Terraforming Venus' Atmosphere

[Jadzia]

Removing CO2 with machinery?

Problem: Heat engines won't work on Venus because there is nowhere to dispose of the heat. Batteries won't be stable at such temperatures. Metals won't be stable in the corrosive atmosphere. It would be an engineering nightmare, made 1,000,000x harder by the fact that everything has to be safely delivered as rocket payloads and remote controlled.

I think it would be best to convert CO2 into oxygen using self-replicating flora. This would greatly reduce the greenhouse effect and acidity of the atmosphere. Thus temperature would fall.

Problem: Flora will not survive because of current temperatures. Nothing water based will survive because of the water would boil inside plant cells, bursting those cells open. Most organic compounds would decompose at these temperature, rendering the organic chemistry pertinent to known life impossible.

Reduce the temperature first. You could do this by creating a nuclear winter. Detonating many large warheads on ground level which will throw dust into the atmosphere which will partially block out the sunlight and allow the planet to cool. Some of those gases will hopefully condense into a sea, making the atmosphere much thinner and immediately that much less of a greenhouse effect.

Water vapour is the worst greenhouse gas. The problem with Venus is (iirc) that it once had an ocean, which has boiled away because things went out of control, and that ocean was then suspended in the atmosphere as water vapour. Imagine that much weight of water (an ocean's worth) being suspended in the atmosphere. It created an incredible gas pressure. That's the cause of the bulk of its greenhouse effect. I think this water vapour was absorbed into minerals reacting to produce acid gases (2.S + 8.H2O = 2.H2SO4 + 3.H2), and much of the liberated hydrogen was ejected from the atmosphere, and is now lost, meaning that the ocean can't be easily reclaimed.

So hopefully after that artificial winter, enough time will be available before the planet reverts back to its former state for introduced plant life to flourish and modify the atmospheric gases.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Just how corrosive is Venus' atmosphere and at what depths? any floating piece of machinery in the high atmosphere might be spared much of the corrosive effects and despite that we could use corrosion resistant materials to create a protective shell around them like a corrosive ablative armour.
What's all this talk of floating cities? people seem to think they're possible so what's the difference between that and floating CO2 guzzling machines?

As for getting them there, hopefully we'll have a space elevator to get into Earth orbit but if not we just rocket it up there. Once in space it is propelled on it's merry way with a large push and left to coast to Venus, once it reaches Venus onboard fuel positions the platform in orbit of Venus, the extractor is then deployed down into the Atmosphere whilst attached to a flexible pipeline composed of carbon nanotubes and a corrosion resistant material, once in position it deploys balloons to help keep it floating and it begins to suck in CO2 and uses some of the CO2 as propellent to keep itself positioned relative to the orbiting platform. Most of the CO2 is pumped up to the platform where it is released into space. The platform will be capable of continually positioning itself relevant to the extractor by also using the CO2 as a gas propellent.
Both the platform and extractor will each have their own bath tub sized mini nuclear reactors to power everything.

As time goes on and the CO2 gradually begins to be emptied from the atmosphere it may become more and more difficult to keep the extractors afloat. At this point the extractors are released from the platforms and allowed to float to the ground. It is at this point the atmosphere may be clean enough and the heat of the planet reduced enough that people can step foot on the planet in order to begin digging caverns or building a space elevator. The ground based extractors are then programmed to compress the CO2 into a liquid and either deposited under the surface or elevated into space.

 

[SG-17]

We build machines on the surface of Venus (powered by Mini nuclear reactors) that extract the CO2 from the Atmosphere and then compresses that CO2 into a Liquid form into huge tankers. There are then two options, the liquefied CO2 can either be shot into space and transported to Mars and dumped into the Martian atmosphere.

Well since Mars is a bit closer to the Habitable Zone than Venus is, this is the only part of your plan that I like.

However since Mars does not have magnetic shielding like the Earth does, something would need to be done to prevent the new atmosphere from being ripped off by solar storms. Unless we only colonize inside deep gorges and canyons we would need some kind a machinery to generate an magnetic shield around Mars, or something to reignite its core. (That or we could introduce a large body into the orbit of Mars, maybe the size of our Moon, to stabilize its orbit, and the tidal forces generated by the satellite would heat up the core again.)
Another probably more convenient way to increase the CO2 levels in Mars' atmosphere is to do it the same way we did it on Earth, burn exorbitant amounts of fossil fuels (which Mars may prove to have its own supply of, hopefully). There is also the CO2 ice caps that once we get the temperature up a bit they will melt releasing CO2 and water vapors, not to mention that there is enough water in the southern cap that it could cover the entire surface of Mars in nearly 11 meters of water.

Trying to terraform Venus would just be a waste of time, its too close to the Sun, and the major hiccup besides its rotational period is the fact that Venus is the way the Earth was several billion years ago, and maybe in a few billion years after the Sun has cooled a bit, Venus may develop by itself into an Earth like planet.

Its just more economical and practical to focus on Mars, we can easily adapt to its lesser gravity.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Your plan, while very clever, requires two things that we lack:

1. A means of inter-planetary space travel that is both faster and cheaper than what we currently are capable of...

I believe the OP is already researching and developing at least 2 technologies to address this. See previous posts in this section. Searching for "runabout" or "incredible velocity" will likely yield results.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Your plan, while very clever, requires two things that we lack:

1. A means of inter-planetary space travel that is both faster and cheaper than what we currently are capable of...

I believe the OP is already researching and developing at least 2 technologies to address this. See previous posts in this section. Searching for "runabout" or "incredible velocity" will likely yield results.

Never have I said anything about an "incredible velocity machine", at least not one I can remember or one that comes up in my thread search result for this forum. I did however design a runabout type craft (this being the original post for it) but I have since removed the image from my photobucket account and it is now lost forever.

EDIT: But i've designed another one.

It will be powered thus.

I also had an idea at one point to use a lump of radioactive substance to generate thrust. The Alpha or Beta radiation produced from the substance would be shot out the back of the craft by use of a mini nuclear reactor powered device and thus creating thrust. (Gamma radiation wouldn't deflect).

 

[Alpha_Geek]

http://trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=2012510&postcount=14

 

[All Seeing Eye]

http://trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=2012510&postcount=14

Holy cow! I forgot all about that idea! that idea was fricking awesome! I can't believe I forgot I came up with that gem.

Let's not forget this bad boy neither.

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

Terraforming would be a super challenge, but even if we do have the technology to do this personally I wouldn't bother and I don't think any government should either.
Why?
Because NASA, Euro and Russian probes have been scientifically mapping this planet. Scientists have come to the grim conclusion that Venus has the nasty habit of turn itself inside out every 900,000 thousand or million years or so.
Unlike Earth where you get events like Mt St Helens and all that power inside is released. Venus is different, its just one giant pressure cooker, it never gets to release that power and the entire planet builds up until it goes into meltdown.
So even if you do terraform Venus, maybe you've got a few thousand years before everything goes up in smoke once again.

 

[Jetfire]

Venus is a lost cause, Mars is not my ideal choice though, what about other bodies in our solar system??? Like moons surrounding Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune...given time we will be able to make use of the outer solar system.

JF

 

[yellowdingo]

A solution might be to discover the vibration frequency of the CO2 molecules and eliminate it that way.

J.

You mean like:
1. Use one of those lasers the Australians are using to Enrich Uranium - Fission that CO2 molecule into Tritium.
2. Use a Robot that comes with a Microwave chamber where the CO2 is Microwave depositied on a spinning rod to create huge balls of Diamond -releasing the Oxygen.
3. Use a Black hole in the Venusian Atmosphere that breaks down the molecule bonds at the Plasma Fission Boundary (a big fire storm out from the black hole). All that Oxygen forms Water with escaping Protons (Hydrogen).

 

[drychlick]

how big is the sun be on venus with out the clound coving up the sun? how hot it be on venus then? any 1 hear have any idea? thank for your time love drychlick