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#51 2006-01-26 10:34:39
Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
I think you are right. I saw a diagram years ago about the Venus Sulfur cycle. The Volcanoes spew out sulfur dioxide, which forms Sulfuric acid when it bins with water vaper. Then Sunlight breaks down the Sulfuric acid back into water and sulfur dioxide. The sulfur dioxide rains down on the surface.
There may be great deposits of Pyrite on Venus surface, which appear like bright spot on radar images.
Perhaps Venus has water in its Magma.
If Hydrogen can be imported, water could be made from the CO2.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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#52 2006-01-26 10:56:48
Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
If we get to a point where we can transport significant amounts of gases from planet to planet, basically all our problems will be solved. But *until* we have the ability to transport a zillion tons of nitrogen to Mars, a zillion tons of hydrogen to Venus - until then, we'll have to figure out a way to eke at least minimal amounts of water for any prospective colonists. The prospects for hydrogen on Venus don't look good as things stand right now.
What use would pyrite be to us? I assume you're referring to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite) FeS2. I may be wrong about that. We have plenty of sulfur already, though. What we need on Venus is hydrogen.
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#53 2006-01-26 11:23:19
Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
I noted the Pyrite because that may be where the sulfur is ending up that rains out of the atmosphere.
As for what use can it be, I don’t know. Maybe they could sell it space based industry. Maybe Asteroid miners will need it for something.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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#55 2006-01-26 12:07:23
- SpaceNut
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- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
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Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
The idea of pumping any and all atmospheric gasses to bring to mars is one ofmany destinations. Another includes the moon where it could be further used to process the lunar regolith. A use for the sulfur it could be used to make acids for the refining process and seperation of the regolith.
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#56 2006-01-26 12:40:06
Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
Here's an image of the sulfur cycle on Earth:
Now it would seem to me that the sulfur cycle on Venus mostly results in sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid. I would imagine that ideally, we would want the sulfur, instead of those two, to be bound in sulfate salts (SO4) and elemental sulfur (S8). If we could bind the sulfur up in those, the atmospheric acidity could be significantly reduced, no? Would either of those forms be storageable in mass quantities on Venus? I'm thinking if we dump huge amounts of elemental sulfur down to the planet's surface, it'll just boil back into the air due to the high temperatures. Are there any sulfate salts which would have high enough temperature resistance that they could stay solids or liquids on the Venusian surface, without re-entering the atmosphere?
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#57 2006-01-26 23:44:23
- Austin Stanley
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- Registered: 2002-03-18
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Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
I think the amount of Sulfuric Acid (or any kind of acid for that matter) is going to be VERY limited. Venus is to hydrogen poor, and far to hot for it to exist in any quantities. In fact, if there are any signifigant concentations of hydrogen they are tightly bound to some rocks inside the crust.
This is not to say that SO2 is realy nice to play around with either. But in all honesty, in comparision to the crushing heat and pressure of Venus, the chemical concurns are rather minor.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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#58 2006-01-27 00:55:45
Re: Venus Terraforamation - Can we colonize the death furnace?
Makes sense to me. I, also, suspect that H2SO4 will be present in trace quantities only.
I think it's totally awesome that we have a probe only two months away from Venus. In just a few months, we'll have lots and lots of data on Venus atmosphere!!
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