We talk about writing Mars centric settings, but Venus never gets any love despite having:
-A point in the atmosphere where pressure and temperature end up being perfectly fine for humans if a little toasty (around 30-40C)
-Plenty of free energy with the clouds being able to reflect the abundant sunlight available due to Venus being closer to the sun on top of all that trapped heat down below
-Lots of water in the sulfuric acid cloud layer.
-A thick carbon dioxide atmosphere which turns breathable air into a lifting gas
The breathable air being a lifting gas can make for some zany shit that's able to float just because there's humans living in it. Even the Empire State Building can happily float on the atmosphere with a 400 meter radius envelope of air. With oxygen/nitrogen already being a lifting gas that would make hydrogen/helium tanks even MORE effective on Venus than on Earth. You could have entire floating castles.
On top of that the speed of sound in carbon dioxide is super low so you're going to be using slower planes on Venus than you would on Earth to avoid sonic booms everywhere. That means all planes would go slow enough for dogfights, and potentially propeller based planes being common.
The biggest fight over resources for Venus would be over raw materials as even the highest point on the surface still rains molten lead instead of snow. Mining operations would be difficult to say the least, but not impossible. NASA already has schematics for a rover that could explore the surface of Venus and says that the task would be doable even with current technology.
>>46201086
I'm intrigued Niven, tell me more.
>>46201188
Travel time between Earth and Venus is half the travel time between Earth and Mars.
Due to orbital mechanics being weird it actually takes a lot less time to reach the asteroid belt from Venus than it does to reach it from Mars. (citation included)
http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/VJ.htm
http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/MaJ.htm
Radiation on Venus will be more or less the same as radiation on the Earth.
Gravity on Venus is 0.9g so it's fairly similar to what you get on Earth.
Venus spins backwards so the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. However you'll never see it happen waiting around because the planet spins so damn slow a single day lasts for an entire Earth year. On the plus side if you're a vampire who hates the sun you'll get an entire year to hang out on the dark side of Venus.
Venus has kind of a shitty magnetic field.
>>46201513
It has a fake magnetic field. But a fake magnetic field is all you need when it comes to avoiding cancer.
>>46201642
>>46201513
>>46201464
No cancer, but magnetic field n/a...
Is it the cloud layers?
>>46201672
>Is it the cloud layers?
Since Venus has no intrinsic magnetic field to act as a shield against incoming charged particles, the solar wind sometimes interacts directly with the upper atmosphere. However, Venus is partially protected by an induced magnetic field.
As on Earth, solar ultraviolet radiation removes electrons from the atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a region of electrically charged gas known as the ionosphere. This ionised layer interacts with the solar wind and the magnetic field carried by the solar wind.
During the continuous battle with the solar wind, this region of the upper atmosphere is able to slow and divert the flow of particles around the planet, creating a magnetosphere, shaped rather like a comet's tail, on the lee side of the planet
http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/50246-a-magnetic-surprise-for-venus-express/
For your setting to work you need to either hand-wave away the acid rain, or create some magic technology that makes it not a problem.
You'll also need an efficient way to escape the gravity well; Venus has all the problems of Earth in terms of escape velocity, but none of the advantages in terms of resources or population maintenance.
But it does have flying cities... and everybody likes flying cities. I'd accept a hell of a lot of QUANTUM if it meant I could descend from orbit and land at a teardrop floating city!
>>46201822
Well, we could use a domes made of ZBLAN with a platinium, silicon polymer coating.
Silicon has a pretty high thermal and acide resistance on its own, and platinium is pretty much immune to acids.
ZBLAN is lighter, stronger, and more transparent than most any materiels we use currently.
I'm thinking, the atmosphere is thick, so props would work well, but they'd have to be electric, as they still need o2 to breathe.
>>46201822
I remember reading that the only thing the strongest acids in the world can be kept in is Teflon.
At any rate if they were to be airborne cities in the habitable altitude range there would be much less to worry about in terms of acid rain.
>>46201916
Personally I'd just say "nanobots did it" and have the goldilocks zone cleared of acid. A bit lame, but less arguing
I'd keep the none O2 atmosphere as it keeps the atmosphere suitably alien (requires masks etc).
I'd also throw "deep diving" into the flight mechanics. Basically re-enact scenes from "Das Boot" with high-atmosphere ships pursuing deep-divers with depth-charges.
>>46201822
>magic technology to make the acid rain not a problem
So according to you teflon is magic? Also the acid happens most often in the sulfuric acid cloud layer which is conveniently located BELOW the habitable layer. Even then if you wind up flying around the acid layer your thin layer of teflon will laugh at such a weak acid.
>gravity well
Wats + lots of power gives you rocket fuel. Since Venus has plenty of both it's really not that big of a problem just making some fuel for the return trip. On top of that you can also float rockets to a pretty high up point to make the delta v needed even less of an issue since hydrogen is insanely effective at making things float on Venus.
>QUANTUM
It's all actually very easy to do. If anything Mars requires a lot more QUANTUM than Venus to work. The Soviets had plans of colonizing Venus back in the day and NASA desperately wants money to study Venus more plus they also wrote up their own Venus colony plans and specifically stated just how much easier a Venus mission would be than a Mars mission. Lack of Venus research is more of a cultural problem more than anything (Mars gets all the attention).
>>46201916
Err, you really don't need anything that fancy, Teflon works just fine.
>>46202131
I was saying SiPt for its durability and resistance to scratching or flaking off under high or low temperatures.
Either or, there's no viability for even trans sonic flight, as the heat pressure would just be too much for the acid resistance layers.
On to design, thick wing, blended lifting body designs with helium, or oxygen bladders in the wings would be ideal, pair it with electric driven contra rotors for stability, and heavy use of canards, and over under tail fins. Since drag us high, and the need for lift is lower, the center of drag needs to be highly regulated over the center of lift.
Would it be useful to improve the magnetic field of Venus? How could it be done?
>>46203265
It would seem it has its own ablative magnetosphere. But, if there is a precedence for it, we could use the thick atmosphere to create a charged particle shield.
>>46203265
>>46203316
A real magnetosphere would need serious core movement to actively generate it. It's been theorized that the Earth's moon is what keeps ours alive, causing stress in the mantle and keeping the core relatively hot and liquid. Contrast that with Mars which has no significant moons and is magnetically dead.
If you wanted Venus to be able to generate its own, you'd need to capture a sizeable moon and sling it into orbit.
But an easier solution might be a shield in geosynchronous orbit between Venus and the Sun that can also act as a solar array, powering itself and maybe beaming energy right to the planet.
>>46203389
Could we have our floating cities right on the halfway point between the day and night sides to take advantage of the stronger shadow zone? Is it really necessary?
>>46201086
Just watch out for time traveling robots
>>46202261
>no viability for even trans sonic flight, as the heat pressure would just be too much for the acid resistance layers
Have you heard of super cavitation?
>>46203437
Solar winds come from almost all sides. These are charged particles, not radiation. The day/night terminator habitable zone is on Mercury and it's about surface temperature.
What is the circumference of Venus at the habitable zone height? As in how far around and would it be feasible to have a colony keep moving to stay it the sun considering the year long days
I don't know, I think it makes a lot of sense that Venus gets no love. Even if you can refine all the rocket fuel and lifting gas you wish from the atmosphere itself, the hostility of the surface means that all mineral assets will need to be imported; anything and everything you would need to build structures, vehicles, etc. would need to come from off-planet because we can't really design anything robust enough to reliably conduct surface mining operations in a viable scale. Mars, by contrast, doesn't have the issue of trying to find a way to dump heat into an environment hot enough to melt metal. The issue of where the building materials are going to come from really seems insurmountable, in that respect. I mean, you can have a probe or a station, but to build a colony affordable it really seems like you would need some method of acquiring building materials in-situ, to say nothing of refining and machining them.
>>46204488
>Radius (50 km up) = 6,101.8 km
38,338.7 km around.
>243.025 day year (reverse spin)
6.57 km/h should keep you stationary, about walking speed.
>>46201464
>Gravity on Venus is 0.9g so it's fairly similar to what you get on Earth.
Which plus the slow rotational speed and thick atmosphere means it's a PITA to get into orbit.
Delta V requirements for surface-to-orbit are roughly the same for Earth and Venus. And that same number can get you almost anywhere else in the solar system at a pretty decent clip.
And what exactly do you get from Venus for all the time and effort and expense? Mars isn't much better, but neither measure up to mining opportunities on the Moon or asteroids. Nice small gravity wells. If you get a NEO into earth orbit, or have operations on the Moon, then it's also very close by, too. Delta V requirements are low and the commercial potential is obvious.
Venus (and Mars) strike me as worthless boondoggles that look good in a powerpoint but won't do more than Inspire Young People To Study Math and Science(tm). The time to do a planetary colony is when you have a viable business plan-- and every plan I've seen works better and cheaper and faster if you go to the moon and asteroids first. Build your infrastructure on more feasible projects with an obvious ROI, then use that infrastructure later for colonies if you want.
>>46204808
Atmosferic carbon?
What kind of sapient race could evolve from Venus and Mars?
>>46205715
Same sage.
Carbon nanotubes for frame.
Carbon fibre weaved into fabric with carbon disulfide polymer to fill frame.
All aviable without need to evr land on surface, while also providin H and O.
>>46201086
>but Venus never gets any love
That's because Venus is basically Hell.
>>46201086
Lets also think what sapient alien creature could live on Venus
>>46205871
>and again
...although i can't tell how much oxid and acid would you have to proces to build single habitat unit.
Well colonizin ain't gonna be quick nor easy.
>>46205861
>Venus
Yeesh. Even our hardest-core extremophiles couldn't handle Venus' surface. So far, we find life where there's water, period. Therefore, it would almost have to be atmospheric, and spend its entire life cycle floating in the clouds. For surfacers, maybe something silicon based? I'm just reaching here.
>MarsAll life on Earth.
>>46206000
>Spend its entire life in the clouds
I like the sound of this, let's continue on its biology
>Mars
I mean based on its current terrain and atmosphere
>>46205861
>What kind of sapient race could evolve from Venus
Demons
>Mars?
before or after all it's oceans boiled away?
>>46206103
>Demons
That's a copout
>Mars
Perhaps both?
>>46206000
That's the funny thing about Venus. It's ignored because narrow-minded people like >>46205907 and >>46206000
literally cannot fathom building something off of the surface of a planet, but a building operation on top of the atmosphere of Venus would be easier and safer with our current level of technology than building on Mars.
Another thing about the upper atmosphere of Venus is that you don't need pressurized space suits or environments. You can walk outside with a breathing mask and basic skin protection, possibly mild temperature protection near the equator. If there's a rupture in your atmopsheric storage unit/flotation platform, it would be non-explosive and you could literally fix it with duct tape. Building on venus is as simple as dragging a zeppelin over and throwing it on top of it's atmosphere, and you're done.
The fact that the gravity is extremely similar to earth's is also HUGE. Earth creatures including humans are not evolved to exist in a low-level gravity environment such as Mars. There would be internal organ and especially skeletal complications with someone spending a long time there, and research suggests that the human fetus would not be able to develop properly in that level of gravitational pull. This is not a problem on Venus.
Venus is by-far the best option for colonization and terraforming specifically for the reason that it's about the same size as earth. People underestimate how important that is. If you want humans and other creatures long-term on Mars, you're either going to have to throw thousands of them at the planet, evolving through the <1% of babies that survive forming in low gravity who will still have skeletal development and internal organ issues especially when they grow up on the planet for millennia, or straight up genetically modify people to an extent that we are not technologically capable of or socially prepared for.
Venus is literally drag a zeppelin over, go, and make babies. No problems.
>>46206388
It's harder to take things out of an environment than to add them. That's why Mars can be terraformed but Venus can't.
>>46206388
That's not narrow-mindedness, anon. It's practicality. I daresay you're a bit blinded by your love for the concept, so much so that you're down-playing major hurdles involved with such a project.
>>46201672
There's still quite a bit of atmosphere above the habitable-pressure layer on Venus, and all that gas makes for a pretty good radiation shield in and of itself.
>>46201086
What if you made something like in your pic only flipped upside down with an air filled dome around the spire to allow it to float, pretty much an enormous blimp.
>>46206388
Except for
>Constant, hurricane-level winds at that altitude
Which are going to make going outside or building anything a rather turbulent affair. And no, you can't harvest wind energy from them, for the obvious reason that you can't harness a breeze that you're moving along with.
>Extremely low weight budget
Breathable air is a lifting gas at that altitude, but it's also not a very good one - about half as much lift as a helium balloon on Earth. And if you lift it with hydrogen, you're inevitably going to have a substantial rate of leakage, and that hydrogen is coming from the same source as your water. This further increases the rate at which you have to process sulfuric acid. You're going to need to build extremely light, while still being rigid enough to handle the wind, and using materials resistant to the ambient sulfuric-acid humidity. (Vitriolicity?)
>>46208442
Oh yeah, and any elements besides hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur are going to be a bit hard to come by. You probably *can* access the surface with something like a post-digger: Drop it, let it embed into the surface, then quickly inflate a hydrogen balloon and lift it to a more temperate altitude before it melts. But it's going to be relatively expensive.
On the Moon and the Mars, at least you get free dirt, which is invaluable as a building material. And surprisingly abundant water, rather than having to collect and decompose sulfuric acid. (an energetically-expensive process.)
I'm not saying a Venus colony is impractical, simply that it's not a no-brainer.
>>46204315
The density of venus' atmosphere is nowhere near that of liquid water, and super cavitation is only really useful for distances under ~15 miles. What good would a high energy flight do at those distances? On top of the problem of not being able to burn kerosene without an additional oxidizer, you're just bogging the flight down for no serious gain.
Better to have lighter lifting body rigid airships that can just ferry mountains of cargo.
>>46208525
>I'm not saying a Venus colony is impractical, simply that it's not a no-brainer.
It's not. There are drawbacks to all mentioned celestial bodies. You considered them, made a choise and now rationalizing it as best one.
Mars and moon are both cold, unshielded and while having lower gravity certainly helps with space traffic you ain't never gonna have large quantities of shipment anyway.
Also Mars's icecap is solid co2 and Moon's is barely wort mentioning.
>>46208442
>Weight Budget
A 400 meter in radius envelope of air can lift the Empire Fucking State Building. A weight budget is silly.
>>46208525
>filtering
Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, and sulfur are all you need to make a MASSIVE list of materials, most importantly food and water. On top of that sulfuric acid contains water molecules already so you only occasionally need to split sulfuric acid into water. Either way with the abundant energy everywhere it's not that big of a deal. You can even just make building materials straight from CO2 itself.
>mining
NASA themselves have said that putting a rover on the surface is entirely possible even with current technology.
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac/2012_phase_I_fellows_landis.html
During the initial years of a Venus colony there would need to be the occasional supply run on rare materials, but a colony could build and test rovers to send to the surface. Once a design proves to be fruitful a supply drop of raw materials needed could be delivered and a fleet of mining robots built in the atmosphere to be dropped down on the surface. Since most metals are in a liquid state on the surface all it would take to mine them is to just have a rover scoop up the metal and then fly back up with a balloon deployment.
>>46209206
Anon, there's a world of difference between being able to put an Existotron™ planetside without it having a critical existence failure after twenty minutes and being able to deploy a robotic, autonomous fleet of mining robots with the means and intelligence to do their job and maintain themselves over time. Technology and materials science is going to have to come a ways before we can do half the shit you're proposing practically and reliably, and when we've reached the point where we can do so, we would still need to answer the most important question: Why go there at all? What does it have to contribute that makes it worth the titanic expenditure of capital, time, and energy that it will invariably demand, as well as the implied risk that in the event of a catastrophic failure, equipment cannot be salvaged and put to use by a second mission; it is lost forever, crushed beneath atmospheres of pressure?
That said, I wonder what the long term psychological effects of being a Venusian colonist would be like.
>>46209748
>Why go there at all?
>>46210018
Don't sass me Mr. Exploding Lemons. Ideas are well and good, and I know just as well as you that doing it just to ensure that humanity isn't all stuck in one place when a near-C object smashes through Earth is sufficient, but the people in suits aren't Zhakarov's, they're soulless Morgans. There has to be some sort of return on investment, because we don't have a weenie-wagging contest with communists to barker up public opinion for us anymore.
>>46210018
Anon, the days when people went places and did things just because they could is over. If there isn't substantial profits to be made, it won't be done.
>>46209748
>why go there at all
Because Venus is FULL of energy and water. Energy and water are all you need for a rocket fuel station. Even with the cost of moving out of a gravity well when you have SO MUCH energy and SO MUCH water you can afford to waste a few trips refueling your ship. The biggest amount of fuel needed isn't escaping a gravity well, it's getting from surface to orbit. Park your ship and orbit and wait for the refuelers to come up into orbit and you're good to go.
>>46210109
As i was about to post pretty much this.
>>46210115
Continuation of human race seems to me like dare-i-say profit.
It is not a question of if but when and how.
Even thou we could live there for another bilions of years you know as i do that we are fuck-ups and we are much more powerfull fuck up than we ever were. Just to make it clear I ain't one of them doomsayers.
But when shit will eventually hit the fan we are gonna need it.
We are gonna need all of them.
>>46210254
Alright, setting-building wise, I can cotton to this. Maybe the resource-crunch gets bad enough on Earth that a plan by NASA or the UN becomes attractive enough to be worth the political risk of championing it? This also presumes that we aren't going to find a less wasteful means of propulsion than chemical rockets, which sucks, but would give a perfect reasoning for a mission if Venus were shooting back containerfulls of fuel and water to a horrible dystopian overpopulation wracked Earth. It'd also give a perfect reasoning why people would be crazy enough to sign up to be colonists: Shit would be pretty bad back home. To boot, it would be less of a surefire consignment to never returning home again, since you'd be sitting on a ton of rocket fuel and organic molecules.
>>46210464
I think an introductory mission launched by one of the great powers would also provide a catalyzing event for other powers to launch their own missions, as if there's one thing people up top hate more than anything else, it's the perception of loss-of-parity. Hence, perhaps, why in the US we're seeing a bit of a resurgence with interest in space now that a big deal is being made of EU and Russian missions and aspirations at a lunar colony. Personally, I don't think the UN could ever dredge themselves up from the mire of bureaucracy long enough to launch a mission of this magnitude, so colonies would probably be beholden to their funding nation-states, as opposed to automatically being part of a larger cooperative effort.
How long does it take for a signal to go from Venus to Earth, anyhow? What would communications be like? What would Venusians do for recreation and for exercise? How would they deal with death? Would a colony ever develop to the size where an economic apparatus would need to come into being, rather than centralized control?
When there's gonna be trade it gonna be orbit to orbit. Only very limited amount of goods is gonna be shipped to surface not just because surface-orbit travel cost but reasonable scale of such a thing.
Imagine said fuel transports. You would have to have hundreds thousands of ships running in loops to keep steady supply line.
Mars, Moon, Venus, Europa or any other will have need things like medicine, specialized tools or equipment but it will be in small quantities.
If trere will be trade in raw resources, it will be as procesed products as posible, preferably produced in near vicinity. But far from global trade down there, where we ship basicly everything regardles from how far.
>>46210711
>signal time
Around 2-14 minutes for radio waves. If you were able to communicate via light you could get relatively fast communication times.
>what would communication be like?
Email at the most, probably. The idea behind pen pals will probably make a return.
>what would Venusians do for recreation and for exercise?
The same thing you'd do on Earth what with all the space available on the floating habitats. There would probably be some extreme sport wingsuit flyers using inflatable nitrogen bladders to gain altitude.
>how would they deal with death?
Same way you'd deal with death while on a plane or a cruise ship. The fail safes everywhere would make it not that dangerous, but it would be a constant reminder for the paranoid people.
>would a colony ever develop to the size where an economic apparatus would need to come into being, rather than centralized control?
Probably. The free energy and lack of rare materials would definitely change the way governments on Venus work. Venusians would probably be VERY big on recycling and renewal while not letting good things go to waste.
>>46211539
>Around 2-14 minutes for radio waves. If you were able to communicate via light you could get relatively fast communication times.
How much faster would light be...?
>>46211896
From my crappy math, at Venus's farthest distance from Earth a light based communication system would take 0.008706023 seconds to send a signal across. Since that's a one way signal a full send an receive time would be 0.017412046 seconds. Video communication might be tough, but text messages would work just fine.
>>46211994
This kinda makes me wonder if we'll ever get quantum-entangled particle communications down. That'd simplify a lot of stuff, space-exploration wise.
>>46212299
you cant really use quantum-entanglement of particles as a communication system unless our understanding of the process changes radically. You would need to be able to compare results on both sides before you could determine the quantum states and just manipulate them to communicate hence making it pointless.
>>46212299
That's right up there with FTL travel. Light based communication is good enough.
>>46209206
First of all, according to my math, a 400 meter radius sphere of breathable air could lift *half* an empire state building, but that's nitpicking.
But that does illustrate my point about weight budget - a 400 m radius sphere is more than twice as tall as the Empire State Building (not counting zeppelin docking spires), and also much much wider. For a structure of that size, that's not an enormous amount of weight budget.
And either some of that weight budget is going to have to be taken up by bracing to keep the envelope from collapsing (both under its own weight, and under wind loads), or the envelope will have to be pressurized, which means you'll have to worry about it collapsing if it leaks.
Actually, does anyone have any idea what wind loads on Venus would be? Googling papers reveals winds are around 50-60 m/s (110-130 mph Freedom units) at the magic altitude, but if they're very calm and uniform across ~km-scale distances then the bubble would just move with the wind and loads wouldn't be too bad. Does anyone know how to estimate this?
>>46212758
Winds on Venus are typically very fast, but very linear, owing to the generally flat terrain and the slow rotation of the planet. There's not much turbulence, so it runs quiet.
>>46212758
Well, your math is wrong.
https://youtu.be/xqQB0WqOahc
13:12
https://books.google.com/books?id=wG0aBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=empire+state+building+floating+on+venus&source=bl&ots=ErTLUkb2r-&sig=yTaIKn7gRY5hI0AgtAWpDlLd-uQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG2L3fptjLAhUB_mMKHRkqAsQQ6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=empire%20state%20building%20floating%20on%20venus&f=false
Also the vessel would not collapse under its own weight as the pressure both inside and outside of the vessel would be the same, it would only be the gas that's different.
>>46212985
Just because the pressure is equal doesnt mean it couldnt collapse under its own weight. The materials may lack the properties to stay together at that scale. For example a Human scaled up like 10x size would collapse under its own weight as its structural components cant support the increased mass.
Its an interesting proposition however given the current serious issues on the planet we live on I dont see the point outside of wishful thinking and neat science fiction settings
>>46213649
But I started this thread wanting to get people thinking of a neat science fiction setting. Things have gone horribly off course.
>>46213746
Discussion like this is great for contemplating a Venus setting that adheres more to hard sci-fi. Plus, it's just interesting in general.
>>46213746
well weve got the gist down, as far as man made civilization goes weve got networks of floating cities/outposts which power themselves with solar power and harvest resources from the cloud layer below. Plants were imported to generate oxygen from the environment, people wear heavy clothing while outside as they are in the colder upper portion of the habitable zone. Airships (literally) are used to travel between cities. Lot of jobs based on maintenance, in fact I think after a couple of generations engineers/maintenance people would be the most important jobs as their effectiveness directly equals continued survivial. Might lead to an interesting society. Probably not possible for it to be totally self sufficient, drops of certain supplies are required from earth. Also occasional short time span trips to the surface via disposable mining drones maybe.
