Venusian Shipyards?

[Henoch]

The Nitrogen would be useful for terraforming the moon, which has very little.

Along with, oh let's say, an atmosphere of any kind. I believe the moon doesn't have the gravitation mass to hold onto an atmosphere. (Then again, artificial gravity in Trek appears to easy to get and takes no power.) My thinking, the only realistic way to terraform the moon is to put the whole thing in a giant baggy and seal it shut.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Along with, oh let's say, an atmosphere of any kind. I believe the moon doesn't have the gravitation mass to hold onto an atmosphere. (Then again, artificial gravity in Trek appears to easy to get and takes no power.) My thinking, the only realistic way to terraform the moon is to put the whole thing in a giant baggy and seal it shut.

In My Head Canon:
Planetoids like our moon, have became terraformed into a Ecumenopolises full of mobile-capable Equilateral Hexagonal Domed Cities that are about the size of Island Frontier from Macross Frontier in terms of Land Area for living.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis
http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossf/macross25.htm
http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossf/macross25/compare-m25-m7-top.jpg

Each Dome can literally fly away and re-settle onto other similar Moon / Planetoids as needed since each one is effectively one large mobile Star/Planetary Base that uses standardized outter structures for common designs. Internal designs may vary as needed.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

So who says the dock would just be drifting in empty space? Obviously, you put it in orbit of Ceres or Vesta or some other large asteroid. Or you go out, stick thrusters on other small asteroids, and bring them to your shipyard where you can mine them at your convenience.

Yes, theoretically, you could use any dwarf planet as a shipyard. However, there would be no nearby colonies, so you're going to need a lot of the local resources to create the homes and infrastructure to lodge and feed your workers, plus entertainment, shopping, et cetera. Makes more sense to move a large asteroid into orbit around a colonized planet and build the facility in it so you can use labor from the planet's surface and orbital infrastructure. So, yeah, we're back to Mars again.

The thing is, lifting mass up out of a planetary gravity well is a lot more energy-intensive than just moving it around in interplanetary space. Robert Heinlein once said that if you can get into Earth orbit, you're already halfway to anywhere else in the Solar System, because moving that first hundred or so kilometers out into space is at least as hard as moving hundreds of millions of kilometers to some other planet.

Just use balloons to lift materials up to the correct altitude. Or in the case of Star Trek, transporters. Beam the materials straight out of the surface of Venus.

Orbital shipyards would appear to make sense. It's easier to get stuff to your ship, you don't have to worry about rats and cockroaches helping themselves on board as much (messy compartment? expose it to void)

If you have crates, you're going to have infestation sooner or later.

For the Venus idea, upper level winds would be a factor, averaging around 300 km/h (184 mph) in the tropics.

Wind speeds are relative to your frame of reference. If you're not trying to maintain a stationary position over the surface, variability in direction and velocity over the total surface of the shipyard are the only things that matter. You can let the winds carry you where they may, with only minor adjustments needed to ensure a stable "orbit" around the planet.

 

[Tenacity]

is there's no protection against solar radiation and cosmic rays. You'd have to shield your facility

Venus lacks a magnetic field, as does Mars. Mercury's field is less than one percent of Earth's. The gas giant all have powerful fields.

Ship yards in Earth orbit would be protected by Earth's field.

I believe the moon doesn't have the gravitation mass to hold onto an atmosphere

But if a atmosphere (once established) were to take thousands of years to "blow away" then terraforming the moon could be worth it. And assuming you had a technological civilization for thousands of years, you could periodically replenish the atmosphere.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, theoretically, you could use any dwarf planet as a shipyard. However, there would be no nearby colonies, so you're going to need a lot of the local resources to create the homes and infrastructure to lodge and feed your workers, plus entertainment, shopping, et cetera.

Who says there are no nearby colonies? If there are resources to be mined, then people will settle there. That's how humans work. Look how the gold rush led to a proliferation of mining towns and major cities in the American West. The asteroids have a humongous quantity of resources that are vastly more abundant and vastly easier to reach than the minerals buried inside a planet's crust. And not just mineral resources, but plenty of ice and organic compounds as well. So of course there will be colonies there.

Makes more sense to move a large asteroid into orbit around a colonized planet and build the facility in it so you can use labor from the planet's surface and orbital infrastructure. So, yeah, we're back to Mars again.

If you assume human development would not be critically impaired by Mars's 38% gravity, then you can assume humans could also survive the even lower gravity of Ceres or Vesta. Or you could just do what I did in Only Superhuman and have the Belt inhabitants build rotating megastructures. Of course, in the Trek universe, you have artificial gravity, so people could easily settle on just about any asteroid.

Just use balloons to lift materials up to the correct altitude. Or in the case of Star Trek, transporters. Beam the materials straight out of the surface of Venus.

The problem is that you've decided what you want the right answer to be and are arbitrarily rejecting anything that doesn't fit it. Maybe those could work, yeah, but there's no reason why bringing material from the asteroids wouldn't work, because it is counterintuitively easy to move stuff around the Solar system once you get out of the pesky gravity wells of planets. Planets have more drawbacks than advantages for a spacefaring civilization.

 

[valkyrie013]

Put a structure as big as Starbase 1 as in ST3 in the asteriod belt, there'd be no problem of a "Colony" or place to hang out and chill.
You could have a "Central" area that contains the "Colony" in a spacestation, either built or holowed out asteroid. and you have ships that go around the belt and grab the smaller (Realitivly) asteroids and comets and guide them to a central proceesssing area. For the bigger ones, the "Space Station" could be mobile where they orbit a bigger one and mine it to exhaustion, then move to another bigger one.
Even in the 24th Centery with replicators, you still need "Replicator Mass" ( can't create something from nothing) to replicate ships/parts ect.

Now the moon, Always had an idea that further in the future, that you could take a small planitoid or moon, and bury a gravity generator near the center, and "Increase" the gravity to 1 g for the whole moon, then add an atmospehere, and a protective shield for radiation, etc. then you could terraform the moons serface. Even if the generator "Breaks" its not going to be catestophic for days. This may be a possibility with something smaller like Ceris or Cheron.

As seen in Space Battleship Yamato, you could orbit a "Sun" around a small planet thats to far away from its host star to be viable.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

Venus lacks a magnetic field, as does Mars. Mercury's field is less than one percent of Earth's. The gas giant all have powerful fields.

My understanding is that solar radiation interacts with the upper atmosphere of Venus to induce a magnetic field. So while it wouldn't protect structures in orbit, it would protect floating colonies and other similar structures.

But if a atmosphere (once established) were to take thousands of years to "blow away" then terraforming the moon could be worth it. And assuming you had a technological civilization for thousands of years, you could periodically replenish the atmosphere.

To me, it makes more sense to use pressurized domes or pressurize large lava tubes. Besides, I'm thinking most of the gas that escapes would end up on the Earth, so you'd have to consider how that would change the composition of the Earth's atmosphere.

Who says there are no nearby colonies? If there are resources to be mined, then people will settle there.

I would presume that would be part of the SAME colony. There are no other celestial bodies nearby that could support a significant colony. But I suppose you're right about Ceres being big enough for a significantly sized colony, and if you have a colony already there, it certainly makes sense to have a shipyard.

Look how the gold rush led to a proliferation of mining towns and major cities in the American West.

The gold rush didn't have automated mining systems. In fact, I'd be surprised if any of the mining was done directly by human beings. So the question would be whether it would be more cost effective to either build factories and processing facilities on Ceres, or ship out the raw ore to somewhere else.

However, you still need the colony first before you have a shipyard. Otherwise, nobody's going to work at a shipyard in the middle of nowhere like that unless it's black ops and they're either getting paid really well or they're criminals who would otherwise have been executed or served long sentences. (Which actually sounds like a great premise for a novel.)

The problem is that you've decided what you want the right answer to be and are arbitrarily rejecting anything that doesn't fit it.

I don't think that's the case. In fact, I've given explanations of how other places might be just as practical or better. For instance, I've pointed out that Uranus has abundant hydrogen reserves for fusion. In fact, I think I've implied that Earth or Mars are slightly better locations for shipyards.

I'm not so hot on gas giants because of intense radiation belts and inherent issues such as a much higher escape velocity than Earth. Also, they're outside of the Goldilocks Zone, so they get far less solar radiation.

So far, the biggest arguments I've seen against Venus are the acidity of the atmosphere and the difficulty in mining resources, both of which I feel are technical problems that could be solved, especially if the planet already has established colonies. Also, Venus has a slightly lower escape velocity in addition to it's mildly lower gravity, so escaping from atmosphere wouldn't be nearly as hard as launching for the Earth's surface.

Actually, Venus might be a good place to hide a shipyard...

 

[Christopher]

I would presume that would be part of the SAME colony. There are no other celestial bodies nearby that could support a significant colony.

You don't need "celestial bodies" except as sources of raw material for building artificial habitats. See:

Colonies in Space by T.A. Heppenheimer: https://space.nss.org/colonies-in-space-by-t-a-heppenheimer/ -- Complete online book about space habitats.

The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O’Neill: Seminal book on space habitat designs.

Mobile Suit Gundam: High Frontier: https://www.dyarstraights.com/gundam-test/ -- Overview of the High Frontier-inspired habitats featured in the Gundam anime franchise. A good summary of the science with plenty of illustrations.

Reinventing Space Oases: http://strabo.moonsociety.org/mmm/whitepapers/reinv_so.htm -- Essay on alternative space habitat designs.

I don't think that's the case. In fact, I've given explanations of how other places might be just as practical or better. For instance, I've pointed out that Uranus has abundant hydrogen reserves for fusion. In fact, I think I've implied that Earth or Mars are slightly better locations for shipyards.

But we were talking specifically about how to get resources to a colony in Venus's atmosphere, and you dismissed the possibility of importing material from the asteroids because you incorrectly assumed that the greater distance made it more impractical.

So far, the biggest arguments I've seen against Venus are the acidity of the atmosphere and the difficulty in mining resources, both of which I feel are technical problems that could be solved, especially if the planet already has established colonies.

That's just it. I'm not arguing against Venus. I'm arguing that if you want to get resources for a Venus colony, it's foolish to dismiss the asteroids as a source for them. Moving material around in the Solar system, even across interplanetary distances, is not difficult compared to dragging it out of a planet's gravity well in the first place. Once there's an established space mining infrastructure, then colonies in any given place will draw resources from all over the system. A colony on Venus could rely on minerals from Vesta and ice and organics from Ceres. Comets from the outer Main Belt could be redirected to Venus orbit as sources of water and organics to support a colony there. In space, you can just coast across great distances, so there isn't a linear correlation of distance to effort like there is on Earth's surface. Sometimes it's going to be easier to ship a resource in from several AU away than it's going to be to drag it out of a gravity well just a few dozen or hundred kilometers straight up.

Also, Venus has a slightly lower escape velocity in addition to it's mildly lower gravity, so escaping from atmosphere wouldn't be nearly as hard as launching for the Earth's surface.

We're talking about a difference of 9 percent, not that significant. They're both a hell of a lot harder than shipping material in from the Asteroid Belt, because in that case you're actually moving downward in the Sun's gravity well. We're conditioned to think of the Solar system as "flat" like a phonograph spinning on a turntable, but you can't really understand interplanetary travel until you realize that the Sun is downhill from everywhere else. You have to consider the system as if it were vertical with the Sun at the bottom. The Asteroid Belt is above Venus and Earth, therefore moving stuff from the Belt inward is comparatively easy. You just have to decelerate it out of its orbit so it falls into a lower one.

 

[BK613]

There is also the "local' asteroid sources:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/NEO_by_size.png

 

[Arpy]

What is Venus like in the Star Trek universe? It’s closest in size to Earth, right? Maybe that’s the human memberworld’s big terraforming project.

 

[Christopher]

What is Venus like in the Star Trek universe? It’s closest in size to Earth, right? Maybe that’s the human memberworld’s big terraforming project.

In the novel continuity, yes.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ishtar_Rising,_Book_1
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ishtar_Rising,_Book_2

 

[Mysterion]

Colonies in Space by T.A. Heppenheimer: https://space.nss.org/colonies-in-space-by-t-a-heppenheimer/ -- Complete online book about space habitats.

The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O’Neill: Seminal book on space habitat designs.

I would also recommend both of these books, especially O'Neill's. Back at the time these were published I was totally fascinated by the concepts presented. Part of me still hopes L-5 colonies will still be pursued at some time.

I would also point you to the book Space Colonies edited by Stewart Brand which presents some very interesting discussion and debate over O'Neill's proposals. Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Space-Coloni...=space+colonies&qid=1561287563&s=books&sr=1-5

Side note - it has always seemed to me that the stuff we see in Earth orbit in Trek (TMP's orbital shipyard, ST3's Spacedock) might have been better placed at L-5 or one of the other Lagrange points.

 

[Henoch]

What is Venus like in the Star Trek universe? It’s closest in size to Earth, right? Maybe that’s the human memberworld’s big terraforming project.

Can you terraform a planet outside the Goldilocks Zone? Additionally, Venus rotates very slowly at 243 days per rotation (and the wrong direction) making for very long nights and days. Because of the slow rotation, its magnetic field is also very small. So, too close to the Sun for liquid water, too slow rotation baking the surface, and no protection from the radioactive solar winds/flares. This may need to be held off until the 25th Century.

 

[Christopher]

Can you terraform a planet outside the Goldilocks Zone?

The zone isn't an absolute, just an estimate of where planets in a habitable range are likely to be found. There's always the chance of exceptions, for instance a tidally heated Jovian moon like Europa or Enceladus.

Besides, with terraforming, you can artificially compensate for things that work against habitability -- for instance, suspend a reflective particle cloud in Venus's atmosphere to keep the surface from getting too much sunlight, or position an enormous sunshade at the L1 point between Venus and Sol. In any case, once you make a non-CHZ planet habitable, it'll probably be a few million years or so before it reverts to uninhabitability, which is long enough for a typical civilization.

Additionally, Venus rotates very slowly at 243 days per rotation (and the wrong direction)

Not "wrong," just alternative. It has no bearing on habitability.

making for very long nights and days.

Another benefit of a sunshade. It could turn on and off to simulate a diurnal cycle.

The magnetic field is a bigger issue, though. Perhaps engines could be mounted on the equator to gradually accelerate the planet's rotation, though it would probably take millennia.

 

[Henoch]

Another benefit of a sunshade. It could turn on and off to simulate a diurnal cycle.

I was thinking of terraforming such that the planet will support human life on its own. But yes, large sunshades and sun reflectors in space would be within the technical capabilities of both the TOS 23rd Century and the TNG 24th Century. This solves the liquid water and long day/night cycle. Maybe they could also install a large, solar-powered, space-based array of force field shielding to protect against the solar wind/flares. Planetary-size force fields are not uncommon in both TOS and TNG era. All structures could have artificial gravity installed at 1G with the outdoor areas at less gravity (who lives 100% outside, anyway; I assume Venus wouldn't have a homeless problem.)

 

[Arpy]

I like the idea of increasing its rotation speed. It could be done early, when the planet wasn’t inhabited, and in a shorter amount of time. I prefer that to artificial gravity generators because I imagine they’re more upkeep. The planet you can fix its rotation and forget about it. If some future Breen “EMP” hits the generators, a planet-wide gravity problem is a bigger issue.

 

[Christopher]

I like the idea of increasing its rotation speed. It could be done early, when the planet wasn’t inhabited, and in a shorter amount of time. I prefer that to artificial gravity generators because I imagine they’re more upkeep.

Huh? The one has nothing to do with the other, so it's not a choice between them. A planet's surface gravity is a function of its mass and its radius, so matter how fast Venus rotates (unless it's insanely fast enough to create a significant centrifugal force, in which case it would fly apart), its gravity will always be 91% of Earth's -- which is close enough that humans could probably live just fine there without any artificial gravity needed. Indeed, the fact that it's the only other solid Solar system body anywhere near Earth's gravity is its primary appeal as a terraforming target. It might be the only other Solar planet we could live on without substantial genetic engineering or the like.

Increasing the rotation rate would be something you'd do to give the planet a day/night cycle closer to Earth's. It might not give the planet a magnetic field, though, since its lack of mantle convection is believed to be due to its thick crust and lack of plate tectonics, so just spinning it up might not be enough.

 

[Arpy]

^ yikes, brain fart this Sunday morning. Of course, you’re right. I was probably thinking of ring habitats.

I wonder if altering the rotation would also help the Venusian ecosystem. Well, make it more Terran-friendly anyway.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

its gravity will always be 91% of Earth's -- which is close enough that humans could probably live just fine there without any artificial gravity needed.

Given UFP/StarFleet's artificial gravity technology, generating an extra 9% artificial gravity should be easy enough in a terraformed Venus. If we can figure out / fix the hostile atmosphere of Venus and prevent that hostile atmosphere from coming back, then adding 9% extra gravity should be trivial for those who setup the artificial settlements.

 

[Christopher]

Given UFP/StarFleet's artificial gravity technology, generating an extra 9% artificial gravity should be easy enough in a terraformed Venus. If we can figure out / fix the hostile atmosphere of Venus and prevent that hostile atmosphere from coming back, then adding 9% extra gravity should be trivial for those who setup the artificial settlements.

It's not about whether it's possible, it's about why you'd even bother. I mean, think about it. There are hundreds of member planets in the Federation -- they can't all have exactly 9.8 m/s^2 surface gravity. There must be plenty that are in the 0.9-1.1 g range, and humans live on them just fine. It's close enough that it doesn't need to be "fixed," because there's nothing wrong with it.

Heck, if anything, a moderately reduced gravity like Venus's might even be beneficial for human health, because it would reduce strain on the heart and skeleton and joints. People might actually be better off in 91% gravity than 100%.