Space Colonization Part 10: Terraforming Venus, too hard, for now

diasdr (54)in #science • 7 years ago

Venus

It used to be the center of sci-fi just before Mars, well it is closer than Mars and i would really like to have my vacations there. Well i already talked about the Sky cities, this people is totally different. Terraforming this Orange planet is going to be very very difficult.

The problems

First of all at Venus's surface the temperature is over 450 degrees Celsius. Second there is so much CO2 in the atmosphere that we could literally use it for making buildings out of it (not that it is a good idea). Third it rains in Venus but it rains Sulfur acid.Forth there is no water at all. And final problem one day one Venus takes about 6 Earthly months to pass.

A small thought

With our current capabilities it is not worth it to even think of trying terraforming Venus, cloud cities are a by far better idea and if one day our tech is good enough these cloud cities can be our bases of operation for the process of terraforming the planet.

But lets try solving the problems

First about that hellish temperature, CO2 traps the sunlight in the planets atmosphere just like it does here on Earth, but since it is too much it rises the temp very very high. We have to block the sun literally. The whole process is going to have great energy demands so blocking the sun with a huge solar panel construction might be our best option. Blocking the sun us going to make the temp drop fast very fast, CO2 is going to become solid at the most parts of the planet. I think we should gather it and keep it stored. The acidic clouds are going to get solid too and something like a volcanic mist or snow is going to start falling on the planet. It will take a few years to gather it all. we should throw it in the sun or use it somewhere else it does not matter. By now having a sun shield solves most of our problems right? Wrong. Venus has no water and we could use that shield to create day/night cycles but it would be better to use a few thousand of ice based asteroids to accelerate the planets rotation on its Axis, after we finish with that we crash the asteroids on the planet. Finally after many decades the planet looks nothing like it used to, of course we still cant even think of living on its surface. So now we can remove the solar shield, the temperature is going to stabilize to something a bit hotter than Earth. Now we have to plant a few billions of trees in many many places. We release just enough CO2 for them to use and we wait an other 20 years. Our new travel destination is ready to fill it up with humans.

In conclusion

Our generation and the next are going to live the Space age and the terraforming process of Mars, i do not think we will see Mars finished as Earth 2, But we will deffinately not see Venus being terraformed, our technology is good enough for cities over Venus's clouds but we are not even close to terraform the planet.

Source links:

https://www.singularityweblog.com/can-terraforming-venus-be-the-solution-to-population-growth/

https://futurism.com/enough-about-mars-heres-how-we-could-terraform-venus/

https://thesciencegeek.org/2016/02/16/terraforming-venus/