Random Thought Table: A good argument for terraforming
Okay, follow along with me.
The Problem: Mars is a crappy planet to try and land on. The atmosphere is too thin to aerobrake during re-entry, you need huge parachute, but there's just enough air to burn anything coming down to crisp if they don't have a heat shield. At one ton the Curiosity rover is the biggest thing we've been able to land. ( Read more... )
The Problem: Mars is a crappy planet to try and land on. The atmosphere is too thin to aerobrake during re-entry, you need huge parachute, but there's just enough air to burn anything coming down to crisp if they don't have a heat shield. At one ton the Curiosity rover is the biggest thing we've been able to land. ( Read more... )
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You need to:
a ) use a Moonformer-grade collision with something the size of, say, Mercury*;
b ) put that much carbon dioxide back**, but only a quarter as much nitrogen***, along with about as much water as makes up, say, Callisto, plus enough helium to soak up UV and keep the water vapor from being broken down like it did in the original case;
c ) leave a big piece of tinsel between Venus and the Sun for the five thousand years it's going to take for the CO2 to be absorbed, until which time the planet is not going to cool below about 600 Kelvin;
d ) spend the whole 5000 years herding debris from the collision into a halfway decent moon and keeping it just outside the Roche limit, so you can get a decent day-night cycle going with tidal action; and
e ) constantly remind yourself that if you went looking for planets around another star you'd still have to do all this crap, but from aboard a generation ship instead of in a system that has Hawaii. Even if you do only go on vacation every other decade. (Though it is for ( ... )
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