nezumi.hebereke wrote:

As the article points out, terraforming Venus is hard, and the primary benefit is a better understanding of how greenhouse gases function on Earth (which is no longer a concern in EP). I could absolutely see terraforming Venus being a major political point once the Morningstar Alliance has the coherence and resources to support it. Right now though, especially with the Alliance being as fractured as it is, it's easier to change morphs to survive on Venus than change Venus to support more morphs. (Still neat find.)

Actually, whether to further terraform Venus is a point of contention. The PC wants it terraformed to be Earthlike, but the MC wants to keep Venus a fantasyland of floating cities.

Hadn't noticed that, sorry :) But still, Mars is a lot easier for a lot of reasons. I'm all for better research on Venus, as that will be directly applicable to Earth in a lot of ways, but actually terraforming it? That's putting the cart waaaay before the horse.

As we've learned more about both the planets I've cooled on the idea of terraforming either of them. Large scale details like the lack of a magnetosphere - owing to slow rotation in Venus' case and insufficient mass to maintain core heating for Mars- make global changes ultimately temporary. To my sensibilities it's more energy efficient to stay with habitats like domed cities or aerostats. If there was going to be an effort at terraforming a planet, I feel Mars would be the better choice. The on site availability of water being key to the formation of an ecosystem that can sustain itself. Lest you think I'm too serious here, let me tell you I've thought of doming over the whole of Mars as a way to keep the atmosphere from blowing away and protecting the surface from UV ! It's not megaengineering that bugs me just the sustainability of it.

My current understanding of Venus is that all of its water blew off into space due to UV photodissociation and solar wind interaction.Also, it's current geology may be less about plate tectonics and more a planet wide boiling over that resurfaces the crust every so often. You'd have to bring in a lot of water not just to supply the surface life but to alter the geological cycle of the planet into something stable enough to build an ecosystem on. Mars isn't better in the magnetic field department, but it has lots of frozen water and a stable- indeed frozen - geology. So any terraforming efforts would create a milder climate in the short term , but it would be ultimately temporary . The fixes for these problems are a whole extra layer of megaengineering. For Venus, it means upping the planets rotation. This could be accomplished in small doses by tidal interactions between the planet and an artificial moon or moons. The iceteroids being brought in to supply water would be a part of this effort. I wonder if you could build a dwarf planet out of it before hand to speed up the process? Regarding carbon sequestration,would diamonds currently survive on the Venusian surface? It would make a spectacular visual of a atmosphere converter showering diamonds down as an unwanted byproduct! Mars is more difficult in this as you'd have to dramatically increase the planet's silicate mass and, short of crashing Luna or Mercury into it ,there just isn't enough mass left in the Solar system to do that.