"Wheelerguy" (wheelerguy)
12/16/2015 at 04:21 • Filed to: If only..., Surface area of Solar System bodies, XKCD
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"Wheelerguy" (wheelerguy)
12/16/2015 at 04:21 • Filed to: If only..., Surface area of Solar System bodies, XKCD | 1
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If Venus was able to support life just like Earth, venturing into deep space to colonize other planets and/or moons would be a teeny-tiny bit less difficult. Teeny-tiny, but still.
Double the research, double the manpower, double the mindpower, a chance to give Venus its own moon, gravity slingshots...
There’s the small problem with a possible Earth-Venus War (or two), but that’s another story.
From !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
facw
> Wheelerguy
12/16/2015 at 05:02 |
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Sadly all indications are that Venus is a burning hot waterless hell. There is some discussion about whether we could set up a colony in aerostat habitats high in the atmosphere (possibly powered by Venus’ huge and violent storms), but it’s not clear there’s any reason to, besides saying we could. A true terraforming would be a massive endeavor, requiring thinning the atmosphere and crashing a whole lot of water ice asteroids and/or comets onto the surface to provide a water supply.
Colonizing Mars, Ceres, or some of the gas giant moons would likely be far easier, though obviously they cannot support the population that a fully terraformed Venus could.
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Wheelerguy
> facw
12/16/2015 at 05:22 |
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I was talking an alternate Venus that formed just like Earth at around the same time in the long past and turning out to be like Earth after some time.
You’re still right, though. Terraforming that greenhouse/sauna will be a longer shot than a lot of us thought.
If only I can go back in time and adjust some sliders to make Venus good enough for life to form as the planets form... though I might end up with non-humans as Venus’ sentient species.
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facw
> Wheelerguy
12/16/2015 at 05:51 |
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It does give a bit of caution to looking for exoplanets. In another solar system, Venus would appear to us as a perfect sweet spot world, as Earth-like as any exoplanet discovered, and yet it is quite possibly the least hospitable rocky world in our solar system. So close and yet so far.
MrDakka
> Wheelerguy
12/16/2015 at 05:55 |
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More like acidic pressure cooker
Drakkon- Most Glorious and Upright Person of Genius
> facw
12/16/2015 at 08:47 |
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That whole sulfuric acid rain is such a downer.
With mars missing its ancient magnetosphere, living there under threat of cosmic rays is less than appealing, too.
Ash78, voting early and often
> facw
12/16/2015 at 08:50 |
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“Eagle 17 has landed. That’s one small step for DEAR GOD I’M BURNING UP THE RAIN IS MELTING MY SUIT!”
Two Drink Minimum
> Wheelerguy
12/16/2015 at 09:29 |
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I remember as a kid reading an Isaac Asimov book “Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus.” It was written in 1954 and offered a hopeful vision of Venus as an ocean world. At the time I read the book, we already knew the truth—that Venus is an acidic hellscape—but I’ll always remember how it felt, thinking for just a moment that our twin planet might prove hospitable to future exploration. Man, I wish it could be true.
Alas, the outlook for Venus is incredibly grim. Even if we could thin the atmosphere and eliminate the sulfuric acid and massive amounts of CO2 (96% of the atmosphere), you’d still be working with an inhospitable rock. The lack of an active core means Venus, like Mars, has no magnetic field. The bombardment of unimpeded, high-energy particles so close to the sun would cook anyone who tried to live there. It has also helped sweep all the hydrogen out of the atmosphere into space. The result: Unlike Mars, Venus is bone dry. The planet is, literally, a desert.
You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
> Wheelerguy
12/16/2015 at 09:34 |
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That joke when you hover over the picture on xkcd. I love their little pop up annotations or whatever those are called. They are half of the joke.
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Wheelerguy
> Two Drink Minimum
12/16/2015 at 09:57 |
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Like I said in the other comment: I’d rather go back in time and fiddle with Venus to be a bit more like Earth while both planets are getting formed (and while I’m at it, coddle up extra material to make a moon and add up extra stuff on Mars and make it more like Earth) so we have three habitable planets.
66671 - 200 [METRIC] my dash
> Wheelerguy
12/19/2015 at 04:00 |
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Why do I get the feeling that if we replaced Polandball with Planetball, Poland would be Pluto and we’d call it Plutoball lol.