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Images of terraformed worlds: Venus, Mars, Luna

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Fri, 2012-10-12 22:15

rfmcdonald rfmcdonald's picture

Images of terraformed worlds: Venus, Mars, Luna

An [URL=http://io9.com/5950875/should-we-terraform-venus-first]io9 post by George Dvorsky[/URL] arguing that Venus, not Mars, should be the first target of human terraformers on account of its potentially more Earth-like environment and its environment's relevance to our own world's needs. I'm skeptical of this argument. Mars terraforming and colonization is substantially easier than Venus', requiring less effort and an arguably lower technology base, while it's a real possibility that maybe, even if we do colonize other worlds, we'll adapt ourselves to them as much as the reverse. Anyway, the whole discussion reminded me of a [URL=http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/2291728.html]2010 blog post of my own on terraforming[/URL]. I'd found images of three fully terraformed Solar System worlds, Mars and Venus illustrated by Wikimedia's Ittiz and the Moon by one Daein Ballard. Below, arranged in rough order of the difficulty of terraforming, are those images.

Mars is still only partly terraformed, Venus is never going to be terraformed into an Earth-like world the way things are going under Morningstar, and the idea of terraforming Luna likely hasn't been seriously considered by anyone in a position of power. Still: pretty, no?

Fri, 2012-10-19 10:26

Decivre

Absolutely stunning. I

Absolutely stunning. I somewhat doubt that a terraformed Mars or Luna would look like that, however. Both are so small that I don't see them having an atmosphere large enough to form a corona. Still, they look breathtaking.

rfmcdonald wrote:
I'm skeptical of this argument. Mars terraforming and colonization is substantially easier than Venus', requiring less effort and an arguably lower technology base, while it's a real possibility that maybe, even if we do colonize other worlds, we'll adapt ourselves to them as much as the reverse.

I can actually see a lot of merit to the argument. Venus has an atmosphere that is about as spacious as Earth's, but almost completely consisting of carbon dioxide. We already have plentiful technology for converting carbon dioxide to oxygen. On the other hand, Mars has a very thin atmosphere, and it will be much harder to ship oxygen and other gases to Mars than it will be to simply purify the air that Venus already has. Plus, there is a lot of potential to be had profit-wise when it comes to Venus. The discovery of graphene has made carbon a potentially very lucrative material for future technologies. The purification of Venus' atmosphere is going to produce a [b]lot[/b] of "waste" carbon. That's a veritable gold mine waiting to be tapped.

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Fri, 2012-10-19 14:21

Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture

Kinda reminds me Blue Mars

the Mars pic, that is. If you look, you could see Boon's Neck, the river that goes from Hellas Sea to the Boreal Ocean, and above, Chryse Bay near Da Vinci. that was when he could still write a compelling story *sigh* on Venus, I think an atmosphere terraformation in high altitude -kinda like in EP- is more likely to happen than any ground level terraformation. While O2 instead of C02 rich atmosphere, the air pressure would still kill anybody without the proper equipment, unless lots of this oxygen is combined with hydrogen, making Venus an ocean world with the cities floating miles above the sea suface as for Luna... that's just plain stupid to want terraform her. the gravity, for one, couldn't hold the atmosphere thick enough without venting too much in space. and if they managed to augment the gravity, the effect would be disastrous -heavy on the dis!- for our planet the Tides would be killers, and the risk of Luna's orbit shifting and colliding with us... well it's just something better left for a television movie

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Fri, 2012-10-19 15:06

Decivre

Quincey Forder wrote:on Venus

Quincey Forder wrote:
on Venus, I think an atmosphere terraformation in high altitude -kinda like in EP- is more likely to happen than any ground level terraformation. While O2 instead of C02 rich atmosphere, the air pressure would still kill anybody without the proper equipment, unless lots of this oxygen is combined with hydrogen, making Venus an ocean world with the cities floating miles above the sea suface

If memory serves, Venus' atmosphere density is due to the fact that it is mostly CO[sub]2[/sub]. Once you convert it to O[sub]2[/sub], it will likely correct itself. In fact, once all the carbon is out of the atmosphere it might actually be thinner than Earth's, so we might need a means of bringing more oxygen to it.

Quincey Forder wrote:
as for Luna... that's just plain stupid to want terraform her. the gravity, for one, couldn't hold the atmosphere thick enough without venting too much in space. and if they managed to augment the gravity, the effect would be disastrous -heavy on the dis!- for our planet the Tides would be killers, and the risk of Luna's orbit shifting and colliding with us... well it's just something better left for a television movie

I don't think the addition of oceans would cause an orbit shift that dramatic. If anything, it might actually normalize its orbit; the moon is actually drifting farther and farther away from the Earth right now (slowly, but surely).

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Fri, 2012-10-19 21:59

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Decivre wrote:Absolutely

Decivre wrote:
Absolutely stunning. I somewhat doubt that a terraformed Mars or Luna would look like that, however. Both are so small that I don't see them having an atmosphere large enough to form a corona. Still, they look breathtaking.

Actually, it is the small worlds that have fluffy atmospheres. The pressure and density decreases exponentially with altitude, set by a scale height that is proportional to temperature (hot means fluffy) and inverse with gravity (heavy means a flat atmosphere). Earth has a scale height of 8 km, Mars (with the same temperature etc) would be 20 km, and Luna 48 km. This has interesting effects on weather systems. A thunderstorm on a terraformed Luna can be *tall*. And since rain intensity is often proportional to cloud thickness, there is potential risk for serious flooding.

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Sat, 2012-10-20 01:23

Decivre

Arenamontanus wrote:Actually,

Arenamontanus wrote:
Actually, it is the small worlds that have fluffy atmospheres. The pressure and density decreases exponentially with altitude, set by a scale height that is proportional to temperature (hot means fluffy) and inverse with gravity (heavy means a flat atmosphere). Earth has a scale height of 8 km, Mars (with the same temperature etc) would be 20 km, and Luna 48 km. This has interesting effects on weather systems. A thunderstorm on a terraformed Luna can be *tall*. And since rain intensity is often proportional to cloud thickness, there is potential risk for serious flooding.

But could Luna actually capture an atmosphere? Wouldn't it risk being pulled into the vaccuum of space? That's the big issue to me. Perhaps "large" was a poor choice of word... "copious"? "Sufficient"? I just don't see Luna or Mars being able to sustain an atmosphere. I might be wrong with Mars, but is it even possible with Luna, especially considering the gravitational effects of Earth?

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Sun, 2012-10-21 13:07

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Decivre wrote:But could Luna

Decivre wrote:
But could Luna actually capture an atmosphere? Wouldn't it risk being pulled into the vaccuum of space? That's the big issue to me. Perhaps "large" was a poor choice of word... "copious"? "Sufficient"?

If you have too much energy, read up on Jeans escape and planetary exospheres. I did, and it looks like Luna could handle an atmosphere for a long while. Basically, at the top of the atmosphere molecules are sparse enough that they don't collide, and instead just move in the planets gravity field. If they have velocity lower than escape velocity they will eventually fall back. But if they are faster, they will escape. The probability of this happening depends on how many are in the tail end of the Maxwell velocity probability distribution, which in turn depends on molecular mass (heavy stuff moves more slowly) and temperature (hotter exospheres leak more). Running the numbers for Luna it looks like an Earthlike atmosphere will persist for a very long time. I am not 100% sure of my calculations (it is easy to drop a factor), but I remember that Martyn Fogg's terraforming book has some estimates for lunar atmospheres. Will check when I get home.

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Sun, 2012-10-21 14:05

Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture

Strangely I remember reading

Strangely I remember reading a lot on terraforming Luna, in most of the cases it involved putting a shell around it to keep the atmosphere. Some ideas here: http://www.ultimax.com/whitepapers/ShellWorldsJBISfinal.pdf

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Mon, 2012-10-22 09:59

rfmcdonald rfmcdonald's picture

My own understanding is that

My own understanding is that the Moon could retain an atmosphere for millions of years at a time, though at this point it'd have to be introduced. This URL has interesting thoughts on lunar atmospheres. The chemical reactions caused by the introduction of so much water would be rather spectacular, now that the author mentions it. http://www.mps.mpg.de/homes/hoekzema/katman/nick/work/moonat.htm

Tue, 2012-10-23 11:34

#10

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

The point about the lunar

The point about the lunar soil is also relevant for how dust brought indoors on Luna behaves. Generally it is abrasive and nasty.

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