Space Housing, Part 4: How We Will Live on Venus
If everything is relatively clear with the way we live on the Moon and in space colonies - it remains only to refine the technologies, then the colonization of Mars and especially other planets is still covered with a veil of obscurity. But we have no any ideas on the terraforming of Venus and life on it in aerial cities. Let's discuss them.
Artistic representation of the soaring city on Venus
The first soft landing on Venus with the subsequent transfer of data to Earth took place in December 1970. The device "Venus-7" started from Baikonur on August 17, 1970 at 8 hours and 38 minutes in Moscow and a few months later sat down on Venus. And this was the first landing in the history of a workable spacecraft on another planet.
As the name implies, this was not the first device. Before him in 1961, Soviet scientists launched the Sputnik-7, which failed to emerge from Earth's orbit. A few days later, "Venus-1" went to the planet and passed at a distance of one hundred thousand kilometers from it. A week after, the station stopped responding. The station "Venus-2" in 1965 flew at a distance of twenty-four thousand kilometers from Venus, and the "Venus-3" reached its goal, but was unable to transmit data after landing. But she delivered to Venus a metal globe of the Earth with a pennant with the emblem of the Soviet Union.
')
The automatic research space station "Venera-7" was built with a large number of successful and not very launches. Previous devices helped scientists find out the conditions in which they will have to work. The new station had to withstand a pressure of six times greater than two vehicles before it. The hull of the descent vehicle was built of titanium to withstand pressure up to 180 atmospheres. To soften the landing, the device was equipped with a corrugated parachute of a conical shape consisting of four layers of glass nitron. A lead-zinc battery charged from solar batteries was used as an energy carrier.
This device transmitted data to Earth for fifty-three minutes, twenty of them after landing. Thanks to the device, we found out that the surface temperature is 475 ± 20 ° C, pressure - 90 ± 15 atmospheres. Before we received the first photos from Mars, Soviet experts received photos from Venus . They were made by the Venera-9 and Venus-10 vehicles. The device "Venus-13" made 14 color photographs of the planet.
In parallel with the USSR, the United States also did research on Venus. In 1962, Mariner-1 was launched to the Morning Star, but the launch vehicle deviated from the course and was undermined. In 1962, it was followed by "Mariner-2", the unit flew past Venus at a distance of 34,773 kilometers. “Mariner 5 ″ in 1967 flew even closer, at 3,990 kilometers from the surface of the planet. Unfortunately, no camera had cameras and cameras, and all the other Mariners flew to Mars.
Photo, "Venus-9" and "Venus-10"
Photo, "Venus-13"
One of the programs for the study of Venus is the mission of DAVINCI , which NASA plans for 2021. As part of the program, the descent vehicle will collect data on the planet’s atmosphere for 63 minutes, as well as verify the activity of volcanoes and the interaction of the atmosphere with the surface.
Apparatus DAVINCI
We often talk about the development of Mars, there are several programs of manned missions to the Red Planet. But Venus was forgotten for a long time. The mere fact that photos from the surface were made only by the devices of the USSR and only in the 1970s speaks volumes.
Perhaps this will change soon. In November 2016, NASA and Roscosmos discussed a joint flight to Venus. The planned project is called "Venus D". The prototype for the new satellite within the mission will be the Soviet space station Vega-2, its descent vehicle in 1985 sat on the surface of Venus.
What do we know about Venus today? Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and the average temperature there is 460 ° C, above the melting point of zinc and lead. Most organic materials are also unable to maintain shape at this temperature. On Mars, for comparison, the average temperature is 40 ° C below zero.
But it makes no sense to compare with Mars, because Venus is considered to be an earth-like planet. What is the similarity? First, the radius of Venus is 6051.8 km, which is 95% of the Earth’s radius. The mass is 4.87 · 1024 kg, that is, 81.5% of the earth's. The acceleration of gravity is 8.87 m / s², when on our planet it is equal to 9.8 m / s². Venus has an atmosphere, 90 times thicker than Earth. True, for a person extremely dangerous and poisonous. And the pressure - as at a depth of one kilometer in the earth’s ocean.
The atmosphere of Venus consists mainly of carbon dioxide. At an altitude of 50 to 70 kilometers from the surface, we are waiting for another unpleasant surprise - clouds consisting of sulfuric acid. Because of the clouds, to look through which from the outside is not possible, and because of the winds and eddies, in which they are wrapped, Venus was called the “Planet of Storms” in the 1961 Pavel Klushantsev film of the same name. It is called the "morning star" because the clouds reflect the sun's rays, making Venus bright for an observer from Earth.
Double hurricane at the pole of Venus, 2006 photo
The distance from Earth to this planet varies from 38 to 261 million kilometers. Venus may be closer to the Earth than Mars to our planet, the distance to which ranges from 55.76 million kilometers. That is, fly closer to her. So why do we want to colonize Mars, and few plan to get there and establish a settlement on Venus?
Design Engineer Sergey Krasnoselsky, the author of the book "Spare Planet" , is sure that space exploration must happen. To colonize Venus, you need to at least fly to it. Spacecraft to Venus had already launched, they were planted on the surface of the planet. Of course, there is still a lot of questions to be solved on the subject of cosmic radiation - one of the main threats of manned flights to other planets. Solar flares guarantee an increased radiation dose to astronauts, but they can, for example, be waited in special rooms. Or - create a magnetic field and turn it on during strong solar flares. Questions of flight, we have already discussed in the article about the colonization of Mars .
As is already clear, the surface of Venus is of little use for human life at the moment. But do we need the surface, can we do without solid ground under our feet? Instead, we could use aerostats. Due to the composition of the atmosphere, a balloon or airship filled with air will fly like a helium filled Earth. Imagine beautiful airships floating at an altitude of 50 kilometers from the surface of a beautiful planet.
Interestingly, people can not live on platforms outside the aerostat, but inside it, breathe air and at the same time engage in gardening, which will keep the device at the right height. About this in September 1971, wrote Sergey Zhitomirsky in the article "Floating houses on the morning star" for the magazine "Technology Youth."
The cover of the magazine "Technology Youth", September 1971
NASA experts in 2014 offered to master Venus before Mars. They presented the HAVOC project. As part of the mission, experts suggest sending robots to Venus, then a manned mission is planned with 30 days in orbit around the planet, and then another stage with a journey to the upper atmosphere. A robotized airship of 31 meters in length will be sent into orbit, and then a 130-meter-long ship with astronauts aboard. On the upper part of the proposed devices are solar cells.
From a psychological point of view, aircraft will have an important advantage: they will be able to drift and not fall into a long Venusian night. The day here is 116 Earth days, and the planet rotates in the opposite direction of rotation of most planets.
We are talking about an altitude of 50 kilometers, because the temperature here is about 75 ° C, and the pressure is one earth's atmosphere. The conditions are almost earthly, except for the composition of the atmosphere. But with the substances of the atmosphere you can work by processing into the necessary compounds. Due to the proximity to the Sun, there will not be a shortage of energy for work.
Carbon dioxide in theory can be divided into oxygen and carbon, sulfuric acid - sulfur, water and oxygen. But it is better, of course, to take the maximum program and drastically change the composition of the planet’s atmosphere.
Venus already has an atmosphere, albeit unfit for life. Billions of years ago on Earth, the atmosphere was also unsuitable for us, it was changed by microorganisms. Today, there is no need to wait so much. Simply select the desired microorganisms and throw them on the planet. It is very difficult and very expensive, but it is possible.
In 1961, Carl Sagan proposed to use chlorella for this purpose. At that time, these single-celled algae offered to be used both for food and for obtaining oxygen on board a spacecraft . According to Sagan, Chlorella, having no enemies, will quickly multiply and convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. He later abandoned this idea when it became clear that there was a negligible amount of water in the atmosphere of Venus. Today you need to choose other microorganisms. Changing the composition of the atmosphere in favor of increasing oxygen will help reduce the temperature.
To make Sagan’s idea more realistic, and indeed to create acceptable living conditions, water must be delivered to Venus. To take it from the Earth in cylinders would be too expensive. It is much better to find a suitable ice asteroid with a diameter of 600 kilometers and throw it on the planet. NASA has been working on the idea of capturing and delivering asteroids to the lunar orbit for several years, but there we are talking about stones up to 10 meters in diameter . In any case, the collapse of one huge asteroid on the planet will lead to disastrous results, so it is better to shower a lot of small ones. But as soon as the pressure drops and a sufficient amount of water appears, it will be possible to launch microorganisms and wait for Venus to turn into the Earth. This process will be similar to the one that happened billions of years ago on our planet. But time in the case of the Earth needed much more, since those microorganisms that formed our atmosphere evolved at this time.
But even then the problem will remain - radiation. On Earth, a magnetic field protects us from cosmic radiation. Venus has no global magnetic field. It can be created artificially. There are two options for solving this problem. The first is to spin the planet to the desired rotational speed. In theory, thanks to a nucleus, presumably metallic, this will create the desired magnetic field. The second is to lay an electrical wire along the equator. It sounds much more realistic, considering that even the wire at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean once seemed like a fantasy.
What would Venus look like after terraforming
Why do we need Venus? In the name of science, of course! One of the answers is almost the same as in the case of Mars. Humanity can simply sit on its hands, continuing to launch astronauts into Earth's orbit, or even master the Solar System, as long as there is no cryphos technology, capable of supporting the life of the crew for many years, decades and even hundreds of years. Venus is the closest planet to us.
The next answer is that Venus is like Earth. If we create conditions suitable for human life on it, we will have where to go if a huge asteroid goes to our home planet, threatening to erase life from Earth.
Another reason follows from the previous one: some people can be moved to the Venus from Earth to avoid overcrowding. This planet can be our second home.
Sergei Krasnoselsky said in an interview for Roscosmos: “Humanity must move forward. Checked: all civilizations that fell into stagnation, they died, they were not left. ”
Artistic representation of the soaring city on Venus
Venus Studies
The first soft landing on Venus with the subsequent transfer of data to Earth took place in December 1970. The device "Venus-7" started from Baikonur on August 17, 1970 at 8 hours and 38 minutes in Moscow and a few months later sat down on Venus. And this was the first landing in the history of a workable spacecraft on another planet.
As the name implies, this was not the first device. Before him in 1961, Soviet scientists launched the Sputnik-7, which failed to emerge from Earth's orbit. A few days later, "Venus-1" went to the planet and passed at a distance of one hundred thousand kilometers from it. A week after, the station stopped responding. The station "Venus-2" in 1965 flew at a distance of twenty-four thousand kilometers from Venus, and the "Venus-3" reached its goal, but was unable to transmit data after landing. But she delivered to Venus a metal globe of the Earth with a pennant with the emblem of the Soviet Union.
')
The automatic research space station "Venera-7" was built with a large number of successful and not very launches. Previous devices helped scientists find out the conditions in which they will have to work. The new station had to withstand a pressure of six times greater than two vehicles before it. The hull of the descent vehicle was built of titanium to withstand pressure up to 180 atmospheres. To soften the landing, the device was equipped with a corrugated parachute of a conical shape consisting of four layers of glass nitron. A lead-zinc battery charged from solar batteries was used as an energy carrier.
This device transmitted data to Earth for fifty-three minutes, twenty of them after landing. Thanks to the device, we found out that the surface temperature is 475 ± 20 ° C, pressure - 90 ± 15 atmospheres. Before we received the first photos from Mars, Soviet experts received photos from Venus . They were made by the Venera-9 and Venus-10 vehicles. The device "Venus-13" made 14 color photographs of the planet.
In parallel with the USSR, the United States also did research on Venus. In 1962, Mariner-1 was launched to the Morning Star, but the launch vehicle deviated from the course and was undermined. In 1962, it was followed by "Mariner-2", the unit flew past Venus at a distance of 34,773 kilometers. “Mariner 5 ″ in 1967 flew even closer, at 3,990 kilometers from the surface of the planet. Unfortunately, no camera had cameras and cameras, and all the other Mariners flew to Mars.
Photo, "Venus-9" and "Venus-10"
Photo, "Venus-13"
One of the programs for the study of Venus is the mission of DAVINCI , which NASA plans for 2021. As part of the program, the descent vehicle will collect data on the planet’s atmosphere for 63 minutes, as well as verify the activity of volcanoes and the interaction of the atmosphere with the surface.
Apparatus DAVINCI
We often talk about the development of Mars, there are several programs of manned missions to the Red Planet. But Venus was forgotten for a long time. The mere fact that photos from the surface were made only by the devices of the USSR and only in the 1970s speaks volumes.
Perhaps this will change soon. In November 2016, NASA and Roscosmos discussed a joint flight to Venus. The planned project is called "Venus D". The prototype for the new satellite within the mission will be the Soviet space station Vega-2, its descent vehicle in 1985 sat on the surface of Venus.
Colonization of Venus
What do we know about Venus today? Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and the average temperature there is 460 ° C, above the melting point of zinc and lead. Most organic materials are also unable to maintain shape at this temperature. On Mars, for comparison, the average temperature is 40 ° C below zero.
But it makes no sense to compare with Mars, because Venus is considered to be an earth-like planet. What is the similarity? First, the radius of Venus is 6051.8 km, which is 95% of the Earth’s radius. The mass is 4.87 · 1024 kg, that is, 81.5% of the earth's. The acceleration of gravity is 8.87 m / s², when on our planet it is equal to 9.8 m / s². Venus has an atmosphere, 90 times thicker than Earth. True, for a person extremely dangerous and poisonous. And the pressure - as at a depth of one kilometer in the earth’s ocean.
The atmosphere of Venus consists mainly of carbon dioxide. At an altitude of 50 to 70 kilometers from the surface, we are waiting for another unpleasant surprise - clouds consisting of sulfuric acid. Because of the clouds, to look through which from the outside is not possible, and because of the winds and eddies, in which they are wrapped, Venus was called the “Planet of Storms” in the 1961 Pavel Klushantsev film of the same name. It is called the "morning star" because the clouds reflect the sun's rays, making Venus bright for an observer from Earth.
Double hurricane at the pole of Venus, 2006 photo
The distance from Earth to this planet varies from 38 to 261 million kilometers. Venus may be closer to the Earth than Mars to our planet, the distance to which ranges from 55.76 million kilometers. That is, fly closer to her. So why do we want to colonize Mars, and few plan to get there and establish a settlement on Venus?
Design Engineer Sergey Krasnoselsky, the author of the book "Spare Planet" , is sure that space exploration must happen. To colonize Venus, you need to at least fly to it. Spacecraft to Venus had already launched, they were planted on the surface of the planet. Of course, there is still a lot of questions to be solved on the subject of cosmic radiation - one of the main threats of manned flights to other planets. Solar flares guarantee an increased radiation dose to astronauts, but they can, for example, be waited in special rooms. Or - create a magnetic field and turn it on during strong solar flares. Questions of flight, we have already discussed in the article about the colonization of Mars .
As is already clear, the surface of Venus is of little use for human life at the moment. But do we need the surface, can we do without solid ground under our feet? Instead, we could use aerostats. Due to the composition of the atmosphere, a balloon or airship filled with air will fly like a helium filled Earth. Imagine beautiful airships floating at an altitude of 50 kilometers from the surface of a beautiful planet.
Interestingly, people can not live on platforms outside the aerostat, but inside it, breathe air and at the same time engage in gardening, which will keep the device at the right height. About this in September 1971, wrote Sergey Zhitomirsky in the article "Floating houses on the morning star" for the magazine "Technology Youth."
The cover of the magazine "Technology Youth", September 1971
NASA experts in 2014 offered to master Venus before Mars. They presented the HAVOC project. As part of the mission, experts suggest sending robots to Venus, then a manned mission is planned with 30 days in orbit around the planet, and then another stage with a journey to the upper atmosphere. A robotized airship of 31 meters in length will be sent into orbit, and then a 130-meter-long ship with astronauts aboard. On the upper part of the proposed devices are solar cells.
From a psychological point of view, aircraft will have an important advantage: they will be able to drift and not fall into a long Venusian night. The day here is 116 Earth days, and the planet rotates in the opposite direction of rotation of most planets.
We are talking about an altitude of 50 kilometers, because the temperature here is about 75 ° C, and the pressure is one earth's atmosphere. The conditions are almost earthly, except for the composition of the atmosphere. But with the substances of the atmosphere you can work by processing into the necessary compounds. Due to the proximity to the Sun, there will not be a shortage of energy for work.
Terraforming
Carbon dioxide in theory can be divided into oxygen and carbon, sulfuric acid - sulfur, water and oxygen. But it is better, of course, to take the maximum program and drastically change the composition of the planet’s atmosphere.
Venus already has an atmosphere, albeit unfit for life. Billions of years ago on Earth, the atmosphere was also unsuitable for us, it was changed by microorganisms. Today, there is no need to wait so much. Simply select the desired microorganisms and throw them on the planet. It is very difficult and very expensive, but it is possible.
In 1961, Carl Sagan proposed to use chlorella for this purpose. At that time, these single-celled algae offered to be used both for food and for obtaining oxygen on board a spacecraft . According to Sagan, Chlorella, having no enemies, will quickly multiply and convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. He later abandoned this idea when it became clear that there was a negligible amount of water in the atmosphere of Venus. Today you need to choose other microorganisms. Changing the composition of the atmosphere in favor of increasing oxygen will help reduce the temperature.
To make Sagan’s idea more realistic, and indeed to create acceptable living conditions, water must be delivered to Venus. To take it from the Earth in cylinders would be too expensive. It is much better to find a suitable ice asteroid with a diameter of 600 kilometers and throw it on the planet. NASA has been working on the idea of capturing and delivering asteroids to the lunar orbit for several years, but there we are talking about stones up to 10 meters in diameter . In any case, the collapse of one huge asteroid on the planet will lead to disastrous results, so it is better to shower a lot of small ones. But as soon as the pressure drops and a sufficient amount of water appears, it will be possible to launch microorganisms and wait for Venus to turn into the Earth. This process will be similar to the one that happened billions of years ago on our planet. But time in the case of the Earth needed much more, since those microorganisms that formed our atmosphere evolved at this time.
But even then the problem will remain - radiation. On Earth, a magnetic field protects us from cosmic radiation. Venus has no global magnetic field. It can be created artificially. There are two options for solving this problem. The first is to spin the planet to the desired rotational speed. In theory, thanks to a nucleus, presumably metallic, this will create the desired magnetic field. The second is to lay an electrical wire along the equator. It sounds much more realistic, considering that even the wire at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean once seemed like a fantasy.
What would Venus look like after terraforming
What's the point?
Why do we need Venus? In the name of science, of course! One of the answers is almost the same as in the case of Mars. Humanity can simply sit on its hands, continuing to launch astronauts into Earth's orbit, or even master the Solar System, as long as there is no cryphos technology, capable of supporting the life of the crew for many years, decades and even hundreds of years. Venus is the closest planet to us.
The next answer is that Venus is like Earth. If we create conditions suitable for human life on it, we will have where to go if a huge asteroid goes to our home planet, threatening to erase life from Earth.
Another reason follows from the previous one: some people can be moved to the Venus from Earth to avoid overcrowding. This planet can be our second home.
Sergei Krasnoselsky said in an interview for Roscosmos: “Humanity must move forward. Checked: all civilizations that fell into stagnation, they died, they were not left. ”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/372865/
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