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

AlexanderHowl · 11-14-2017, 04:53 PM

The big problem would be doing it slowly enough so that you do not vaporize Venus. Venus receives around 3.5e17 J every second from the sun, so the energy required to move it is more than 2e15 times as much, the amount received by Venus from the Sun over 60 million Earth years. Even a process with 99% efficiency would have to be done over 600,000 years to avoid the waste heat boiling off Venus (it is much easier, and cheaper, to leave Venus where it is and use its excess atmosphere as reaction mass for increasing its rotation).

11-14-2017, 04:53 PM	#7
AlexanderHowl Join Date: Feb 2016	Re: Implications of a terraformed Venus/Triton The big problem would be doing it slowly enough so that you do not vaporize Venus. Venus receives around 3.5e17 J every second from the sun, so the energy required to move it is more than 2e15 times as much, the amount received by Venus from the Sun over 60 million Earth years. Even a process with 99% efficiency would have to be done over 600,000 years to avoid the waste heat boiling off Venus (it is much easier, and cheaper, to leave Venus where it is and use its excess atmosphere as reaction mass for increasing its rotation).