My futuristic idea about colonizing Mars and Venus

Raduprv · 2005-10-25T11:12:58

As you know, Nasa is planning to send humans on Mars in 2050 or so. Mars suffers from not enough atmosphere. If it had a denser atmosphere (especially greenhouse gases such as methane and CO2) the temperature there would be warmer, and the pressue would be better suited for life forms. On the other hand, Venus has a lot of CO2, and the pressure and temperature are too much for known life forms (especially for humans). For the time being we do not have the technology to do this, but with the advancements in nano technology and new materials, wouldn't it be possible in the future (maybe 500 years from now) to build some very elastic and flexible pipe between those two planets, and pump the CO2 from Venus to Mars? If we could manage to do that, both Mars and Venus would have a climate pretty close to the one on Earth, so we could colonize them without building space domes and stuff like that. We could directly walk on their surface, without any protective gear.

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Started by Raduprv October 22, 2005 05:08 PM

99 comments, last by Endar 18 years, 6 months ago

Pouya

869

October 23, 2005 01:29 PM

Quote:Original post by Diodor
Won't the whole concept of living on planets be obsolete by the time we are able to build inter-planetary plumbing?

Quoting Michael D. Griffin:

Quote:In the long run a single-planet species will not survive. We have ample evidence of that ... (Species have) been wiped out in mass extinctions on an average of every 30 million years.

LessBread

1,415

October 23, 2005 01:32 PM

Quote:Original post by mikeman
I'm tired of hearing this all the time. If you present an idea, and you want to be taken seriously, you have to bring arguments that sustain this particular idea, explaining, even in general terms, of why and how it would be possible.

Yep. The problem comes when the arguments are there but the idea is still dismissed as dreaming or "interested fabrication" as often happens with climate scientists and global warming. As with Arild's Sagan quote, Columbus, Fulton, the Wright Brothers had arguments to back up their ideas. Bozo the Clown merely had seltzer.

Quote:Original post by mikeman
If you have to resort to "maybe in the future people will discover how to do it", you've already made the discussion non-serious. "All the great inventions were met with laughter and distrust" is not an argument. Period.

I don't think that renders the discussion non-serious but it does make it speculative. Speculation can be done with seriousness. Case in point, Carl Sagan. Sagan often speculated about things that were not yet completely understood, but when Sagan speculated, he was very upfront about it.

Quote:Original post by mikeman
The fact that many great inventions were dealt with distrust at first can't, in any way, be used as a serious argument about the validity of any crazy idea one can think of.

I agree. It doesn't mean that any idea should be taken seriously.

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." - the Laughing Man

LessBread

1,415

October 23, 2005 01:35 PM

Quote:Original post by T1Oracle
Postulate? You can spare yourself, for it is a clear fact that there are far more bad ideas that have been laughed at then decent ones. There is no shortage of bad ideas, that's why people develop skepticism in the first place. This doesn't mean that people should just keep their mouths closed. However, that fact should be taken into consideration before any proposal is presented. The honest attempt to gather the proper facts first is definately a respectable gesture. Even if one's idea proves to be unfeasible, the honest attempt to gather the proper facts first makes them worthy of respect. Unfortunately, not everyone goes to such lengths before presenting their case.

Yep, a novel idea is usually treated as a novelty. And quite often a serious effort must be made to take the gag out of it to convince others that it's not a confabulation or a confidence game.

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." - the Laughing Man

Luckless

3,283

October 23, 2005 01:40 PM

Quote:Original post by kSquared
Let us suppose that the pipe has a cross-sectional diameter of 200 meters, approximately the length of Grand Central Station in New York City, and a wall thickness of 1 meter.

May I ask what you are basing your rather MASSIVE wall thickness on? Did you do the math and decide it is totaly impossble to have walls about, I don't know, micoroscopic and use nanobots to make a self sealing pipe?

Did you think about a flexible pipe that could be bent around objects that the self sealing wouldn't take care of?

Could also have TWO pipe structures, one goes above the sun, the other goes below *this is a ticky part,... like none of the other parts are,...* somehow so the pipes are still trying to orbit in the same way the planets are, rather than around the pole of the sun. This would allow you to maintain pipe connection.

Now, I still think the idea is a waste, we shouldn't be terraforming planets. Domes are better. :P Humans have done a bang up job of killing life on this planet, we should be sailing around space screwing with others.

Old Username: Talroth
If your signature on a web forum takes up more space than your average post, then you are doing things wrong.

H_o_p_s

877

October 23, 2005 01:43 PM

Instead of replying upon a physical tube, why not just make a wormhole between the two? This would make it so there was very little distance, and you wouldn't need any pumps because Venus is a higher pressured planet than mars.

However, if we are to create a wormhole between these two planets, we must remember that we will nedd all of our negative energy in the universe to keep it open… but we'll just ignore that fact for the time being.

Just think: WORMHOLE TERRAFORMATION. It is the way of the future.

BRING BACK THE BLACK (or at least something darker)

LessBread

1,415

October 23, 2005 01:55 PM

Why not perform the transfer with a teleportation unit?

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." - the Laughing Man

Pouya

869

October 23, 2005 02:01 PM

Quote:Original post by H_o_p_s
Instead of replying upon a physical tube, why not just make a wormhole between the two? This would make it so there was very little distance, and you wouldn't need any pumps because Venus is a higher pressured planet than mars.

However, if we are to create a wormhole between these two planets, we must remember that we will nedd all of our negative energy in the universe to keep it open… but we'll just ignore that fact for the time being.

Just think: WORMHOLE TERRAFORMATION. It is the way of the future.

But then the two planets will attract each other "through" this wormhole (yay gravity) and collide!

Or even worse, they might end up orbitting each other, and with the real distance from mars to venus, you'll end up swinging one of them into the sun by "accident"

AnonymousPosterChild

168

October 23, 2005 02:02 PM

Why not get those elves that cobble shoes to build the pipe for us, as long as we're all living in a fantasy world.

With love, AnonymousPosterChild

Servant of the Lord

33,739

October 23, 2005 02:02 PM

Quote:Original post by LessBread
Why not perform the transfer with a teleportation unit?

Because teleporting dosen't work as well as it does in startrek.

Wormholes are actaully posible from what little I know.

Dmytry

1,151

October 23, 2005 02:06 PM

even with wormholes you'll need pumps to get from lower potential energy into higher (unless of course there's no energy conservation).

For conservation of energy, to get from surface of heavier planet that is closer to sun, to surface of lighter planet that is further from sun, you'll need to spend at least difference of gravity potentials per unit mass transferred.

My futuristic idea about colonizing Mars and Venus

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