So far I just see two planets that are canadates to potentially live on. Unfortunatly they both have 95% of thier atmosphere being CO2 and little to no water.
Mars has CO2 ice caps (resulted from the reverse greenhouse effect) that could form a atmosphere so that the temperatures on mars could begin to be tolerable to humans, but there are trace amounts of water so plants can't domesticate on the planet.
Venus has a good atmosphere that cause the greenhouse effect to generate a consistant temperature of 600 degrees so to make it tolerable one will have to get rid of some of the atmosphere. If we could find a large water asteroid in the astroid belt and swing it into Venus it might be possible to make it tolerable for us.
I just want a thought experiment for this. These are not a suitable alternative for earth in the foreseeable future and our planet needs to come first, we need to adapt to the changing conditions that earth will become first. What I'm proposing is hypothetical thought experiments to turn our two closest terresterial worlds to a tolerable landscape.
Only mars has a little of the magnetosphere whereas Venus already has the atmpshere to block most asteroids.
Forming terresterial worlds like ours
It seems it would be easier to maintain this planet than waste an extraordinary amount of resources to barely get a small garden on Mars.
Yes, I mentioned that. Can't we entertain the thought and look into how much resources would be required anyways?
Terraforming a planet is harder than making artificial space habitats, if you want to "fix" Mars' gravity , you would have to build spinning bowls where the centrifugal force of the bowl and the Mars gravity result in a combined earth like experience of weight. You might as well just go for a spin-gravity in space.
Why would it be important to recreate gravity? Isn't a third 3.37g enough?
Mars has no geodynamo. You would cook, Prickly.
IMHO trying to colonize our 2 neighbours is a fools errand. Mars has no geomagnetic field, meaning no atmosphere can stick and cancer is an ever present threat.
Venus is a toxic pressure cooker and the technology to adapt its atmosphere is complete scifi.
Should humanity master the Solar System, I think the moons of the gas giants are a much more attractive prospect, because beyond getting there, the only problem is the -500C temperature.
There's Europa, Io and Ganymede, but the one that fascinates me the most is Saturn's unique moon Titan, has a thick atmosphere and one of the most developed "hydro"systems outside of earth. Except instead of water, it's liquid methane that forms Titan's lakes, oceans and rivers.
As an aspiring Hydrogeologist I can't wait till we fling more satellites there to find out more about the landscape.
Having sufficient gravity is necessary for muscle and bone health. Astronauts returning from a few weeks in space are unable to stand up in the earth's gravity. They require some hours of rest. A person who grows up under low gravity will probably never be able to survive on earth. In fact we don't even know if it is possible for a fetus to develop properly in low gravity.
Neither does Venus, so even if it were feasible to fix the atmosphere there would be no protection against radiation.
Titan is an interesting candidate. So is Europa, which is believed to have liquid water ocean underneath a global icecap. The water will offer protection against radiation and give ample supply of oxygen and hydrogen.
That being said, if it is possible to build habitats under the ice on Europa why not just build undersea habitats on earth instead. It will be less expensive and the gravity on earth is correct.
You know temperature is a pretty big factor for tolerable living conditions.
It's rare to find liquid water beyond the Astrioid belt and it's neigh improbable to have tolerable living conditions next to jovian planets, maybe life could thrive in the middle of Europa but not human life.
About Venus, would it be good to nudge a large astroid full of water into it as a reasonable measure? The astroid would hopfully knock out a majority of the CO2 and let's hope that will counteract with the water vapor being the largest greenhouse gas. I don't see that as scifi as much as nuking ice caps on mars. What are the solutions to terriforming Venus?
huehuehuehue
Anyway, that's not the only problem. Methane and much of the other fun stuff in Titan's atmosphere is flammable and explosive. One spark and there's the opportunity for some severe grief.
It's possible that the geodynamo on Venus is simply "stalled" due to low thermal gradient within the planet. It'd probably be more sensible to work out what to do about the fact that the rain on Venus is actual acid. Slow death from irradiation is not a pressing problem when the environment is about to piss deadly caustic chemicals over your spacesuit.
In Soviet Russia, we don't worry about acid rain. I kid, I do think dowsing it with water will lower the PH
I think you need oxygen molecules for it to react to it so as long as you keep them seperate the sparks won't ignite inside your habitable capsule which defeats the purpose of living on other planets
I mean moon in this case.
I rechecked and amend my statement, temperatures on Titan are actually much more "temperate" than I thought, avetaging - 128C. Still cold, but definitely survivable. Besides Titan is inside Saturn's geomagnetic ring, protecting it from ultraviolet rings. It's atmospheric pressure is about 5 times Earths at sea level, which is bearable without pressure suits and also allows for habitats to be pressurised very closely to the outside atmosphere, greatly simplifying construction.
The 3 big problems of Titan are cold, a toxic atmosphere and low gravity. Out of these only low gravity will be a serious obstacle to colonisation imho.
You'd need oxygen for that, of which Titan has not a lot. Unless you plan to bring along much more oxygen than is needed to survive inside habitats, it shouldn't be a problem.
I was recently reading some articles which give an interesting lead for life on Europa. We've managed to more or less reconstruct the physics of the KT impact (the meteor that killed the dinosaurs) and it seems that as a result of the impact, quite a lot of debris has managed to reach escape velocity and enter an irregular orbit around the sun. Now the catch is that according to current probability calculations at least some of those rocks harbored single celled organisms. And many of these eventually crashed into various Solar bodies, including the moons of gas giants. Its a long shot, but if life exists on Europa, could it be our distant cousins?
This is now a Soviet Military Power thread
and so on and so on
and so on
LONG HARD METAL TUBES FULL OF COMMUNIST SEAMEN UNDER THE WAVES OF EUROPA
*sniff*
Good point, well made; that oversight was retarded of me. The gravity would make it worth living there; just look at the effort ISS astronauts have to make in order to stay healthy and the microgravity still causes permanent eye damage.
You're still going to need a full suit outside that habitat, though.
My Gott! Zhis is preshishely what is most needed today, I claim!
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Not gonna happen.
This will never happen under the inefficiency of capitalism, and after capitalism we'd be wise enough not to spread the disease of humanity to other worlds