Posted on 09/19/2008 9:11:12 AM PDT by awildanimal
“So I’ve been doing some heavy thinking.”
I think you misspelled “drinking.”
I’ll have you know, Sir, that I have a drinking problem.
I have only one beer left.
That won’t work. Pat sneaked onto a shuttle to Mars, organized the other Grecophiles, and changed the name to Ares. Now you have to speak Greek, and the menu in the canteen is very short on variety ... all peanut butter sandwiches, cereal, and cookies.
I like, “More champagne, please!”
I'm only worried about them if they have diseases ...
That's actually good news.
I'm relieved to learn that legumes are flourishing in Martian Soil.
I understand they water them. Pat’s emails are cryptic, and heavy on complaints that everyone won’t do what he tells them. He’d like to replace the colonists with robot labor.
The robots I designed need human operators.
I've learned my lesson about uppity robots.
It wouldn't hurt Pat to learn it for himself ...
He may be too young to learn what I learned anyway.
Urk.
Ohno....Greek was not my strong suit...:o[
What diseases can Venusians have that would prevent you from writing another book....?
Why, Venus diseases, my dear. (You really should pay more attention to my smirk.)
*choke*
OK. I’ll do that.
(FYI, I thought that smirk was a satisfied glow. I’ll have to revamp my agenda.)
Night everybody!
Nothing that a little dose of sulfuric acid vapor can’t cure...
We won't go that low.
The bright clouds of Venus are formed where the sulfuric acid condenses out. Just above that layer is where we want to ride.
We get plenty of sunshine, (near twice as much as at Earth orbit), and even the clouds below reflect enough light to make solar cells function on our bottom side!
We will have to make our exterior corrosion resistant, of course. Atmosphere is atmosphere. It mixes.
In fact, all we'll really need is a good fabric protective suit and a breathing mask with air supply, and we could stroll around exposed to the raw atmosphere of Venus. Just remember to keep breathing and don't fall off.
Skyhook it. Run a nano-tube cable out to geosynchronus orbit and hang a decent size asteroid off it. Spider-bot "spinneret" assemblies are essentially a combo of ink jet printers heads and large scale Scanning-tunneling-microscope (STM) arrays. They can deconstruct materials at a near atomic level and reconstruct them the same way.
Hang a super-tough carbon cable down-gravity from orbit and hang a counter-weight up-gravity in orbit.
Let physics do the heavy work...
Also, Venus probably smells like a bad day after a Texas chili and tequila contest.
We'd be better off trying to smack the planet with a good sized comet. Blow off some of the sulfur atmo and give it a massive dose of good old di-hydrogen monoxide. Of course, we'd need to wait a couple years for things to cool off a bit too... Multi-Megaton kinetic impact events tend to shake things up a bit.
Let's not be hasty.
Things may not be as bad as they seem. Here's a little further update information:
Heavy Thinking (3)
We’ll need a tether. A nice, solid anchor point in space to connect to as we lower our Habitat into the Venusian atmosphere.
We’ll use Plymouth.
Yeah, I know. It will be like moving a small world around. What’s your point?
It’s all about Delta Vee and reaction mass. We’ll use our Nuclear Reactor/Rocket Thrusters, (our familiarly named “shuttles”) to push us and our captive asteroid into a minimum transfer orbit to Venus.
Then we’ll circularize our orbit into the wind-matching 100 hour orbit. As we had done before, we’ll separate the Flying Castle Habitat from Habitats A and B, which will remain connected and mutually rotating on the Thrust Ring, and we’ll begin lowering the Flying Castle toward Venus.
Here’s one of the problems. You may recall that all of the interior structure of the Flying Castle is designed to remain in a gravitational field, whether natural or artificially created.
For the first time since we left Lake Fate, the Flying Castle Habitat will have to be exposed to zero-gee.
For safety’s sake, the Flying Castle will descend into the atmosphere of Venus after it has been evacuated of people and pets.
The moat will be drained. The castle walls and structures will be reinforced to hold together. All unattached things will be stowed away in some fashion.
This includes the plesiosaurs. They will be confined to their grotto. For the sake of posterity and hilarity, we will have some cameras recording their antics and confusion in zero gee, but we expect that they will come through the ordeal without injury other than to their pride.
The fish too will have to be collected and put into storage containers. Zero gravity shouldn’t harm them, but we have to keep their water contained.
The return of gravity will come gradually as the Flying Castle Habitat nears and enters the Venusian atmosphere. Then we will be able to return the residents to it, using our newest form of transportation, a device which traverses the very long tether cable.
We can also use shuttles to move back and forth from the Flying Castle to the orbital Habitats above. They will be faster.
Telecommunications will be fast enough, although the astute observer will notice a slight delay due to the time of light travel along the tether. This is similar to the delays we have experienced any time a shuttle has been traveling away from base.
Once the Flying Castle is safely floating in the atmosphere of Venus, we can enjoy the differences that will bring about.
For one thing, we’ll be able to experience a stronger, real gravity pull again. Under these circumstances, one’s weight will be approximately ninety percent of Earth normal, if you can remember what that was.
If you have grown accustomed to Mars gravity, as simulated by our rotation rate, you will suddenly feel three times heavier. If this will be a problem for you, you might consider relocating to either Habitat A or B.
If you want even less than that, you can visit the Thrust Ring, which is more like the moon as far as the feel of gravity. Or you can go into the excavated portions of Plymouth. (As soon as we have a chamber big enough there, we’ll try flying with strap-on wings.)
Where were we?
Oh, yes. Inside the Flying Castle Habitat, floating because its total weight will be slightly less than the weight of the carbon dioxide displaced by its volume, (see Archimedes in his bathtub).
A one-hundred hour day is going to represent a change, as the winds of our altitude carry us around the planet. Most of us will get used to taking siestas during daylight, and working under artificial light when it is dark.
The plants probably won’t care or notice, although the birds will undoubtedly have some stresses in adapting.
We won’t be subject to seasons, unless we work to create them.
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