[extropy-chat] Nuclear terraforming

[Jeff Davis]

Oh, heck.  Clearly Mike beat me to the sunshade idea. 
I didn't read ahead.  My bad.  Congrats Mike.  Great
minds think alike.

Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles

--- Mike15007 at aol.com wrote:

>  
> In a message dated 12/15/2005 9:58:04 P.M. Eastern
> Standard Time,  
> wingcat at pacbell.net writes:
> 
> But  speaking of applying nuclear weapons to vast
> surfaces...I
> wonder - has  anyone looked into the feasability of,
> say,
> initiating nuclear winter on  Venus so as to rapidly
> chill the
> planet, so that much of the sulfuric acid  comes out
> of the
> atmosphere (which might then allow establishment of 
> more
> permanent temperature-control mechanisms, infeasable
> to  deploy
> right now mainly because of the immense temperature,
>  pressure,
> and acid rains at Venus's surface)?  Most of the 
> radioactive
> fallout could probably be localized, and even if the
>  atmosphere
> were magically converted to Earth-temperature 
> oxygen-nitrogen
> overnight, the soil will probably need cleaning
> before  people can
> live there as it is anyway (again, due to the
> sulfuric  acid
> rains).
> 
> 
> 
> I think it would be easier, more practical, and 
> less problematic, to use a 
> gigantic dynamically-stabilized sunshade at the L1 
> position between Sol and 
> Venus, and lower immense "radiator fins" into Venus'
>  atmosphere from a 
> dynamically-supported orbital ring, to suck the heat
> out of  the lower atmosphere more 
> quickly and cool the place without leaving lotsa
> nasty  isotopes at all.
>     Giving Venus an Earth-like day-night cycle will
> be  trickier. The best 
> way I can think of to do it - quickest without
> requiring a  lot of energy or 
> hitting Venus with something *big* - is a bunch of 
> dynamically-stabilized giant 
> reflectors at L4, L5, and maybe L2 as well, in 
> conjunction with the 
> aformentioned sunshade at L1. The reflectors could
> each  "oscillate" in tune with each 
> other, and the sunshade could perhaps be varied 
> periodically, to simulate day 
> and night around Venus.
>     Hey, no one ever said terraforming a world that 
> wasn't already mostly 
> there would be easy. I came up with this strategy a
> few  years ago as one that 
> didn't involve hitting Venus with anything *really
> big,*  or otherwise 
> affecting its rotation, among other things.
>     Okay, what are the holes in this strategy? I 
> genuinely wish to be told 
> when it looks like I'm smoking something :-)
>  
> Mike
> > _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
> 



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com