Plotbunny for sale - cheap

[Feinan]

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When I think of terraforming Venus, my first image is of seeding the clouds with tailored bacteria to start altering the atmosphere into something livable. If 'wavium speeds the process of designing those critters up, and enhances their efficiency, then maybe we can already be up to the level of "native plants" by this point--it's still a Trenconian hellhole, but it may be possible to send ships down there and harvest stuff. Is that what people have in mind?

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That's what comes to mind when I think of terraforming Venus, too. Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae (even better). If you modded it - you could add in extremophilic tendencies from bacteria from deep-sea vents, which would let it process sulphuric acid in the clouds. Since it's got chlorophyll, it'd also start to work on converting CO2 to O2 as well. The most you'd have to do is find a way to keep it floating, and there should be something a good biomodder could kitbash together. As for 'native plants'....my take on this would be that given the harsh conditions, it's quite probable that the handwavium has speeded up evolution in the algae. It's also possible there were versions of extremophilic bacteria that were native to Venus and that got fused with the algae. With the handwavium adding a boost, you could get plants that really were partially native to Venus in a few years, I'd say.
As for sending ships down - yes, you could. Or remote drones like my Scout-class buddies. Of course, it's possible there are some domed outposts or at least a few buildings on the surface that the Senshi use. *grin* I doubt they'd be amused by the zwilniks, however. Which is fine by me.
Oh - for those who might wonder why Atropos snorted at my song choice in the snippet: the Scout/Sword-class drones are not true AIs, though they do exhibit vague hints of personality from the handwavium. They're remote-controlled by the AIs in my ship. Since Atropos (the crone archetype for the Sisters in my vehicle) was handling Spare/Saber at the time, I was actually teasing her a bit.