Talk:Terraforming of Venus

how long

Assuming that intra-Solar System space travel becomes a practicality - how long would it take to make Venus a habitable planet?

While a fairly hypothetical question at them moment, money invested in Martian terraforming would probably be better spent.

Jackiespeel 16:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

From start to finish? Preparations for Mars terraforming would be shorter (we could start in five years), but overall length of time spent and resources invested would be greater (on the order of hundreds of years). Terraforming Venus would take longer to prepare for (70 years) but once begun the actual terraforming process would be much shorter than even half a human lifespan (20-50 years). All that is needed for Venetian terraforming is a large source of hydrogen such as H3 or H2 commonly found on cryogenic bodies which would need to be broken apart into small chunks and shuttled towards Venus over the course of a few decades. After that, resulting carbon and H in water can be used for bacterial food, with bacteria pushing forth nitrogen fixation and releasing some oxygen from the water with small scattered lakes remaining. The result is a fertile surface rich in organic molecules (bacterial remains), with a good seal against losing water, fixed nitrogen and an atmosphere where carbon and nitrogen have been removed and replaced by oxygen. Really the only thing needed to so it is a large amount of hydrogen, nitrogen fixing bacteria as well as seeds, animals and people to colonize it. It would be just like earth with a bit higher solar radiation. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 23:47, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Very true. There have been several articles on terraforming Venus in the JBIS, and it's apparent that the 200 atmospheres of carbon dioxide present a far greater problem than anything on Mars. Even Titan might be easier to terraform than Venus. - Reaverdrop (talk/nl/wp:space) 23:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Venus is very difficult even settle, not to mention terraform (which is factually impossible). Settling Venus is much more difficult than settling Mercury or Ganymede or something in Kuiper Belt.--Nixer 16:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Did you even read the article? Terraforming Venus is not impossible, merely very difficult. The question is whether it is practical, or worth the effort. (67.87.115.207 19:41, 29 July 2006 (UTC))

I have several ideas, likely not covered: Many things are likely necessary to terraform Venus. The high speed wind at about 50 kilometers altitude likely spirals in near the North and South poles of Venus. The pressure, and thus the temperature, increases as the air descends converting the algae to algae charcoal. A snow fence on the surface collects algae charcoal and other dust for the same reasons it works with snow. If the fence circles the polar region, the elevation will increase over the centuries just outside the fence. Repositioning the fence will be necessary at least occasionally. The ring of hills will block some of the sunlight reaching the polar region and impede hot surface winds which would otherwise occasionally blow into the polar region from the lower latitudes. The sunshades that cool the polar regions need to be transparent to wavelengths of light that the algae can use is for photosynthesis. To convert the excess carbon dioxide to oxygen in less than a million years, many millions of cubic kilometers of atmosphere need to be maintained at a temperature which allows the algae to flourish. This will require skillful management of the sunshades. The algae cloud will cool the polar region significantly, if it is sufficiently dense. Just before the polar region is cool enough for sulpheric acid rain to fall, the polar region should be covered with an impervious film to keep the acid from soaking deep into Venus, otherwise boiling acid guysers will erupt returning the acid to the atmosphere. The sub-surface temperature of the polar plateau will likely remain at almost 500 degrees c for a million years. The algae has other needs: Phosphorus, potassium, nitrates and water which can be supplied by crashing small comets and asteroids into Venus just North of the Equator. We can build a plateau at the South pole simultaneously, but the North pole already has part of a plateau. As others have posted, incredibly expensive and may take a million years to terraform just the polar regions. After most of the sulpheric acid is stored below the surface of the polar plateau (1000 years?) genetically altered humans with a carbon dioxide removing prosthesis can likely work otherwise naked on the polar plateau. Plants can likely thrive in an atmosphere 1% oxygen, 1% water vapor and 90% carbon dioxide, at about 89 atmospheres pressure. At that high a pressure more than 1% oxygen is a fire hazard, so iron asteroids are now needed to convert the excess oxygen to iron oxide. Alternately, a million tons of imported hydrogen will make nine million pounds of water from the excess oxygen. Ccpoodle 15:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposed move

I suggest to move the article to Terraforming of Venus by analogy with Colonization of Venus--Nixer 09:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

shading via comet

I just removed this from the article:

A comet at the Sun-Venus L₁ point could produce a coma which could provide at least temporary shade for the planet, possibly allowing enough time for atmospheric processing to be done. Keeping a continuously decaying comet in a stable position could prove to be a difficult feat.

It's uncited and doesn't seem plausible to me, but just in case anyone else has heard this proposal and can come up with references for it I'm putting it here in talk. Bryan 08:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Dead links

The two linked PDFs to the NASA site do not work anymore and I can't find to where they moved. Can someone find them again?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terraforming_of_Venus&oldid=136168050#References

82.83.247.0 23:58, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Rotation Section

Mdbrownmsw removed the following from this article:

"In a paper by Korycansky, Loughlin, and Adams, it is suggested that close flybys of sufficiently sized asteroids could be used to speed a planet's rotation. "

Stating "Rotation - source does not discuss Terraforming of Venus, topic of this article."

Granted that as it stood, it didn't directly apply to the article, but the logical inference I made, and hadn't made explicit was that this procedure, as referenced in the article can be used to speed up the rotation of a planet, and is a technology much more readily accessible to our time than creating huge solar shades and mirrors. Could it be reworked and re-incorporated into the article? Bo-Lingua 02:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

No that would be OR Nil Einne (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Capture in carbonates

Why consider only calcium and magnesium metals when sodium and potassium are also available? These alkali metals are very reactive with carbon dioxide and would appear in any ocean that might be created later. In the right proportions they would be vital to any marine life that might be sown, and potassium would be a welcome addition to any soils that develop. - Tony (talk) 09:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it has to do with the reaction chemistry allowing some reactions involving magnesium and calcium to proceed more easily. Read the referenced paper for details. If you can find another reference that discusses reactions with alkali metals, feel free to add that in as well. - Atarr (talk) 17:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The online document Investigation of sodium - carbon dioxide interactions with calorimetric studies at http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/icapp07/program/abstracts/7547.pdf. indicates that sodium metal is a promising agent for the removal of carbon dioxide from Venus's atmosphere. The surface of Venus is a favorable environment for Na - CO₂ reactions, which are facilitated by high temperatures. - Tony (talk) 22:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Ca and Mg are relatively abundant in the solar system-- I have no idea where you'd find the amounts of sodium and lithium needed to convert carbon dioxide to carbonate in the amounts needed. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 21:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Name of article

Should the name of this article not be "Terraforming Venus" or "Terraformation of Venus"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.36.223 (talk) 12:04, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Terraforming as simple as 2x2!

The article does not mention the most obvious solution: move the entire Venus to Earth's orbit, but exactly to the opposite side of the Sun. This would get rid of the excessive light influx problem, which Venus currently suffers from due to its closeness to the Sun.

Of course, if you are mighty enough to do this, you are probably good enough to spin up Venus's day to 24 hours, the same as Earth's and add a strong magnetic field.

Venus is a better place than Mars, it is so Earth-equivalent in size, The Supreme Reason obviously intended it to serve as hummankind's second home. It would be a show of hubris not to do our utmost to accept this gift as quickly as possible! 82.131.210.162 (talk) 13:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

This could be terrible, messing with slight gravitational pulls, lagrange points, asteroids in motion... not to mention that it is impossible unless you believe in a benevolent God. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 23:51, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Burst the bubble

Drop some insulated space stations down there, run a tube up out of the atmosphere into space. Simply "poking a hole" in the balloon of an atmosphere is more than enough to cause very rapid outgassing. Simultaneous (talk) 19:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it works like that. Their is no 'bubble', and the entire 'surface' of the atmosphere is already exposed to the 'vacuum' of space. All of the ougassing you are gonna get by doing that, is already occurring naturally. naturalnumber (talk) 23:34, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Excessive light & heat? We love it!

Stirling engines on venus would work without even needing concentrators. Just set one out in the sun, and watch as it generates enough excess energy to pay for its trip. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) Simultaneous (talk) 19:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

A heat engine (such as a Stirling engine) needs a temperature difference to operate: the laws of thermodynamics requires that a heat engine must reject waste heat, and this waste heat must be rejected at a temperature lower than the temperature at the heat source. (see Carnot efficiency).

You can't run a heat engine from the temperature of the surface of Venus; there is no temperature difference there-- it's pretty much all the same temperature; there's no place to reject waste heat to.

(also note that the surface of Venus is clouded all the time-- you can't really "set one out in the sun". Geoffrey.landis (talk) 21:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Changing Venus rotation is too hard

Establish a day/night light cycle shorter than Venus's current 116.75 day solar day.

Can we do without changing Venus rotation? Make a thick cloudy atmosphere with equal temperatures all around the Venusian globe, not unlike the current situation but much thinner and colder? --Atitarev (talk) 06:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

There isn't much you could make such an upper atmosphere out of, maybe huge huge quantities of ozone 99.236.221.124 (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-NPOV? (an informal peer-review)

I hate to be a stick in the mud here, especially since this is actually a cool and decently written article (although, stylistically, it could still use some copy editing). It's clear to me however, that the subject matter here is nothing more then science-fiction... It's good, interesting, and cool hard sci-fi, and I enjoyed reading it, but... it's still sci-fi. Are the stake holders in this article really certain that this is a credible article as is? The one issue that spring immediately to my mind, which I dont' see any mention of at all, is the total lack of a Venusian magnetosphere (which, theoretically, is one major reason for the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus...). I'm not saying that this article shouldn't exist (I'm likely one of the most inclusionist editors on Wikipedia), but I am saying that this article definately needs to be balanced with a more realistic view.

I hate to do this, but in order to better illustrate what I'm talking about I'm going to mark up the current article with a bunch of {{fact}} and other inline marks as needed. my normal mode of editing is to remove them whenever I can, but... I'm not adding the tags willy-nilly. I really thing that attention is neede dwhere I've added the tags. I hope that those of you who have shepherded this article to this point will be motivated to improve the article rather then become discouraged. (actually, I stopped after the Solar Shades section. If most of those are taken care of, we can address the rest of the article later)
— Ω (talk) 03:28, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not scifi; it's highly speculative science. Everything in here that's not basic physics has some published reference backing it. Well, OK, one section references hard sci-fi, but only one.

I took out the tags related to solar sails (that's basic physics; if you insist, you can reference the Birch article that touches on solar pressure but it's really unnecessary IMO). I re-wrote some other things to deal with the tags. I took out the planetary ring section; I don't know who put that in and I don't know if it has a reference.

FWIW, the lack of a magnetosphere is mentioned in the rotation section. It's also tangentially touched on in the solar shade section. - Atarr (talk) 23:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Question to be looked up / at

Two reasons Venus may not have a magnetic dynamo and plate tectonics may be affected by the addition of an ocean. That is, tectonic lubrication (which I'm told is important) and the induction of convection due to a thermal gradient in the core (which would be affected by the changing geology). This is pure speculation on my part, but has anyone seen anything that looks into the effect of such massive changes in this way? naturalnumber (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ready source of hydrogen

Crash (gently) a comet like Hale-Bopp into Venus... problem solved. http://solar-center.stanford.edu/art/comet.html. Probably could be done in our lifetime. Steer a comet with a controlled heat source ... exploiting the reserves of reactive gasses in the comet itself. Outgassing=thrust. Simultaneous (talk) 18:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Venus needs in at least 10²⁰ kg of water (i.e. thousands of such comets) to complete the terraforming. Krasss (talk) 20:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Mass drivers

Given sufficiently advanced technology to construct rigid towers from the surface to above the top of the atmosphere, there's a way to get a 'double shot' from using mass drivers at their tops to export excess atmosphere and speed up the rotation.

The first energy addition would come from capturing the kinetic energy of the millions of incoming pressure tanks filled with compressed hydrogen, oxygen or ordinary water. The emptied tanks would then be filled with compressed carbon dioxide and hurled outwards to comets brought in to a Solar orbit between Earth and Venus. The CO2 would be vented out there and the tanks refilled to send back. Think of giants repeatedly catching and pitching baseballs, with each catch and pitch pushing the giant back a little. More kinetic energy transfer could come from loads of cargo staying on Venus. Of course such mass drivers would require large amounts of energy, most likely nuclear power plants on top of the towers. If 'simply' exporting most of the atmosphere using mass drivers could bring Venus up to a 30 day rotation, reversing the process to transfer energy via incoming loads caught by the mass drivers ought to get the rotation going a bit faster, perhaps 20 days. Depends on how much mass would be imported. Upon reaching the end of the project, fire all the tanks in at the top designed catch speed then send them to the surface for recycling into various stuff. Keep a few of the better condition ones for the museums. The towers could remain for use as space elevators and over time the mass drivers, still being used for interplanetary cargo, would continue speeding up the rotation. If it ever gets to 24 hours, switch to launching and catching half the loads in each direction.

The last thing Venus needs for terraforming is *more atmosphere*. Aerobraking random chunks of natural space ice could cause extra work for getting rid of undesired gasses, though any useless gas added that way would give more mass for the mass driver system to kick away and make the final day shorter. The basic composition to aim for would be approximately 70% Nitrogen, 20% Oxygen, 4% water vapor and 0.03% carbon dioxide, and little enough of the total to produce close to one Earth atmosphere pressure. Of course that still leaves the need for extreme SPF sunscreen if speeding up the rotation doesn't jumpstart a magnetic field.

Direct atmosphere ejection

A different method would use the same style of towers as the mass driver system, but would have nuclear rocket engines using the atmospheric gas as reaction mass. The gas would have to be accelerated significantly above escape velocity and only at points in the rotation where the likelyhood of Venus scooping it back up in its orbit would be minimal. Once started the process might work without requiring any moving parts, giant nuclear powered siphons. For even more kick, antimatter powered venturi siphon jets. Fire a high speed jet of fluid through a venturi and fluid can be sucked through an opening in the side of the venturi throat. (One mundane application is a water siphon jet used to empty water bed mattresses. Using antimatter to empty a water bed = insanity.) The antimatter reaction with the atmospheric gas to create the jet would need to be tightly controlled. any unused antimatter would rather dramatically 'erode' pieces of the equipment. Another problem with that method might be radiation. Wouldn't want anything getting in the path of the exhaust streams.

zip-cord method

Completely crazy spin-up method. Make two really long cables, one end of each attached to opposing points on the equator. Wrap around Venus several times then pull, gently. What to pull them with? Who knows, some sort of rig that can thrust away for a very long time. Handling the cables as they fully unwind and have to be detached could be quite a 'fun' problem. Re-attaching and re-winding for another pull if needed would be even more fun. If anyone wants to use this or any of the two ideas above it in a SciFi story, be my guest. This third one might have potential for a comedy.