Quote:Well, you need more than just carbon, oxygen and hydrogen to make organic compounds. You also need nitrogen, and there's not a hell of a lot of that handy in or around Venus. The best places to obtain raw nitrogen are the outer system moons & the Kuiper Belt.
The Venusian atmosphere is mostly CO2, right? If Venus ships in hydrogen (I think as a metastable solid, but not neccessarily), then between that and the gases already in its atmosphere, the VTP has all the building blocks to synthesize water, hydrocarbons, and amino acids at a potential profit while also forwarding their objective. I can see a triangular trade of hydrogen from Jupiter to Venus, water and simple organics from Venus to Mars or Earth, and food and finished goods from Earth or Mars to Jupiter.
Conversely, with the energy being thrown around it'd actually be cheaper to harvest Kuiper ice and crack that for hydrogen instead of mining Jupiter for it.
(Helium-3, now, that's a resource with potential for profitable farming in the outer system, especially if the Mundanes manage to 'wave themselves up a fusion reactor. Still, Jupiter's gravity makes getting it a bitch and a half; Saturn, Uranus and Neptune make for better "oilfields.")
Quote:Yeah, but then you get into that portability thing again. It's like... well, the outer rings are about 50/50 rock and ice, but it's more profitable for rockrats to go after small-to-medium asteroids than to take a big bag and collect dust.
Besides, unless my memory misleads me, aren't the outer system rings supposed to be made up of ice?
Plus, let's be honest. Even in the most libertarian fandom possible, if you're dumb enough to fuck with the jovian rings you'll be strung up for environmental desecration before the viewgraphs are dry. Some things are simply sacrosanct.---
Mr. Fnord
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