Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: thedoc on 23/02/2016 16:07:07
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John Mc Caffery asked the Naked Scientists:
With terraforming we always talk about Mars . This would entail enormous inputs of time money and resources.
Why not Venus with its gravity the same as ours and plenty of Co2 for oxygen and water formation.
The 600deg Centergrade and 90 times pressure would of course be a negative. But if our Geologists are to be believed this was similar to earths atmosphere.
If we dump 10 kg of single cellular photosynthetic organisms in the upper atmosphere and talking about this doubling every 5 days. We would have 70 trillion tons of these organisms in 6 months doubling every 5 days.
We would have the added plus that they would be evolving into Venesian organisms and we could reseed with more efficient and organisms as the free oxygen increases and temparture falls.
So in conclusion my question is why Mars not Venus.
I have sent this question before . Please acknowledge receipt.Regards John Mc Caffery
What do you think?
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By my calculations, if we dump 10 kg of photosynthetic micro-organisms (from Earth) into the upper atmosphere of Venus, there will be 10 kg of dead photosynthetic micro-organisms within 20 minutes.
Venus does have many perks over Mars, though. As you pointed out, the gravity is more similar to Earth's. Also, Venus is closer than Mars (on average), and there is more energy (sunlight) available. Ultimately, I think it would be far easier to establish a base in orbit of Venus (or high up in their atmosphere) than to try to terraform it. Even if we knew exactly what we were doing, I would be surprised if any terraforming strategy could be successful in less than 50 million years (try getting an investor for that!)
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By my calculations, if we dump 10 kg of photosynthetic micro-organisms (from Earth) into the upper atmosphere of Venus, there will be 10 kg of dead photosynthetic micro-organisms within 20 minutes.
Ya really going to give it a whole 20 minutes eh? [;D]
Venus does have many perks over Mars, though. As you pointed out, the gravity is more similar to Earth's. Also, Venus is closer than Mars (on average), and there is more energy (sunlight) available. Ultimately, I think it would be far easier to establish a base in orbit of Venus (or high up in their atmosphere) than to try to terraform it. Even if we knew exactly what we were doing, I would be surprised if any terraforming strategy could be successful in less than 50 million years (try getting an investor for that!)
How about blocking some of the sunlight? Some kind of orbital opaque sheeting or something. Hey, its terra-forming, no one said anything about economics.
Another idea to kick around.. How about steering a large comet or asteroid into the planet.. Something big like several miles in diameter so that it kicks up so much material the sun is blocked out for a while. Might help kick start the cooling process.
The other problem with Venus is that the planet doesn't really rotate.. a day on Venus is actually longer than a year.. I don't think there's anything that can be done about that.