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Terraforming Venus
#5
(04-23-2015, 06:57 PM)Rynn Wrote: Man that would be a huge challenge even for OA tech (in terms of time at least). I'm not even sure how it would be done; conversion drives all over the surface anchored deep into the crust?

Venus has 4.8 × 10^20 kg of atmosphere to shed. Sequestering some CO2 as limestone and coal or hydrocarbons keeps carbon available for the ecosystem's carbon cycle, but there's still plenty of CO2 and nitrogen to shed.

Basically, you're asking for about 400m/s imparted to 4.87x10^24 kilograms but not evenly. If my understanding of rotational inertia isn't too completely decrepit (it probably is), then that's equivalent to accelerating the full mass to 160m/s.

With 4.8x10^20kg of reaction mass available you could get 173m/s at a specific impulse of 180,000. That's well within conversion drive capabilities and leaves plenty of room to compensate for losses, like trying to blast the exhaust through the atmosphere without using vacuum nozzles or something similar.

Quote:Crash thousands of relativistic kinetic rounds into it or directed boost bombs?

To get Earth-sized oceans, you need to import about 1.4 × 10^21 kilograms of water. Falling at Venus's escape velocity of 10.5km/s (a minimum), and assuming perfect conservation of momentum, and assuming perfect dedication of that momentum to spin, you'd get...3m/s. Hmm.

Alright, ocean delivery won't help much. Smile

Quote: Whatever way I expect it would take a long time. If you can do that I doubt you'd be particularly worried about the earthquakes, you could use megascape cooling loops to bleed off heat from the crust and solidify it.

I was thinking of a von Neumann project to drill wells / heat pipes several kilometers deep across the entire planet to a density of several wells per square kilometer. Compared to the resculpting of continents done to New Earth in the Terran Federation, that shouldn't be too hard. And based on geothermal power plant depletion rates that should cool the upper crust within a century.

The planet would be ideal for geothermal power after terraforming, though.

Quote:When it comes to planets like Venus it would be easier to colonise with bubblehabs than terraform.

I'm familiar with Landis Habs but I wanted to go old school on this. The end users would be a low technology (not lo tek) civilization.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
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"Everbody's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oh, suddenly you've gone too far." -- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
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Messages In This Thread
Terraforming Venus - by Cray - 04-23-2015, 09:43 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Rynn - 04-23-2015, 06:57 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Cray - 04-23-2015, 10:02 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Drashner1 - 04-24-2015, 01:25 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Rynn - 04-24-2015, 05:16 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Cray - 04-24-2015, 09:51 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by stevebowers - 04-23-2015, 09:04 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Rynn - 04-23-2015, 09:17 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by radtech497 - 04-24-2015, 05:07 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Drashner1 - 04-24-2015, 11:28 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by stevebowers - 04-24-2015, 07:42 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Rynn - 04-24-2015, 07:57 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by stevebowers - 04-24-2015, 08:35 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Rynn - 04-24-2015, 08:51 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by stevebowers - 04-25-2015, 12:33 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Cray - 04-25-2015, 01:03 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by Dalex - 04-25-2015, 06:17 PM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by ai_vin - 04-26-2015, 12:56 AM
RE: Terraforming Venus - by stevebowers - 04-25-2015, 07:37 PM

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