[Space] 'Space Opera' Setting

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by nick012000

Hmm? Wikipedia disagrees. It has about 60% of the lifting power of Helium there; blimp-like structures ought to be entirely possible. Heck, with advanced enough genetic engineering, you might be able to create plants capable of growing a carbon nanotube sheathe and giant gas bubbles out of the carbon dioxide in the air. With Collossal Carbon Tubes, you might be able to construct a space elevator, since they'll rotate around the planet much more quickly than the surface of the planet does (about 4 Earth days).

You do mean the upper cloud layers of Venus? Even 60% of helium (which I _strongly_ doubt) isn't very impressive as a lifting gas. The Hindenburg would have taken a big hit to payload if it had used helium instead of hydrogen and 60% of helium would been far worse..

What do your floating plants use as an energy source? The opacity/reflectivity of the Venusian atmosphere is very high.

It's also a peculiar question why anything in an atmosphere that's 95% C02 would create gas bubbles of the same thing. There'd be no lift. You might be able to float on the wind like dandelion fluff but I'm not sure Venus is very windy. There are strong reasons (like uniform surface temperature) why it shouldn't be.

As to the self-grown Beanstalks/ Space Elevators rotating more quickly than the Venusian surface is not impressive. That rotates very slowly indeed and in the wrong direction too.

I don't believe you could build upwards from any cloud base either. You'd have to build downwards from orbit and what are you doing that for? In what way is the upper Venusian atmosphere more attractive than orbit? You can build big floating cities in orbit too.

Incidentally, Venus' substantial lack of a magnetic field makes its' orbit less attractive than Earth's. You'd need much thicker hulls to protect from cosmic rays than you would in Earth orbit.

I meant it when I said "garbage dump".