Crap!
This is confusing - I just relaized that there are
two different threads on the *same* topic!!!
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=76728&page=3
The other thread is
3 months old, you've just resurrected it. This thread is the one that is the latest and which was made only last week.
I linked to the other one in the first page of this thread as a reference only to my idea for terraforming.
*doh* My mistake...sorry...my bad...it was in one of my browser tabs - I must have followed your link then forgot I did that somehow...
I tell ya man, that meth's a hell of a drug.
Anyway, I quess I'll just repost my comments here:
I wonder if Venus is terraformed by TNG's time? ENT showed us the begining of a Mars terriforming effort that with Trek's technology could be finsihed by TOS' time, certainly by TNG's - and "First Contact" hinted at the Moon possibly being terriformed (though we never saw evidence for it onscreen.) And they terriform other planets around other stars quite regularily, so certainly they have the technology in Trek's time.
(Ha! We just need to drop a Genesis Device on the planet!)
Anyway, to recap and expand on some points already raised here:
*The wormhole idea was mine first damn it! Open wormhole with one mouth on Mars and the other on Venus and the pressure difference on each planet would do the rest of the work - we'd kill two terriforming birds with one stone! (Mars would be transformed first by this process however - a *lot* sooner than Venus!)
But you don't even need black holes or wormholes! I have read a few science fiction short stories that deal with methods to terraform Venus with less far out - but still very advanced and expensive - technologies.
* No need for giant rocket engines - the spin and orbit Venus could be changed - slowly, over 100's of years - by altering the orbits many asterioids (we can do this now with solar sails) to swing by the planet in a carefully planned sequence to slowly drag it away from the Sun and/or speed up it's rotation. (Such a method has been suggested could be used to slowly by surely move the Earth away from the Sun in the future when it (the Sun) starts to expand.)
* Blast some of the excess atmosphere off with massive comet impacts - that would also supply the world with extra water.
* Deploy a giant space-based solar shield on one side to cut down the solar heating on the planet - then later add space-based to warm the "dark" side.
* Drop packages of gengineered alge that would eat carbon dioxide and release oxygen in the upper atmosphere as it slowly drops, binding the carbon up and raining it out on the surface.
* Venus' present atmosphere is so thick dirgibles would be an *ideal* platform for floating carbon sequestration factories - and habitats.
And I think it's very short-sighted to say that terriforming Venus will for sure "never ever happen."
Like it's been pointed out here already we have no idea what kind of technological advancements will be made in 100, or 1000 or 10,000 years! And even if it's still a very long-term project - in the future our post-human descendents could live much, much longer, and so think and plan on *much* longer timescales than we do now! Or one single generation could build self-replicating machines programed to do the task without human or post-human help!
(We just have to be careful that one day those machines don't mutate and decide to assimilate us!)
