I’m partial to the idea of converting Mercury into a star lifter / thruster / planetary shade. Blocking sunlight to Venus would cause the atmosphere to cool, then freeze and fall as snow. Then you can disassemble Venus too for more raw material. That’s a massive store of carbon, oxygen, and sulfur. Solar powered mass drivers operating out of a planetary vacuum cut costs of launching material into space.
People often object to the idea because we can’t afford it, it’s too difficult, or out of concern for preserving those planets. Yeah, we won’t be doing all that. It will be our descendants in the far future. A task for new civilizations, over eons. Discovering life on Mercury and Venus is a long shot. But if it is there, it’s doomed without human intervention. Convert those two planets to Dyson swarm, and they’ll have matter for countless orbital habitats, not just for whoever humans evolve into, but for nature preserves too.
Don’t disassemble Venus. That planet is far too easy to terraform. Disassemble Mars, asteroids, and the various otherwise useless moons, comets, asteroids, and proto-planets in the heliosphere
Well, I understand the argument for terraforming, and I’d bet good money we will terraform it long before disassembly, but I’m more of an O’Neil Cylinder / Dyson Swarm kind of guy. I prefer the idea of overwhelming surface area via orbital habitats rather than colonizing gravity wells. I also don’t trust Venus not to catastrophically resurface itself and refill the atmosphere with CO2 and sulphuric acid in a mass volcanic event.
Long term, but far too soon the Sun will expand into a red giant and devour Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth as well. If it’s possible to employ a Dyson Swarm to lift material from a star to reduce its mass, then it may be feasible to prevent or mitigate the red giant phase to preserve Earth and extend its habitability, perhaps indefinitely. If preserving the birthplace of known life seems more important than building a copy in a more precarious orbit, then we ought to sacrifice that copy to expand the Dyson Swarm and mine the Sun faster. Mercury first though. We’ve got time. Mars can probably go too.
Oh yes, and if the notion of slowly altering Earth’s orbit by tossing asteroids past us ever needs to happen, then surely rapid firing 2 or 3 planets worth of material across our bow ought to get the job done much faster.
Considering the eons involved with stripping both inward planets down to the last bucketful though, I’m certainly in favor of a few millennia to fully explore and research them both beforehand.
I’m partial to the idea of converting Mercury into a star lifter / thruster / planetary shade. Blocking sunlight to Venus would cause the atmosphere to cool, then freeze and fall as snow. Then you can disassemble Venus too for more raw material. That’s a massive store of carbon, oxygen, and sulfur. Solar powered mass drivers operating out of a planetary vacuum cut costs of launching material into space.
People often object to the idea because we can’t afford it, it’s too difficult, or out of concern for preserving those planets. Yeah, we won’t be doing all that. It will be our descendants in the far future. A task for new civilizations, over eons. Discovering life on Mercury and Venus is a long shot. But if it is there, it’s doomed without human intervention. Convert those two planets to Dyson swarm, and they’ll have matter for countless orbital habitats, not just for whoever humans evolve into, but for nature preserves too.
I’ve watched a bunch of Isaac Arthur.
Don’t disassemble Venus. That planet is far too easy to terraform. Disassemble Mars, asteroids, and the various otherwise useless moons, comets, asteroids, and proto-planets in the heliosphere
Take a look at my other comment in this thread.
https://lemmy.world/comment/5171378
Dont worry dude, I won’t. I promise. 😆
Well, I understand the argument for terraforming, and I’d bet good money we will terraform it long before disassembly, but I’m more of an O’Neil Cylinder / Dyson Swarm kind of guy. I prefer the idea of overwhelming surface area via orbital habitats rather than colonizing gravity wells. I also don’t trust Venus not to catastrophically resurface itself and refill the atmosphere with CO2 and sulphuric acid in a mass volcanic event.
Long term, but far too soon the Sun will expand into a red giant and devour Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth as well. If it’s possible to employ a Dyson Swarm to lift material from a star to reduce its mass, then it may be feasible to prevent or mitigate the red giant phase to preserve Earth and extend its habitability, perhaps indefinitely. If preserving the birthplace of known life seems more important than building a copy in a more precarious orbit, then we ought to sacrifice that copy to expand the Dyson Swarm and mine the Sun faster. Mercury first though. We’ve got time. Mars can probably go too.
Oh yes, and if the notion of slowly altering Earth’s orbit by tossing asteroids past us ever needs to happen, then surely rapid firing 2 or 3 planets worth of material across our bow ought to get the job done much faster.
Considering the eons involved with stripping both inward planets down to the last bucketful though, I’m certainly in favor of a few millennia to fully explore and research them both beforehand.
A properly configured solar thruster doubles as a starlifting platform. Kurzgesagt has a video on is as well as PBS Spacetime