/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.8730080]

Why isn't SpaceX trying to create a floating sky colony on Venus? It makes much more sense than colonizing Mars.

>The gravity of Venus is more similar to Earth's, meaning less bone loss

>The distance to Venus is much shorter than the distance to Mars.

>Colonists on Mars would have to live in a super complicated housing system, but on Venus, colonists would literally just live in a giant balloon filled with oxygen.

>Venus actually has an atmosphere, meaning less radiation

>Mars is colder than Antarctica, while the upper atmosphere of Venus is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit

>There is abundant Carbon dioxide and Nitrogen, allowing colonists to easily farm vegetables

>There would be a lot of energy from the Sun, meaning the colony could survive on solar energy 24/7

[Anonymous No.8730100]

>>8730080
>falling for the cloud cities on venus meme

No access to minerals means no ability to supply nutrients to any plants nor produce any metallic or refractory products.

A Venus """colony""" would amount to nothing more than a complete dead-end, with no chance of it ever gaining any sort of self-motivated industry nor independence from Earth.

Also, the atmosphere at 50km above Venus (which is where the ambient temperature is equal to Earth sea level) is at around 70 degrees CELSIUS, not fahrenheit. Venus habitats would need active refrigeration to prevent people from being scalded by the ambient temperature, and refrigeration is much more energy intensive than heat.

[Anonymous No.8730169]

If you fall off a Venetian city, what would kill you first, the shock from falling, the rising temperature as you fall, the rising pressure, or the impact?

[Anonymous No.8730183]

>>8730169
You'd pass out before you knew you died, but I'd say the pressure.

[Anonymous No.8730195]

>>8730169
I'd say temperature, venus is fucking hot

[Anonymous No.8730207]

>>8730100
Why do you believe that you can't build machinery that can survive the temperature of a hot oven

The ONLY actual problem in mining on the surface is electronics operating at high temperatures, which will be solved fairly soon

[Anonymous No.8730213]

>>8730080
>STILL falling for the planet meme

O'NEIL CYLINDERS

fucking planet memers get off my board REEEEEEEEE planets are popsci.

[Anonymous No.8730256]

>>8730100

Despite all of that, Venus still remains a more logical and rational choice for colonization. Elon Musk is a moron.

[Anonymous No.8730275]

>>8730080
Floating aluminum balloons in an acid atmosphere...

[Anonymous No.8730308]

>>8730080
>>8730256
The long term goal of having a colony is to have a self-sustaining population outside of this biosphere in case this one gets cooked, and to have a practice stepping stone for when the solar system eventually will.

You might be able to do that on Mars, or with very large O'Neil cylinders stationed sufficiently distant from Earth, but you can't do it with a floating sky city that floating over what amounts to lava. There's no good way to gather materials - so why bother sticking yourself inside a gravity well with nothing of use in it?

I mean, it'd be interesting as an engineering research project, but it doesn't have any substantive long term application. It might be something to try after colonizing a few other worlds and moons.

Though some folks have been talking about ways to burn off and solidify Venus's atmosphere via chemical chain reactions. Awhile after that, it might start looking more inviting.

[Anonymous No.8730311]

>>8730080

>Gas mining cloud city

vs

>moisture farmer

[Anonymous No.8730382]

>>8730308
>Though some folks have been talking about ways to burn off and solidify Venus's atmosphere via chemical chain reactions. Awhile after that, it might start looking more inviting.

>Though some folks have been talking about ways to burn off and solidify Venus's atmosphere via chemical chain reactions.

Wow just, sounds quite ambitious. How are they planning to go about that?

[Anonymous No.8730390]

>>8730382
>Wow just, sounds quite ambitious. How are they planning to go about that?
inverse tachyon pulse from deflector

[Anonymous No.8730431]

>>8730382
I think I recall a sci-fi or two where they did that, but conveniently never explained how. The only way I could think to do it would be to build a giant moon-size shade somewhere out in front of it, then it'd freeze and the CO2 would liquify, bringing the whole thing down.

But then it'd be too cold - I dunno, maybe you could poke holes in it afterwards until you found a happy medium, or something. Still gotta deal with that Venusian day that lasts two-thirds of an Earth year though.

Think it'd almost be easier to terraform the damned moon - certainly easier to work with Mars than Venus.

[Anonymous No.8730459]

>>8730080
I love this thread. It's beautiful and comical, it captures the heart of /sci/.

[Anonymous No.8730478]

>>8730390
something something your mom's dildo

[Anonymous No.8730488]

>>8730207
Dude, stop it.

You have to make machines function well at high heat and pressure,mine resources with surface rock that's like taffy due to the heat, then you have to launch the mined substances from the surface up to your colony in the clouds, using what kind of rocket? You ever try to get a rocket to take off in several hundred degree heat under massive steel crushing pressure,and plow through a cloud layer of sulfuric acid?

You are hand-waving like half a dozen brain-poppingly hard engineering challenges.

[Anonymous No.8730494]

>>8730080
SpaceX isn't trying to colonize Mars, they are 'building the railroad' to Mars/Venus.

[Anonymous No.8730510]

>>8730488
Why would you use a rocket instead of a balloon or a propellor plane, dumbass
It's not a vacuum

Don't try to act like 450 celsius is some insane temperature, or that 100 atmospheres is an impossible to account for pressure.

We have sent probes to Venus's surface, the only problem is that conventional electronics can't function at high temperatures

[Anonymous No.8730516]

>>8730100
>Also, the atmosphere at 50km above Venus (which is where the ambient temperature is equal to Earth sea level) is at around 70 degrees CELSIUS, not fahrenheit.
You would float higher than 50 km due to CO2 being quite a bit denser than air, at about 55 km. At that height, temperatures are like 27°C, which is still a bit high, but you may just as well settle for a lower cabin pressure (like on air planes) and go for a higher altitude and lower temperatures.

I think it's a cool idea, but nothing that sounds too practical. All in all a bit more practical than the mars shit I've heard so far.

[Anonymous No.8730526]

>>8730207
High temperatures, lightning, 900+ atmospheres of pressures, chlorine, acid rain, and nearly a full G worth of gravity well.

The dozen or so landers we've sent to Venus have had a whopping 15% success rate, all half melted after landing, a none lasted as long as expected (save one atmospheric probe that was never intended to survive at all). All the atmospheric data we've gotten back since then indicate it was a miracle those few made it at all. It's a seething chemical ocean of hell down there.

[Anonymous No.8730529]

>>8730169
temp/pressure unless you're wearing a suit.

then pressure.

[Anonymous No.8730531]

>>8730526
>and nearly a full G worth of gravity well.
please tell me more about this incredibly dangerous full G of gravity thats on venus.

[Anonymous No.8730532]

>>8730526
>900+ atmospheres of pressures
It's 90

[Anonymous No.8730535]

>>8730510
I'm trying to imagine building a balloon sturdy enough to deal with the winds that you'd encounter in Venus's atmosphere. We're talking wind that's much denser that our wind moving at 450 miles per hour. How in the fuck can you take a balloon or a propeller craft through that?

It's a tall order m8. Mars has its issues,but they're a hell of a lot less severe than delaing with that mess of bullshit.

[Anonymous No.8730537]

>>8730529
You aren't physically going down there period! 90 atmospheres is enough trouble in plain old water - this is basically hot acid on crack with lightning in it. It's the equivalent of diving into 3,000 feet of heated turbulent battery juice.

>>8730531
In case you're wondering what makes all this space travel so damned difficult to begin with - it's mostly this this called escape velocity. Getting on and off the moon or Mars is a hell of a lot easier than getting on and off the Earth or Venus. And you could imagine what would happen to your average rocket that has to exit THAT atmosphere at roughly the same speed it'd need to exit Earth's.

[Anonymous No.8730540]

>>8730535
>We're talking wind that's much denser
What is that even supposed to mean

>wind moving at 450 miles per hour.
Top speeds are more like half of that, at much higher altitude than you would float and only at the equator. You don't really need to go for the equator though.

Also, the winds are not particularly turbulent, so you might just as well float with the winds to emulate some kind of day/night cycle.

[Anonymous No.8730544]

>>8730540
>What is that even supposed to mean
Atmospheric gas under high pressure is denser than gas under less pressure, it has more mass in a given area and accordingly more inertia. A 50 mile per hpur wind on mars could barely even be felt by a person, a 50 mile per hour wind on the surface of venus would flip you around like a rag doll.

[Anonymous No.8730546]

>>8730540
>>We're talking wind that's much denser
>What is that even supposed to mean
He means you're fighting against the equivalent of water, rather than air, and it's moving faster than air or water ever does on Earth. None of the few landers that made it down there landed anywhere near where intended, and they were basically just lumps of steel.

[Anonymous No.8730550]

>>8730544
The balloon is not on surface level you dolt

[Anonymous No.8730556]

>>8730550
NTG, but following the thread back, was this not in regards to mining the lava surface? Somehow going down or coming up with a magic super balloon?

[Anonymous No.8730563]

>>8730556
Then it's even less of a problem as winds are only strong in the upper atmosphere. At surface level there is hardly anything going on.

[Anonymous No.8730585]

>>8730535
Why do you think WIND is any different than an aircraft flying forward at 200 mph+

Surface winds are much slower, also wind is free power if you can harness it

[Anonymous No.8730587]

>>8730556
You would anchor yourself to the surface, then use bouyancy to get up into the winds, then use aerodynamics to get up to the 55km altitude that your normal habitats are at

[Anonymous No.8730595]

>>8730563
>>8730585
Cuz it's not wind anymore - it's more like a river, traveling at 400+mph against you.

>>8730587
At 90 atmospheres, an average of 10Km/h is nothing to sneeze at. Imagine what 10Km/h is like under 3,000 feet of water, as that's basically what you're looking at, except in the case the water is basically charged acid and you're basically sitting on lava. Chunks of Venera 13 weighing over a dozen kilograms rolled away before she stopped filming - months before she was supposed to.

Now put up a balloon (that can somehow take that churning chemical mass and not attract lightning and that you're somehow inflating against 90 atmospheres of pressure) and see where the hell you end up.

Not to mention this surface is essentially liquid, and the tectonics have been dead for half a billion years, so anything that might be useful is going to be sunk in ordered sedimentary layers. This means you'll have to tunnel through miles and miles of the same uniform liquid siliceous rocks before you find anything. All while dealing with that acid rain, torrents, pressures, hoping your drill doesn't overheat, and hoping that same semi-molten rock doesn't swallow your whole rig - before you even begin thinking on how to get it all back to Lando's Cloud City.

[Anonymous No.8730599]

>>8730595
It's a CO2 atmosphere, with traces of Sufuric acid, at 450 degrees, at 90 atmospheres

This is something that can easily be tested on earth

Maybe use nukes to blast away to useful minerals.

[Anonymous No.8730603]

>>8730256
>guy who founded multiple successful start-ups is a moron

[Anonymous No.8730612]

>>8730599
Actually it turns out it's not just CO2 and Sulphuric Acid - it's also Chlorine, and several nasty combinations of all of the above to varying degrees depending on where you land.

Dropping nukes in into silicon jello isn't going to be particularly effective, plus it's just gonna make shit even hotter with no way for it to cool.

I dunno... For testing... Maybe you can try drilling for oil inside a deep enough inside an active undersea volcano to duplicate the pressure and heat problems, and just forget the corrosive chemical composition and the "winds" (probably more accurately described as "flows"), but suffice to say, we don't have the tech to even attempt that now. No place on Earth provides those kind of pressures, heat, hazardous chemical, and speed of flow in combination. All the Venera probes were tested in every way we could conceive at the time, and it turned out to be far from sufficient.

Really, in terms of engineering feats, it'd be easier to build a giant shade and cool the whole planet off first than to drill down in that hell and bring anything useful back to its exosphere. Space elevators aren't an option on a planet with a rotation that slow.

So either figure out how to build moon-sized aluminum sheets that don't collapse under their own gravity nor get rip to shreds by solar winds - or just go back to Mars, where mining and lifting is even easier than it is on Earth.

[Anonymous No.8730685]

>>8730488
>>high heat
500°C isn't even hot enough to melt aluminum.

>>pressure
we have robots and submarines that can withstand 1070 atm of pressure, pressure really isn't much of an issue.

Temperature is a bigger issue because actuators are more difficult as magnets don't work very well at these temperatures and traditional semiconductors stop working above 300°C.

First has largely been solved and electric drills have been tested in Venusian ambient: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/vexag/may2008/presentations/22JIExtreme.pdf

Second, basic silicon carbide semiconductor technology has been demonstrated to work at venusian conditions. A SiC ring oscillator worked fine for 21 days(as long as they were willing to run the test) at venusian ambient conditions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/venus-computer-chip/
http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973429

>>mine resources with surface rock that's like taffy due to the heat
Bullshit. Nothing from the Venera probes indicates that rock on venus' surface behaves like taffy:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1984LPSC...14..393S/0000393.000.html

>>using what kind of rocket?
balloons. A metal bellows balloon(pic related) can reach altitudes where plastic doesn't melt, from there a teflon coated(to resist the sulfuric acid clouds) kapton balloon can be used to reach ~55 km which is about the altitude our colony would be at.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/KERZHANO.pdf

[Anonymous No.8730730]

>>8730595
>Cuz it's not wind anymore - it's more like a river, traveling at 400+mph against you.
It's not 400 mph at ground level, it's 400 mph at 70 km height or something. People have already corrected that for fuck's sake and you still keep repeating it.

[Anonymous No.8730748]

>>8730730
Ya gotta get down there first.

Then ya gotta deal with ~10kph flows at 90 atmospheres - you do realize that's faster than any water at that same atmospheric depth moves on Earth without dropping a nuke or a volcano into the mix? Nothing of any structurally significant size could survive being it by it at an off angle, much less navigate it.

[Anonymous No.8730762]

>>8730730
We know very little about the atmospheric gradients of Venus and the potential for turbulence and transient surface winds exists. A brief flash of 100 mph wind on the surface would tear pretty much any vehicle to shreds. We need way more data before we can try any of this.

>>8730685
That thing looks complicated and flimsy and it's dealing with insane external pressure while needing to be lightweight enough for the whole affair to actually be able to float.

You're acting like this is easy. It isn't. Robotically harvesting resources from the surface of Venus would be incredibly difficult. We're at least 15-25 years away from being able to give it a shot. Mars is much easier.

[Anonymous No.8730774]

>>8730526
>>chlorine
in the form of hydrogen chloride, 0.1-0.6 ppm
>>acid rain
not at the surface, it's too hot for sulfuric acid to exist at the surface.

>>nearly a full G worth of gravity well.
no jello babies

>> 15% success rate
you pulled that number out of your ass didn't you? Venera 3: communications failed 2 weeks before landing, fail
Venera 4: ran out of battery before reaching the surface, fail
Venera 5 and 6: crushed before landing. Fail.
Venera 7-13: Successful landing
Pioneer Venus: wasn't supposed to survive landing but did anyway

That's 8 successes out of 12 missions, with one mission that wasn't supposed to be a lander for a success rate of about 67%.

>>half melted after landing
500°C isn't even hot enough to melt aluminum. The only thing that melted was the solder joints in the electronics.

[Anonymous No.8730775]

>>8730774
> hydrogen chloride
> not hydrochloric acid
why?

[Kek No.8730778]

>>8730308
Who needs to colonize a planet when you can live in a biosphere floating through space. You can fly by nearby planets, scan for resources, collect resources and off you go again.

[Anonymous No.8730779]

>>8730080
Why isn't SpaceX trying to mine asteroids? It costs a shit tonne of money to send resources into space so why don't they focus on using what's already floating around?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Potential_targets

Musk's business model seems to be pandering to the reddit crowd about being NASA 2.0 while he laughes his way to the bank to cash in his government subsidy checks

[Anonymous No.8730783]

>>8730779
This faggot is right.

The first person to get a ship to Psyche and start building ships out of asteroid iron is going to become the god emperor of the asteroid belt.

If it were me,I'd get myself and a few hundred people on a good O'niell cylinder, and then i'd blow up a bunch of shit in earth's orbit and make it suicide ot try to follow me.

[Kek No.8730790]

>>8730779
Musks dream is to build an amusement park on mars, You're all just pawns in his goal of achieving it.

[Anonymous No.8730795]

>>8730779
>mfw I claim Anteros and become a space trillionaire

[Anonymous No.8730808]

>>8730762
>>insane external pressure
the pressure differential isn't that much. Sure the absolute pressure might be be 90 atm, but the pressure differential between the inside and outside is only 630 millibar.

>>lightweight enough for the whole affair to actually be able to float.
Venus' atmosphere is quite dense at these altitudes. Someone did the math and found that a number of rocket stages ought to be neutrally buoyant at 5-15 km:
http://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venusian-rocket-floaties/
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110016033.pdf

[Anonymous No.8730867]

>>8730256
>tfw no Martian empire that purges dumb Earthlings
I WANT MY MARTIAN FANTASIES TO BE REAL

[Anonymous No.8730921]

>>8730183
well, she is the love goddess for a reason

[Anonymous No.8730946]

>>8730779
Mining and refining the resources you need in space, in addition to being a pain in the ass itself, does run the risk of someone picking up on the fact that it isn't all that hard to bring 100 ton bricks of semi-precious materials back home, and crash any market. (Possibly both literally and figuratively.)

Ask all those conquistadors who brought back all that gold back from the new world, and then died in destitution, how well that went for them.

Granted, most of those rocks are made up of mostly iron and carbon with a mixture of nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold, magnesium, with a sprinkling of osmium, ruthenium and rhodium... So there's only so many markets you can crash that way, I suppose.

[Anonymous No.8730980]

>>8730685

Dude, stop.

Even if electronics work as you say(which they won't, you are asuming perfect systems)what they won't stand is the constant degradation, erosion and all fuckery of high presure.

And electronics are just part of the equation that you will have to compensate with huge redudancies so you aren't sending another mining probe every month because the last one just fucked up something and you just can't let it work anymore(its not just that electronic components fail and stop working, is that they fail and the machine keeps working and making things worse)

And you have to lift those resources, lets see.

>Earth like gravity that forces you into taking high care of mas in a place where you won't have the infraestructure to do so.
>Superdense air with storms at certain altitudes adding even more complications for anything trying to reach orbit again.
>Total dependence in teleoperation, adding even more costs and points of failures.

Meanwhile Mars.

>Almost no atmosphere, no drag either.
>Lower gravity, which means that things are easier to put in orbit.
>People and tools can be close to each other, making things even cheaper.
>Much less agresive enviroment, even the radiation is not that huge issue(if it were, we wouldn't have space travel in the first place)

I swear I hate venufags, they are like the macfags; feeling so special because they think they are geniouses that have realized about something no one ever did.

[Anonymous No.8731002]

>>8730516
>27°C still a bit high
No offense, but I bet you use Fahrenheit, or am I missing something here? 27°C is colder compared to your average day in summer. It wouldn't pose any threat to the hypothetical Venus atmospheric cloud balloon-structures that OP is talking about. That temperature would be ideal.

[Anonymous No.8731020]

>>8730169
the pressure, unless you had no oxygen mask, then it would be not being able to breathe.

[Anonymous No.8731427]

>>8730080
>Why isn't SpaceX trying to create a floating sky colony on Venus? It makes much more sense than colonizing Mars.
No it doesn't, the technology required to set up a self sustaining colony on Mars already exists the hurdles are doing it and paying for it, the technology to colonize venus meanwhile still does not exist.

[Anonymous No.8731433]

>>8730213
>O'niel cylinder
How would you actually get one of those into space?

[Anonymous No.8731441]

>>8730169
I'd say drowning, followed by angry gondoliers.

[Anonymous No.8731442]

>>8730779
>Why isn't SpaceX trying to mine asteroids?
That would be much easier to do if every mission to them didn't have to escape earths gravity well first would it not?
Colonizing and setting up refueling stations on mars opens the rest of the system up a bit.

[Anonymous No.8731485]

>>8731002
I'm German you twat. 27°C is a little high considering those people are living in a literal greenhouse. You need a negative temperature gradient to cool shit. You kind of want to end up with room temperature.

[Anonymous No.8731581]

>>8730775
No water in the atmosphere

[Anonymous No.8731599]

>>8730080
Why aren't we sending probes to the moons of Neptune and Saturn. Some of these moons have a much better chance at sustaining life than mars or Venus.

The only other planet we will ever be able to inhabit is one that is in a different solar system.


Better whip out that meme drive

[Anonymous No.8731612]

>put shades on venus
>atmo freezes in a decade or two and you can start your work

Why is noone doing this? Fuck mars, it's a gay micro world.

[Anonymous No.8731630]

>>8731433

Space Catapult.

[Anonymous No.8731688]

>>8731485
>Germany bringing the bants

[Anonymous No.8732126]

>>8731612
While I think, as fantastical as it sounds, this is actually more practical than mining the surface under the current conditions, in the end, what you end up with is worse than Mars. No water.

Does have the advantage of 1G, but there's more disadvantages to that than advantages. On the other hand, the surface would be a lot smoother, so landing and getting around would be easier, but then again, the minerals would be striated, meaning you'd have to dig a long ways through the same stuff (probably miles of silicates) before you found anything else. It wouldn't be like Earth or Mars where materials would be mixed in and in veins.

Setting up on Mars first would probably be wiser, but it maybe one day, when we have the ability to make semi-super structures, coming back to Venus and cooling it off might be an idea.

[Anonymous No.8732151]

>>8731441
underrated

[Anonymous No.8732397]

>>8731427
>the technology to colonize venus meanwhile still does not exist.

Humans have been piloting zeppelins since the early 1900's

[Anonymous No.8732403]

>>8731427
>the technology to colonize venus meanwhile still does not exist.

Humans have been flying blimps since the early 1900's

[Anonymous No.8732409]

And what resource are they going to exploit that generates a profit?

[Anonymous No.8732412]

>>8732126
Making statements about mineral availibility before we actually go see for ourselves is fucking stupid
Geologists can't make accurate predictions about the EARTH UNDER THEIR FEET

Why would you imagine they could make predictions about Venus or Asteroids

Everything needed for an initial colony can be extracted from the air anyways.
Water is present in the atmosphere, and other hydrogen compounds

[Anonymous No.8732430]

Fuck this stupid "colonize planets" meme

When are we going to get a space station that isn't a flying hunk of shit?

[Anonymous No.8732448]

>>8732412
They make predictions on asteroids based on meteorites remains.

They make predictions on Venus based on the analysis we've made so far, coupled with the state of the surface, and what we know about how geology works on Earth.

The problem with Venus is that much of its surface is in a viscous state. That means heavier elements sink and larger aggregates come to the surface. We know the surface is thus, as one would predict, entirely silicates, largely semi-molten. What we know about hot rock suggests this should continue for a long ways before you hit a layer of another element. (Though, on the plus side, once you do hit said, the deposit should be large and fairly uniform. So mining is at least more predictable.)

And there's no water in the surface, and insomuch as there is any in the air, it's 0.002% water vapor, compare that to the Earth’s atmosphere at 0.40% or 0.16% on Mars. So, even if you collapse the atmosphere on Venus, you aren't getting oceans.

[Anonymous No.8732494]

>>8732126

That's what I was thinking. Hellish it might be but you don't need to make it earth clone of earth, and it certainly can become more suitable long term colony than low g worlds.
The lack of hydrogen is a problem but nothing that can't be solved with few meters of delta v and carefully planned neptune gravity assist...
I think that's actually easier than the solar shade which requires relatively basic self fabrication, but self fabrication nonetheless.

At any rate, terraforming is a giant undertaking but sometimes people inflate the difficulty to fantastical levels and usually time scales. Moving planets or doubling Mars's mass for example is not realistic. Melting some co2 or putting a big ass umbrella in space is actually possible.

[Anonymous No.8732593]

>>8732494
The gravity is more of a disadvantage than an advantage though. It makes it require exponentially more escape velocity than Mars. You can't use a space elevator as, in addition to the normal problems Earth-scale gravity causes, the planet's rotation is much, much too slow.

On Mars, however, unlike Earth or Venus, space elevators maybe a feasible thing.

Bone loss isn't a real issue at Mars gravity, the muscle mass loss can be compensated for. Jello babies aren't as much as a problem as folks like to think. Even in zero-G, small mammals seem to gestate fine, regain even their ability to balance after being returned to normal gravity in short order, and the reduced strength isn't an issue provided you never intend to return to your ancestral homeland. If anything, it just means more calories can be dedicated to the brain.

But if it were a problem, getting on and off Mars is a whole lot easier, so there's nothing stopping you from rigging up a satellites with artificial gravity that a mother would spend the last few months of her pregnancy on and where a newborn would spend perhaps its first few years.

Granted, as others have pointed out, in terms of ease of use, O'Neil cylinders are superior to either planet, and you can mine resources from asteroids. They are, however, engineering nightmares, and probably impossible to make at the scales that the surface of an entire planet gives you. To have a definitive survival advantage, they also have to placed at quite some distance from the Earth. Not that self-sustaining habitable space stations aren't a worthy goal, but they'd probably have to be in addition to, rather than instead of, planetary colonies.

Like so many of these arguments, it's not an either/or situation. Different groups will no doubt focus on different projects as industry expands and improves.

[Anonymous No.8732599]

>>8732448
What sort of rock is melting at under 500 degrees
There is active volcanoes and tectonic activity on venus

Our knowledge of Earth stops where the land surface ends, everything below that is guess work or experimental drilling.

Venus is a whole planet, it would be stupid to suggest that the whole planet is a uniform layered ball.

[Anonymous No.8732612]

>>8732599
Rocks absorb heat and it doesn't dissipate well at 90 atmospheres, which is why much of the surface looks like this. Much of it is semi-molten, and even where our probes landed, they sank quite a bit (resulting in some of the failures). No probe that has landed on Venus has reach its operational life goal - unlike those on Mars which have regularly exceeded their live goals by multiple magnitudes.

There hasn't been tectonic activity on Venus for at least half a billion years. It is true there are volcanos that are probably redistributing stuff, but that also makes it harder to pick safe mining spots, while the chaotic flows make it impossible to determine where you're going to land... But it's true, if you collapse the atmosphere via cooling that may help with the striation issues.

[Anonymous No.8732616]

>>8732612
Wrong pic...

[Anonymous No.8732661]

>>8732612
>The lander functioned for 127 minutes (the planned design life was 32 minutes) in an environment with a temperature of 457 °C (855 °F) and a pressure of 89 Earth atmospheres (9.0 MPa). The descent vehicle transmitted data to the satellite, which acted as a data relay as it flew by Venus.

We are working on electronics today that will be able to function at 500 celcius, which is the primary difficulty for venusian landers

There are large "continents" that would exist at lower pressures & lower temperatures too

Like I said before, until we get there to actually do prospecting, saying that no mineral resources are accessible is just guess work.

If the whole damn planet was semi-molten liquid then it wouldn't have mountains.

[Anonymous No.8732682]

>>8731442
>escape a gravity well
>refueling stations on mars
I hope you mean in orbit around Mars

But wait, Mars orbit still wouldn't be great, because you'd have to limit yourself to trajectories that let you do Mars orbital insertion before going somewhere else. Even that costs delta-V. And you still have to find a way to make the fuel, even if you have to land tanks full of hydrogen on Mars.

Earth-orbiting stations have the advantage that you already have to go through there on the way to escape. And it's getting up there that takes most of the fuel anyhow.

As far as terraforming goes, I'm seeing one common thing in the most straightforward ways to terraform Mars and Venus: build an enormous shield in front of each of them, to block light from Venus, and charged particles from Mars.

[Anonymous No.8732725]

>>8730100
>Never watched si-fi movie where sciencists use a blackmans train with a plasma drill to dig to the core of the Earth to drop nuclear bombs on it causing it to spin again.
Minerals are easy to mine on Venus.

[Anonymous No.8732917]

>>8730080
>floating sky colony on Venus?
whats the point, why not just orbit earth

[Anonymous No.8732925]

>>8732725
>easy
atmosphere surface pressure same as 1km deep water, how the fuck is that easy

[Anonymous No.8732930]

>>8730256

>despite all evidence pointing towards Venus being clearly the worst option, it is actually the best

nah

the upper atmosphere of Venus is a siren's song luring you into """literal hell"""

[Anonymous No.8732940]

>>8732616

>false color image that looks like lava
>must be lava

Except it isn't. Venus' surface rocks are not semi-molten, they aren't even hot enough to glow red. Basalt (the most common type fo rock on Venus) needs to be about twice as hot as the surface of Venus in order to start going even slightly soft.

[Anonymous No.8732943]

Why doesn't SpaceX just put a really tall mountain on Venus and then build a colony on the summit?

[Anonymous No.8733050]

>>8732917
Cuz half the shit that'll kill the Earth will may kill any self-sustaining orbital habitat in the process, plus it's much more tempting to fudge "self sustaining" when you're that close.

Why you'd wanna sink yourself into a gravity well just as strong where extracting resources is a whole lot harder than near anywhere else in the solar system and the more critical ones are plain old missing, that, I've no idea. You would be better off setting up an O'Nieil in the asteroid belt than in the exosphere of Venus - at least until you cooled it, and got a whole lotta water there. Mars is more difficult to depart from than an O'Neil cylinder, but easier than Venus, and still gives you basically limitless electronics-friendly land mass to play with, unlike the cylinder where you're limited to your engineering constraints.

[Anonymous No.8733085]

>>8731441
kek

[Anonymous No.8733217]

>>8730207
>The ONLY actual problem in mining on the surface is electronics operating at high temperatures, which will be solved fairly soon
No it won't.

[Anonymous No.8733225]

Guys, listen
What if
Listen
What if we sent big robots to Venus,
Guys
If we sent big robots there, and built a giant 70 km tall mountain?
We could live on top of it right?

[Anonymous No.8733238]

>>8733225
The mountain will need to be made out of husks of dead robots.

[Anonymous No.8733429]

>>8731433
with space magic

[Anonymous No.8733445]

>>8732940
fyi rocks will become white-ish long before glowing red in the process of heating

[Anonymous No.8733459]

I have read a lot about terraforming Mars. But even if you managed to do that, you can never terraform the gravity of the planet, so truly colonizing Mars will never happen. Maybe by genetically modified humans that can deal with the low gravity, but not by normal humans.

But in what way could you terraform Venus? I guess "cooling" a planet is much harder, than "heating" it?

[Anonymous No.8733484]

>>8730980
>>Dude, stop
can't, don't have any brakes

>>Even if electronics work as you say(which they won't, you are as[s]uming perfect systems)what they won't stand is the constant degradation, erosion and all fuckery of high pres[s]ure.
We have tested silicon carbide integrated circuits for 521 hours at venusian ambient conditions, yes including the corrosive gases, no degradation was found.
Didn't you read the linked paper?

http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973429

pic related

>>Superdense air
launch from higher altitudes

>> with storms at certain altitudes adding even more complications for anything trying to reach orbit again
well then, don't launch a rocket from those altitudes. Now since you seem to know so much about this, perhaps you can elaborate as to what these altitudes are?

NASA has concluded that it can be done:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160006329.pdf

>>Earth like gravity that forces you into taking high care of mas[s] in a place where you won't have the infraestructure to do so.
On Mars you need pressurized habitats and radiation shielding, ''in a place where you won't have the infraestructure to do so"

>>Total dependence in teleoperation, adding even more costs and points of failures
Provided one can make a sufficiently strong fullerene cable, one doesn't need teleoperated robots, one can dedge for rocks.

But material from the surface may not be that important as a variety of elements can be extracted from Venus' atmosphere

gonna finish the rest of my response later

[Anonymous No.8733486]

>>8731433
By building it from materials launched by a mass driver on the Moon

[Anonymous No.8733492]

>>8731433
Make it from nickel iron asteroids, that have been nudged into earth orbit by remote rocket drones. Get the resources to come to us.

[Anonymous No.8733518]

Does Mars have enough nitrogen? I know Venus has shitloads, assuming you removed the co2 you'd get about 3 bar atmo in which you could joyfully hike with oxygen mask, but I remember reading Mars has the issue of not having enough.

[Anonymous No.8733545]

>>8733459
>I guess "cooling" a planet is much harder, than "heating" it?
Yeah.

Earth and Mars both used to have thicker, volcanic CO2 atmospheres too, but since they're cooler planets, this CO2 was absorbed into geological sinks via weathering (and in Earth's case, photosynthesis also played a role). On Venus, however, the temperature was already hot enough that the reverse happened, and carbonate minerals readily rejected their carbon into the atmosphere. (Or that's the prevailing understanding anyways.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate%E2%80%93silicate_cycle

Perhaps if the Venusian surface could be terraformed into enormous mountains reaching into the cooler upper atmosphere, this reaction would reverse and CO2 would be absorbed into silicate rocks at the peaks of these mountains.

[Anonymous No.8733554]

>>8733518
>Does Mars have enough nitrogen?
What do you mean, "enough nitrogen?" What do you need nitrogen for? If atmospheric pressure is below 0.3 atmospheres nitrogen's not going to do you any good anyways.

[Anonymous No.8733560]

>>8733554
Except on Mars you can stand on the surface, dig a hole, and pressurize it.

As opposed to Venus, to get that pressure, you gotta suspend yourself in the air against incredibly fast, largely corrosive wind and lightning, and the surface is pretty much out of the question.

Until you cool it with a tier 2 civilization style super-structure, but then you lose your pressure, and still have no water around. (Which might not be a problem, if you actually were a tier 2 civilization - but otherwise...)

[Anonymous No.8733579]

>>8730207
>>8730080
Mars:
>low gravity, may have ill effects on humans over the long term, we don't know how bad, if any, yet though
>colonists can actually live on the surface, constructing shit on the surface and protecting colonists from the cold is relatively easy
>mining is easy, we can use already existing mining equipment with little to no modifications
>could theoretically be terraformed over the long term by melting frozen shit to give it an atmosphere, although it could evaporate over thousands of years
>you could most likely build self sufficient colonies
>no magnetic field or atmosphere to protect from radiation
>days are about as long as on Earth

Venus:
>closer to 1G, would cause no ill effect on humans
>colonists have to live in floating cities, balloons are a single point of failure, if they fail, they fall into literal hell
>mining is hard, and not only because of the electronics. many metals lose their tempering after they reach a certain temperature, and after that they become useless for mining. you would also need some super high temperature grease (surface temperature is like fucking 450 °C). the reason they stopped drilling the Kola superdeep borehole was that the temperature reached 180 °C, which is nothing in comparison. the repeated cooling and heating would also most likely damage the landers that bring up the mined minerals
>you could build self sufficient colonies if you solved mining and built a lot of solar panels or harnessed fusion, most likely at least an order of a magnitude higher initial invesment than a Mars colony though
>could theoretically be terraformed by getting rid of most of its atmosphere, changing its chemical composition, and somehow spinning it up over eons
>no magnetic field against solar radiation, although it has an atmosphere, not sure how much that would shield at high altitudes
>days are 240 Earth days long

[Anonymous No.8733586]

>>8730080
Mars can support a self sustaining colony. It has water, iron and other materials which you cant get in the sky of Venus

[Anonymous No.8733590]

>>8731002
I'd fucking shoot myself if I had to live in 27 degree weather all the time
t. canadian

[Anonymous No.8733591]

>>8731433
>build zero-g construction and metal processing equipment, launch it into space
note that we most likely have very advanced autonomous construction equipment at this point in time, cutting complexity and costs down
>build some huge electric gun, like the 9000 meter long magnetic "catapult" proposed by some mathematician, because they are more efficient at getting stuff into space than rockets
>alternatively, build the gun on the moon, and mine the moon
>build the cylinder from the raw materials in space

[Anonymous No.8733605]

>>8733591
Or we could just mine an asteroid

[Anonymous No.8733609]

>>8733560
Dude, chill. I didn't say a damn thing about Venus. I was only pointing out how you don't need nitrogen to breathe on Mars, so there's not much point in worrying if Mars has "enough nitrogen."

[Anonymous No.8733610]

>>8730748
>Nothing of any structurally significant size could survive being it by it at an off angle, much less navigate it.
Actually, the bigger your craft, the better, since its surface (on which the winds act) is less compared to its weight, that keeps it stable, although the square-cube law also makes structures weaker as they get bigger.

[Anonymous No.8733615]

>>8733605
Yeah but I did not want to mention that, because I don't know how feasible it would be. First, we'd need a big enough asteroid. Then it would have to contain a lot of useful stuff, and not just some random rock. And then it would have to be at the right point in its orbit to be close enough to us to reach it, and even then, we would have to slow it down, because it would probably have a stupid orbit that is not good for a space habitat. Slowing it down would require rockets, which are inefficient, or some very slow method, like a huge solar sail, that would take decades.

[Anonymous No.8733623]

>>8730778
Most of the weight of a rocket is the fuel, so if you wanted to move your habitat, it would have to be like 90% fuel by weight. Not only is it extremely hard to build rockets of that size, but you also wouldn't want to have a huge tank of what are basically high explosives to be part of your habitat for obvious reasons. Also, you don't want your habitat just flying around in space in random directions, because of the changes in insolation that would cause would fuck up your vegetation, fuck with the internal temperature and shit.

[Anonymous No.8733628]

>>8730080

>Why isn't SpaceX trying to create a floating sky colony on Venus?

Because the technology for it hasn't even been demonstrated to work. NASA hasn't built a functional high-altitude long endurance Venus probe (ie an airship) yet. Meanwhile Mars rovers are proven to work.

[Anonymous No.8733630]

>>8731433

build it on the moon

[Anonymous No.8733631]

>>8732682
Mars has a much smaller gravity well though (escape velocity is 5 km/s compared to 11 km/s). That difference is way more significant than it seems.

[Anonymous No.8733633]

>>8732430

>ISS
>shit

just because you're a retard doesn't mean everyone else is

[Anonymous No.8733673]

>>8732943
>>8733225
Building such a huge mountain would require a fuckton of energy, and would lead to a number of problems. First, I suppose you would do it by stacking mined rocks on top of each other. This would mean that as the pressure grows, the rocks would be deformed, until they fill out the space perfectly. This deformation would generate a lot of heat that would melt the rocks, meaning you would have to wait for your mountain to cool down before you can continue building it, otherwise it would liquefy and flow away, and then you would have no mountain. I remember seeing a documentary about iron recycling, and they mentioned that as the scrap pile grew, its internal temperature would become so high, that there was a risk of fires. Anyway, as your mountain grew, you would have to wait more and more for it to cool, since it would have less and less surface compared to its mass, and cooling happens on the surface. And finally, even if you did end up building this mountain, it would exert ridiculous pressures on the surface, and since the inside of Venus is molten, it would sink into the planet over time (think about it, there is a reason for all planets being spherical). This sinking would mean that your city is ultimately doomed, and it would also lead to a lot of unpredictable Earthquakes.

[Anonymous No.8733683]

>>8733459
>I guess "cooling" a planet is much harder, than "heating" it?
The reason Venus is so warm is the greenhouse effect. The Venus is about 108 million kilometres from the Sun, the Earth is about 150 million kilometres from the Sun, and Mercury is about 58 kilometres from the Sun. Even though Mercury is almost twice as close, meaning it gets about 3.5 times as much energy from the Sun per square metre of its surface, it is still colder than Venus, because it has no atmosphere. So the obvious solution is to get rid of most of Venus' atmosphere, since we don't need that anyway. I guess it could be done by temporarily heating up the planet so that the gas molecules have enough energy to escape its gravity well, but I don't know by how much you would need to heat it up, and how long it would take. You could probably do it by somehow focusing more sunlight on its surface. Also, you'd need to make it rotate faster (it barely rotates at all right now), which is a huge problem, since planets have huge angular momentum, and because there is no trivial way to do it, since you can't just "grab" a planet and spin it. One proposed way of doing it I've heard of is shading one half of it, so that solar radiation exerts more pressure on that half, thus making it spin. I don't know how long that would take though, probably at least a couple million years.

[Anonymous No.8733689]

>>8733554
>What do you need nitrogen for?
plants need it

[Anonymous No.8733692]

>>8733554

>why do you need nitrogen

Not sure if bait. Pure oxygen or co2 atmosphere is useless.
Unless you intend the entire colonization project be limited to small underground facilities forever.

[Anonymous No.8733704]

>>8733683

Spinning up venus is stupid aside from being impossibly impractical. Tidal locking is not that much of a big deal anyway and I believe (just a fuzzy memory), that if it had 24hr rotation it would have been actually worse as far as temperature goes. I also don't like the ideas about ejecting atmospheres and so on. Seems like a big waste of stuff that could be used, not to mention that the methods involved in doing it would probably render the planet into molten rock for millions of years.

[Anonymous No.8733718]

>>8733704
If it was tidally locked, you would end up with a too cold dark side, a too hot hot side, and small region where life is possible, because it's neither too hot nor too cold. As it is right now, with the 240-day orbital period, it is even worse than if it was tidally locked, since you will inevitably spend 120 days in the heat, and there are no spots with the right temperature forever, as it is constantly rotating. Take the moon for example, it is about as far from the Sun as the Earth, has no atmosphere, has a 27 Earth days long day, and during daytime, the surface temperatures can reach up to 123 °C, because of the long time spent in sunlight. Clearly you need Venus to rotate around its axis.
The atmosphere is full of useful stuff, true, but you don't need that much of those things anyway. The only thing you need to watch out for is to keep enough of the useful stuff in the atmosphere while you're doing the evaporating. The other option is cooling, but then you end up with miles of dry ice and other useless shit covering the planet's entire surface. Also, the hotter something is, the faster it cools, so even if you heated it up to 1500 °C, it would take less time for it to cool down back to the initial temperature of 450 °C than it would for it to cool down from 450 °C to humanly bearably temperatures.

[Anonymous No.8733722]

>>8733718
>240-day orbital period
I mean that's how long it takes for it to rotate around its axis, I'm not talking about how long it takes for it to orbit the Sun. I fucked up the wording there a bit.

[Anonymous No.8733734]

>>8733689
And you need plants... why?

Genetically engineered cyanobacteria are where it's at. Soylent green up in this bitch.
>>8733692
>Pure oxygen or co2 atmosphere is useless.
Pure O2 is perfectly breathable and safe at low pressure. Fire hazards and oxygen toxicity are only a problem at higher pressures (>1 atm). And Mars is a low-pressure environment anyways.

[Anonymous No.8733750]

>>8733718

You are thinking atmospheric-less bodies tidal locking. With atmosphere things change. The air will move around fast enough to compensate for the long day and night cycle. If water is available it will also evaporate on the day side, reflecting large amounts of light.
Windpower fags will probably rejoice.

[Anonymous No.8734456]

Why do you always got retards talking about terraforming jesus christ

[Anonymous No.8735840]

>>8733484
>>8730980
Venus' atmosphere contains a variety of elements, most importantly CHNOPS. CHNOPS are the among the most important elements necessary for life. Nitrogen is available directly from the atmosphere, carbon and oxygenare available in the form of CO2, sulfur and hydrogen are available as sulfuric acid. Phosphorous, we aren't quite sure what form it is in, but it is probably in the form of phosphoric acid. The venera and vega probes detected it with their x-ray spectrometers, even finding as much phosphorous as sulfur in the lower clouds below 52 km:
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/venus2014/pdf/6005.pdf

In addition to CHNOPS we also get HF and HCl. From all this we can make a wide variety of organic materials including teflon, HDPE, PVC, kevlar, kapton, carbon fiber, epoxy, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and organic semiconductors. All useful things for making more balloons, habitats, vehicles, hydroponic farms, etc to grow our colony. Now here's where things get crazy, one of the things the venera and vega probes found in the atmosphere was iron. Further analysis has shown that this is likely to be in the form of a 1% solution of ferric chloride solvated in sulfuric acid:

https://phys.org/news/2016-04-dark-stripes-uv-images-venus.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103516306509

From carbon and iron we can make steel. From steel we can make all sorts of things including chemical reactors and those fancy metal balloons for getting back up from the surface. Interestingly ferric chloride also happens to be a catalyst used in the production of certain polymers. There's no telling what else could turn up in venus' atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.8735841]

>>8735840
Even so, a Venus colony is still probably going to need imported resources for some time, but then again so is a Mars colony. What makes a venus colony compelling is that the majority of the resources we need to stay alive and grow food are available by gas phase and liquid phase processing. Dealing with liquids and gases

is a heck of a lot easier than dealing with solids. On Mars one needs to dig for resources/drive over rocks and sand, on Venus one just filters and condenses stuff out. Well that's the argument the Venus people make at least, we need to understand venus better before we can attempt such things.

[Anonymous No.8735905]

>>8735841
Trying to mine on the surface is probably better than trying to extract iron thats present at ppb amounts

Or just mine asteroids

[Anonymous No.8736729]

>>8733590
Seconded by Scotland. First time I went into 30 Deg weather I got heatstroke.

[Anonymous No.8737246]

>>8733579

Imagine the horror of a large solar flare while being in that death trap on Venus. Electronics would get fried. People would have to shelter in rooms surrounded by water. The whole thing would probably come crashing down after the first bad one.

[Anonymous No.8737289]

>>8730431
I don't think it's much of a problem.
I would suck living in perpetual darkness or light for 200 days but there are communities of people who go 50 days in the far north.
I mean martians would have to deal with something similar since terraforming plans at the moment call for underground cities.

We can just nuke the core to get a magnetic field right?

[Anonymous No.8737305]

>>8737289

You can't nuke cores this ain't a movie. Though I wonder what will happen if the venusian crust cools drastically. Probably lots of floaty things.

[Anonymous No.8737312]

>>8737246
Solar flares have two ways of frying things: they fry things in space, such as satellites, because the gorillions of charged particles that crash into them cause static build-up, which is known to destroy electronics, and they fry the things one the ground, because the charged particles cause a geomagnetic storm, and the voltage fluctuations induced by this changing magnetic field in the electric grid are what kill the devices. Since the cloud cities would be within the atmosphere, they would most likely be protected from the direct effects of the charged particles by the atmosphere, and since the Venus has no fucking magnetic field, it would not experience geomagnetic storms. Furthermore, even if it had a magnetosphere, solar flares would still have no effect on small to medium sized electronics. That is because geomagnetic storms are very weak, however the electric grid spans tens or even hundreds of miles, and on those scales there is enough change in magnetic flux to induce high enough voltages to fuck with the grid. This would not be a problem on Venus, because the Venusian "electric grid" would probably not even span a mile.

[Anonymous No.8737324]

>>8730213
>>STILL falling for the planet meme
>O'NEIL CYLINDERS
Sing it brother.
Planets are just a gravity well trap.
Best choice would be to build artificial habitats connected to Ceres-habitats for living, while Ceres would provide building materials.

[Anonymous No.8737326]

>>8737324
Gravity wells are not a trap at all
Once we are travelling in space regularly they are just an inconvenience

[Anonymous No.8737390]

Well, what resources would they get from Venus?

[Anonymous No.8738302]

>>8735905
There is quite a bit actually
It's in ppbv amounts in the atmosphere overall, but is in 1% concentrations in sulfuric acid droplets. With something like a fog net, we can collect sulfuric acid in an entirely passive process. There is also the possibility that venus has sulfuric acid rain, in which case we can collect the 'rain' much like we do with rain water collectors on earth.

[Anonymous No.8738345]

>>8737312
Actually, a strong enough solar flare can cause a plasma build up in the magnetosphere and it can in turn draw that plasma down in funnels to the surface, frying everything. (Yeah, you're cell phone will probably break first, but you won't care for very long.)

Flares that strong, indeed many times that strength, are actually not that unusual, but they rarely are that strong this far out. (Only two of the global extinction events in the past four billion years list this as a probable cause.)

Not sure if such storms are more common around Venus, but in this case, it's actually the magnetosphere that makes the storm worse, so it may not be an issue.

Granted, the radiation issues on Mars are extremely overstated as well.

[Anonymous No.8740110]

Lump

[Anonymous No.8740251]

The biggest "issue" is that its .9 g gravity necessitates a 2 stage launch vehicle to get back to Earth.

So the ITS vehicle would not be suitable for Venus

[Anonymous No.8740267]

"The average temperature on Venus is 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius). Temperature changes slightly traveling through the atmosphere, growing cooler farther away from the surface. Lead would melt on the surface of the planet, where the temperature is around 872 F (467 C)."

I'd say that building technology able to withstand that for a *time* isn't an issue, but how do you make something that can withstand that sort of heat for years to come?

[Anonymous No.8740316]

>>8740267
You live on floating cities at 50~km altitude where the temperature is similar to earth summer days

[Anonymous No.8740346]

>>8740316
>temperature is similar to Earth on a summer day, while suspended over red-hot glowing coals of my magnificaent BBQ grill.

FTFY

[Anonymous No.8740354]

>>8740316
And, the sulfuric acid clouds?

[Anonymous No.8740534]

>>8740354
Just a light haze, means you have to build using acid-resistant plastics
Or least put an outer coating on the habitat

>>8740346
The diversity of environments/resources will be beneficial, not a bad thing.

[Anonymous No.8741228]

>>8740354
You harvest them for their ferric chloride and phosphoric acid content

[Anonymous No.8741235]

>>8730207

[Anonymous No.8741269]

This has been a good thread /sci/, I'm proud of you.

[Anonymous No.8741287]

>>8730685

Now prove sustainability.

[Anonymous No.8741296]

>>8741287
Sustainability is a meme

[Anonymous No.8742027]

>>8730169
>All these replies

It's Venusian

[Anonymous No.8742255]

>>8732403
m8 we can't even fly blimps to the moon yet

[Anonymous No.8743541]

>>8742255
There's no air on the moon

[Anonymous No.8743860]

>>8733734

Anything that uses photosynthesis needs nitrogen, idiot.

Nitrogen is required to make amino acids which are required to make protein. Without protein life can't exist. Therefore a self sustaining colony needs a source of nitrogen.

[Anonymous No.8743862]

>>8737289

Don't need a magnetic field to do anything but give your atmosphere a longer shelf life. If you live indoors and don't depend on an open atmosphere you don't need a magnetic field.

[Anonymous No.8743863]

>>8737390

Carbon, oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, a little hydrogen, argon, and maybe some volcanic ash dust if they're very lucky. Not enough to actually support a colony by a long shot.

[Anonymous No.8743868]

>>8740251

ITS can't land on Venus, not only would the heat kill everything inside it it's also cause the ship itself to disintegrate as the resins melted.

Also to get into orbit around Earth takes roughly 9.4km/s of deltaV, whereas to get into orbit around Venus requires over 27km/s of deltaV, because Venus' atmosphere is thick and dense enough to actually make a huge difference, as opposed to Earth's or Mars'.

[Anonymous No.8743871]

>>8741296
>he fell for the entropy meme

I bet you think perpetual motion is impossible, too

[Anonymous No.8743953]

>>8743868
Thats obviously one of the issues with Venus, you would be doing everything in the air, different thinking than doing shit on land

Not necessarily harder, but different.

>>8743863
>Not enough to actually support a colony by a long shot.
It's a whole frigging world, of course it has everything the Earth has, maybe not in the same proportions but all the same elements.

[Anonymous No.8743959]

>>8743953
>It's a whole frigging world

Not if you can't reach the surface any collect any meaningful amount of resources.

[Anonymous No.8743989]

>>8743959
But of course you can reach the surface
What would stop you?

[Anonymous No.8744000]

>>8743989

The heat and pressure. We don't have the materials required to mine rocks at over 400 degrees C, we don't have electronics that can survive the conditions (although recent progress has been made in high temperature semi conductors, it's not close to the level of sophistication we'd need yet), and we don't have a way of shuttling mined materials from the surface up to where a habitat would be viable. Some research into metallic balloons has been done but they aren't at a level of technological readiness yet that we could use them for something like this, and we can't build a colony with our fingers crossed.

Venus colonization can probably be done given infinite budget and super-advanced technology, but as it stands today Venus is probably the most difficult environment in the solar system to attempt to colonize that isn't outright impossible to colonize.

[Anonymous No.8744028]

>>8744000
>The heat and pressure.
Neither the heat nor the pressure are going to prevent Venusians from dredging the surface.
Initial expansion of the habitat would be done using resources extracted from the atmosphere

Necessary technologies would be developed over the years it will take to even start a colony.

[Anonymous No.8744050]

>>8744028
>dredging

Dredging solid rock and hoping you get something useful? Seems legit.

>resources extracted from the atmosphere

There are no more anemic sources of building material that come to mind.

>Necessary technologies would be developed over the years it will take to even start a colony.

There is a difference between "we will need a modified version of something that already exists" and "we will need completely new technology that we haven't even started thinking about". Starting to take steps without knowing that these problems are even solvable is a recipe for failure.

[Anonymous No.8744091]

>>8744050
So you know where all the carbon in wood comes from right?

[Anonymous No.8744097]

>>8744091
So you want to grow trees on airbags?

[Anonymous No.8744114]

>>8744097
No, just pointing out that one of the world's most used building materials is largely derived from air.

Genetically engineered bacteria would be preferable to trees, as we want plastic rather than wood. We already have 100% biologically derived nylon:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096717614000664

[Anonymous No.8744126]

>>8744091
It came from a star that died

[Anonymous No.8744140]

>>8738302
What about storms?

[Anonymous No.8744159]

>>8744000
>we don't have a way of shuttling mined materials from the surface up to where a habitat would be viable.
If a 3-rigged British Corvette could dredge sediment from the bottom of the Marianas Trench way the fuck back in 1875, somehow I think they could figure something out for hauling shit up from the Venusian surface.
>Not that it matters if you lack the means to actually analyze and mine it in the first place.

[Anonymous No.8744176]

>>8744159

No, even though the pressure at the bottom of the ocean is higher than on Venus, what kills your machinery is the heat. Tool steel loses its hardness at temperatures below what exists at the surface of Venus, thermal cycling through 400 degrees C is a nightmare for any machine, and current electronics can't handle the heat.

There's also the problem of actually transporting the mined materials. Underwater you can just use buoyancy, at Venus you'd need a system that used buoyancy and active propulsion and could operate over a 400 degree range of temperature and pass through the acid haze AND be able to navigate the sheer winds on ascent and descent to get close to its targets, and so forth.

[Anonymous No.8744180]

>>8744091
You know hydrocarbons require hydrogen right? And that hydrogen compounds are very rare in Venus' atmosphere?

[Anonymous No.8744208]

>>8730207
A Venutian ground vehicle would be like trying to keep every operating part of a truck at absolute zero in the middle of the Sahara. Theoretically possible, but utterly impractical. Not to mention way harder on Venus because the temperature difference is bigger, and heat rejection would have to be done at a much higher temperature.

[Anonymous No.8744211]

>>8731433
The most viable proposal so far has been using mass drivers on the moon to deliver most of the raw materials, and contructing at Earth-Moon L5

[Anonymous No.8744213]

>>8731442
Play some KSP, faggot

[Anonymous No.8744219]

Solar shields/mirrors (for mars/venus respectively). I guess you'd need self manufacturing to turn asteroid into that since shipping plates and all is insane. And wouldn't the solar pressure push it off place eventually since that's how solar sails work? Honestly can't get rid of the feeling we'll be stuck in LEO for a long time, and maybe push it to the moon with some sort of ISS v2.0.

[Anonymous No.8744336]

>>8744208
That's why everyone wants to build machines that operate at that temperature, and not machines that need cooling.

[Anonymous No.8744386]

>>8730207
/sci/ calls engineers stupid when you have shit like this.

[Anonymous No.8744423]

>>8733623
>rockets are 90% """"fuel"""""
>I think I'm smart but can't even into the rocket equation
Lifting something up a gravity well != maneuvering in orbit

Habitats aren't built to do much maneuvering, but what evasive maneuvers and stationkeeping might be necessary can easily be performed by high-efficiency, low-thrust ion or plasma drives

[Anonymous No.8744428]

>>8744180
>clouds of sulfuric acid
anon...

[Anonymous No.8744434]

>>8744386
There's a reason why all the mathematicians are communists

[Anonymous No.8744448]

>>8744423
>""""fuel""""
What's the matter with that? Should I have written propellant of what? It's most likely a language barrier thing.
>90%
That was just a random number I wrote. To be fair, it was a bad idea to write an exaggerated number when 10% would have proven my point just as well.
>Habitats aren't built to do much maneuvering
The poster I replied to talked about flying the habitat close to other planets to gather resources, and not just maneuvering it in orbit, which would mean the habitat would have to gain considerable speed requiring lots of propellant.

[Anonymous No.8744782]

>>8744176
>Tool steel loses its hardness at temperatures below what exists at the surface of Venus
Mining buckets are frequently hardfaced with carbide. Hardness shouldn't be an issue, though toughness and yield strength are concerns. HSS also exists. It's a pain in the ass, but it's an option.
>thermal cycling through 400 degrees C is a nightmare for any machine
So keep it hot. Wrap it with a blanket.
>and current electronics can't handle the heat.
I'm not really talking about any electronics but yeah. You'd have to refrigerate anything that went down there for any length of time.

[Anonymous No.8744796]

>>8730431
>>8730382
My favorite Venus terraforming theory is to build a big-ass mass driver that intentionally siphons off most of the atmosphere into space

This will simultaneously solve the pressure, temperature AND rotational problems (if you shot everything in more or less the same direction you'd have a Venus with an earthlike air pressure that rotates once every 30 days instead of once every 116 days)

It seems like the only issue is building a big fusion reactor to power the mass driver.

I think effective fusion power wouldn't just help on Earth, it would enable all kinds of amazing space projects. I mean fuck, you could colonize Pluto, just bring a fusion reactor along to heat and light the place.

[Anonymous No.8744810]

>>8744796

>have magic tech
>use it throw away carbon in space instead of turning it into something useful

[Anonymous No.8744813]

>>8744810
>you'll only ever get one fusion reactor after it's invented

[Anonymous No.8744991]

>>8744176
Jet engines operate up to 2000 degrees C, your argument is irrelevant.