Awesome stuff you have to share

[dman11235]

Venus has much less water than Mars.  Mars is covered in water in some places, and Venus has almost no water.  1% of the atmosphere (less, actually) is less than the air surrounding a (moderate) desert on Earth, so there's no way that could possibly be enough water to cover a significant enough of the planet and provide a rain cycle.

@oslecamo:  I addressed that.  I didn't address the distance, because I assumed that to be negligible (which it would be if we have the capabilities to transport stuff efficiently at that distance anyway)

Oh, and veekie: you may be right, but we don't know the energy required for that trip yet, as we don't know where the planet would be (or how much energy would have to be used to colonize it when we get there).  We don't even know if it's possible to get the magnetosphere going again for Venus (or any planet, for that matter) with the technology we will have before it becomes feasible to colonize other star systems.  The only ways I can think of right now would be to take a giant magnet (by giant I mean planet sized) and orbit it around the planet, or to crash a large asteroid (lunar-sized) into the planet and hope for the best.  Anyone else have a better idea?  Also, we need massive amounts of hydrogen and nitrogen (we have enough oxygen), and then enough potassium, sodium, magnesium, etc. to support the life.  Those are hard things to come by, and we might have to.....mine Jupiter to get the hydrogen we need.  Nitrogen, I don't know where we can get it that's close.

[veekie]

Hydrogen and Nitrogen are fairly feasible to harvest from comets, though they may be of variable availability. As for the minerals, likewise, asteroids.

Alcubierre drives would be hard to make work inside a gravity well though, if the theory is any indication. You'd need a significantly larger distortion to overcome the natural distortion caused by mass.

[dman11235]

Nitrogen isn't all that common in comets, is it?  As for hydrogen, I don't think there's enough in any one comet (unless the target is Mars, which I think might work if we just crash a couple comets into it it should have the composition we need, the only problem is the structure), so the most reliable source would be Jupiter.  And mining Jupiter is easier than people realize, since we'd be mining helium and hydrogen.  Just skim the top to get what we need.  Saturn has a good amount of nitrogen we could mine (easier than even Jupiter to mine).  But yeah, for the other stuff asteroids should suffice.

[betrayor]

About the magnetic field....
What if we overheat the core of venus,since Venus has essentially the same core as earth shouldn't that provide magnetic field?
Of course that depends on if the core of venus is still rotating enough for this....

[InnaBinder]

You all know who this is for.  Don't even play that game.   

[veekie]

Nitrogen isn't all that common in comets, is it?  As for hydrogen, I don't think there's enough in any one comet (unless the target is Mars, which I think might work if we just crash a couple comets into it it should have the composition we need, the only problem is the structure), so the most reliable source would be Jupiter.  And mining Jupiter is easier than people realize, since we'd be mining helium and hydrogen.  Just skim the top to get what we need.  Saturn has a good amount of nitrogen we could mine (easier than even Jupiter to mine).  But yeah, for the other stuff asteroids should suffice.

Comets would consist of most frozen common gases. Nitrogen is not that rare as they go, while being also heavy enough to easily gather from gravity. Its pretty stable as they go, so it'd remain in elemental form.

[Jackinthegreen]

About the magnetic field....
What if we overheat the core of venus,since Venus has essentially the same core as earth shouldn't that provide magnetic field?
Of course that depends on if the core of venus is still rotating enough for this....

Given its weather systems, I'd say it's still rotating.  Whether it will be if we fiddle with it is a different story of course.

[betrayor]

About the magnetic field....
What if we overheat the core of venus,since Venus has essentially the same core as earth shouldn't that provide magnetic field?
Of course that depends on if the core of venus is still rotating enough for this....

Given its weather systems, I'd say it's still rotating.  Whether it will be if we fiddle with it is a different story of course.

Yes,i have no doubt it is rotating,the problem is the speed,since Venus is closer to the sun than earth.....
Maybe manipulating the core will be easier than carrying giant magnets or causing planetary colissions while still being incredibly hard with today's technology.....

[sirpercival]

Hey, as long as they build telescopes there, I'm happy.

[dman11235]

The CORE is not necessarily spinning, but the PLANET is.  It's the rotation of a magnetic core that causes the field.  Though we don't know if that's even correct, it's the most plausible theory we have.  It might even be "core spinning with relation to planet".  And the weather patterns?  Core has no effect on that.  Magnetic field has no effect on that (directly).  The magnetic field keeps the planet from cooking by high-energy EM radiation, which keeps us from developing as much cancer and, you know, dying.  And heating the core will, if anything, remove the magnetism from the core.  Not something we want.  There needs to be a solid core, made primarily of strong paramagnetic elements (Ni and Fe are the best) with a large magnetic charge applied to it.  Even if it's not spinning, it might provide a field, but we don't know.  And yes, it is possible to artificially create one, but it might take too much energy to maintain (we'll have deflector shields before we have that, and yes, they would be the same technology, save for scale).

Yes, this is a very, very hard thing to do.

@veekie: I know it's common, but I don't think comets will have a large enough concentration to be viable.  I'm pretty sure comets are mostly Ni, Fe, and H₂O, with some other frozen gases (some ammonia (NH₄), but not that much).

[Nanshork]

We're working on looking into asteroid mining in case everybody didn't know.

[dman11235]

Yup.  And it'll be easier than people think.  Again, the hardest part is moving the stuff around, and getting to the asteroid safely.  Otherwise, it's just like regular mining, but in 0g.

[veekie]

Though, a magnetic field might not even be that necessary. A sufficiently dense atmosphere can just soak up the incoming beams, and permanent settlements can be underground. It'd be better to have a magnetic field than not have one, but it can be engineered around.

[Halinn]

Assuming the warp drives mentioned in the article exist, it would probably be simpler to send exploratory teams to likely planets than terraform one of our own. The vast quantities of elements needed to create a habitable atmosphere aren't that easy to come by.

The article mentioned that conventional propulsion would be needed to get far enough away from planets, and to get close to other ones, so it wouldn't do that much for travel within our system.

[dman11235]

Though, a magnetic field might not even be that necessary. A sufficiently dense atmosphere can just soak up the incoming beams, and permanent settlements can be underground. It'd be better to have a magnetic field than not have one, but it can be engineered around.

But an atmosphere thick enough to do that would crush anything underneath it.  We're talking Jupiter levels of thickness to stop the things our magnetosphere blocks.

@Halinn, that's pretty much what I've been saying, though I'm not quite as pessimistic as that.  With current technology, it would take millions of years to terraform a planet (you'd need to crash a few asteroids into it, then let it settle), but I'm confident that in a few (thousand) years we will have the technology to move vast quantities of mass with precision to other places, eliminating the need to wait for turmoil to settle.

[Halinn]

While terraforming is awesome, I feel that it would stay in the realm of science fiction unless we don't get faster than light travel. At sublight speeds, travel between stars takes long enough that it's only feasible if we want to near completely sever part of the population (good for survival of the species, but kinda hard to get any trade going, so no major economic incentives )

[Kuroimaken]

This is what happens when dice rollers give me the shaft.

[veekie]

While terraforming is awesome, I feel that it would stay in the realm of science fiction unless we don't get faster than light travel. At sublight speeds, travel between stars takes long enough that it's only feasible if we want to near completely sever part of the population (good for survival of the species, but kinda hard to get any trade going, so no major economic incentives )

Depends on the extent. The ability to construct a viable ecosystem is vital beyond just space exploration, we need it to create safe habitats and more.

[Jackinthegreen]

The Force is strong with this one.

[oslecamo]

Venus is the closest planet to Earth.

Jupiter is much farther away, not to mention the much bigger gravity would make it a much bigger pain to take off harvested materials.

When Alpha Centauri is "weeks or months" away according to the article, the distance between Jupiter and Venus isn't significant.

I have no input on the gravity issue.

Distance inside the solar system is still important because even if you have the warp drive, as the article pointed out, it doesn't have the precision for travel inside a solar system, just between stars, and then you need "conventional" means to actually get to the planet you want. 

And gravity is a pretty important issue. It's actually the main problem limiting us right now. Just geting into space (and then back inside the atmosphere in one piece) is doable, but still extremely expensive and you end up having to discard most of the machinery used, leading to even higher costs. And Jupiter has  2.64 the superficial gravity of Earth, while Venus has 0.88.