/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4111591]

How feasible is it to actually colonize the cloud tops of Venus?

On the surface, the idea seems intriguing. The temperature is within a suitable range for human life, the pressure is comparable to earth pressures, and the gravity is nearly identical.

Plus, earth atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen) would be naturally buoyant

[Anonymous No.4111641]

mate, you've been smoking some bad granola

[Anonymous No.4111645]

>>4111641
why you say that?
i mean colonization, period, is pretty impossible right now. but assuming we do reach that stage, i think venus is a serious candidate - only in the cloud tops of course.

[Anonymous No.4111648]

And we do this by? What building huge gliders, huge helim filled zeplins that hopefully won't corrode in second because the atmosphere is acid as fuck?

[Anonymous No.4111652]

boats made of plastic.

Fund it.

[Anonymous No.4111700]

>>4111648
there's definitely problems, but there's problems everywhere.
is there a better planet for colonization?

i think the biggest problem with venus - aside from the logistics of dealing with corrosion, etc - is the lack of water. mars trumps it in that regard. but then you have to deal with the low gravity and thin atmosphere

[Anonymous No.4111707]

>>4111648

The joy of Venus is it's atmosphere is mainly carbon dioxide. Breathable air is a lifting gas, so you can build a big bubble of air and live in it fairly easily.

And the atmosphere isn't that bad. We can deal with a bit of acid rain.


>>4111591

I don't know how feasible it would be, but that's the exciting thing about Venus. Going to Mars would be much like going to the Moon, just on a bigger scale. The technical challenges we would have to overcome living in the atmosphere of Venus would no doubt lead to far more exciting developments than what we would get from Mars.

[Anonymous No.4111709]

>>4111648
no helium required. the atmosphere is so dense on venus that a normal mixture of air would float very well.

it's so dense that terminal velocity is 25mph or so.

it would have to be a large scale zeppelin of sorts, yes. kind of a 'space station/space balloon' sort of rig.

the room you're in now would float above the clouds on venus if the walls were thin enough

[Anonymous No.4111715]

>>4111648
Not all of the layers are highly acidic or hot. Aerostats are acutely a reasonable option for Vensiuan exploration.

That said, I've always been curious about seeding the atmosphere with extreamophile aerostat organisms* to fix atmospheric CO2. It would take a long time to have any real effect, if it worked, but would be an interesting experiment that could result in more potentially habitable real estate in the solar system.


*Think tiny creatures that live off the chemicals in the air like the ones that cling to deep ocean vents on earth. Building their teeny-tiny shells from mostly carbon, when they die they'd decay, lose buoyancy and sink to the bottom, over time creating a layer of stone and removing carbon from the atmosphere. Ironically, if they were really successful they'd destroy the conditions that allow them to live in the general atmosphere and be reduced to extinction or living just on geothermal features.

[Anonymous No.4111721]

>>4111707
Really, Mars has huge amounts of resources the moon doesn't and a day close in length to Earth's. Mars is a terrforming candidate, the moon isn't.

[Anonymous No.4111724]

Isn't that planet basically Hell?

[Anonymous No.4111727]

>>4111724
No, Venus is real.

[Anonymous No.4111745]

>>4111721

Regardless, the problems with settling there are much the same as those involved with settling on the Moon. The pressure's really low, nothing much to shield you from the Sun and a lot less gravity than Earth.

Venus is just more exciting. It's full of challenges we've never had to face.

[Anonymous No.4111757]

>>4111724
yeah, the irony is that the surface is one of the least habitable places in the solar system.

atmospheric pressure equal to a kilometer of ocean water and temperatures that melt lead. thick sulfuric air. basically a real hell.

[Anonymous No.4111766]

>>4111745
Not at all. Mars has all the resources life requires and has enough of an ozone layer and atmosphere to massively moderate solar radiation. You could easily grow plants on the surface of Mars in domes, unlike the moon, and unlike the moon the .38G is likely enough to allow humans to avoid the worst skeletal demineralazation.

On Luna you really have to go underground and import all of the supplies you require. On Mars you simply don't.

[Anonymous No.4111778]

Unlike most other colonization ideas, you wouldn't need to wear a pressure suit. The pressure would be nearly identical to what we experience on earth.

You wouldn't need to wear anything to protect you against extreme heat or cold. The temperate ranges from 0-50 degrees celsius. Minor cooling would be required occasionally, but that's all.

No worries about loss of bone density or other potentially crippling side effects from too little or too much gravity - Venus would be a comfortable 0.9 Earth gs.

Unlike many other places, a rupture or leak wouldn't cause catastrophic problems in a short time - the escape of atmosphere would be slow allowing for plenty of time to repair. This can be compared to an emergency 'suction' effect of air escaping into a vacuum, etc.

[Anonymous No.4111788]

>>4111766
dubs.

but yes i agree that mars is probably the most likely prospect, even though i find the idea of Venus intriguing.

The biggest sell of Mars to me though is the presence of water in the polar ice caps. A readily-available water source is a huge plus to any extra-terrestrial effort.

[Anonymous No.4111795]

Mars would probably be a later project. It's easier to focus permanent moon and (near earth) asteroid bases. These are close enough for rapid travel, you can mine them for massive profit. The moon also has water so it's a good candidate for launching missions to rest of the solar system.

[Anonymous No.4111807]

>>4111788
Also dubs. Venus is a great idea for study, but it would be hard to get raw materials there, you'd need teleoperated or totally robotic resource extraction on the surface, or to make plastics from the atmosphere. It's also dry as a bone, with nearly no water.

>>4111795
It's much easier to make rocket fuel on Mars then on the moon, and because you can grow plants on the surface in simple low pressure domes it's easier to make food. The only reason to go to the moon would be to collect Helium 3 and for observatories.

It's cheaper to send missions to support a moon base from Mars then from Earth, and much cheaper to send equipment from Mars to asteroids then it is from the Earth's surface.

[Anonymous No.4111832]

Uhh did none of you hear about Keplar 22b? Fucking retards

[Anonymous No.4111844]

Behold, the future of the red planet.

[Anonymous No.4111851]

>>4111832
Uh did you not hear Kepler 22b is 600 ly away?
Unless you've got an alcubierre drive warmed up for us, you da fuckin retard.

[Anonymous No.4111919]

>>4111807

I don't think the ease of getting of the surface should be a major consideration. If we are thinking about colonizing other worlds, we probably have some kind of easy access to space already in place, such as a space elevator or orbital ring. Chances are the first thing we would do when getting to a new planet is to drop a cable down from orbit to the surface, so we don't have to worry about producing lots of rocket fuel.

[Anonymous No.4111939]

>>4111919
Personalty, I'd like to get to space within the next 100 years, rather then wait for the technology to make it trivial. For the foreseeable future, producing food and fuel are real problems that would have to be dealt with if someone, for example, wanted to mine an asteroid.

Honestly, once you have a space elevator or fusion engines you may as well not bother with Mars, Luna or Venus as anything but scientific curiousties. You can fly direct to asteroids, harvest them, then fly back to earth with your half million second specific impulse rocket.

[Anonymous No.4111955]

For countering a weak gravity, isn't it possible to wear a suit made of lead and weights?

[Anonymous No.4112101]

>>4111955
That would add unnecessary weight to the spacecraft during liftoff.

[Anonymous No.4112103]

[Anonymous No.4112108]

[Anonymous No.4112110]

[Anonymous No.4112117]

>>4111700
>is there a better planet for colonization?
While it's not technically a planet, europa is better.

[Anonymous No.4112132]

>>4112117
The moon is only 3 days away and a building a permanent modular habitat there is within our current technology. But the cost of getting there by chemical rockets is still immense and there just isn't enough demand at the moment to justify the pricetag.

[Anonymous No.4112138]

>>4112132
our moon I mean, not Europa. Radiation from Jupiter would be a problem on the surface of Europa.

[Anonymous No.4112168]

>>4112110
>>4112108
>>4112103
is THAT Venus ???

[Anonymous No.4112284]

>>4112132
the moon has aliens
haven't you watched apollo 18?

[Anonymous No.4112287]

>>4112168
no

[Anonymous No.4112288]

>>4112284
We can negotiate or something

[Anonymous No.4112289]

>>4112284

[Anonymous No.4112295]

>>4112168
Yes, according to the Soviets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera

[Anonymous No.4112345]

Venus is useless unless we speed up its orbit in order to cool it down

[Anonymous No.4112443]

>>4112138
Thats why you live underwater, fairly deep down in europa the water is the same pressure there as it is here, as soon as we can live under water here, we can live underwater there. When we can get there that is.

[Anonymous No.4113999]

I think that in the future, having a 'base camp' in space where missions can be launched from will be more beneficial than simply having each mission going straight to the objective, in fact, NASA seems to be planning their newest space goals with an air of flexibility, knowing that the hardest part is simply getting up there.
Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=this-way-to-mars