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Terraforming
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| Aerospacefag | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:11 | Message # 61 |
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| Quote steeljaw354 (  ) Lets say you have hundreds of thousands of these converters upscaled, now leave them there for a century, and come back and you would see an oxygen increase.
When the concept of thermoforming was introduced the first time (it's hard to determine, but I guess somewhere in the middle of 20-th century, when the nuclear power emerged), people weren't looking for, erm, some real projects. They were looking for possibilities, and they have learned that humanity at large is slowly developing towards more powerful status. Before 20th century, we were all the same animals, just intelligent. During it, we became something that can rival gods, and it is natural for these humans to predict what can happen in the future. A logical iteration of the same big projects like transcontinental canals, power plants, dams and megalopolises.
Now, fast forward to the end of the century, a concept of singularity is introduced. On the other approach, people now think that progress not only develops civilization, it accelerates itself. So, frankly, instead of definite answer, as it was before, there are many different possible futures. There are several variants:
1. We could develop so fast that at some point we won't need any terraforming at all.
2. We could develop so slow, that it will take the best of us and terraforming will become a necessity to recover climate on Earth.
3. Terraforming will be needed to establish new colonies in new worlds if we will develop relatively stable.
4. We could even just annihilate ourself out of some stupid mistake, so there would be no future at all.
All of this can't be determined by some sort of magic recipe, but most scientists consider the second possibility most realistic.
Although my guess as engineer is that there could be something entirely different - it depends on technology rather than something reasonable that we already know.
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| DoctorOfSpace | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:11 | Message # 62 |
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| Quote midtskogen ( ) Humans can't wait several million years.
Maybe if we cure aging and get some augmentations going that might be possible but it leads into your second point
Quote midtskogen ( ) Or perhaps it's more feasible to genetically engineer a human breed capable of living in an unaltered atmosphere.
If we can genetically engineer or mechanically augment humans to survive most of these environments, then terraforming becomes a waste of resources.
Still an interesting subject.
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:11 | Message # 63 |
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| Quote DoctorOfSpace ( ) If we can genetically engineer or mechanically augment humans to survive most of these environments, then terraforming becomes a waste of resources.
It's not a likely scenario, but if the other alternative is terraforming, it might be a more fruitful approach.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| steeljaw354 | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:11 | Message # 64 |
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| Paraterraforming is easily in our hands, all we have to do is make domes over craters and have it airtight and terraform the inside of the dome including the crater.
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| spacer | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:11 | Message # 65 |
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| steeljaw354, its still super hard. here there is big challenge that you wouldnt have if terraform the entire planet and its:
to protect your place from the outside...how will you build the doom? how you will keep it up and constract it?
how would you take care of the doom? and what if there will be 1 crack in the dome that lead to total destraction?
"we began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still"
-carl sagan
-space engine photographer
Edited by spacer - Sunday, 26.06.2016, 13:11 |
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:11 | Message # 66 |
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| Quote steeljaw354 ( ) Paraterraforming is easily in our hands, all we have to do is make domes over craters and have it airtight and terraform the inside of the dome including the crater.
That's not really terraforming. I'd call it building a space station that happens to sit on a planetary surface. It will have gravity and it might be possible to extract resources on site, but in essence you just have a space station.
If the pressure inside and outside the station can be the same, then things could become interesting. In our solar system I believe there are only three places we can realistically have such stations: On the surface of Titan, or in the clouds of Venus or Saturn. Each has several major problems. Titan: extreme cold and low gravity. And it's far from Earth. Venus: Not practical to reach the surface, acidic atmosphere and must be kept afloat. Saturn: No surface, extreme cold and far from Earth, and must also be kept afloat.
Gravity wise Venus and Saturn are very close to Earth, and can offer an Earth like pressure. Mars just fails on everything.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Sunday, 26.06.2016, 15:21 |
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| apenpaap | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:12 | Message # 67 |
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| What about Uranus and Neptune? They too have similar gravity to Earth, and regions in their atmosphere where the pressure is equal. Obviously, the cold problem is even worse on them.
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| DoctorOfSpace | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:12 | Message # 68 |
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| Quote apenpaap ( ) Obviously, the cold problem is even worse on them.
If humanity creates working fusion reactors then I don't think the cold would be an issue.
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:12 | Message # 69 |
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| Yeah, let's not write off Uranus and Neptune completely despite the extreme temperatures. Saturn, however, might not be that bad temperature wise if we dive a bit into the atmosphere: Pressure-temperature profiles
At 1 MPa (10 atmospheres) Saturn appears to stay at a balmy 0C. I think humans can live in 10 atmospheres if the air is modified slightly. We should have much knowledge about this since divers often operate at such pressures.
One concern for all of the gas planets (Jupiter is disqualified anyway due to radiation) is that the weather is pretty extreme. Since a station would travel with the wind, it might not be as bad as it sounds, but high turbulence might become an issue. Especially at 10 atmospheres.
Saturn is also much more attractive due to the views. 
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| Aerospacefag | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:12 | Message # 70 |
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| Quote midtskogen ( ) One concern for all of the gas planets (Jupiter is disqualified anyway due to radiation) is that the weather is pretty extreme. Since a station would travel with the wind, it might not be as bad as it sounds, but high turbulence might become an issue. Especially at 10 atmospheres.
Most of the problems, though, might come from the composition of atmosphere. If it consists entirely of hydrogen and helium, it might be nearly impossible to float anything out there unless we use something like diamond-structured balloons filled for low pressure. So there would be difference i pressure all the time, but it will allow to float somewhere around the reasonable altitude without too much turbulence.
I've read Charles Stross and his "Accelerando", and it described entire cities floating in Saturn atmosphere, but no clear description was given how do they actually do that.
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:12 | Message # 71 |
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| Quote Aerospacefag ( ) Most of the problems, though, might come from the composition of atmosphere. If it consists entirely of hydrogen and helium, it might be nearly impossible to float anything out there unless we use something like diamond-structured balloons filled for low pressure.
Good point. How does the "hot air" principle work in hydrogen and helium? Given a powerful energy source, the atmosphere could be heated to create uplift. I suspect that the energy required would be huge, though.
Unnecessary to say, the technology to pull something like this off doesn't exist. But, unlike terraforming, we can make reasonable estimates for what it would take.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Sunday, 26.06.2016, 18:42 |
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| DoctorOfSpace | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:12 | Message # 72 |
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| I don't think keeping them at a specific altitude is really that big of an engineering problem. If they were forced to, they could just use jets or pressurized gas fired from the bottom of the station. Gas giants offer many solutions for all of these problems.
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| Aerospacefag | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:13 | Message # 73 |
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| Quote midtskogen ( ) Good point. How does the "hot air" principle work in hydrogen and helium? Given a powerful energy source, the atmosphere could be heated to create uplift. I suspect that the energy required would be huge, though.
At one point on our forum I was studying into the case of balloon habitats (among others), and it turns out, the "hot" concept would really be possible, but not for much. For rigid constructions, it might be about as hard as the high-pressure solution. The lifting capacity of such balloon would be only about 1/10th of the normal hydrogen balloon in Earth atmosphere, so, again, exotic materials will be necessary.
http://biotsavart.tripod.com/balloon.htm
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| Mosfet | Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013, 18:13 | Message # 74 |
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| Given that the hydrogen has a temperamental nature, very prone to exothermic reactions, wouldn't be a bit problematic to float on such conditions?
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| steeljaw354 | Date: Monday, 27.06.2016, 00:41 | Message # 75 |
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| Oh, instead of focusing on otherworldly concepts, we need to fix up our issues and find a way to combat climate change, then we can start plans to terraform mars or any other planet, if we are going to do this, the world must be in cooperation with the project, if there are terrorists of the future, they will probably target the terraforming projects and such. If we do start terraforming a military presence is necessary
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