Implications of a terraformed Venus/Triton

[Phase_Shifter]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There is no easy orbital position that is useful for capturing extra sunlight for a planet.

Not even a ring-shaped reflector just outside L2?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Phase_Shifter

Not even a ring-shaped reflector just outside L2?

If a planet with no night is acceptable, maybe.

[AlexanderHowl]

Titan and Triton are the two largest sources of nitrogen other than the Earth in the Sol System, so it is generally a good idea not to waste either of them (Callisto would probably make a better moon for Venus than either of them). If you want Venus to have an Earth-like atmosphere, you will need to steal around 5e15 metric tons of nitrogen from either Titan or Triton (Titan is closer, but it will most likely be tapped for orbital colony [and Martian] nitrogen production long before you get around to terraforming Venus).

[Flyndaran]

Comets will have nice amounts of ammonia, methane and water. All useful elements for Venus. If you an fix the carbon from the extant atmosphere, then fixing the carbon in methane shouldn't be an issue.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There is no easy orbital position that is useful for capturing extra sunlight for a planet.

Sure there is. L1. You need a soletta of larger diameter than the world you're lighting, with a world-sized hole in the middle. Those outer rings then deflect light toward the planet that otherwise would have just missed.

I remember seeing a very clear diagram once, but I can't seem to google it. All that keeps coming up is that Terraforming Mars boardgame.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If you want Venus to have an Earth-like atmosphere, you will need to steal around 5e15 metric tons of nitrogen from either Titan or Triton

Well, I guess 5e15 is better than 2e22, technically...

The answer, as always, is wormholes, I guess. Drop one end into the Sun and use the other as a rocket on Triton. The problem is that real-life wormholes would be spherical, so you'd need to engineer a nozzle that can take that much energy. Maybe dropping it into Jupiter would be better? :)

Frankly, since my progenitor society is TL12 and likely at least aspiring to Kardishev II status, are these energy levels really that unlikely for a mega-engineering project like this? I mean, Christ, that's 10e26 W!

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by acrosome

? :)

Frankly, since my progenitor society is TL12 and likely at least aspiring to Kardishev II status, are these energy levels really that unlikely for a mega-engineering project like this? I mean, Christ, that's 10e26 W!

Production of energy is not the issue. It's control of energy and even the ability to make that energy do pretty much anything you want that is required.

You could give our current society a wall socket that gave them access to the total output of a sun (hopefully somebody else's sun since we're using ours for other stuff) and it would change our economics but not directly change our physics or engineering.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Production of energy is not the issue. It's control of energy and even the ability to make that energy do pretty much anything you want that is required.

You could give our current society a wall socket that gave them access to the total output of a sun (hopefully somebody else's sun since we're using ours for other stuff) and it would change our economics but not directly change our physics or engineering.

Granted. But at TL12 I think we could assume arbitrarily precise control of that energy, don't you? I mean, hell, I just posited wormholes. We're not talking about our current society, here.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Granted. But at TL12 I think we could assume arbitrarily precise control of that energy, don't you? I mean, hell, I just posited wormholes. We're not talking about our current society, here.

It isn't even "precision". It's the ability to make that energy violate some inconvenient laws of physics. That's what I was meaning by "control".

For example, some hard science limited societies might have trouble just with the waste heat from 10e26 W.

[Flyndaran]

When dealing with energies that enormous, even the tiniest of imperfect inefficiencies could cook planets.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Earth receives 5.5e24 J of energy every year, so if 1% of the energy from a 1e26 W source turns to waste heat, it would produce over 5 million times the heat as the Earth gets from the sun. The atmosphere of the Earth would abalate away within a second, the oceans would boil away within a minute, the rest of the Earth would follow within an hour.