Surviving On Venus. Is It Time To Go Back To That Awful Place?
If you’ve watched this channel enough, you might have the impression that I hate Venus. It’s possible, just possible I’ve even suggested that the planet is so terrible it should be pushed into the Sun.
The reality, of course, is that it’s an absolutely fascinating world - the closest twin to the Earth that we have in the Solar System. It’s nearly the same mass and has the same surface gravity.
While Earth is the beautiful life-filled world we all enjoy, Venus is a tortured hellscape, with temperatures hot enough to melt zinc. With atmospheric pressures more than 93 times what we experience here on the surface of Earth. And I always forget about the sulphuric acid rain.
The Soviets sent a series of landers to a horrible demise for a glimpse of the surface of Venus in the 70s and 80s. But nobody’s been back since.
There have been new techniques and technologies in development that might make a serious exploration of the surface of Venus possible again. Exploration that could help us understand why the planet went so horribly horribly wrong.
Watch the video here:
And in case you missed it, here's a link to Monday's Open Space episode:
Comments (4)
มันสามารถดับไฟป่าได้ ทำเกษตรกรรมได้
ฝากข้อความสักเรื่องนะ....อย่าสร้างหุ่นยนต์เพื่อฆ่ามนุษย์เพื่อทำสงคราม แต่ให้สร้างหุ่นยนต์เพื่อปกป้องแก้ไขโลก เช่นดับไฟป่า ปลูกป่า ทำเกษตรกรรม อิ่นๆๆๆอีกมากมาย
ความอยากได้ในทรัพย์สินของผู้อื่น จึงเกิดการค้นหาและลงทุนแบบโง่เขลา
You know, it makes me wonder if it might be possible to terraform Venus. Introduce a genetically engineered microbe that can consume the CO2 and H2SO4 into something sequesterable (working from the upper levels where it isn't Dante's inferno, and gradually working downward as increasing sequestering diminishes the atmospheric density/pressure and allows for heat to escape). If water is lacking, kick a few atmosphere-grazing comets through to introduce new water for the microbes, as well as fresh nitrogen and other gasses.