Venus Made Inhabitable?

Could solar power generators absorbing the incoming sunlight allow us to terraform Venus?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Could solar power generators absorbing the incoming sunlight allow us to terraform Venus?

Who knows? The 735 K average surface temperature is a bit of a bummer though, not to mention the sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid clouds. Gotta love this quote from Wikipedia:

The surface of Venus is often said to resemble Hell.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Atmosphere_and_climate)

Interesting article on possible colonization of Venus though, floating cities!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus

Mars and the Moon seem a little more human-friendly than Venus. The Moon is said to contain some ice, which means you can get water and oxygen provided you have some means of getting power (solar/nuclear).

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Mars and the Moon seem a little more human-friendly than Venus. The Moon is said to contain some ice, which means you can get water and oxygen provided you have some means of getting power (solar/nuclear).

As the Moon has no atmosphere, nor magnetic fields, any humans on surface is at a constant risque of the high-velocity particle stream from the Sun, the solar wind. One way to remedy this is to live under the ground. Not very funny.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
As the Moon has no atmosphere, nor magnetic fields, any humans on surface is at a constant risque of the high-velocity particle stream from the Sun, the solar wind. One way to remedy this is to live under the ground. Not very funny.

Yes, you'd have to live in bunkers. Doesn't seem that big of a deal though, at least compared to the other technical difficulties.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Yes, you'd have to live in bunkers. Doesn't seem that big of a deal though, at least compared to the other technical difficulties.

Not much of terraforming Luna.

Terraforming Venus is an enterprise to big for our engineers.

Mars is the best candidate of terraforming this far.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Yes, you'd have to live in bunkers. Doesn't seem that big of a deal though, at least compared to the other technical difficulties.

It would probably even be significantly safer than living on the surface when it comes to the air problem too. You cant accidentally break a window and loose all your air in seconds when living in a bunker.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Could solar power generators absorbing the incoming sunlight allow us to terraform Venus?

Mirrors would be cheaper. Simply painting it white might make a considerable difference. You might even get some advertising revenue out of it (paint your logo in white).

Originally posted by twhitehead
Mirrors would be cheaper. Simply painting it white might make a considerable difference. You might even get some advertising revenue out of it (paint your logo in white).

actually what you see at venus are tzhe clouds, so painting won`t do the job I presum. The pount would be to direct the ice blocks to Venus at a good angle to get a her a bit off the sun.

Ice blocks?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
As the Moon has no atmosphere, nor magnetic fields, any humans on surface is at a constant risque of the high-velocity particle stream from the Sun, the solar wind. One way to remedy this is to live under the ground. Not very funny.

Superconducting coils kilometers across will solve the problem of incoming solar ions.
That technology has already been worked out on paper at least. There are also designs that use that same technology on a smaller scale to shield spacecraft.

Picture this: around the lunar equator, a few turns of superconducting line, buried where the temperature is already lower than that of the high temperature superconductors already used making a magnetic field similar to Earth but around the whole moon. That would shield the whole planet and the magnetic field generated by starting a current flow would maintain itself with no further input of energy. A permanent superconductive magnet.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Superconducting coils kilometers across will solve the problem of incoming solar ions.
That technology has already been worked out on paper at least. There are also designs that use that same technology on a smaller scale to shield spacecraft.

Picture this: around the lunar equator, a few turns of superconducting line, buried where the temperature is a ...[text shortened]... flow would maintain itself with no further input of energy. A permanent superconductive magnet.

Interesting idea! How about neutral particles, like neutrons, in the solar wind?

The inside of the Moon is not so cold, is it? I could guess at a minimum something like minus 20 centigrades, probably warmer.

Originally posted by sonhouse
..... buried where the temperature is already lower than that of the high temperature superconductors already used ....

I never thought of that. Does this mean that some parts of Canada can already use superconductors without the need for refrigeration equipment?

Originally posted by twhitehead
I never thought of that. Does this mean that some parts of Canada can already use superconductors without the need for refrigeration equipment?

Yes, we connect them to Class-Eh transformers.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Interesting idea! How about neutral particles, like neutrons, in the solar wind?

The inside of the Moon is not so cold, is it? I could guess at a minimum something like minus 20 centigrades, probably warmer.

No help for neutrals of course. Fortunately there aren't that many of them. It was just a guess of mine about the sub lunar soil temp though. It would be great if it was like 120 degrees K, where the high temp stuff would work. Not sure how much energy it would take to keep something that is now at -20 C down to 120 K. The energy for the coils would only be needed once, thereafter self sustaining. The temperature problem is another story.

I once wrote about the trans-lunar railway, do you remember that tale? The idea that a railway built around the lunar equator could sustain a train that would be roofed with solar cells, traveling forever around the moon at about 16 km/hr taking on passengers and letting off, freight and such.

My new idea is to combine the railway, self powered, a mile long, generating about 50 megawatts, can feed power to refrigeration units, properly redundant units for safety and such to maintain aforementioned super sized coil. I know a bit about cryopumps needed for such a job and I don't think 50 megawatts would do it.

I guess if you could use properly insulated tubing, like long thermos bottles or the like, maybe aerogel insulation (one cm of that stuff is equal to 1 meter of fiberglass), it would seem fixed solar cells would be needed every few km.
For sure the total power draw would be way over 50 megawatts.