greenhouse effect proportionatly.

I came to the same problem with radiation to break the bonds of the co2.

The bonds do break easily with radiation, but with no input of energy the bonds rejoin.
Unless the o2 can bond to something else or the C can be locked into heat resistant things then its pointless.

Trying to transport 45 atmospheres of something for o2 to bond to is not realistic.

At best with something that makes many 02 bonds we would still need 10 or so atmospheres importation, again not realistic.

I guess if you got the realy, REALLY hot the carbon and oxygen could exist as free radicals, but that would be way to hot.  I've also though that it might be possible to tie up some of the oxygen in some of the metals on Venus.  Things like Iorn Oxide and Titanium Oxide could (and probably do) exists on Venus surface.  Of course, most of the metals in Venus are probably already locked up in varius oxides, so this may not actualy be that usefull.  It would certainly need a huge mining opperation that wouldn't be easy to do on the planets surface.


He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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#9 2006-06-24 10:31:04

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

Re: Terrform Venus

I think , Austin you are right only about this: "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."
wink
wink

Please put some calcs and sources in your statements.
I`ll interfere soon to "illuminate".

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#10 2006-06-27 16:08:09

neilzero
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Re: Terrform Venus

It appears it will take thousands of year to terraform Venus even if we install sunshades which block 99% of the solar radiation not needed for photosynthesis. We also need to deliver many comets to Venus to supply water and fertilizer for photosythesis in the cool upper atmosphere. The water will be trapped by the sulpheric acid layers, instead of recycling as water does on Earth. A partial solution is to partially terraform = cool, only the Arctic region, first, so the acid falls as rain which can be trapped in aquifers between artificial impervious layers. The dead algae and unused fertilizer will form a very high polar platau, if the crust of Venus is strong enough to support the weight of a very tall plateau. If not, we will get Venus quakes. With the sulpheric acid sequestered, Venus will recycle water much as Earth does. It will take many more thousands of years to lower the carbon dioxide to a percentage which humans can tolerate = about 5% carbon dioxide for genetically altered humans, but hundreds of meters of dead algae mixed with unused fertilizer will make rich top soil.
We can approximately halve the terriforming epic, by building a high platau at both the North and South poles. As the oxygen is freed by photosynthesis, dead algae fires will return the carbon dioxide to the Venus atmosphere, unless we bring many iron asteroids to Venus to absorb the oxygen. Iron oxide will form at much less than one percent oxygen, but dead algae = mostly carbon won't burn at less than about 1% oxygen.
We will have too much oxygen, but we can bring hydrogen to Venus (that has cooled to about 200 degrees c = the boiling point of water at 60? atmospheres) to make more water. Too much water is very unlikely. We will need some sunshades, forever, to keep even the high Arctic plateau at a temperatures tolerable even to genetically altered humans and food crops.  Neil

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#11 2006-06-27 17:09:54

neilzero
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Re: Terrform Venus

Hi Austin Stanley: Alchohols, alkyners, ethers,  teflon, and so on can also fall with the sulpheric acid into the acquifers of the polar plataus if we can find a convenient way to synthesize these compounds and shade the polar platau completely. Some of my ideas are from a 20? year old Analog science fact article which said, "the carbon dioxide of Venus would make a layer of carbon 600 meters thick covering all the surface of Venus."
I understand diamonds will burn in air much as coal burns.   Neil

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#12 2006-06-27 17:18:57

nickname
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Posts: 354

Re: Terrform Venus

neilzero,

Many thousands or millions of years to make an earth like place.

Venus probably got the way it is when its oceans boiled into its atmosphere, free hydrogen without a good magnetic field was lost to space, then the carbon was liberated from the crust as the temperature rose and bonded with the free O.

ALA co2 atmosphere.

Adding hydrogen to Venus now will produce water, but water on Venus just produces steam, a very powerful greenhouse gas.

Adding iron asteroids has its potential, but enough to alter that much co2 is a doubtful project, and still you need to break the co2 bonds so the iron has free oxygen to bond with.
Even if all the C on Venus boned to something it produces a 75mb Oxygen atmosphere so something even more plentiful will also need to bond to it.

Cooling Venus just produces vast quantities of co2 ice, maybe 200 miles thick planet wide.

Even if we could find a solution to all that ice we would still require a few million years for a natural plant cycle to produce an earthlike place.


Maybe something as simple as altering the co2 into carbon monoxide is the solution Venus needs to get things started.
carbon monoxide and free oxygen will occupy a much larger volume than co2, i doubt if Venus can hold an atmosphere much bigger than its current size.
At best though even a simple solution like it will leave you 50 times the volume of earths atmosphere or more.

Carbon monoxide bonds more readily with metal than co2 so lots of it at that point might reduce the atmosphere further.
Carbon monoxide (smog) is great at reflecting light, and nowhere near as good a greenhouse gas.

Unless we do something radical with Venus it will be a very long term stepped project. IMHO


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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#13 2006-06-27 17:39:26

neilzero
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Posts: 17

Re: Terrform Venus

Another possibility for getting the fertilizer, and putting fine dust in the "air" is a large robot machine which contineously circles the Equator of Venus at about 12 kilometers per hour, so it stays where the Sun is directly overhead. It scoops and grinds to a very fine dust which it flings into the air. The strong thermals would carry the dust to the upper atmosphere to fertalize the algae. The poles of Venus have a strong down draft which would be strengthened by the cooling of the poles (the dust and algae shade the poles) so most of the dust would be deposited at the poles. A few thousand miles of snow fence would keep the dust from being blown off the plataus by the gentle surface winds toward the Equator of Venus. When it began to rain acid (1000 years?) the mud would stay where it hit the surface.
The contineous travel of the big machine would (I think) shorten the Venus year by about 1 second per century. A minute bonus.  Neil

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#14 2006-06-27 18:03:20

neilzero
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Posts: 17

Re: Terrform Venus

Hi nickname: I edited my first post to adding hydrogen after Venus was cooled to 200 degrees c to avoid boiling the rain when it hits. The dead algae will insulate the still hot rocks far below, so it may only take 1000 years to get the polar plataus below about 200 degrees c = 392f
The algae breaks the CO2 bonds. I'm thinking cool the poles enough to keep the sulpheric acid liquid. Not nearly cold enough to make dry ice. In the final stages (a million years?) we may have some coral reefs making calcium carbonate out of part of the remaining 5% carbon dioxide. At the cooler temperatures, dead algae burning under ground should be no more problem than old coal mines burning below ground on Earth.   Neil

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#15 2006-06-27 20:53:36

Austin Stanley
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From: Texarkana, TX
Registered: 2002-03-18
Posts: 519
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Re: Terrform Venus

Neilzero, I think the major problem with your plan is Venus's lack of hydrogen.  The element is incredibly rare on Venus, with the majority of it having escaped the atmosphere some time in the past.  There may be reserves still trapped up in the planets crust someplace, but they are not easily accesable.

Without hydrogen, biologial life is impossible, as is the creation of all those various diffrent hydrogcarbons.  Even diamond requires hydrogen as an outer layer as well.  As for diamond burning, while it certianly can (especialy in an oxygen rich atmosphere like we are talking about), but that generaly takes temperatures above ~1000K so it should be stable on Venus surface.  It would be intresting to have floating diamond plants on Venus, slowly raining out a rain of diamonds hundreads of meters thick on the planets surface below.


He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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#16 2006-06-28 06:08:52

neilzero
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Re: Terrform Venus

Hi Austin Stanley: I agree. The small amount of residual hydrogen in the crust of Venus will be even more difficult to free after there are hundreds of meters of dead algae covering most of the surface, as well other solid minerals. The sequestered sulpheric acid produces free hydrogen when mixed with free metals, and this often frees the water which the acid has captured. Large quantities of sulphates may, however, be a nuisance as most of them are at least slightly soluable in water. Hydrogen will be difficult to transport from elsewhere in the solar system as it melts at 10 degrees k and boils at about 30 degrees k even at 60 atmospheres pressure.
My guess is the hydrogen particle beam mentioned early in this thread delivers huge amounts of unneeded energy along with a tiny amount of hydrogen, most of which will escape unless it is combined with something. Hot carbon normally takes oxygen from water steam to make carbon monoxide. Is there a practical way to reverse the reaction (very large scale) so the the hydrogen beam coverts the carbon dioxide to water and soot = free carbon?
It may be more practical to make lots of unwanted steam (from excess comets)early in the terraforming even though that means more off planet shades are needed to offset even worse green house conditions, much of the hydrogen will be lost from the upper atmosphere plus even more free oxygen to cause mischief. As you mentioned carbon is stable in a rich high pressure oxygen atmosphere below about 1000 degrees k = 727 c = 1340 f. Perhaps that is a bit too hot to avoid oxidizing carbon? In any case, Venus has lightening which will occasaionally ignite the piles of dead algae, which will blow about in even a slight wind, until it is cool enough to make mud.
According to the old analog article, the atmosphere of Venus has as many tons of Nitrogen as Earth's atmosphere, but it may not have enough hydrochoric acid = HCl to make a salty ocean which can support coral reefs. The sodium will be far below the dead algae, but the fertilizer may have enough sodium as a contaminant. Making Venus a lot like Earth involves many details, many of which with far exceed the total efforts of humans thoughout the history of Earth.   Neil

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#17 2006-06-28 12:00:19

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

Re: Terrform Venus

Bosch reaction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Bosch reaction is a chemical reaction between carbon dioxide and hydrogen that produces elemental carbon (graphite), water and heat.

The overall reaction is as follows:

CO2(g) + 2 H2(g) → C(s) + 2 H2O(l)

The above reaction is actually the result of two reactions. The first reaction is a fast one.

CO2 + H2 → CO + H2O

The second reaction controls the reaction rate.

CO + H2 → C + H2O

The overall reaction produces 2.3x103 joules for every gram of carbon produced at 650 °C. Reaction temperatures are in the range of 450 to 600 °C.

The reaction can be accelerated in the presence of an iron, cobalt or nickel catalyst. Ruthenium also serves to speed up the reaction. The production of elemental carbon tends to foul the catalyst's surface, which is detrimental to the reaction's efficiency.

Together with the Sabatier reaction the Bosch reaction is studied as a way to remove carbon dioxide and to generate clean water aboard a space station [1]

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosch_reaction"
===================================================

Rule #1: Don`t relly on photo-bio-reactions , less than 1% efficient. We need brutal chemistry. Result instead of 95 bars of CO2 we receive H2O shallow ocean + graphite...

Rule #2 Don`t relly on solid state hydrogenm for transportation. Anything instead of "beaming" it is economically unsound. ...

I`ll contineau with the topic later...

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#18 2006-06-28 14:06:25

nickname
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From: Ontario, Canada
Registered: 2006-05-15
Posts: 354

Re: Terrform Venus

karov,

I agree Venus=chemistry problem.
Other than fine tuning near the end of a teraformation the main solution will need to be a chemistry one.

Big question for me is bond the O or bond the C, both are very difficult with current surface temperatures, both well bound to each other.
Carbon monoxide might be a good solution to lower the surface temperature, but just 1 step in many for sure.


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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#19 2006-06-28 18:41:06

neilzero
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Posts: 17

Re: Terrform Venus

Brutal chemistry may be the way to go. The hydrogen beam can heat the upper atmosphere to 600 degrees c in the volume filed with iron dust from an iron-nickel asteroid that vaporized in the atmosphere of Venus, recently.
According to the old Analog arcticle the energy of all the sunlight that falls on Venus in 600 years is needed to free all the carbon from the carbon dioxide, so we are looking at 6 million years if we can delver 1% of the sunlight to the algae which uses 1% of that energy. Unless the asteroid dust is extremely fine, it may take just as long with the hydrogen beam. Getting the high speed  hydrogen to react with the carbon monoxide that is diluted with lots of carbon dioxide may happen only 1% of the time, before the gases cool below the reaction temperature.
I presume we would be using hydrogen beams as reaction mass to propel space craft = an ion engine? if this is easy and efficient with present technology. We can't let humans breath air with more than a few parts per million of carbon monoxide, as it is very toxic.  Neil

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#20 2006-06-29 02:48:41

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

Re: Terrform Venus

karov,

I agree Venus=chemistry problem.
Other than fine tuning near the end of a teraformation the main solution will need to be a chemistry one.

Big question for me is bond the O or bond the C, both are very difficult with current surface temperatures, both well bound to each other.
Carbon monoxide might be a good solution to lower the surface temperature, but just 1 step in many for sure.

O or C -- bond O with H. Water is what we need.  Turning the CO2 in H2O and C immediatelly solves the CO2 sequestration problem WITHOUT to use excessive power waste to orbit or expell it or sunshades etc... CO2 turned into C - solid + water liquid -- effectivelly removes ~95% of the atmosphere, leaving above surface "only" 3 to 4 bars of N2. Significant part of this N2 also cxould/should be solidified into nitrates/nitrides for the topsoil, so perhaps 2 bars N2 + 0.2 bars of O2 is OK.

The average surface teemperature of non-grenhoused Venus is only 10-15 degrees centigrade higher than Earth` one.

The atmosphere effectivelly will transfer the daylight heat around the globe so you don`t need mirors or parasols. Two months of day + two months of night is acceptable...

The ONLY viable and reasonable way for lowering down the surface temperature ( otherwise we end with aerial ocean of steam over surface of coal -- which again will produce via F-T process exxessive amunts of CO + free H2 = syngas ) is VENUS to activelly REFRIGERATED. Parasoling it completely takes at least 500 years for cooling, without to put into account the heat of the surface rocks.

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#21 2006-06-29 03:10:38

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

Re: Terrform Venus

Algae and so bio-cheistry is not workable cause it needs as prerequisite loweer temperatures water and so on... Also the bio-chemistry is totally inefficient. Biochemistry could execute planetary scale tasks for multi-kiloyears ONLY because it is self-replicating automata and its intrinsic inefficiency is compensated by the great power of the exponential growth. But exponeential growth is not an atribute only of the natural evolved systems...
============

So my "plan" for Venus is:

1. Channel to Venusian vicinity ( its Hill sphere of slightly less than 1 000 000 km radius ) thickened solar wind of hydrogen...

2. Use the energy of the hydrogen beam , transformed into electricity for REFRIGERATING the venusian atmosphere and surface, resp. If the hydrogen capture&surface delivery system, combined with kinda laser or Peltier-Seebek cooling system ( better thse to be the effectss of ONE system ), occupies the venusian Hill sphere -- the Hill radius of ~1 000 000 km, roughly means 10 000 times bigger cooling surface , i.e. radiator ; than Venus could be cooled down for 10 000 times less tim than 1000 years, i.e. for several months!!!!!!!

3. The system should swap CO2 for H2 orbitally speaking, to react the substances via Bosch or Sabatier process into C and H2O ( readiating out the additional heat of the reaction whic is exothermic...), and to introduce in the place of 400-500 degrees hot CO2, cooled C + H2O ...

4. The C is in form of craphite and other more stable forms, because the H-beam energy will be two excessive, we have lots of energy for improvemeents -- say SiO2 coating of the graphite/diamont granes --...

5. We end up the "bosch-sabatier"+fridge phase with cooled planet covered with shallow water ocean + lots of SiO2 coated C-"sand" and 4-5 bars of N2 ontop...

6. The H-beam capture and processing and fridging system indeed is a mag-sail so after the active chemical transformation phase we use it as "Faraday" global cage providing unscapable for H magnetosphere powered by the normal-intensity solar wind...

7. Settle the water oceans with photosynthetic life forms to produce O2 in the old / "normal" / classical way -- seen so aesthetical and necessary by some people.

8. Via electrical means we turn the N2 and O2 into necessary quantity of N-oxides hence acids hence nitrides / nitrates which together with the SiO2-ed C-grains ( wity the best size/diameter) to make the best possible soil!!!

and thats it!

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#22 2006-06-29 06:06:07

nickname
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From: Ontario, Canada
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Posts: 354

Re: Terrform Venus

karov,

Very interesting ideas on  altering the Venus chemistry.

Cooling Venus is a must for anything useful to happen with its chemistry, so your idea of a cooling process as the chemistry happens is very interesting.

I can see a problem with the beaming of hydrogen  as the thermal temperatures increase, it will be very difficult to avoid steam with the production of h20.

Also we are talking about beaming 30 or so bars of hydrogen, not impossible but long term.

Some additional cooling process might be required as liquid water starts to accumulate in the atmosphere.
If not the steam effect on Venus will start to become a bigger and bigger problem with heating as co2 is converted in greater quantities of h20 and C.

Maybe instead of common h20 we can produce heavy water? and instead of free C we produce Carbon monoxide?
Both of them will alter the heating process and both soak up more bar pressure.
Both would lead to additional steps for Venus though.


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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#23 2006-07-02 08:52:42

cjchandler
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From: canada
Registered: 2006-06-24
Posts: 138

Re: Terrform Venus

I don't know anything about this hydrogen beaming from solar wind, but it seems to me that the total amount of hydrogen in a resonably sized colector is rather small. Granted, we are talking about terraforming, so I guess reasonalbe isn't a good argument smile. I would suggest building a gigantic ballon type space craft in Jovian orbit to collect the hydrogen needed from it's atmosphere. It is liquified/slushed and shaded by a sun shade close to the sun. The ship then moves from jupiter to venus with a tether in Jupiter's massive magnetic field. Nuculer or beamed power for electricity. Then the ship slams into venus, helping to throw off some of the atmosphere and cool the planet rapidly since the energy required to bring 10^14 kg of 14K hydrogen venesuian temperatures is quite high. The sun shade that was shadeing the ship, now shades venus. Hmm, now that I've writen this it seems a bit more complex than hydrrogen beaming...  big_smile oh well, in case that isn't fesable. [/url]


Ad astra per aspera!

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#24 2006-07-06 04:08:06

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

Re: Terrform Venus

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/ … l&edu=high , guys I`m talking about kinda tamed / cathalized coronal mass ejection...

The Sun as source of H is perfect one:
-- close
-- the material is charget with its own thermal/kinethic energy
-- it is magnetized, hence MHD controlable

Thw Sun is instable system, hence NOT the power is problem ( it is abundant, even excessive ), but the informational processing... Controlled instability, magnetic confinement and "funneling" towards the Venusian hill sphere based and encompassing capture mechanism... And voila! We have the necessary MATERIAL -- Hydrogen in form of plasma, carrying ALL the necessary energy the hydrogen to be:
1. transported from the sun`s vicinity to the venusian atmosphere
2. the chemical processes to be controlled and implemented
3. ALL the necessary energy the original and the resulting new venusian fluo-sphere to be cooled to thee necessary level...

Scratching several exa-tonnes of hydrogen out of the Sun ( I.e. not scratching out, but MAKING the Sun to spit it in the right direction, angular dispersion, velocity, temperature, composition, etc... via gentle in power, but powerfull in information means of catalization, "butterfly effect" , chaos theory...), solves all our problems with Venus.

Please envision the Sun and Venus as two vessels S and V ( but capped not with solid caps, but gravitationally holding volatiles - gases and plasmas). S is huge and hot, so hot that the Virial theoreme states that the overall thermal state of S is enough to through out/up half of its mass from "here to infinity" -- simply consequence of the gravitational-thermal equilibrium of all the Main sequence stars...
S occasionally spits tens of trillions of tonnes of H out of its gravitational funnell.
V is closed bottle of too hot to be convenient gasses with not good chemical coposition for our purposes. V should be cooled and chemically recomposed with import of Hydrogen...

in S`s plasma ( almost entirelly H) we have th material in quality and quantity AND the energy to:
-- chemically and thermally MODIFY V...

Now, please invent the plasma-management hardware!!!
I suppose that it would need quite a few giga-kilograms to be constructed, COMPLETELY affordabl mass-wise only from the thosands of Near-earth, near-venusian, near-mercurian and vulcanid asteroids and from the hundreds of millions of meteoroids there...

To build this magnetical plasma mining, channeling, processing, reacting and cooling equipment, we do not need NOTHING except SELF-REPLICATING AUTOMATA, to harvest solar photonic energy and asteroidal/meteoroidal materials and to biuld it self...

The plasma-managment system after it terraforms Venus and Mercury and the Moon ( but be carefull -- DO NOT point the plasma projector or the "atomic laser" beam directly onto EArth ), the same equipment use to send as much as you want interstellar ships with as much gees of acceleration as you want...

If a transport system has so abundant power source as the very plasma of the sun mined, it could afford to use Diamagnetic levitation devices to cancel to zero the acceleration over-load for humans. Levitating frogs. One ~100 kg human being neds constant 100GW to get and stay levitated... These 100 GW are nothing compared with the enrgy needed to accelerate multi-millions of tonnes massing ship with 1000 gees...

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#25 2006-08-16 12:02:00

Tom Kalbfus
Banned
Registered: 2006-08-16
Posts: 4,401

Re: Terrform Venus

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...

I disagree here.  Venus has LOTS of excess CO2, and while a good portion of it could be absorbed into a biosphere or otherwise contained in the planet, the vast majority of the rest of it must simply be disposed of some how.  Venus is of similar size and mass as the Earth, yet has a CO2 atmosphere 90 times as thick (9.3MPa).  Removing the vast majority of this gas in some fashion is a primary step in making Venus liveable.

As for the removal of CO2 being wastefull, I disagree.  Especialy if we are taking it out of the atmosphere via solar-hydrogen.  If we realy needed vast amounts of carbon that much (and I don't see why we should), we could simply capture carbon from the sun via a similar process.  The sun has trace amounts of carbon in it, which is way more carbon in it then we would ever need.  Certianly blasting it off (via a enourmous impact), frying it off (via mirrors as I propose), or freezing it (with a huge shade) and tossing it off (via mass drivers I suppose), would all be far more expedient as well.

What is the easiest way to get rid of the carbon dioxide energy wise?
1) Is it easier to scoop it up out of the atmosphere and send it hurtling into space at escape velocity?
2) how about disassociating the CO2 into C and O2? C is a solid, and the O2 we combine with hyudrogen to make water.
3) Compress the CO2 and store it underground on Venus.

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