So I've been kicking around the Venus Terraforming Project a bit, and I've come to one solid conclusion: the Senshi really got shafted here. Even with handwavium, this one's easily a multi-century project. (As opposed to the simpler Martian Terraforming Project, which could be done or at least livable by 2050.)
There are three big problems with Venusian terraforming:
* There's too much atmosphere and it's all entirely of the wrong mix.
* The surface temperature is 500C and can't cool because of the weight of the atmosphere.
* There's no water. At all.
(There's a fourth problem - Venus rotates in the wrong direction and it takes 243 days to do it - but solving that one's a bit out of range for this partcular diatribe.)
The core of Venusian terraforming is the atmosphere; getting rid of it doesn't solve everything, but it takes a lot of the pressure off. Problem is, 92 bars of atmosphere (96.5% of it pure CO2) is a lot of atmosphere to get rid of. And it has to be gotten rid of. At the very least, the carbon needs to be sequestered in a non-flammable form, otherwise just cracking the CO2 into 02 and C will create a very explosive layer of graphite under a thick, nearly pure-oxygen atmosphere. Not good.
Currently, we've got the Senshi working with algae and other forms of airborne plantlife engineered by the Jason and their own biotech people, using that to convert CO2 and start cooling the planet. Problem is, this won't work on its own. Biological terraforming on Venus is dependent on water. As mentioned above, Venus doesn't have any. It makes Arrakis look like the bottom of the Pacific. The very small amount of water vapor in the upper atmosphere would be very quickly used up by the plants, which would then die, sink to the surface and return the sequestered carbon back to the atmosphere.
So the Senshi plan on its own won't work, because Venus has no water. Venus has plenty of oxygen, though, so it should be easy to make water, right? Well, sort of. Venus also has no hydrogen, which is what you need to make water. Now, there's plenty of hydrogen in the solar system, so it's a matter of trucking it in and just dumping it into the atmosphere and presto, right?
Not quite. There's the Bosch reaction, which converts hydrogen and CO2 into water and graphite, and it will work at the temperatures found on Venus. The problem here is you need lots of hydrogen to reduce the Venusian atmosphere. If you have enough hydrogen the Bosch reactionn will reduce the entire CO2 content of the atmosphere into water and graphite, but in order to do that you'd need 2*10^16mt - that's 20,000,000,000,000 metric tons - of hydrogen to do the job. The Senshi could commandeer all the heavy shipping in Fenspace for the next thousand years and not move enough hydrogen to reduce the atmosphere.
(In parenthesis I'll add this caveat: Should the Professor or the Wizarding World or somebody else develop a device that creates a stable wormhole, like a stargate or a portkey or a farcaster or something similar, then this particular hurdle becomes moot. All that needs to happen then is to sink one end of the wormhole relatively deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, sink the other about mid-level in Venus' atmosphere, open the wormhole and let pressure differential do the work. But this technology has not been invented yet, so the above paragraph still applies.)
The Senshi can still import hydrogen to create water, but the tonnage they can import is only a drop in a very large bucket. At best they can import enough hydrogen to keep their biological mediation plan alive - more or less - while they work on industrial methods of reducing the atmosphere.
(It may be that the Senshi didn't know - or still don't - that the "we can terraform Venus with a handful of algae!" plan is woefully incorrect, and committed themselves to the project before realizing this. That said, it's entirely plausible that Castle Magellan and the future Castles are going to need some significant upgrades to deal with reality.)
The best industrial way of reducing the atmosphere is to suck it up, seperate it into component gasses, bottle it and ship it somewhere else. This can even include cracking the CO2 into oxygen and carbon, both of which can be moved elsewhere. This will take just as long - possibly longer - than moving hydrogen from Jupiter, but the benefit here is that it can work alongside the biological mediation, and it provides the Senshi with items for trade in the Fenspace economy.
What items? Nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. Gaseous nitrogen and oxygen are critical components necessary for Martian terraforming, and using the Venusian excess of atmosphere to bulk up Mars' excuse for air has a nice symmetry to it. Pure carbon can be sold to manufacturing concerns on Luna and the asteroids for use in creating handwavium-composite building materials for bigger and better habitats, as well as the next generation of Fen spaceships. The current VTP plan has the Senshi making complex organics for export as well, but the hydrogen requirements suggest that they're better off putting all their imported H2 into water production and not hydrocarbons.
---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
There are three big problems with Venusian terraforming:
* There's too much atmosphere and it's all entirely of the wrong mix.
* The surface temperature is 500C and can't cool because of the weight of the atmosphere.
* There's no water. At all.
(There's a fourth problem - Venus rotates in the wrong direction and it takes 243 days to do it - but solving that one's a bit out of range for this partcular diatribe.)
The core of Venusian terraforming is the atmosphere; getting rid of it doesn't solve everything, but it takes a lot of the pressure off. Problem is, 92 bars of atmosphere (96.5% of it pure CO2) is a lot of atmosphere to get rid of. And it has to be gotten rid of. At the very least, the carbon needs to be sequestered in a non-flammable form, otherwise just cracking the CO2 into 02 and C will create a very explosive layer of graphite under a thick, nearly pure-oxygen atmosphere. Not good.
Currently, we've got the Senshi working with algae and other forms of airborne plantlife engineered by the Jason and their own biotech people, using that to convert CO2 and start cooling the planet. Problem is, this won't work on its own. Biological terraforming on Venus is dependent on water. As mentioned above, Venus doesn't have any. It makes Arrakis look like the bottom of the Pacific. The very small amount of water vapor in the upper atmosphere would be very quickly used up by the plants, which would then die, sink to the surface and return the sequestered carbon back to the atmosphere.
So the Senshi plan on its own won't work, because Venus has no water. Venus has plenty of oxygen, though, so it should be easy to make water, right? Well, sort of. Venus also has no hydrogen, which is what you need to make water. Now, there's plenty of hydrogen in the solar system, so it's a matter of trucking it in and just dumping it into the atmosphere and presto, right?
Not quite. There's the Bosch reaction, which converts hydrogen and CO2 into water and graphite, and it will work at the temperatures found on Venus. The problem here is you need lots of hydrogen to reduce the Venusian atmosphere. If you have enough hydrogen the Bosch reactionn will reduce the entire CO2 content of the atmosphere into water and graphite, but in order to do that you'd need 2*10^16mt - that's 20,000,000,000,000 metric tons - of hydrogen to do the job. The Senshi could commandeer all the heavy shipping in Fenspace for the next thousand years and not move enough hydrogen to reduce the atmosphere.
(In parenthesis I'll add this caveat: Should the Professor or the Wizarding World or somebody else develop a device that creates a stable wormhole, like a stargate or a portkey or a farcaster or something similar, then this particular hurdle becomes moot. All that needs to happen then is to sink one end of the wormhole relatively deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, sink the other about mid-level in Venus' atmosphere, open the wormhole and let pressure differential do the work. But this technology has not been invented yet, so the above paragraph still applies.)
The Senshi can still import hydrogen to create water, but the tonnage they can import is only a drop in a very large bucket. At best they can import enough hydrogen to keep their biological mediation plan alive - more or less - while they work on industrial methods of reducing the atmosphere.
(It may be that the Senshi didn't know - or still don't - that the "we can terraform Venus with a handful of algae!" plan is woefully incorrect, and committed themselves to the project before realizing this. That said, it's entirely plausible that Castle Magellan and the future Castles are going to need some significant upgrades to deal with reality.)
The best industrial way of reducing the atmosphere is to suck it up, seperate it into component gasses, bottle it and ship it somewhere else. This can even include cracking the CO2 into oxygen and carbon, both of which can be moved elsewhere. This will take just as long - possibly longer - than moving hydrogen from Jupiter, but the benefit here is that it can work alongside the biological mediation, and it provides the Senshi with items for trade in the Fenspace economy.
What items? Nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. Gaseous nitrogen and oxygen are critical components necessary for Martian terraforming, and using the Venusian excess of atmosphere to bulk up Mars' excuse for air has a nice symmetry to it. Pure carbon can be sold to manufacturing concerns on Luna and the asteroids for use in creating handwavium-composite building materials for bigger and better habitats, as well as the next generation of Fen spaceships. The current VTP plan has the Senshi making complex organics for export as well, but the hydrogen requirements suggest that they're better off putting all their imported H2 into water production and not hydrocarbons.
---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"