Terraforming Venus

[Ubermensch]

Don't laugh, I know how hard it's supposed to be to do this.

 

Wanted to know if anyone had any ideas other than "haha you idiot mars is easier." Because frankly, I've been doing the math and it strikes me that Mars is not easier, and will in fact take much longer, and its biosphere would be much more fragile.

 

My hope is that the idea will intrigue someone who may want to help with the math as a bizarre hobby :3 That’s not to say I haven’t done a lot of math already >_< *brain pain.

 

The Goal: Transform the Atmosphere

The Venusian highlands shine in the radio spectrum because of high compositions of pyrite (iron sulfide, FeS2). These two massive continents are the iron catalyst necessary for a Bosch reaction on a planetary scale. All that is required is the introduction of 4e19 kg of hydrogen from of ice asteroids (ammonia, methane, water, or pure hydrogen are all candidates). The introduction of this quantity is enough to transform the CO2 of the Venusian atmosphere (95% composition) into a planetary ocean.

 

This ocean will cover 80% of the planet's surface, yet will be only 10% the mass of Earth's ocean. So we will have a planetary temperature-regulator, without too much greenhouse-inducing water-vapor. Ocean mass will be 3.6e19 kg; remaining atmosphere will be 1.6e19 nitrogen (~3.2 bar), much of which will dissolve into the ocean, raising sea-level and reducing atmospheric pressure according to the Henry’s Law.

 

Hedging My Bets: Auxiliary Techniques

Two secondary techniques: a small solar shade to reduce the heat input to Venus, and towers to reduce the heat already inside Venus. The shade would only work to keep the sun-facing side of Venus in its penumbra. The towers are basically 50 km chimneys that take advantage of the Venusian greenhouse in the lower atmopshere and high wind speeds (+300 kph) in the upper atmosphere to become a planetary air-conditioner.

 

My recommendation for living quarters for the terraformers is to take advtantage of the thick, non-flammable atmosphere with hot-hydrogen balloons. Think "cloud city" from Star Wars

[admiral_ju00]

The ocean itself does not regulate the Greenhouse effects, but rather the Phytoplankton does.

So not only will you need to somehow deliver that much water to the Venician surface, you will also need the various marine life, at least the Phytoplankton and the Algae.

[Ubermensch]

The ocean itself does not regulate the Greenhouse effects, but rather the Phytoplankton does.

When I said "regulate temperature" I was not talking about the greenhouse effect. I was talking about the transfer of heat around the planet. Marine environments on Earth are more temperate than land because land heats and cools much quicker than water, and it can't circulate around the planet or within itself as water does.

So not only will you need to somehow deliver that much water to the Venician surface...

I was never talking about transporting water to the surface of Venus. The idea is to cause a planet-wide Bosch reaction that will transform the majority of the Venusian atmosphere into a Venusian ocean.

...you will also need the various marine life' date=' at least the Phytoplankton and the Algae.[/quote'] I do not in fact need them. This terraformation idea does not start with nor does it necessitate biological processes. Unlike Mars. This is not Mars. This is Venus. Venus is not Mars in a great many ways and cannot be terraformed using the same devices with which one might terraform Mars.

 

The Bosch reaction requires the laws of physics to work. No plankton required. Certainly, when we move on to talk about creating the new biosphere, and maintaining the 210 mbars of oxygen in the atmosphere, plants and such have a role. They can certainly play a very good role at controlling the greenhouse effect. But they are not in the list of things I need. Nor do I want them, not yet, not without first cooling Venus, then giving it an ocean for future plankton and whales and naked nubile women to enjoy. But the plankton --like the whales and nubile women-- come later. All I need are the continents of Ishtar and Aphrodite to be as they are: giant plateus of iron and pyrite. Oh, and a gigantic ice asteroid of pure hydrogen. That will simplify the operation. Though I can make do with the already-discovered ammonia- and methane- and water-ice asteroids. Here's some numbers; "Chiron" is a 208 km-wide "centaur" (asteroid/comet) that has an ellipsoid orbit that can't be more than a million years old that goes out around Saturn. As you can see, next to hydrogen iceballs, methane iceballs are preferred, unless some way can be found to get rid of the nitrogen or oxygen undesirables from ammonia/water iceballs.

 

Chiron as ammonia (NH3) iceball:

===================================

1.647e19 kg nitrogen

0.353e19 kg hydrogen

Chiron-size bodies needed: 11.33

Unwanted products: 1.86e20 kg nitrogen (42 bar nitrogen atmosphere)

 

Chiron as methane (CH4) iceball:

===================================

1.5e19 kg carbon

0.5e19 kg hydrogen

Chiron-size bodies needed: 8

Unwanted products: 1.2e20 kg carbon (2.4e20 kg carbon total)

 

Chiron as water (H2O) iceball:

===================================

1.75e19 kg oxygen

0.25e19 kg hydrogen

Chiron-size bodies needed: 16

Unwanted products: 2.8e20 kg oxygen (58 bar oxygen/3 bar nitrogen atmosphere)

[Gant]

Ubermensch,,you scare me.

[admiral_ju00]

Thanks for clearing this up a tad.

However, I do have this question still.

First of all, you surely know that the reason Venus is so hot is because of it's Greenhouse.

Now, if you create this Bosch reaction (I'm not into Physics, so for now I'll take your word on this and won't ask for details of what the Bosch reaction is) and manage to turn a good deal of the atmosphere into water, then won't you still be delaying the inevitable as Venus will still have Carbon Dioxide gasses, they've just been spread out or thinned out. Overtime however, that will put you back where you've started.

[Ubermensch]

...won't you still be delaying the inevitable as Venus will still have Carbon Dioxide gasses, they've just been spread out or thinned out. Overtime however, that will put you back where you've started.

First we cool Venus to the point where liquid water can exist on the surface, or at least in the atmosphere. This is done with the solar shade and the towers before we hit it with ice asteroids. Eventually we will start hitting it with ice asteroids, and some time after that there won't be much more CO2. "Diminishing returns" does not apply: because CO2 is so heavy, it will float to the pyrite-covered surface and react with the imported hydrogen. As each ice-asteroid impacts the planet, more CO2 is converted to water, and there is less CO2 to greenhouse the planet.

 

Global temperatures drop. The ocean forms. We introduce biota. The final part of the plan has to do with putting mirrors in the L2, L4 and L5 points that slowly rotate, giving Venus light on a 12-hour day/night cycle.

 

Btw, here's a link to an article on the Bosch reaction.

[admiral_ju00]

So you bombard the planet with these iceballs(hydrogen rich meteors) and that starts a chain reaction. How do you capture these iceballs? Surely, a small number of them may be possible, but such large caliber is a whole other matter.

[Ubermensch]

Do a google search on "Kuiper belt objects" and you'll find that there's several orders of magnitude more objects that have already been discovered than I need for this little project. I've got a map of them on my computer. There are plenty.

 

Chiron is one such object. It's thought to be a Kuiper belt object because A) its orbit is unstable, and can't have lasted for more than a million years; B) it's not really a comet and not really an asteroid, thus its considered a "centaur"; C) the theory is that the outer planets will cause Kuiper belt objects to fall out of their high orbits and into the inner solar system. Right now Chiron is hanging out around Saturn, between ~9 and ~13 AUs, with a 50.7 year orbit. It's ~208km in diameter, with a mass of around 2e19 kg of mixed ices.

 

The plan is to send some nuclear thermal rockets up there, affix them to Chiron, fuel them using the comet's own ices, and put it on a collision course with Venus.

 

If we want to be picky and choose "pure" methane or pure hydrogen ice asteroids, and especially the smaller, mountain-sizes ones, we'll have to send a probe equipped to do just that to the outer solar system, followed by the nuclear thermal rockets.

[admiral_ju00]

Do a google search on "Kuiper belt objects" and you'll find that there's several orders of magnitude more objects that have already been discovered than I need for this little project. I've got a map of them on my computer. There are plenty.

 

That's a bit irrelevant, but yes, there are plenty.

 

The plan is to send some nuclear thermal rockets up there

 

And how do you propose to do that? At this point, this issue will cease to be Scientific and become Political - on a Global Scale. Meaning that Every leader of at least an Industrial gov't, will have a say in this and Sending a Nuke by a Nation up there does raise some interesting questions.

[Gant]

I would choose alot of smaller asteroids of say,,,100 meters in diameter,to pepper the surface of venus rather than using the devastating sizes of a few km. As for the needed resources,,we have it. We just need the rest of the world to realize that our resources could be used for better purposes other than petty needs.

[Ubermensch]

And how do you propose to do that?

The same way every satellite that has gone to the outer solar system has gone to the outer solar system.

At this point' date=' this issue will cease to be Scientific and become Political - on a Global Scale.[/quote'] No more political than the "furor" over the other nuclear-powered space probes that have been launched. The two Vikings, the two Pioneers, the two Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini is around Saturn right now.

Meaning that Every leader of at least an Industrial gov't' date=' will have a say in this[/quote'] This is not a scientific argument. I want to talk about the science, not neurotically dwell on "what the neighbors will say."

and Sending a Nuke by a Nation up there does raise some interesting questions.

I wasn't talking about "sending a nuke." No bombs will be sent. Radioactive material' date=' yes. But that's not a new thing now is it? I mean, where do you think all those new pictures of Saturn are coming from? The space-probe Cassinni, with its own "nuke" onboard, if we're to use sloppy language.

 

I'll say it again: I'm concerned with the science, not the politics.

 

Certainly, I could put on my philosopher's hat and talk about the [i']philosophy[/i] of terraforming and how irrelevant the politics are on philosophic grounds. But you can't debate neurosis. You can't debate a mental disease that forces its victims to be locked in a constant state of anxiety over imaginary monsters and illusions.

 

It is the most fundamental mistake. The most fundamental truth is "existence exists." The most fundamental error is to say this is incorrect. Politicians do not determine what exists --nobody does. It just is. And this --what is-- is what I am here to debate. I am not here to "debate" the arbitrary and capricious whims of third-world juntas or first-world mobsters or the sea of morons that elect them.

 

The Madness of Mankind and the Army of Fools are large themes that distract from the intention of this thread --that being, a workshop on the terraforming of Venus.

I would choose alot of smaller asteroids of say,,,100 meters in diameter,to pepper the surface of venus rather than using the devastating sizes of a few km.

I wouldn't because A) you can't find them, B) you can't cost-effectively move them from the outer system to the inner system, C) you would need to move billions of them, D) we can break-up large ice-asteroids on the way, and E) Venus' atmosphere would evaporate them long before they got near the surface --that's why the planet has very few impact craters and no small craters.

As for the needed resources' date=',we have it. We just need the rest of the world to realize that our resources could be used for better purposes other than petty needs.[/quote'] Meh. Once the space elevator goes up in 2008, space will no longer need government subsidy, and "resources" will no longer be a problem for this business. As for the req'd resources, it's not that expensive to shoot those nuclear rockets to the outer solar system, nor would a big mylar sail be that expensive. Not expensive today, relatively speaking, and not expensive at all with a space-elevator operational either. Any number of billionairres could do it and own their own planet and refuse to let anyone else "use" it.

 

At least, the part of the terraformation process that I've covered wouldn't be that expensive. I haven't done the numbers for the "creating the biosphere" part It's just having the will to do it.

 

As I said at the beginning, Venus is easier than Mars.

[Gant]

Would solar sails do the job of manuevoring the asteroids i wonder?

[Ubermensch]

Would solar sails do the job of manuevoring the asteroids i wonder?

Yes. If you're willing to wait a few centuries. I'm not. Even if they had an immortality serum.

 

EDIT: No, actually. You could get up there using sails. But you couldn't get back. Solar, magsail, m2p2, it doesn't matter. The sun is really weak up there. It's ion engines --that have to haul their fuel with them-- or nuclear thermal rockets --which can use anything we may find up there for fuel.

[Gant]

Yes,,that would take forever,,,i did a little google search and found a link you might find interesting. For what its worth,,here it is.

 

http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/TerraformSRS1983.htm

[admiral_ju00]

Would a probe like the Viking or Cassini have enough juice and power to rip or alter an object of say Chiron's proportions out of it's current orbit and push it towards saturn?

 

If not, how many such items will be needed?

[Gant]

Moving the asteroids obviously wouldn't be a problem. Measure's such as nuclear rockets is a possibility. i just wonder how it could be done without taking 200 years. The ice asteroids would melt in little amount of time. But wouldn't you need to build the solar shade first to help slow down the heating of the planet?

[Ubermensch]

Meh. After the decision to use the rockets, it becomes a question of when you want the ice-asteroid to hit Venus. I read about how four 5000 MWt nuclear rockets (the same kind of rockets used in the 60's in the NERVA program) could crash Chiron into Venus in 20 years. The curves are different for objects of different sizes further up the gravity well, but that's just physics.

 

Yes, we've had nuclear thermal rockets for nearly 50 years now. Yes, even small prototypes are very powerful. Half the reason is that a nuclear rocket is really damn powerful. The other half is that the nature of the mission is that the rocket isn't limited by fuel; it's fuel is the ice of the asteroid itself.

The ice asteroids would melt in little amount of time. But wouldn't you need to build the solar shade first to help slow down the heating of the planet?

Not from the sun. Sure, they'll throw up a coma like a comet. But they won't melt in space. Now, when it comes to Venus, sure they'll melt. We can send the rockets to the ice asteroids while we build the solar shade. That way, Venus has a few decades to cool off before we try and make liquid water oceans on her surface. If we wanted to, we could even orbit Venus with the ice-asteroids we collect from the outer system until Venus is cool enough, then we can send them all down all over the planet at once.

[Gant]

I wonder if this would change the atmospheric pressure to be to much pressure.

[Sayonara]

If the objective is to terraform Venus, then I'd certainly hope so.

[Ubermensch]

Oh yes. The Bosch reaction we're interested in (not the one used for making nitrates, the other way 'round) goes like this:

 

CO2 + 2H2 --> C + 2H2O

 

The Venusian atmosphere is 92 bar pressure at surface, of which 96.5% is CO2 and 3.5% is nitrogen. This works out to 4.4e20 kg CO2 and 1.6e19 kg nitrogen. If you convert all that CO2 using the Bosch process, you will get 1.2e20 kg graphite sand dunes, an ocean of 3.6e20 kg water, and the remaining nitrogen (1.6e19 kg) will give an atmosphere of ~3.2 bar pressure. That's the pressure before the nitrogen atmosphere reacts with the planetary ocean according to Henry's law, which will cause the nitrogen to saturate the water in solution until the surface water pressure is in equilibrium with the surface air pressure.

 

Once 210 mbar of oxygen is introduced alongside the 3.2 bar of nitrogen (that's all the oxygen humans need), that's an atmosphere of only 6% oxygen --despite its proximity to the sun, fires would be a thing of the past. Nothing is wrong with that much pressure, either --it's not even near the range where people would be susceptible to nitrogen narcosis (which is itself nothing bad, they just get high and do crazy stuff from nitrogen). At this point people could walk the graphite deserts of Ishtar and Aphrodite on the shores of a warm sea. Then the question will be, "do we introduce Earth-native life to Venus? Or shall we wait for things to crawl out of the new primordial soup we've cultured across the surface of an entire planet?"

[Radical Edward]

do you have a site detailing more of the maths? this is great have you done any calculations regarding the solar shades i.e. how big would they have to be, and what are the cooling rates (I assume it would be cooling by Black Body Radiation) The towers you mention are interesting, but wouldn'T you have problems with the nature of the atmosphere, and what would you make them out of exactly?

[Sayonara]

Then the question will be, "do we introduce Earth-native life to Venus? Or shall we wait for things to crawl out of the new primordial soup we've cultured across the surface of an entire planet?"

The latter would be more useful, but it would take a lot longer.

 

:-/

[ed84c]

hmm you may have to use your venus terraforming plans on our planet in not to long....

 

Although I have only scan read this thread I dont believe the acidity of Venus has been taken into account? There is enough H2SO4 and H2CO3 to render any seas lifeless, even for the bacterial superbreads that take control of acid lakes on our planet.

 

The best way of cooling anything is to stop the movement of heat around the planet. Im not sure how you would do this but i do know water wouldnt be a great ally here. An ice cap certainly would reflect any light reaching the surface, but the greenhouse may prevent any heat escaping. Im taking a leaf out of earths book here, that entirely froze over due to the reflection of sulight due to ice.

[Ubermensch]

do you have a site detailing more of the maths? this is great have you done any calculations regarding the solar shades i.e. how big would they have to be, and what are the cooling rates (I assume it would be cooling by Black Body Radiation) The towers you mention are interesting, but wouldn'T you have problems with the nature of the atmosphere, and what would you make them out of exactly?

Atmospheric numbers were calculated by me and my familiarity with college-level chemistry. The number "4e19 kg hydrogen" was picked up from multiple websites but affirmed by my calculations. The Bosch reaction and the resulting calculations were figured using chemistry. Information on the planetoid Chiron (mass, size, location, etc) can be found all over the internet.

 

I looked at the calcs for solar-shades and have been meaning to do them myself. Till then I won't post any numbers. Note, though, that I've proposed a modest solar-shade that only casts Venus in its penumbra; a rough guess on a solar-shade big enough to cast all of Venus in its umbra is 15,000 km. Whether the calcs prove its 15,000 or 16,000 is irrelevant; in principle, a shade of that nature would need to be a circle with a greater diameter than the planet itself. Thus I recommend a smaller shade :3

 

No I haven't done the cooling rates. I still have more formulas to get my hands on before I do this sort of calc.

 

As for the towers, they don't have the problem of space probes. Computer hardware needs to be protected against Venus' hellish conditions. The towers just need to not fall down. I was considering an outer layer of heat-shield stuff, followed by a layer of silver to reflect visible and some infrared heat transmission, then a thermos-like vacuum between the next layer (the inner walls of the tower). The lower ports would be of a material that reacts with the Venusian atmosphere: they survive entry and impact/implantation in the ground, then they melt away. They could be made of lead The upper chimney would only need to pop open as soon as the lower ports are open. At this point it's like siphoning gas out of a car, with the added effect that the super-hot gases at the bottom are impelled to rise because they are hot, and the +350 kph winds at the chimney cause a suction effect.

 

As for insertion: three parts to the system. First, a several-kilometer-long spike as the base, attatched by tether to the tower, attached to tether to a parachute/balloon. The device enters the atmosphere, ejects its heat-shield, the tethers extend, the base penetrates Venus at a high rate, the tower settles onto its base lightly using the parachute.

The latter would be more useful, but it would take a lot longer.

I agree. I mean, my choice is clear. The actual intelligent life-forms who terraformed Venus have clear property rights to Venus, superior to the potential primordial life-forms who just happened to have evolved on a planet engineered by others. But still, it's an intriguing notion: "if I leave this place alone, eventually life will evolve here."

There is enough H2SO4 and H2CO3 to render any seas lifeless' date=' even for the bacterial superbreads that take control of acid lakes on our planet. [/quote'] There is more water vapor than these acids in Venus atmopshere, today. There's 7 ppm neon --both those acids are in lower concentrations than even neon-- as compared to 20 ppm of water vapor.

The best way of cooling anything is to stop the movement of heat around the planet.

I just read some material that ran to the effect that Venus' greenhouse keeps the night-side temperature approximately equivalent to the day-side. Thus, the only way to cool the planet is to urn off the input to the system --a solar shade-- so the system will cool off.

 

Once the planet is cool enough to allow liquid water to exist, we bomb it with ice asteroids. Not water, per se. The water will form as a result of converting the Venusian atmosphere. Vapor at first, until the pressure has dropped/water vapor has increased to the point where there are planetary rain-storms that last until all the hydrogen we have introduced into the system has reacted with all the CO2 in the system --that is, until Venus' greenhouse-atmosphere is converted into an ocean.

[Guest New Hylas]

The problem with space and terraforming is the energy required to build out there. What if we use a cheaper approach:

 

Instead of a screen to block the sun we use a kind of 'smoke screen' - explode a cloud of infrared absorbant dust between venus and the sun to reduce the sunlight and heat input (obviously it would have to match Venus' orbit and have enough staying power so as to last reasonably long before being dispersed by solar winds)

 

Instead of physically moving an astroid to venus, why not genetically engineer a microbial life form tailor made for a cooler venus - one that could use the tremendous heat energy still available and use it to metabolise the airborn CO2. The microbe could have an extremely fast growth cycle and reproduction and death rate (think 'moss-cancer on steroids'). Having no predators and existing in what it would consider an energy rich utopia it would quickly spread planet-wide; growing, muiltiplying and dying all the while trapping carbon in its remains and releasing oxygen (like any other plant on earth does).

 

The microbes growth would be exponential - and more tailored microbes could be introduced to manage the process or weed out unwanted mutations.

 

After enough time - the greenhouse gasses would be signigicantly reduced and the surface of venus would be covered in a thick 'dirt' of microbial corpses.

 

Light a match and all the newly free-floating oxygen would 'burn' with any free-floating hydrogen and make water.

 

I don't know if there is enough hydrogen on venus to make oceans we'd be comfortable with and to grow crops, but Hydrogen is the single most populace element in the universe so it shouldn't be hard to find.

 

The attention being paid to mars is good - but the fact remains the hardest factor to change in any terraforming effort will be the gravity. With effort Venus could be a second earth with identical weather and vegetation. Mars is simply too small and lacking in available energy - it can be nothing better than a huge space-base.

 

Good luck earthlings.

 

B.