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Import 0.8x10exp20 kilograms of hydrogen. This is 80 000 000 000 000 000 ( eighty quadrillions of metric tonnes ) . Via Sabatier process ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction ) using cheaper nickel cathalyst turn all the 4.4x10exp20 tonnes of the present CO2 atmosphere into 160 quadrillions of tonnes of methane and 360 quadrillion tonnes of water. The water will be 1/4th of the earth`s total hydrosphere mass - perfect for shallower and wider venusian global ocean ( 80% surface coverage?). The methane , polymerize via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process , into heavy oil, asphalt, oil shale, even better kerogen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerogen ) - pretty stable solid... suitable for storage underground. In kerogen form it will hold the hydrogen and wouldn`t burn after oxigenation of the atmosphere. As far as I remember the total earth`s reserve of oil is about 160 cubic kilometers - our polymerized methane new Venus would possess assuming say 1.6 tonnes per m3 density of the kerogen , "petrol" reserves measuring >450 km side cube -- million times more than Earth, literally kilometers of asphalt under ground...
Of course civilization capable of delivering such quantity of hydrogen across the vast expanses of the Solar system, would not relly on petrol, but why not a new tropical paradise, to not have such giant reservoir of energy in hand in occasion of colapse of the SolSys civilization... Good scenario for cheap SF movie - Venus after thousands of years, being the new Saudi of SolSys....
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Import 0.8x10exp20 kilograms of hydrogen. This is 80 000 000 000 000 000 ( eighty quadrillions of metric tonnes ) . Via Sabatier process ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction ) using cheaper nickel cathalyst turn all the 4.4x10exp20 tonnes of the present CO2 atmosphere into 160 quadrillions of tonnes of methane and 360 quadrillion tonnes of water. The water will be 1/4th of the earth`s total hydrosphere mass - perfect for shallower and wider venusian global ocean ( 80% surface coverage?). The methane , polymerize via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process , into heavy oil, asphalt, oil shale, even better kerogen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerogen ) - pretty stable solid... suitable for storage underground. In kerogen form it will hold the hydrogen and wouldn`t burn after oxigenation of the atmosphere[url]
Though moving that much material would be very costly that is still maybe one of the most brilliant ideas I have ever seen about terraforming venus. Oh and dont forget that sulfuric acid is H2SO4 so there is a lot of hydrogen ready for the taking.
There are several layers of clouds many kilometers thick composed of sulfuric acid.
taken from http://www.nineplanets.org/venus.html
Or just add enough ammonia (imported from uranus or neptune) so the acid and base neutralize each other becoming NH3(g) + H2SO4(l) → NH4HSO4(s, l) (ammonium bisulfate). Right now I am having a very difficult time figuring out what to do with the ammonium bisulfate and how to seperate it into N2 and H2O and O2 (i'm not a chemist) but it would reduce the atmospheric pressure a lot and I do know that ammonium bisulfate is water soluble.
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The hydrogen amount seems pretty big, but it couldd be excavated from Jupiter, the energy for the operation comming from slightly deorbiting some of the Gallilean moons via simple and cheap electrodynamic tethers deployment ( Say, Io).
The hyperamount of petrol resulting is easier to export, cause the difference in the hight of the Jupiter and Venus solar otbits, gives the necessary amount of energy every kilo of hydrogen falling to elevate many kilos of unnecessary stuff to escape route ( indeed to be delivered for construction of makaroni habitat or else)...
Other petroleum seequestration tech uysed partially could be to provide the new Venus with very extensive biosphere.
The Earth`s total biomass is 75 000 000 000 tonnes dead or alive, including the Deep hot biosphere at leat another so, the carbohydrates reserves added gives us totally about 300 000 000 000 tonnes of biomass and organics present on the Earth today... Still several millions of times more than we have here should be on Venus. It is impossible to house 400 millions of tonnes of biomass on every sqare kilometer of Venus, even regarding supergiant trees, with "hearts" to pump water on many kilometers hight, eeven such bio-constructioins are possible...
Exporting only carbon, and using the 4 hydrogen atoms for another two molecules of water will decrease twice the hydrogen import needs to 40 quadrillion of tonnes...
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If you had the energy;
Spin Venus up, so the upper atmosphere is almost in Geosynchronous orbit.
It would reduce the area exposed to the Sun,
Increase surface area, while allowing easy floating up to near orbital speed.
How many Kuiper Belt objects needed for this ?
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Whats the best way to speed it up? Hit it multiple times with glancing blows in the direction of its current spin?
I think the biggest issue will be the volcanos. We need to shut them off, our they are just going to keep spitting out gases we are trying to get rid off.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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One idea is to cycle large Iron objects between Mars and Jupiter,
gaining energy on Jupiter slingshot and releasing energy while glancing off Mars atmosphere.
If you spun up Venus to form a disk, the core would come closer to the surface.
good way to mine lot of Iron ?
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If you spun it up to form a donut ??
Large donut would be unstable, rings without a planet,
but a small hole in the middle ?
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I think the biggest issue will be the volcanos. We need to shut them off, our they are just going to keep spitting out gases we are trying to get rid off.
The few probes that were able to penetrate the atmosphere of venus and land for a few minutes saw no evidence of volcanic activity.
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To spin any planet -- enormous waste of energy!
Import-export of stuff from higher orbiting the sun bodies PROVIDES you with excess of energy. This is two-in-one option -- you have the building materials AND the energy for construction...
Spinning planets eats energy!
We should rather despin bodies to utilize energy, than to spin them, there are numerous technics to illuminate a world even better than natural axial rotation way.
Regarding the Earth`s case -- one needs about one martian mass glansing hitting at about 10 km/s in order to have earth`s size moon forming in one-two years from the debris, thinning out of the crust to allow tectonics, and faster spin rate at once. Or to push higher Mercury untill Venus captures it as a Moon. The caputer will input axial spinning energy. Mercury is many times larger than the Moon, but you could put it in higher orbit around Venus to provide the same level of tides. In the injection phase let it orbit Venus in highly eliptic orbit using gravity assist slowing down in the most efficient apo-venusian trajectory "kicks". Than stabilize the orbit in circular... Again this method need staggering amounts of energy and reaction mass if using rockets to move Mercury. This energy could come from the solar axial rotation. Slight despin of the Sun will give you the momentum to slingshot and adjust Mercury in Venusian orbit, but again this is not economical and practical... One could use off course the orbital energy of Mars to do so...
Lower the martian orbit untill it become , say, settled in L4 or L5 points of Earth-Sun. Use the momentum to get Mercury higher untill Venus captures it... After that you have FIVE big good for terraforming bodies at the very middle of the solar nowaday ecosphere ( goldilock zone ) -- (1)Venus-(2)Mercury double planet + (3)Earth-(4) Moon system inculding as co-moon (5) Mars. The distances between the so redesigned Inner system worlds will be thus closer for faster transport. Putting Mars at L4 or L5 of Earth-Sun gravity system in several dozens of millions of years will lead it in collision course to the Earth after accumulating orbital instabilities... So this way the whole new Inner system should be maintained in this state in long term... But the advantage is that you don`t need to import energy i.e. to spend one to do so... Simply you should use the present energy confined in the celestial mechanics of the inner system. No rockets, no waste of mass for momentum exchange.
The question here is why to do it. The total gain of territory is miniscule. www.paulbirch.net states that for such moving/spinning of planets using just redistribution of the respecting orbital&axial momentums would take less than one Kondratiev cycle of time ( i.e. less than 40 years, a time interval denominated by the average human lifespan, which makes pointless every project taking longer than that in economical sence) , but the long term energy expenditure for orbital stabilization would be not insignificant... Only 5 planets with total area of slightly over 2 times earths is nothing that could suffice the demand for new habitable land in near future even... Such ideas are like to try to move antarctica north speeding the tectonics up, and gaining some millions of square kms. as opposed to creating much more solid surface artificially ( say water floating artificial continents)... The last is much more economically sound...
As I pointed out -- the carbon contained in the Venusian atmosphere, exported ( via gravity leveraging with hydrogen import from the Outer system ) and turned into buckytubes is enough to be built DOZENS of THOUSANDS of times the Earth`s area in rotating space colonies 1000 miles wide...
The planets are not enough! Don`t relly on them!
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As I pointed out -- the carbon contained in the Venusian atmosphere, exported ( via gravity leveraging with hydrogen import from the Outer system ) and turned into buckytubes is enough to be built DOZENS of THOUSANDS of times the Earth`s area in rotating space colonies 1000 miles wide...
The planets are not enough! Don`t relly on them!
Export not only the Carbon, but also the metallic inner core !
Shielding the surface of Venus by rotating fast enough for low Venus orbit, around 90 minutes. Won't be a donut or spinning inner tube. Likely similar to rotated cross section of a raindrop.
Galaxies give a clue to the flattening, But there is insufficient friction for the mass concentration to move from the center.
If you spin a container of Mercury you get a good parabolic shape to form a telescope. But with different densities and varying gravitational field, it is more complex. Possibly could write equation to approximate for one density, without computer modeling.
Have not seen anyone model this. Closest is
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1449507
In preparation to dismantling Venus; would be good way to cool down and expose the inner core. The contents of the planet would be conveniently seperated into different layers of density.
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MarsDog, why do you want to spend so much energy. The gravitational binding energy of Venus should be comparasble with this of Earth -- about 2x10exp32 Joules, equal to the total solar output for entire week, or the total energy which the Earth receives for 2 000 000 000 weeks or 40 MILLION YEARS!!!...
Iron is not as good building material as the much more abundant carbon... Iron is useless even if you have cheap mass scale transmutation. Simply cause it doesn`t provide net energy neither fused nor fissed.
In the momentum loop scheme you don`t loose energy cause you utilize the energy of the faling in hydrogen to do all the terraformation at once.
Or if you need the iron -- you could harvest it from the Sun via ramscoops. The solar metalicity is 1.6 -- there are >5000 earths masses of "metals" there... and the energy to lift it up-star.
I think the best position of the venusian iron and rocks is their present. The way they are now -- simply gravity anchor for atmosphere.
Moving, spinning, dismantling planets -- something someone very rich and stupid would do.
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I think the biggest issue will be the volcanos. We need to shut them off, our they are just going to keep spitting out gases we are trying to get rid off.
The few probes that were able to penetrate the atmosphere of venus and land for a few minutes saw no evidence of volcanic activity.
None of the pics I've seen show the horizon.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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To spin any planet -- enormous waste of energy!
Import-export of stuff from higher orbiting the sun bodies PROVIDES you with excess of energy. This is two-in-one option -- you have the building materials AND the energy for construction...
Spinning planets eats energy!
We should rather despin bodies to utilize energy, than to spin them, there are numerous technics to illuminate a world even better than natural axial rotation way.
Regarding the Earth`s case -- one needs about one martian mass glansing hitting at about 10 km/s in order to have earth`s size moon forming in one-two years from the debris, thinning out of the crust to allow tectonics, and faster spin rate at once. Or to push higher Mercury untill Venus captures it as a Moon. The caputer will input axial spinning energy. Mercury is many times larger than the Moon, but you could put it in higher orbit around Venus to provide the same level of tides. In the injection phase let it orbit Venus in highly eliptic orbit using gravity assist slowing down in the most efficient apo-venusian trajectory "kicks". Than stabilize the orbit in circular... Again this method need staggering amounts of energy and reaction mass if using rockets to move Mercury. This energy could come from the solar axial rotation. Slight despin of the Sun will give you the momentum to slingshot and adjust Mercury in Venusian orbit, but again this is not economical and practical... One could use off course the orbital energy of Mars to do so...
Well the point of spinning it would be to create a more Earth-like day. Having one side receive heating from the sun for the better part of a year no doubt contributes to the heat issue.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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A faster rotation would also work to throw off some of the atmosphere. Venus's gravity is only 80 something% of earths and one big reason for it retaining so much atmosphere is the fact that it spins so slowly. Otherwise one would expect earth with its higher gravity and magnetic field to have a much higher atmospheric pressure than venus. Just think of all the volcanic eruptions and all the gas emmisions from people and the few comets to hit earth all these release large amounts of gasses into the atmosphere. Now the earths magnetic field helps the earth keep from losing large amounts of its atmosphere by protecting it from solar winds. Venus does not have that luxury.
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Its possible that off center impacts would spin the crust faster than the mantle or core, thus improving the magnetosphere.
Alternetively if we halt the spin completely, heating and then blasting the atmosphere away, providing a massive landmass permenently shielded from solar radiation.
Though I do like the idea of harvesting the carbon in the atmosphere. Its a relatively short term possibility.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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If you need earth-like day/night cycle you could just put a mirror in polar orbit around Venus. It is not necessary this morror to pour in another sun-constant of light dowwn there. If excessive - you could filter out, deflect or utilize the light coming directly from the sun via parasol/soleta. The issue of the right kind of insolation for any planet lies in optics , rather than in the orbital or axial mechanics.
To create artificial magnetosphere is much easier and more economical with magsail, than with changes in the planetary rotation. Even without optics, one terraformed Venus will be habitable with the present diurnal cycle of two earth`s months of day and two months night. We have plenty of "elbow room" to tickle with the atmosphere...
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The kinetic energy stored in Earth's rotation is 1.8586 x 10^29 joules
3.827 × 10^26 joules is energy output of the Sun in one second
0.486 x 10^3 = 486 seconds or 8 minutes sunshine
For Venus
90 minute orbital period gives geosynchronous of approximately surface radius
Angular velocity increase is 18 times Earth
Energy 18^2 for the ω^2 term = 324 times
Angular momentum increases as mass is redistributed,
plus the energy to lift center on mass to the surface.
Perhaps 1,000 times the Energy in Earth's rotation or around 2 hours sunshine ?
The "weather" of metal, rock and atmosphere would be complex.
Near the top, material would try to escape, as the Moon, via tidal interaction
Lower, attraction to center ?
Below synchronous material would drift down, but would be stirred upwards by friction.
A stable configuration, near the center, isolated from the massive ring at GEO, is possible ?
Possible rings, up to Roche Limit of 2.44 radius, above which would coalesce to individual satellites.
Anyone seen a link to computer program to simulate this ?
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Looking up Energy
Earth rotation 1.8586 x 10^29 joules = 2x10^11 kg
Motion around Sun 6.669 x 10^31 joules = 7.41x10^13 kg
Total Sun output = 3.9*10^26 Joules/second = 4.3 x 10^8 kg/second
every kilogram of mass converted to energy releases .90 10^18 Joules
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_ … e_(energy)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/fa … sfact.html
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Interesting matheematically , BUT why to spnd so much energy to dismantle Venus. The energy to do so will be more expensive than the iron we`ll extract out of thee gravity well. If you want iron - mine the Sun. Iron is useless:
-- low tensile streght
-- poor radiation shield
-- too big nuclear stability to be usefull as fuel
-- poor chemical characteristics to mass produce interesting chemicals and nanomaterials
-- ... etc. etc.
Iron is one of the things which considered as ash or waste in nuclear energetics terms, is going to be convrted in energy via blackholes, monopoles, GUT converters, ... whathever... Perhaps good reaction mass for kinda rockets?
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I was thinking of how to make a Wernher von Braun Wheel the size of a planet.
Possibilities are greater than for a spherical planet.
The solid part would be like a car tire. Add water and atmosphere
Very complicated dynamics.
Material above GEO would form rings, become satellites above Roche Limit,
and try to escape as does the Moon
Below GEO material would fall down towards the center.
So a high density tube of Iron with the less dense tending up and down.
GEO would have to be above the atmosphere. 90 minute GEO at surface is not stable.
So cannot have a stable donut planet with ordinary density materials ?
But a good way to bring the dense iron to GEO.
Lot of steel is not necessarily bad.
Easy material for steel buildings and space elevators on rapidly spinning planets.
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I.e. rotating habitat stabilized with gravity? Non-economical. If you use the steel to produce 20-30 km wide cilindrical rotating habitat, you can have hundreds of thousands of times the living area, without dynamical nighmares.
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Productive would be to bring other objects to near critical spin.
A large mine to extract.
Make Copper or Silver planet to hide inside, from a gamma ray burst ?
Jupiter, turned inside out. Iron ring surface with gas in the middle.
Too cold ?
How about a brown dwarf, almost failed star ?
Pleasantly warm iron surface with some fusion below.
Drop hydrogen when it gets cold.
Hydrogen dropped, creating a hot spot;
a directed solar flare, a nuclear jet engine to the next galaxy in comfort !
The giant ring could tap into the nuclear generated magnetic fields
Further to control the mass ejections.
We are going to need one as a strategic beam weapon generator
to blast the aliens in nearby solar systems.
Not quite a SuperNova, but maybe sufficient to destroy their ozone layer.
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http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 … _cool.html
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=x50hfzxa
Too hot - need ring cool enough for iron gas to condense out.
High density metals for rings would permit more extreme shapes.
Critically spinning a gas cloud, only some departure from sphere.
Spin Steel, Lead, Tungsten. Osmium, what is the ultimate shape ?
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Interesting, but as intermediate sep for megengineering of stellar and planetary systems. It takes much more energy to make, than positive effects to utilize I see.
In our univese, exectly due to the perfectly clean in thermodinamical aspect nature of the gravity, this negative energy, it is better to go in its direction than in the oposite. If descending from higher ground of stuff to lower position ( gravity well, black hole, etc...) it is usefull to swirl a little the stuff - ok, but to use inficient power production processes to go against the flow of the most efficient power production process is unwise... It`s like the hydropower storage - inefficient, but we use it cause the other methods of power storage are even more inefficient.
BTW, for Venus we could use the same way the asymetric ice-cup heat redistribution method. Venus is not tilted axially against its orbital plane, so perhaps we should use Istar and Afrodita terra + Maxual mountains to store kept-in-solid state material covered with smart cloth - working soimultanoiusly as power provider, radiator, etc... The material could be water ( if we manage to bring down from the outer system or the sun enough hydrogen or water or to bring up from the venusian mantle), dry ice, petrol substances... Cover ~10% of the Venusian urface with such ice or "ice" sheet, the rest terraform with shalow ocean and lots of land irigated via planet-wide "vascular" system of underground pipes ... if you manage to trap the water in pipes, dug with selfreplicating automata of course to utilise the exponential multiplication, than planet-wide you ned much less water to provide total heaven. Again you have spacehigh mountains to push back and forth cargoes... The ices could be gradually exported for ultimate non-necessary volatiles sequestration, during the habitation. Begin operation with huge hovering aerostatoic blanket in the well trasperant hights of the venusian stratophere - this blanke could be of habitats, too. Put on surface powered by cables huge mining machinery to reach and release the water beneath, locked in the thick uniform non-tectonic litosphere of more than 50 kms. Consume the atmosphere via freezing, there is point when the consumption puts the blankes on surface, pump in the rest of the CO2 via pipes to the lowest surface points. Release water from the mantle mined by the thermoresisting robots multiplying host. The robots could be from grafite or other thermal resistant carbon material further utilizing CO2...
So: No import of zillions of tonnes of material, no waste of energy for orbiting of stuff, no rapid axial spinning, no orbital changes, no sunshades, no mirrors, no atmospheric dopping, no instable hovering life-support structures, only the old good compression structures...
Living of-the-venus in the direct sence.
The new strange biosphere will be selfsupporting, but rellying on dozens of times more efficient thermodynamically machinery than the "natural" earthly one and utilizing much bigger energy flux.
Hence dozens of times more meta-stable than the earths biosphere...
The same on Mercury -- even closer to the sun planets could be kept habitable using for aerconditioning the excess of solar flux energy which otherwise renders them uninhabitable in "shirt-sleeve" mode...
The new planetary "ice" cups will be cryogenically cold during the day sucking heat from the sun and the environment using improved and mass scale peltier elements, and red hot during the night, when they pump by force using the day-side photoenergy, the heat into space...
The simplest visualization: imagine tidally locked world around say red dwarf. Put giant photocollector 1000 miles arround the cissollar point, and giant radiator 1000 miles wide around the transsollar point. Connect them with efficient power lines -- such thing could transfer, get rid of, and so on, with thousands of times more heat than the mere ocasional and tricky gas and liquid currants around the globe, keeping the sun side much colder than it deserves baked with so much exxessive eneergy and the night side much warmer than normally. Reverse the process - make the sunwards face of the system hotter than the environment and the oposite colder and you could warm up colder world.
Sequester all the co2 of Mars underneath two such small polar cups. Provide asside the cold trap the atmosphere you need... Mars has good axial tilt...
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The floating cities idea is brilliant. I never thought something like that could be done without something as sci-fi as antigravity generators, but the lifting gas phenomenon solves the problem elegantly and simply. In effect, living inside massive zeppelins filled not with helium but breathable air.
This concept, to me at least, seems to make colonizing Venus easier than Mars, even. However, there are a few questions about practical details.
Transport between orbit and the cities? Space shuttle type solution? We still don't have sufficient tensile strength materials to build a space elevator. However, I'm having a hard time visualizing a floating city that can take the kind of punishment that Cape Canaveral does. Wouldn't the backfire of a shuttle taking off pretty much destroy the city?
Food. In order to really be able to colonize anything, we're going to need a completely closed bio-cycle; shipping food from Earth for hundreds, thousands, millions is unfeasible for a permanent colony. How much agricultural space needs to be built per inhabitant? Would the soil have to be shipped from Earth? Are there plants that could be grown without soil? Aquatic plants perhaps? Sprouts et al? Would fish pools be more practical than shipping soil over?
Sulfur. Pretty much all of the atmosphere can easily be transformed into other useful gases and water, but what use is sulfur? What can we use it for? Are we gonna end up with huge sulfur mountains leftover from chemical reactions that we won't know what to do with?
Any thoughts?
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From Wikipedia:
Carbon dioxide ~96.5%
Nitrogen ~3.5%
Sulfur dioxide .015%
Argon .007%
Water vapor .002%
Carbon monoxide .0017%
Helium .0012%
Neon .0007%
Carbonyl sulfide
Hydrogen chloride trace
Hydrogen fluoride traceNo mention of sulfuric acid.
From Wikipedia:
The clouds are mainly composed of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid droplets and cover the planet completely
The latter seems to imply there are significant amounts of sulfuric acid but the former seems to imply any H2SO4 would be at trace levels at best. How much sulfuric acid is there really in the clouds of Venus?
However much there is, though, there's just no way the water we could extract from sulfuric acid would be sufficient to, in any way, create a hydrosphere. If it is plentiful, however, it could maybe be used to produce drinking water for (small amounts of) colonists?
Problem with that is, I believe it requires a great deal of energy to break down H2SO4 into SO3+H2O. Then again, supposedly we will have a great deal of solar energy available, so maybe that won't be a problem.
I tried looking into methods for decomposing sulfuric acid into sulfur trioxide and water, but couldn't find any existing methods. Is it impossible?
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I believe sunlight breaks down Venus Sulfuric Acid, but it gets renewed by active volcanoes.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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As I understand it, volcanoes exhale sulfur dioxide, not fully formed sulfuric acid. This then goes on to combine with water to produce sulfuric acid. The distinction is important because if volcanoes exhale fully formed sulfuric acid, that means there's hydrogen in the crust. If volcanoes just exhale sulfur dioxide, then we'll have to deal with only the atmospheric (very minute amounts of) hydrogen.
One of the key issues with colonizing Venus is the availability of water, which is directly related to the availability of hydrogen. The only sources of hydrogen would seem to be atmospheric water vapor (.002%), atmospheric hydrogen chloride and atmospheric hydrogen fluoride (both in trace amounts), and the unclear amounts of atmospheric sulfuric acid. If indeed volcanoes exhaled ready-made sulfuric acid, that would give us a new source of hydrogen (the crust) which would be nifty.
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