Colonising Venus

anglolawyer said:
Shifting its orbit? LOL. HTF do we do that?
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Quite obviously, by increasing its orbital velocity, such that it seeks a higher orbit. There is certainly plenty of energy available to do the job in the solar system, as it has happened before, with much larger planets; it's just a matter of harnessing the energy. The only problem is that we don't have a scale of engineering equal to the problem, not yet.

But then we didn't have the engineering to build the chunnel, or the Golden Gate bridge in the 19th century, either. In 500 years? I don't think anyone has a clue about what might be possible then, let alone how.
 
quarky said:
I vaguely recall reading something recently that a cold spot had been detected on Venus.
I'll see if I can find it.
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http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-closest-planet-sun-mercury-harbors-ice-193337172.html

Holy cow. I was only off one planet toward the sun, in my crappy memory.
It's Mercury that has a cold place.

Even weirder.


I can't tell yet, but is our space travel fantasy based on us being the storm troopers?
From the few sci-fi block-busters I've seen, aren't we just the sort of people you wouldn't want colonizing the galaxy?
Unless you were us?
 
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Ok, so far we've got huge helium filled zeppelins carrying habitats that ride the super-rotation winds and hopefully stay above the convection cells or are large enough that the vertical component is bearable.

It sounds like our gas bag and habitat would need to be able to withstand periodic H2SO4 rain showers, so they need to be made out of a suitably tough material. I assume that UV at this altitude (and no magnetic field) would also be a problem.

Could we build something like that right now? Lets say we want to send a crew of 7 with enough space for them to live in atmo for at least a year or two while doing science and research as a beachhead for more permanent habitats.

I mean if India, China, Russia, the EU and the US all decided to throw large portions of their GDP (say 10 - 15% each) at this project, surely we could do something like this fairly quickly? (like 10 - 20 years?)
 
Do you have any idea how long the list of better things to invest that effort in stretches?

Even without paying attention to the groundhogs crying about education and the environment, colonizing Venus will be at the very tail end of several hundred years' expansion. The only appeal it might have in the near future is if we discover life literally everywhere else, such that a sulfurous hellhole is the only room we can find which doesn't step on anything's toes.
 
theprestige said:
Step One: Colonize Earth's continental shelf, desert reaches, mountain ranges and antarctic landmass.

Step Two: Don't colonize Venus.
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Beelzebuddy said:
Do you have any idea how long the list of better things to invest that effort in stretches?

Even without paying attention to the groundhogs crying about education and the environment, colonizing Venus will be at the very tail end of several hundred years' expansion. The only appeal it might have in the near future is if we discover life literally everywhere else, such that a sulfurous hellhole is the only room we can find which doesn't step on anything's toes.
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I fail to understand if some posters are simply incapable of reading and comprehending an OP or if they just take some perverse delight in these sorts of posts. Or perhaps they really, honestly think everyone else is so thick that they don't already know this.

How much clearer did I need to make the OP? Whether colonising Venus is a good idea or not, whether it is viable of not, whether you could ever convince humanity to do it or not is besides the point. How do you not grasp something that simple?

The thread is meant to be an interesting through experiment where we can speculate how humanity might do something like this. They why is completely irrevelent.

Ok, how about this: The reason Earth has decided to do this is we have discovered the surface of Venus is covered in wish-granting genies and if we colonise it, everyone will get 100 million free wishes.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Do you have any idea how long the list of better things to invest that effort in stretches?

Even without paying attention to the groundhogs crying about education and the environment, colonizing Venus will be at the very tail end of several hundred years' expansion. The only appeal it might have in the near future is if we discover life literally everywhere else, such that a sulfurous hellhole is the only room we can find which doesn't step on anything's toes.
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The OP assumes a decision to colonise has been taken at global level. Supply your own imperative (e.g. climate scientists conclusively prove that irreversible, runaway climate change will make the planet uninhabitable within half a millenium - so we are moving to a planet where that already happened. OK, that idea needs a little more work).
 
Octavo said:
I fail to understand if some posters are simply incapable of reading and comprehending an OP or if they just take some perverse delight in these sorts of posts. Or perhaps they really, honestly think everyone else is so thick that they don't already know this.

How much clearer did I need to make the OP? Whether colonising Venus is a good idea or not, whether it is viable of not, whether you could ever convince humanity to do it or not is besides the point. How do you not grasp something that simple?

The thread is meant to be an interesting through experiment where we can speculate how humanity might do something like this. They why is completely irrevelent.

Ok, how about this: The reason Earth has decided to do this is we have discovered the surface of Venus is covered in wish-granting genies and if we colonise it, everyone will get 100 million free wishes.
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Just send one guy there and he can wish for us all to have 100 million free wishes right here:D
 
Octavo said:
Ok, how about this: The reason Earth has decided to do this is we have discovered the surface of Venus is covered in wish-granting genies and if we colonise it, everyone will get 100 million free wishes.
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Frederik Pohl came up with a scenario in which Venus was colonized because alien technology was found there.

With the kind of technology I can envision now, I'd go with a brute-force approach, sealed underground chambers with a system that can generate gigawatts of power for cooling.

In 500 years, we may have technology that enables us to modify our bodies, or whatever vessel stores our consciousness, into something that can withstand the surface conditions on Venus.
 
I literally think it would be easier to hook up a tow cable to Venus and drag it away from the Sun into the "Goldilocks Zone" than to try and terraform it where it is.
 
Octavo said:
I fail to understand if some posters are simply incapable of reading and comprehending an OP or if they just take some perverse delight in these sorts of posts. Or perhaps they really, honestly think everyone else is so thick that they don't already know this.

How much clearer did I need to make the OP? Whether colonising Venus is a good idea or not, whether it is viable of not, whether you could ever convince humanity to do it or not is besides the point. How do you not grasp something that simple?

The thread is meant to be an interesting through experiment where we can speculate how humanity might do something like this. They why is completely irrevelent.

Ok, how about this: The reason Earth has decided to do this is we have discovered the surface of Venus is covered in wish-granting genies and if we colonise it, everyone will get 100 million free wishes.
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Yes yes, your OP DOES say, that "we have decided to do it, so how would we do it?"

But the problem is, it's a really stupid idea. There's nothing that could possibly happen to the earth that would make us choose to go to Venus to colonize. Not that would give us a 500 year headstart. (and why wouldn't we go to Mars?)

IMO, a better question would have simply been "what would it take to make Venus habitable" it removes all the silliness and you'd get straight answers.
 
anglolawyer said:
OK we send another guy to keep an eye on the first guy. Problem solved.
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The real trouble is that for the first few attempts the plucky volunteer would immediately wish he was anywhere else but Venus and promptly disappear.

Eventually someone would keep their **** together just long enough to wish Venus was more like Earth and - hey presto - instant terraforming.
 
Might not be the right thread, but what kind of mineral resources could we find there? Any convenient uranium deposits to exploit?
 
StankApe said:
Yes yes, your OP DOES say, that "we have decided to do it, so how would we do it?"

But the problem is, it's a really stupid idea. There's nothing that could possibly happen to the earth that would make us choose to go to Venus to colonize. Not that would give us a 500 year headstart. (and why wouldn't we go to Mars?)

IMO, a better question would have simply been "what would it take to make Venus habitable" it removes all the silliness and you'd get straight answers.
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Seriously? There's NOTHING that could happen to Earth? Wow.

See I can think of several hundred things pretty quickly, because it's a feaking thought experiment. Here's the scenario JUST FOR YOU then:

A Vogon constructor fleet has arrived and announced that the new intergalactic superhighway is about to be built. The path of said highway goes right through the orbits of Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and all of the outer planets, leaving only Mercury and Venus around once they're done and they're planning on building an on-ramp through the orbit of Mercury that will conveniently bypass Venus. This is scheduled to commence in exactly 500 years.

The only way to save humanity is for us to colonise Venus and the Vogon refuse to help because they say we've known about the plans for 6000 years already and we should have planned ahead.

Happy now?
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
With the kind of technology I can envision now, I'd go with a brute-force approach, sealed underground chambers with a system that can generate gigawatts of power for cooling.
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That's actually not a bad approach I guess. If Venus has anything akin to the lava tunnels that are reportedly around on the moon, it would make such an endevour much easier.
 
nvidiot said:
Might not be the right thread, but what kind of mineral resources could we find there? Any convenient uranium deposits to exploit?
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Again, I'm no expert, but it seems likely to me that Venus' composition is similar to earth, so there should be gold, platinum and uranium all available to the interested miner. The problem of course is that it's all sitting at the bottom of a 0.9g gravity well.
 
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