Quote:As Wiki has it, Venusian air is about 5% N2. Granted that isn't a huge share, but you're making water - which is HOH - and hydrocarbons of various flavors, all of which can be written completely using the C and H keys.
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.
I won't argue about needing more of it to set up an Earthlike atmosphere on Venus, though.
Quote:Thank you! That helped me identify the biggest problem I was having with your version...
(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.")
As presented, the primary limitation on fennish activity is not supply, delta-v, or energy.
It's travel time.
Say - for very rough, back-of-the-envelope purposes - that the Kuiper belt starts at about Neptune's orbit.
That makes its resources six times as distant as Jupiter's. That's, what, at least four more round trips that the Jovian miner makes while his Kuiper rival is still doing his first?
And, yeah. I think that fusion power can be taken as a given.
Ja, -n
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