/sci/ - Science & Math

So the individual modules are highly customizable. Habitats, solar platforms, atmospheric processors, science labs, landing platforms for airships/probes/unmanned drones, storage, medical quarters, communications modules, recreation, manufacturing, etc. All of these can be delivered to Venus and easily connected to the existing infrastructure web, similar to the ISS protocol. Each one would have its own buoyancy, and can receive or transmit power and other resources. Habitats in particular could have two decks: A windowed upper deck and a shielded lower deck with some small portholes. The upper deck can be used for whatever you want, while the lower deck houses the essentials like supplies, batteries, life support, living quarters, etc.

Each module has a ballast beam that keeps the bottom of the module pointed down. The ballast beam could hold an atmospheric pump or whatever you wanted. Each module could contain 4 docking tubes in case you want to connect that particular module in any direction. The rest of the unneeded docking tubes remain sealed.

Each module's buoyancy is controlled by compartmentalized balloons that can be easily serviced from the deck of the module (not having to climb a hundred meters of cable, 90km above the surface to service the balloon). Like I said, no rules. Any type of module can be created as long as it can be delivered to Venus and hooked up properly to the base, and support itself.

This is an idea of a small base. Imagine all the modules are connected via a walk-through docking tube.

That being said, I'm not an aerospace engineer, nor am I a star Sketchup artist. But I have a huge passion for this stuff and feel that the basis of my ideas are worthwhile, even if I don't truly understand all the engineering behind it. But this is the basic idea.

Is there any reason this idea could not work? Why is there no Venus One project? How would someone even get such a thing started?

>>7142782
What purpose would base that can only produce few ordinary gases have? It could never become even a little self-sufficient.

Study Engineering.

>>7142796

Explain what I'm doing wrong then, please.

>>7142794

I don't know, honestly the same purpose any other base on any planet would have right now: bragging rights and science. We really have very little reason to go to any other non-earthlike body at the moment. I just feel Venus might be the easiest to survive on, despite the circumstances.

>>7142782
>Since the atmospheric gases are so similar
>H2SO4

Yeah, I don't think a significant quantity of fucking atmospheric sulfuric acid is very conducive to human habitation.

>>7142808

wow, chill. I didn't say we would be using that.

>>7142816
It's still there.
sulfuric acid fucks up everything

>>7142822

This is true, and much more helpful.

So consider a material that could withstand or even become non-reactive to H2SO4. A ceramic perhaps, I don't know.

Then what else would hinder such a base?

>>7142805
If you choose good planet/moon, then you will have enough raw material to build potentially self-sufficient base, that can produce fuel for rockets or possibly even build/print them. It could also be used as waypoint for longer manned missions, so crew could relax.
Also, if its self-sufficient then it can become permanent colony.

>>7142794
>What purpose would base that can only produce few ordinary gases have? It could never become even a little self-sufficient.
If you have oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulfur, you have a lot to work with.

You can make fuel, oxidizer, solar collectors, structural materials, breathable lifting gas, water, electrical and electronic components, and batteries.

So you can expand your colony, and you can build craft that drop to the surface to gather materials (which gives you just about anything else you want), and you can build spacecraft.

Get one good Cloud City going, and it can expand over time to populate Venus as densely as Earth.

>>7142827

The fact it could fall out of the sky at any time due turbulence / power failure / sabotage?

Between that and the "acid atmosphere" thing, I think this scheme is a non-starter. Good sci-fi, tho.

>>7142831
>>7142841

This is true. So the biggest problems for Venus base is lack of solid raw materials.

Though the gas could be processed into breathable atmosphere and water, it doesn't help that there is nothing else to process.

Perhaps materials from the moon can be shipped.

>>7142782

here's the flaw in your idea: where do you get the materials to build your base? from off world? very economical. maybe as a vacation resort, but otherwise your idea is shit.

>>7142842

Actually it has very, very low possibility to "fall out of the sky." The Venera Probe that landed on Venus (really cool, look it up, pics and all) had to be engineered to hit the surface... otherwise it would stop dead in the atmosphere and float. Empty fuel tanks that enter Venuses atmosphere would float...

So realistically, as long as there is Earth atmosphere in the base, the base has a high chance of remaining high above the wind corridors.

I suppose a high-flowing turbulence could occur. But remember that you're 30 miles above the surface. In a power outage, that wouldn't mean buoyancy is compromised.

Just like in any space adventure, a power outage is a serious problem on many fronts. but on Venus you wouldn't suddenly plummet to the surface.

>>7142844
It's not shit, I'm not the first to envision such a concept. Secondly, EVERY space base is begun off-world. So your "very economical" comment doesn't really hold water. Right now, the only place where we could realistically extract and refine ore is on the moon. Until then, anything we send in space is not at all economical.

>>7142782
So basically you're suggesting we build a real life Korin Tower from Dragon Ball

>>7142827
There are plenty of plastics that give no fucks for H2SO4.

>>7142854

Hell, I could have saved an hour in Sketchup and just used that.

>>7142856
There ya go, plastics make it possible. And I imagine any strong enough plastic could be much lighter than ceramic or whatever other spaceborne material.

>>7142850
Why the fuck would you go to Venus in the first place?
Like literally explain the point of making a venus base.

>>7142862

As it's been stated, same reason you'd go to any other planet. Balls and science.

>>7142843
Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen give you a lot of options for solid materials.

Carbon alone gives you graphite, diamond, carbon fiber, carbon-carbon (carbon fiber reinforcing a graphite matrix), nanotubes, graphene, etc.

Adding the other elements gives you a lot of different polymers.

>>7142870

Hmm. So advancement in carbon nanotube technology would work wonders aboard a Venus colony eh?

There you go... Reasons to go to venus.

Incidentally: no reason not to use hydrogen as a lifting gas on Venus. There isn't enough free oxygen in the atmosphere for flammability to be a concern.

Venus is by far the easiest extraterrestrial target to "land on". You just aerobrake and float in a dense atmosphere. No rocketry or tricky aerodynamics involved, and unlike the gas giants, the atmosphere isn't mostly hydrogen, requiring not just a hydrogen balloon, but a hot hydrogen balloon.

It's one of the more difficult ones to come back from, though. Much like taking off from Earth, without the industrial base.

>>7142882

Exactly, and this would be the issue. Much like the "Mars One" project's not planning for a return vehicle, I fear Venus would be the same. Perhaps small unmanned (for materials transport) or manned (for emergency escape use) pods could make it out. But any major launches may be unfeasible, unless another method was found. Perhaps using balloons to lift rockets even higher out of the atmosphere. I don't know.

>>7142885
What you could do is a nuclear thermal rocket that just runs on carbon dioxide.

Specific impulse and thrust-to-weight would both be poor, so you'd probably need about four stages to get to orbit. But once you got it going, you could ferry up to orbit pretty much as many times as you like with minimal effort.

I'm picturing a cluster system, using parallel staging of identical modules. You'd toss them at Venus empty, so it wouldn't cost too much. You could also manufacture them on Venus from native materials, if you just sent the fuel and some fittings. Carbon fiber composite tanks, graphite moderator, carbon-carbon nozzles and vanes -- most of the mass could be made from carbon generated from atmospheric CO2.

Venus is a good place for nuclear reactor power sources, since the thick atmosphere makes sinking heat easy, and hot air balloons can't run out of lifting gas. And who really cares about nuclear spills on Venus?

You could send an initial charge of HEU, and then just thorium. That should be a low-launch-risk, low-controversy nuclear payload.

>>7142935

And in theory, you could engineer your trade route so that the engine stages are used over and over. Perhaps the stages fall back into venus, and are collected by either autonomous airship drones or manned crafts that collect the stages and bring them back to the base. Anything in Earth orbit can be docked with an Earth station, then filled up and reused on the way back to Venus, which is dropped into the atmosphere and collected by aforementioned airships. So lots of stages and whatnot, but theoretically no waste except fuel.

>>7142862
Helium would be nice

Also, any habitable region we can get will be nice to have.... a whole new world for humans to explore and inhabit

>>7142958

Don't see the problem with this. Why limit our intelligence to terrestrial planets? In the case of our solar system, terrestrial planets which are far more hostile?

>>7142943
Well, since you'd have to send the stages to Venus in the first place (assuming you're not producing them locally), they have to be able to survive atmospheric entry and float in the atmosphere, and it would help if they can propel themselves around to link up and go to the refilling base / launch site.

The payload doesn't have to be huge. If you want to return a human to Earth, you don't have to drop the interplanetary transit vehicle out of orbit. So you really only need to take about 200 kg of flesh and minimal life support and maneuvering equipment up from Venus into orbit and back into the transit vehicle.

I wonder also about a nitrous-oxide/carbon hybrid rocket. That should be relatively easy to produce from a CO2/N2 atmosphere, if you take a little of some binder for the carbon.

>>7143003

Alright, who wants to start a Venus One project.

Really nice thread op, with some interesting replies.

>>7143096

Thanks. Thought it started badly with all the naysayers.

Though I'm not an engineer nor an astronaut, I do my research.

>>7143122
> I'm not an engineer
we can tell
> I do my research.
not enough

Wouldn't it be cheaper to colonize Mars? (oblivious to topic)

>>7143124

Gonna explain or be the worst armchair engineer in the thread?

>>7143136
Launch windows to Venus are more frequent than ones to Mars (19 month intervals, rather than 26 month ones). Travel times are shorter (2.5-5 months vs. 4-6 months). Earthlike gravity and air pressure are available, so you don't need pressure suits or pressure vessels. There is no true "landing", you just aerobrake and then float, which doesn't require any precision timing. Airships, winged aircraft, and helicopters all work very well. CO2 and N2 are available in abundance (on Mars, while there is an atmosphere, it's a struggle to compress it from the near-vacuum atmosphere). H2SO4 can be harvested from clouds to provide hydrogen to make water and plastics. Astronauts are well protected from space radiation by Venus's thick atmosphere.

There are many ways in which Venus is easier than Mars.

>>7143136

It would be cheaper still to colonize the Moon and LEO. One of the main draws I find for Venus is it's Earth-like gravity. We've done plenty of studying of the effects of micro-gravity on board the ISS, but our understanding of partial gravity is still severely lacking. Venus colonisation removes that risk.

also, on escaping the gravity well of Venus: any attempt to seriously colonise the planet would have to start with a megastructure for getting onto and out of the atmosphere. A convention space elevator would be impossible with the 4 day period of a floating city, but something like an orbital ring could work.

What if we built many small space habitats in Earth orbit, without landing anywhere? Gravity could be generated by momentum and there would be no other requirement for basic life support. Of course, the habitats would need resources, but I guess it's more feasible to send resources to the orbit than to send resources to Venus (or Mars). Then again, I know almost nothing on space colonization...

>>7143175
Is it really that hard to figure out?
Building floating fortresses is really hard.
Just making some sci-fi drawings isn't enough.

This actually seems pretty feasible. But first we need to do some pretty heavy research into carbon nanotubes or some some sort of super strong polymer that can be made from resources you can get on venus.
Also food. You need a lot of space to grow crops, and more research needs to be done on self-contained habitats. Also no livestock, but whatever everyone can just eat tofu.
Also metal. Yeah we can get away with carbon based building materials, but copper to make wires would be nice to have, and gold too if you want to build computer parts. It's conceivable that you could mine for these metals, but you would need a hella resilient mining robot or something to deal with Venus's atmosphere.

>>7143177
>There are many ways in which Venus is easier than Mars.
sure, if you ignore the fact that it's just a giant bubble of gas and uncolonizeable for any foreseeable future then yea it's easier.

Guys, why can't we just build a rotating habitat in Earth orbit that generates its own gravity and receives supplies infinitely easier than a Venus or Mars colony?

>>7143177
You don't need pressure suits, but you still need protective clothing from the H2SO4 clouds and a breathing apparatus. Still better than hauling around a huge spacesuit though.

>>7143177
>Earthlike gravity and air pressure are available
atmospheric pressure is 92 times earth's...
>There is no true "landing", you just aerobrake and then float
it's a terrestrial planet...

>>7143206
>Building floating fortresses is really hard.
The atmosphere of Venus is very dense, so it's much easier than on Earth.

Also: voluminous structures are well-suited for atmospheric entry. You could build it on Earth, inflate it in orbit, launch it to Venus (with plenty of living space for the astronauts), and just have it enter the atmosphere in ready-to-float condition. The more surface area, the less heating per unit area. With enough area, some really ordinary materials can take the heat, especially when they're balloons with with gas convection carrying the heat away from the surface.

Anyway, they're hardly "fortresses". There's nothing to defend against on Venus. You can float at an altitude with Earthlike atmospheric pressure, with plenty of atmosphere above you to protect against space radiation and meteors.

You might as well have said "Building balloons is really hard."

>>7143206

Only if you sit there and say "It's too hard for me to even think about," like you're doing.

If you want to help, help, don't just sit there and go "DERR WONT WERK CUZ RTARDID." Give me REAL issues with this, not just your inability to understand a thought. You may keep eating your mcdonalds and working at walmart while other people try to develop conversation and dialogue and actually interface on scientific topics.

Sheesh almighty, I didn't think /b/ had seeped so far into /sci/'s corner.

>>7143223

>didn't read thread

>>7143223
Nobody's talking about landing a habitat on the surface of Venus. It's incredibly easy to float in the dense atmosphere.

You can choose the air pressure you want by choosing your altitude.

>>7143215

How about a module with a long ass bucket penis that winches down to the surface and scrapes up soil (lava? rock? don't even know what's down there) and carries it back up... The Venera probe melted in two hours on the surface, so theoretically something could AT LEAST last one. There could be a module that processes the soil for stuff and figures out if there's harvestable minerals there.

Of course, that would be a 90km long drill scoop thing.

For what purpose?

>>7143235

>read thread

tl;dr:

mining useful stuff from the atmosphere such as C, O2, CO, CO2, N, H2SO4,etc, turning them into shit like fuel, breathable and lifting atmosphere, carbon nanotubes, grapheme, graphite, carbon fiber, also "balls, science, cool factor and into space"

>>7143235
Living space. Distance from troubles on Earth. Lack of environmental concerns limiting industry. Just because it's cool.

>>7143234
It's a long way down, and the deeper you go, the closer it becomes to swimming, so hanging something down by a cable is probably a poorer idea than sending a detached vehicle down, like a quadcopter that scoops up rocks and flies back up.

You'd want it all made of stuff like carbon-carbon and diamond, that can stand the heat and corrosiveness.

I'm sure it can be made reliable. It might take some persistent experimentation.

>>7142850
>otherwise it would stop dead in the atmosphere and float. Empty fuel tanks that enter Venuses atmosphere would float.
they wouldn't stop where the air pressure is equal to earth's. they'd stop much further down, where the winds would fuck you.

>>7143235
every time someone asks that question

>What is the purpose of knowing how to read? I have everything I need here with my ox and plough

>What is the purpose of developing your theory on radio waves? It's just a fun magic trick, nothing useful

>Why would you build an adding machine? All the math we could ever want to do can be done with pen and paper

>What is the purpose of sending satellites into space?
>What is the purpose of going to the moon?

Fuck you bitch because I want to that's the purpose

>>7143276

Because most people don't realize that MOST of the amazing technologies in the world were developed by accident, and somebody decided "Holy shit, I can make this INCREDIBLE thing with that!"

>GPS
>Synthesizers
>Cell phones
>Microwaves
>Fire

>>7143272

Hmm, I'm thinking something Venera shaped (Basically a giant dildo) with a jaw or scoop in it that grab up some soil, then rotors carry it back up?

>>7143275

True, there would have to be some kind of braking, balloon or otherwise.

But why would you want to do anything like this anyway?

So you can live in a virtual prison?

Okay great is there was some scientific purpose, but apart from gathering data what the fuck else are you going to do?

>>7143337
see >>7143276

innovation comes from changes in perspective
you're not going to discover anything unless you go somewhere new

>>7143337
>So you can live in a virtual prison?

>flying all day
>every day
>virtual prison

Imagine how awesome it would be when you got some population going.

Here's another problem with venus:
Sure the thick atmosphere would provide some shielding from solar radiation, but remember, this base is so high up in the atmosphere that it's regular old 1 bar pressure. Also, Venus has no magnetosphere, which is what deflects most of the solar radiation on the earth. Furthermore, Venus is way closer to the sun.

How would we deal with this? I don't think lead bulkheads would be feasible. Maybe some sort of localized magnetic field? Not enough to mess with electronics, but maybe enough to turn the needle on a compass

>>7143337
>Read the damn thread

You call being on Earth NOT prison? Sure some people have great lives, but others don't and would love to live on another planet for a change.

"We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard." -Kennedy. He's right, we do these things because we want to discover our limits.

>>7143365
See, this is how to be helpful. This is how to contribute.

Shit, I don't know about that. Led would not be feasible indeed. Magnetics could disrupt stuff, and it would I'm sure be a constant power drain. Perhaps storing water and waste in the walls as they are planning on doing for Mars missions, but even so I don't think it would be enough to shield from radiation.

This is the tough problem I think

>>7143365
>this base is so high up in the atmosphere that it's regular old 1 bar pressure
That's plenty. Besides, the density is much higher on Venus due to it mostly being CO2. That's why standard breathable air is a lifting gas there.

>magnetosphere, which is what deflects most of the solar radiation on the earth
Doesn't matter for us on the surface. Having the solar wind hit the atmosphere wouldn't hurt us any down here.

The magnetosphere does help protect astronauts in LEO, and maybe people flying at high altitude, but it doesn't matter this deep into the atmosphere.

You wouldn't need any radiation shielding on a floating colony on Venus.

>>7142844
Asteroids perhaps?

There are some companies looking into that.

>>7142782
Nice post. Summarizes a lot of upper atmospheric Venus concepts well.

So judging by this shitty graph I made from data from Venus's wikipedia page, we're pretty good for temperature. The armstrong limit (where the pressure is so low that your saliva starts to boil and you die) is at 0.0618atm at 37°C, and I'm not sure what the maximum pressure the human body can withstand is, but 2 atm sounds pretty uncomfortable, so that's where I'll set the upper limit. Since the atmosphere isn't breathable, the only thing to worry about is whether colonists will need pressure suits. That leaves us with quite a wide variety of temperatures to choose from, ranging from sahara desert to arctic. If the people on the colony are getting too cold, they can just let out a little ballast.

>>7143227
I didn't say that.
Why you putting words in my mouth?
There's easier really cool things to do in space.
You guys talk about materials that don't even exist yet and you want to build this on another planet?
When? In 100 years when everything's changed anway? It's good for a sci-fi story. Awful from an engineering standpoint.
> The atmosphere of Venus is very dense, so it's much easier than on Earth.
That's the one thing you got going for you.
It's still pretty ridiculous.
How much would just the rocket that'd take you back to Earth weigh?
6000 tons (just taking saturn v weight).
What's the density of the air at that altitude?
Similar to Earth? Probably not but I'm lazy
6000 tons/(1 kg/m^3) = 5 million cubic meters of vacuum = a balloon with 109 m radius
Just to hold the rocket you'll be returning with.

C'mon do some engineering if you don't want me to pick on you for not doing engineering

>>7143485
>You guys talk about materials that don't even exist yet and you want to build this on another planet?
Who's talking about materials that don't exist yet?

>What's the density of the air at that altitude?
>Similar to Earth? Probably not but I'm lazy
Okay, you're disqualified from having an opinion anyone cares about.

>>7143492
> Who's talking about materials that don't exist yet?
anyone who wants to talk about building something and not just write a sci fi story?

>>7143495
Do you have anything to say at all, or are you just going to spout random gibberish?

There aren't any new materials needed for any of this, you total assclown.

>>7143501
What are you going to make your huge balloons out of?
What are you going to use to protect your stuff from sulfuric acid

> material selection
> Fermi Problems
> Gibberish
Look I just said it was clear you didn't know how to do engineering. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea, just not a feasible one.

>>7143272
> sending a detached vehicle down, like a quadcopter that scoops up rocks and flies back up
This or some other method to access materials on the Venusian surface seems critical to the overall plan.

So we need a drone that can operate from 1 to 90 atm and human ambient to 800 deg F.
What is the feasability with current technology ?

>>7143517
moral of the story.

Send more probes to Venus
Build best housing you can for electronics on Venus

>>7143509
>What are you going to make your huge balloons out of?
Balloons holding a gas at ambient pressure need almost no structural strength. And considering that nitrogen and oxygen are lifting gasses on Venus, you don't need a separate balloon to lift your habitat. Your habitable space is the balloon.

>What are you going to use to protect your stuff from sulfuric acid
Have you not noticed how sulfuric acid is a common and important industrial chemical? Which we keep in containers and run through pipes?

Wherever shall we come up with such exotic materials as polypropylene, teflon, hastelloy-C (basically a stainless steel), and aluminum? I guess we'll just have to invent these materials unknown to science.

>>7143509
>Look I just said it was clear you didn't know how to do engineering.
This is rich, coming from a shitposter who can't seem to identify the basic engineering issues involved, let alone say anything accurate about them.

>>7142782
You show what might be described as static habitats.
Would it be better to make all the habitats manueverable ?
Like comparing a hot air ballon with a mobile blimp on earth.

>>7143517
If it's just popping down to grab some rocks and fly back up, it doesn't need to stay down there long enough to get all heated up.

You can power it with liquid nitrogen, so it can also cool itself as it works, and so it has a supply of lifting gas to deploy balloons for recovery.

While it's not exactly knocking together a toy quadcopter to play with in your back yard, I don't think this would require any major new technology or materials.

>>7143562
> you can power it with liquid nitrogen, so it can also cool itself as it works

Some form of cooling scheme might work so that the drones can handle surface temperatures for the basic transportation of the rocks or ore.
But you could still need some kind of "strip mining" surface equipment to get the raw materials ready for drone pickup.

>>7142843
You know, Venus does have a solid surface. You can't stay there very long, but you don't need to.

Venus mining might look something like a giant post-digger stuck to a balloon; you drop the spike, then quickly inflate the balloon and let the enormous lift pull your material up to a more useful height.

>>7143536
I don't know, how WILL you come up with such exotic materials as Teflon, stainless steel, and aluminum when all you have to process is Venus' atmosphere?

Which is not, last I checked, particularly rich in fluorine, let alone iron or aluminum.

>>7142789
cool drawings, have you done any math to see if it will work? Have you run PRAs on everything to make sure it won't fail?

>>7142792
Mars One is a scam

>>7142792
>>How would someone even get such a thing started?
Draw pretty pictures, make a plan that sort of makes sense, make a shell company to accept money. Then ask for money.

Congratulations on your new scam.

>>7142789
So how much lift are those balloons actually providing?

>>7143603
> you drop the spike, then quickly inflate the balloon and let the enormous lift pull your material up to a more useful height
You might get some usable materials by skimming the surface that way.

>>7143605
>how WILL you come up with such exotic materials as Teflon, stainless steel, and aluminum when all you have to process is Venus' atmosphere?
>ignores polypropylene
>ignores mining the surface
>implies that only the materials listed are resistant to sulfuric acid
>implies that every one of the materials listed is needed
>tries to mix and match the challenges from different Venus mission concepts into some kind of Voltron strawman where you have to fly everyone back to Earth, but you have no materials or equipment from Earth, and you can't mine the surface or asteroids
Kindly stop being an utter chimp.

>>7143536
> Balloons holding a gas at ambient pressure need almost no structural strength.
still has to not dissolve is sulfuric acid.
So are you shipping it there or making it?
How much does that weigh?
How big does your balloon have to be?
How are you going to afford to launch all that shit?
it seems like this is just Mars One with added complexity.
> but I don't have to brake in the atmosphere
>>7143541
huge ass fucking balloons that somehow hold an entire Earth's worth of manufacturing aboard since you're going to make it all there?
Superstructures made out of stuff other than steel because it's heavy as shit.

>>7143642
So you're mining now.
Why didn't you just land on the surface beforehand?

>>7143661
>>7143664
I asked you nicely to stop being a chimp. This is the opposite of that.

>>7143642
>tries to mix and match the challenges from different Venus mission concepts into some kind of Voltron strawman where you have to fly everyone back to Earth, but you have no materials or equipment from Earth, and you can't mine the surface or asteroids

>>7143673
>I asked you nicely to stop being a chimp.
no you didn't.
Imagine that more than one person thinks you're full of shit.

>>7143677
This from the guy who's replying indiscriminately to different people as if they're OP.

>>7143677
Not him, but you are the one being obviously contarian

>>7143685
seriously no I did not.
I even checked.
That's something I do all the time.
>>7143715
By asking simple questions that they should have been asking at the beginning.
I guess you caught me.

>>7143661
> How are you going to afford to launch all that shit?
> huge ass fucking balloons that somehow hold an entire Earth's worth of manufacturing aboard since you're going to make it all there?
> Superstructures made out of stuff other than steel because it's heavy as shit.

Post must be from contemporary American with the "no can do" attitude from economics class, unless it lines someones pockets with immediate cash.

> it seems like this is just Mars One with added complexity.
Mars One is an actual project that deals with a different planet.
Venus habitation ideas are being discussed in various ways by scientists and interested parties for a variety of reasons.

>>7143718
>By asking simple questions that they should have been asking at the beginning.
You dumb shit, you obviously haven't even read the thread.

Your questions are loaded with idiotic assumptions, and you aren't asking them in good faith. You're piling them up dumber and dumber objections and trying to imply that if nobody takes the time to answer ALL of your injection of stupidity, that means the idea (whatever idea, since you're never specific about what concept you're criticizing) is unworkable, rather than that people have got fed up with talking to a rude moron with nothing to contribute because he has demonstrated that he can't understand the basic considerations involved, and never shows the grace of admitting when he was wrong about anything.

>>7143226
kek

>>7143272
What about if you had like a very, very thin sheet of diamond coating the outside of the machine? You'd prevent the cost of this machine being really high and it can go down and scoop up yo minerals.

Just make it for prisoners. They are taken away from Earth and away from civilians. And we already spend so much on the prison system as is, so we're used to the inflated budget.
But, what would you do with the poop? Flush it into space?

>>7143756
>diamonds will make it cheap!
The trouble with anti-corrosion coatings is that if you damage them in any way, you get corrosion underneath. Anyway, if diamond coatings were that easy, we'd all be using diamond-coated frying pans by now.

Anyway, the heat and pressure are bigger problems. You're talking about sea-floor pressure with 850-degree temperatures.

There's stuff that can take it, but building complete machines to work under those conditions is going to be kind of a bitch.

>>7143765
Sorry. Just thought it'd work if you cut the thickness of the coating. I've been drinking a bit so apologies for my logic.

>>7143765
> building complete machines to work under those conditions is going to be kind of a bitch
If you have mining machines that do not deal with human life support issues, that makes the task a lot easier.
It seems that much of the machine could be made out of high temp/ high strength metal alloys, such as those
used in the hot section of a jet turbine engine.
Some critical components might need onboard cooling systems so that would add weight and energy usage complexity for
any refridgeration components. If surface miners don't have to float back up to the cloud city then they
could probably be quite heavy. Getting them down to the surface initially might be a hassle.

>>7143766
Man, you don't have to apologize. It's a worthwhile thought.

It's just that everything either has to be refrigerated or work well above the melting point of lead, and everything has to be solid state, capable of generating an internal pressure equal to an external pressure of 70 atmospheres, or inside a very strong pressure vessel, and on top of that is the sulfuric acid haze, when you obviously can't have rubber seals on things to keep it from getting in joints.

There's a lot to take into account to design something to work on the surface of Venus.

>>7142782
So how big is it?

>>7143788
> when you obviously can't have rubber seals on things to keep it from getting in joints
Metallic and composite seals can withstand temperatures well above 1000°F.
More flexible seals such as used on a mechanical joint could be more problematic, however materials science is improving all the time.
I would guess a machine that minimizes the use of more complex seals would be feasable today.

>>7143796
Judging by the scale (assuming the guy's 5.5 ft), then the balloon's about 37.3 ft, or 11.3 m, in diameter.

Exercise for the reader: Given the temperature and density of Venus' atmosphere at the 1-atm altitude, what would be the mass that this balloon could actually carry for several reasonable lifting gases? (breathable air, hydrogen, methane, and hot Venus air)

>>7143804
I think it's better to avoid having any seals on moving parts at all.

Just run on electromagnetic actuation.

>>7143804
What he's saying is that sulfuric acid eats rubber.

>>7143806
>Oh god, I want to know something, but I'm too dumb to figure it out for myself, but I don't want to admit that.
>How do I ask for help with it, while still remaining smugly superior?
>...
>I'VE GOT IT!

>Exercise for the reader:

>>7143810
Well no, I was saying that rubber won't last long at 850 degrees.

There are certainly rubbery seal materials that will stand up to sulfuric acid, but I don't know of any that can take temperatures that high.

>>7143764
But look how Australia turned out! It will be a disaster!

>>7143811
Of course I know how to figure it out myself. I just thought it'd be a neat problem and also it's 3 AM.

(You can easily look up the temperature at the 1-atm altitude, use P/T=nR/V to find the moles/m3, use the composition of Venus' atmosphere (96% CO2, and the rest mostly N2) to convert that into a mass density, then find the densities of the other gases at that temperature and pressure, multiply by Venus' gravity (which is very nearly Earth's anyway) and the lift is the difference between the weight density of the lifting gas and the weight density of the atmosphere. Then assume the balloon's a hemisphere and work out its volume, multiply, and done.)

>>7142841
>electrical and electronic components
Unless I'm missing something (or we are talking very non-traditional design), you still need some metal.

>>7142782
There is a major problem with your plan OP.
Since you will be parking these habitats at 1 atm of pressure, there will be significant hazards from violent weather cell patterns.
Prevailing winds can be on the order of several hundred mph at that altitude.
Any storm will tear up your puny lightweight habitats sending the residents to their fiery death below.

>>7143824
People have already made carbon nanotube yarn that's as conductive as copper. So there's all of your wires and coils. There are conductive glues based on graphite which can replace solder. Organic semiconductors are also a thing, including stuff done with graphene, nanotubes, and diamond.

Metals are useful, but not necessary.

>>7143546

This is the question. Remember that while you're well above the destructive winds on Venus at the target altitude, you WILL be drifting along with high air currents, gently but surely, likely along the equator in a pretty specific channel area.

So realistically it stands: Would you rather make the whole base maneuverable, or make everything that goes to the base maneuverable? The vision is that the base can be expanded upon like a giant growing web of floating modules, so as the base expands, maneuverability will grow more and more complicated, whereas any object, craft or new module traveling to the base would be much easier to move.

So if someone could find a way to move the whole base without causing weird stresses, go for it (but I don't think it's necessary, really)

>>7143607
>>7143610

No, I have done no math, schematics, not even to scale, realistically. The drawings I made are PURELY concept. They are about 20ft in diameter (which, if I was doing a REAL drawing I would have converted to metric... I just did it quickly and out of ease)

I'm not a true engineer or mathematician, so I have no idea where to start. But if I had some real engineers and whatnot to collaborate with, I could surely make a to-scale, functional schematic. with proper dimensions and whatnot.

>>7143661

Read the fucking thread. Don't need a "HUGE ASS BALLOON." Learn to Venus. Empty fuel tanks can float on Venus with no assistance.

You're making USA look bad.

>>7143685

He's not OP, I am :P I leave the thread overnight and this is what happens!

>>7143796
>>7143806

Very close, The habitat modules I just threw together at 20ft diameters. I said earlier that these are only concepts, not at all a true mathematical scale. If I was to redraw an actual scale, operable version, I would make them in meters (to cooperate with current rocket diameters and probably scale them down to 3.7m or so. So don't take the pictures here for appropriate scale... just for concept.

>>7144120
> Remember that while you're well above the destructive winds on Venus at the target altitude
There may not be a thunderstorm every weekend, but even a once every 18 month "tropical storm" hazard could
be too much for the safety of the habitats.
Is there good reliable weather data that supports claims in op intro text ?
If a storm hazard was infrequent enough say < 1 every 10 or 20 years the colonists might be able to cope with that level of danger.

>>7142792
passion is the most important thing anon. If you use it smartly everything is possible.

>>7143276

while I agree with you, if you want a venus colony to progress beyond idle speculation it would be useful to come up with some sort of tangible benefit for it.

I would rather use nuclear bombs to change the orbit of an inner dwarf planet. So that it impacts Venus at the appropriate angle and becomes a moon. Hopefully it will also impart enough rotation to sustain a magnetosphere. Once you have a stable rotation and magnetosphere. You can impact comets to add hydrogen and water into the air. Then you can introduce bacteria to scrub out the carbon. Atmosphere pressure and temperatures will drop. Sulfur oxides will take over and cool the planet. Liquid water on the surface. Now introduce more complex life forms and eventually people.

>>7144291
that would go in a terraforming thread

>>7143235
think of it like a stepping stone

we start with a colony on Venus, then we use the technology we develop there to help us colonize other areas of the solar system, all the while figuring out how to extract resources from the planets

>>7144306
There is nothing on a planet that we can't get easier from asteroids, comets, and small moons(some moons have oceans of liquid methane)

The only reason to set up on another planet is for living space.

>>7144339
for the foreseeable future, we will need to develop adequate living arrangements for humans in space, because shit is always going to have to be repaired, at minimum. So we work on Venus on establishing cloud-based habitats. Then on Mars or the Moon, we work on land-based habitats.

There's zero practical impediments to making this happen.

Wouldn't a base deep below the surface on Venus make more sense?

>90 atmospheres (about the same as the pressure at a depth of 1 km in Earth's oceans).

>740 K Temperature
http://nineplanets.org/venus.html

The clouds maybe good for taking off and landing on Venus but why permanently live there?

>>7144383
see
>>7144372

it's a quite efficient solution for developing cloud-based habitats, with potential to translate this to somewhere like Saturn or Jupiter, although I haven't a clue how plausible that would be.

>>7144339
One major advantage of planets is the variety of materials available in one place without having to spend a lot of delta-V shifting orbits to get to it all.

>>7144372
Why do you need to live on Venus?

You could for instance just drop alkali metal bombs into the atmosphere to bind CO2 and sulfuric acid.

In the long run you'd get vast deserts of gypsum. You could mine on venus for more sulphur and repeat over and over again.

If I remember correctly most of the sulfates of the alkali metals have decomposition temperatures well above the surface temperature of Venus.

You might even get a cycle going.

>>7144396
it's a developmental project. The goal is to develop the technologies necessary for living off of earth. Eventually it will be necessary, mostly to maintain our space-mining machines

>>7144392
>it's a quite efficient solution for developing cloud-based habitats,
They make no sense at all. It's just cool on pictures.

You could use cloudcities on Jupiter as robotic fuel stations.

But that's no place for humans. Radiation is way too high.

Terraforming Planets is like Art. You do it because you can and you want to do it. There is no other reason.

We want to go to space. We don't really need to. We want to! We should try to get some cultism into this to keep the drive going. Just reasoning that we need to leave to survive won't work. The only thing that ultimately provides enough drive is religion.

We really need to turn 'Leaving Earth' into a 'religious' sort of movement.

>>7144401
>The goal is to develop the technologies necessary for living off of earth.
That's robotics.

You send robots for mining and terraforming. Then when the work is done you send humans.

In space humans are nothing but cargo. We have no real value in space.

>>7144409
For the same money that was wasted on the ISS you could have built a hundred probes to send to all planets in the System.

We could already have a complete water-map of the whole Solar System ready and start redirecting Waterasteroids to Mars and Venus.

>>7144409
Have you noticed how feeble, clumsy, and ineffectual the robots have been that we've sent out?

Have you looked at how feeble, clumsy, and ineffectual the robots are that we've tried using in uncontrolled environments on Earth?

It'll be a while yet before you can send a machine to do a man's job. People think and find ways around problems. They don't commonly just break down and stop working. They don't need staffs costing tens of millions of dollars per year to micromanage every tiny action they take.

>>7144417
>Have you noticed how feeble, clumsy, and ineffectual the robots have been that we've sent out?
Have you noticed that the first time we sent out an artificial satellite has only been 58 years?

Even robotics isn't yet a whole century old. That's all new to us. It's like we have just yesterday learned how to make knives.

>>7144420
Oh, sorry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakuri_puppet

Robots are older.

>>7144420
If you want to wait for robots to do everything for you, you might go on waiting until somebody else has already grabbed all the good stuff.

>>7144431
You see robots as more than tool.

That may be your problem. Robots are just the same as space ships, computers, knifesm sticks, stones or fire.

They are just a tool for us to get by.

>>7144435
>You see robots as more than tool.
I'll be charitable and guess from your grammar that English isn't your first language, and therefore you're failing to read and understand words because your English skills are poor, and not because you're an idiot.

I've never implied that robots are more than a tool. I've pointed out that they are currently, and are likely to remain for some time, grossly inadequate substitutes for human workers, especially in remote worksites.

Expansion into space could happen sooner than development of robots that are complete replacements for human workers. Therefore, taking the attitude that robots will do all of the work for us while we sit safely on Earth is preparing to fail in the race to claim and exploit valuable territory.

>>7144530
My English is actually quite okay.

I was just typing fast and you still don't get the point. It simply doesn't matter if robots go first because they are just tools.

You complain:
>If you want to wait for robots to do everything for you, you might go on waiting until somebody else has already grabbed all the good stuff.

That's simply stupid. In your childish mind you must be the conqueror of new Worlds on foot, in person. You have probably watched too much Scifi. Machines are our extended arms in space and sending humans before robots have leveled the playing field is just a waste of resources.

Sending humans along is not practical. We can easily increase the achievements tenfold with intelligent robotic probes instead of wasting energy and resources on radiation shielding and life support.

>>7144575
>My English is actually quite okay.
Alright then, I was being overly charitable: you're an idiot.

>In your childish mind you must be the conqueror of new Worlds on foot, in person.
That isn't even close to a reasonable conclusion from what I've posted. I haven't made any such appeal to emotions. I've simply pointed out how grossly inferior robots are to human workers, and how they are likely to remain that way.

>instead of wasting energy and resources on radiation shielding and life support.
You're stuck in this bizarre delusion that it's easier to increase the technological sophistication of payloads without limit, than to just develop efficiently reusable rockets and launch more mass.

Energy is cheap, especially in space. Saying that it's a waste of energy to have life support for adaptable human workers is absurd.

If we want to expand into space using human workers, we can do it in the very near future with little new technology to develop, and we could have done it in the past. If you want to keep all the humans on Earth, and do everything by laggy remote control, you're depending on radical new developments in technology to make that cost-effective, which might not arrive this century.

>>7144616
>>7144575

alright you nignogs.

Back on topic. Put that passion into Venus base.

>>7144127
You have not done any math on this, so at best this is just a bunch of pretty pictures.

Do you have a spreadsheet program and half a brain? Then you can do some simple calculations to see if this will work. You calculate the weight of the thing and the weight of the air displaced. If it weighs more than the air it displaces, it's fucked.

>>7144130
>> Empty fuel tanks can float on Venus with no assistance
They do, it's just they float at altitudes where the temperature is hot enough to cook people:
http://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venusian-rocket-floaties/

>>7144616
>I've simply pointed out how grossly inferior robots are to human workers, and how they are likely to remain that way.
That's cute.

>>7144670

>pretty pictures
I said that, dumbass.

>spreadsheet
I can't read

>floating tanks
I never said they wouldn't burn up.

>>7144685
If you have nothing to contribute, then just don't post.

>>7144707
>>I can't read
you read my post didn't you? Now stop whining and do some math.

>>7144279
As it stands right now, I think this is all speculation. Before we can properly evaluate whether a Venus base would be worthwhile or even feasible, we need to dump a lot more money into another few Venus probes, and more research into materials science, so that we can build lightweight habitats that can withstand spaceflight, strong winds, sulphuric acid rain, etc.

I would say were are in the stage of considering whether we should consider a Venus base, and not yet at the stage where we can consider a Venus base. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

>>7144875
A manned Venus mission has been under study by NASA for a while. It's been in the news fairly recently.

The balloon habitat isn't hard. I think the biggest obstacle is the difficulty of launching back into orbit to return the crews.

>>7144670
>They do, it's just they float at altitudes where the temperature is hot enough to cook people:
>http://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venusian-rocket-floaties/
Do you understand that these are existing rocket stages, with no design consideration whatsoever given to buoyancy?

It's not hard to do airships that float at ground level on Earth. It's far easier on Venus to float at ground level air pressure, with higher air density.