Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Implications of a terraformed Venus/Triton

Anthony · 11-14-2017, 03:51 PM

The big implication is that you're operating at energy budgets sufficient to actually move planets around (Venus at its current position has a gravitational potential energy of -6e+33J and kinetic energy of 3e+33J. Moving it out to 1 AU will reduce both values by 28%, for a total of about 8e+32J.

This is... several times the gravitational binding energy of Venus, and about a quarter the total annual energy output of the sun. It's enough that almost anything else you might choose to do to the structure of Venus is a rounding error, so you might as well decide what you want it to look like and ignore what it looks like now.

11-14-2017, 03:51 PM	#6
Anthony Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Berkeley, CA	Re: Implications of a terraformed Venus/Triton The big implication is that you're operating at energy budgets sufficient to actually move planets around (Venus at its current position has a gravitational potential energy of -6e+33J and kinetic energy of 3e+33J. Moving it out to 1 AU will reduce both values by 28%, for a total of about 8e+32J. This is... several times the gravitational binding energy of Venus, and about a quarter the total annual energy output of the sun. It's enough that almost anything else you might choose to do to the structure of Venus is a rounding error, so you might as well decide what you want it to look like and ignore what it looks like now. __________________ My GURPS site and Blog.