Of course the electrical current requirements will be astronomical and there is still that pesky issue of availability of a strong enough magnetic field.
Quote from: Da5id on 02/28/2012 11:15 amQuote from: douglas100 on 02/28/2012 08:12 amQuote from: RocketmanUS on 02/28/2012 05:00 amA possible way to increase the planets rotation is to use the light from the Sun. Around the equator build up mounds with one side of the mound to reflect the Sun light. Well, the Yarkovsky effect can alter the spin rate of asteroids as a result of solar radiation, but this is a planet we're talking about. Solar radiation pressure even at Venus's orbit is minuscule compared with the mass you are trying to influence. I doubt you could change the spin rate of Venus by any significant amount over the remaining lifetime of the Solar System by this method. Hundreds of thousands to maybe millions of nuclear atomic directional bomb blasts placed at the side of mountains, specially around the equator, and let off at the same time. Would this have an effect on rotation. Bit like a Hero's steam turbine. No. The bomb blasts would not be powerful enough to eject material into space, and without mass leaving Venus to carry away momentum there would be no effect what so ever on the rotation of Venus once all the dust settled.
Quote from: douglas100 on 02/28/2012 08:12 amQuote from: RocketmanUS on 02/28/2012 05:00 amA possible way to increase the planets rotation is to use the light from the Sun. Around the equator build up mounds with one side of the mound to reflect the Sun light. Well, the Yarkovsky effect can alter the spin rate of asteroids as a result of solar radiation, but this is a planet we're talking about. Solar radiation pressure even at Venus's orbit is minuscule compared with the mass you are trying to influence. I doubt you could change the spin rate of Venus by any significant amount over the remaining lifetime of the Solar System by this method. Hundreds of thousands to maybe millions of nuclear atomic directional bomb blasts placed at the side of mountains, specially around the equator, and let off at the same time. Would this have an effect on rotation. Bit like a Hero's steam turbine.
Quote from: RocketmanUS on 02/28/2012 05:00 amA possible way to increase the planets rotation is to use the light from the Sun. Around the equator build up mounds with one side of the mound to reflect the Sun light. Well, the Yarkovsky effect can alter the spin rate of asteroids as a result of solar radiation, but this is a planet we're talking about. Solar radiation pressure even at Venus's orbit is minuscule compared with the mass you are trying to influence. I doubt you could change the spin rate of Venus by any significant amount over the remaining lifetime of the Solar System by this method.
A possible way to increase the planets rotation is to use the light from the Sun. Around the equator build up mounds with one side of the mound to reflect the Sun light.
Let's turn Venus into a magnetar. That should do it!
Quote from: LegendCJS on 02/28/2012 02:50 pmQuote from: Da5id on 02/28/2012 11:15 amQuote from: douglas100 on 02/28/2012 08:12 amQuote from: RocketmanUS on 02/28/2012 05:00 amA possible way to increase the planets rotation is to use the light from the Sun. Around the equator build up mounds with one side of the mound to reflect the Sun light. Well, the Yarkovsky effect can alter the spin rate of asteroids as a result of solar radiation, but this is a planet we're talking about. Solar radiation pressure even at Venus's orbit is minuscule compared with the mass you are trying to influence. I doubt you could change the spin rate of Venus by any significant amount over the remaining lifetime of the Solar System by this method. Hundreds of thousands to maybe millions of nuclear atomic directional bomb blasts placed at the side of mountains, specially around the equator, and let off at the same time. Would this have an effect on rotation. Bit like a Hero's steam turbine. No. The bomb blasts would not be powerful enough to eject material into space, and without mass leaving Venus to carry away momentum there would be no effect what so ever on the rotation of Venus once all the dust settled.I was really meaning a pushing effect rather than blasting.Like Project Orion.
only requires approx 8.8*10^26 joules.
Plants need light to grow and who wants a half month a darkness or light
QuotePlants need light to grow and who wants a half month a darkness or lightLike winter-summer cycle at Earth. During the Venus day (== summer) forests grow, during the night (== winter) small plants die, big ones go into anabiosis to be able to survive until dawn (== spring).Maybe during the night there would be living plants that use planet heat as a power source (if terraforming companies will be able to create them).Animals also need to be be very different from Earth ones.You need to attract customers (and investors) to your Venus Terraforming Inc. somehow So many differences could be a good selling point. People like exotics.
Imagine a moist world where a fungal network connects all plantlife in lush jungles. During the long night smaller plants would derive nourishment from the network and during the day give it back. Every living thing would have the symbiotic fungus in their tissues providing sustenance and perhaps a form of bio-communication keeping things in balance. During the night there would be a glow everywhere of the fungal symbiote in animals and plants. A 10-20 bar thick atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide would result in trees growing to enormous size. Huge colonies of plants related to kelp would float in the moist air by means of air bladders filled with nitrogen/oxygen resembling floating mountains. Huge reptilian bird creatures would nest in these flying mountains, effortlessly flying in the thick air and lighter gravity of Venus. On some of their backs would be...blue blooded genetically modified humans, perhaps with an advanced hemocyanin in their viens to better resist carbon dioxide acidosis. How's that image for a Venus Terraforming Inc. advertising poster!
There has been discussion of using lasers to block sunlight and thereby cooling Venus. While I agree that this is not workable there is another technique using lasers that may work. It's called laser cooling and there are several related techniques. Gas atoms are excited by a precisely tuned laser beam and induced to radiate far more energy than they receive, dropping to a lower energy state, thereby cooling the gas. If it could be applied on large scale to the Venusian atmosphere above the clouds then the re-radiated heat energy would be reflected from the clouds outward into space. As the temperature dropped the upper atmosphere would become more dense and drop downward, upwelling more of the hotter gas closer to the surface which would radiate more heat. Once this convective cycle was started perhaps only a relatively small amount of energy would be necessary to sustain it. Modeling this technique would require a high speed centrifuge filled with gas with the temperature and composition of Venus. At high G the gas would stratify to resemble on a small scale the conditions in the Venusian atmosphere.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling
Read the link, I don't think that would work. One method only work with some elements. One of the big problems is the amount of energy needed to run all the lasers needed.With all the wind on the surface, we should be able to use that to generate power. Separate the CO2 from the atmosphere and jet it at high velocity out of the atmosphere. With some of the CO2 leaving at escape velocity, removing heat and CO2. The problem with this idea is that we need CO2 for plant growth.
What a facinating idea, could you provide some sort of energy budget?
Quote from: RocketmanUS on 03/01/2012 05:12 amRead the link, I don't think that would work. One method only work with some elements. One of the big problems is the amount of energy needed to run all the lasers needed.With all the wind on the surface, we should be able to use that to generate power. Separate the CO2 from the atmosphere and jet it at high velocity out of the atmosphere. With some of the CO2 leaving at escape velocity, removing heat and CO2. The problem with this idea is that we need CO2 for plant growth. Great! How about an energy budget for accelerating most of 4*10^19 kg of CO2 to Venus escape velocity, and compare it to the amount of energy you can get from Venusian wind turbines, also, what method were you proposing to accelerate the CO2 to that velocity? I've no idea how we'd do it from the surface of the Earth.
Another idea to remove a large amount of atmosphere and lessen the density of Venuses atmosphere may be by way of a sort of nuclear depth charging,from space.
@ Nyar:Liked the use of "relatively" in your post!