Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ...
by rbanffy on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @10:41AM
(#22535818)
That's an interesting article. I wonder how practical would it be to harvest hydrogen (protons, really) from solar wind using magnetic lensing. Tha same tech could be useful for Mars.
Depending on the shape of the parasol, the same support structures could be used for the lenses, focusing a stream of hydrogen nuclei on a small area of the planet. This focused plasma stream could also compensate some of the forces on the parasol (it'd need to be closer to the Sun than the Sun/Venus L1 point and balanced by light pressure) allowing the parasol to be smaller.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ...
by entropicdrifter on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @10:28AM
(#22535705)
The thing is, if we were to develop the tech needed to cool Venus, it would be orders of magnitude cheaper to just use it here on earth to offset CO2/CO emissions and reverse the greenhouse effect.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ...
by rbanffy on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @10:42AM
(#22535823)
That does nothing in terms of increasing Earth's surface area. Either we cap the population or we expand to other habitats.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ...
by lokedhs on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:11PM
(#22537287)
There are vast expanses of desert in Sahara that no one lives in. That land is much easier to settle than another planet, yet we don't do that.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ...
by blaser-waffle on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:26PM
(#22536861)
Or we mature enough to stop expanding exponentially
Nah, you're just not thinking big enough:
https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TerraformingVenusQuickly....