Terraforming Venus & More

[Thundercraft (OP)]

I had mentioned in the Semi-Official 6.x Suggestion Thread that we could use more options for terraforming (at higher tech levels). But I just came across some real-world proposals for terraforming Venus and I wanted to discuss the potential for some of this as game suggestions.

Granted, while the gravity is about right, Venus is otherwise incredibly inhospitable. The temperature is insane and so is the atmospheric pressure. Even considering that... According to the AuroraWiki article on Terraforming, it would take a single terraformer about 96,000 years to reduce the pressure to a tolerable 4 atm! That just sounds insane to me.

I would point out this Wikipedia article on Terraforming of Venus. And I want to emphasize that these are serious proposals published by scientists and other professionals. (See the References.) And they would require much, much less than tens of thousands of years to implement.

I want to discuss a few of them:

• Floating Cities - At a certain high altitude the temperature and atmospheric pressure is actually habitable to humans. The only problem is the atmosphere is caustic and unbreathable. But you could have enclosed dome cities that float by the simple virtue of having a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, which is lighter than CO2.
  
  It was estimated that, eventually, Venusian floating cities may become economically viable. They can also remove and process the CO2 in the atmosphere, converting it into needed oxygen, carbon, and - with an import of hydrogen - water.
  
  CO2 removal could be accomplished by various methods. Here are some relevant articles:
  
  • Carbon capture & storage
  • Carbon dioxide scrubber
  • Carbon dioxide removal
  
  Aside from algae or bacteria specifically bred or engineered for CO2 removal or H2 gas generation (such methods exist), let's not forget the simple virtue of being large greenhouses, naturally converting CO2 to oxygen and plant matter/soil.
  
  The carbon that is removed could also be made into carbon nanotubes or graphene sheets, very suitable for construction. Thus, such cities could use the CO2 as raw material to expand.
  
  With huge numbers of such cities, they would reflect/absorb a significant part of the sun's rays while removing a lot of CO2.
  
• Introduction of hydrogen - This involves bombarding Venus with hydrogen. It can react with the CO2 to produce carbon and water by the Bosch reaction. Venus is so hot that the reaction can work, with the catch that it needs an aerosol of iron as a catalyst to speed it up. The hydrogen can be mined from one of the gas giants or, as ice, from their moons. It also requires large volumes of iron (and/or nickel). But many asteroids are mostly iron and nickel, anyway.
  
  Estimates predict this could reduce it to 3 bars of atmosphere and produce so much water that it would cover about 80% of the surface!
  
• Capture in carbonates - The idea is to use magnesium and/or calcium to serve as a sink for both carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. A lot of this could come from mineral deposits on the surface. (By one estimate that alone could reduce Venus to 43 bar.) But more could be imported.

While not related to Venus, I also want to mention methane. This gas is not uncommon on planets with an atmosphere. Most significantly, methane has 25 times the global warming effect as an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide! So the presence of methane can have a huge impact on temperature.

With growing concerns over global warming, there has been interest in Sequestering Methane (article).

There are several methods possible. In nature, atmospheric methane reacts with the hydroxyl radical (OH) in the troposphere or stratosphere, which gradually breaks it down. There's also a "methanotrophic bacteria" in the soil that oxidizes methane into CO2 and water, using it for energy. Some of it can get stored as methane hydrate, such as in ice, too.

So... What's my point?

Why couldn't there be more methods to terraforming beyond just building planetary Terraformers or Terraforming ships with Terraforming modules? That is, how about some new approaches that, with enough research and enough of the right resources, could speed up the process for certain planets with certain types of atmosphere?

The only minerals we mine are Trans-Newtonian. (The rest are considered "trivial"...?) But among Trade Goods we have Chemicals, Precious Metals, and Plastics.

Suggestion 1: If we could mine Hydrogen (and/or Iron), perhaps we could use it in a new terraforming option to convert an excess of oxygen pressure (atm) or carbon dioxide pressure (atm) into water (as a liquid, solid, or vapor, depending on temp)?

And aside from using Hydrogen, there are many easier ways to reduce an excess of Oxygen as it readily oxidizes many materials (including iron, magnesium and calcium). Such a job should not require huge and expensive terraforming facilities to do this over a period of centuries.

Similarly, for planets with too much Methane, one could mine Oxygen and introduce that. A reaction with oxygen would produce carbon dioxide and water. Assuming that oxygen can be readily mined and imported, this should be much easier and faster than a "scrubber" or filtration.

Suggestion 2: Or maybe we could mine Magnesium or Calcium and use it to Sequester Carbon Dioxide or a few other gases, such as Sulpher Dioxide.

Suggestion 3: Instead of the above, maybe we could have a new terraforming option to do similar without the hassle of mining/buying and transporting new materials? Currently, we must remove a certain gas for the purpose of reducing atmospheric pressure. Likewise, currently, we can add a generic "greenhouse gas" to warm up a cold planet or add an "anti-greenhouse" gas to cool a hot planet.

With high enough research, how about new choices like "CO2 Sink", "Methane Sink", or "Nitrogen Sink" to represent newly researched methods to sequester certain gasses? (That is, methods that are faster that direct removal, such as filtering it out of the air and compressing it.)

Suggestion 4: For certain planets where the atmospheric pressure is too high and the colonization cost is astronomical (like Venus), perhaps we could have an option to build an equivalent to a Sky City? In game terms it might cost less than building on the surface, but perhaps it would not allow building certain types of facilities on the surface? Or, perhaps it would have a specific population limit and require a certain amount of Trans-Newtonian elements to build?

[doulos05]

Sky cities sound a lot like infrastructure to me. The rest of the ideas seem cool, but remember that a single terraformer is hardly a serious investment. It only represents a few hundred thousand workers. I use 20-30 terraformers when I terraform someplace. I'm sure others use roughly the same (I usually opt ground based solutions because infrastructure to sustain a population during the process is cheap and engines, armor, crew facilities, et al aren't, but I think I can see the appeal). That's still a long time (3200 years). But if you've decided to terraform Venus, you're probably putting a lot more energy into it and you're also probably willing to gene engineer a species of Venusians which shortens the time as well.

[Sematary]

There is also the fact that terraformering facilities work off your empire's terraforming rate so if you go up 3-4 levels you have the 96,000 years for your one facility down to under 48,000 and then you get 10 facilities and have it down to 4,800 years and so on. Generally when I want to start seriously terraforming things I put a few levels into terraforming rate and then build gigantic ships that have 10 or so terraforming modules and then put 3-10 in orbit. So that is equal to 30-100 facilities and generally they have a combined total of 0.25-0.5 atm a year change rate. Venus has roughly 50 atm so that would be 100-200 years with a normal fleet or just throw down enough infrastructure to hold a couple million people and put close to 1,000 facilities on Venus and get it done in about 10 years.

[Thundercraft (OP)]

...Generally when I want to start seriously terraforming things I put a few levels into terraforming rate and then build gigantic ships that have 10 or so terraforming modules and then put 3-10 in orbit. So that is equal to 30-100 facilities and generally they have a combined total of 0.25-0.5 atm a year change rate.

That's a huge, huge investment, isn't it? Instead of those gigantic terraforming ships, couldn't you have built gigantic capital ships that would help you defend your systems or lay waste to spoilers or NPRs?

To be fair, though, terraforming ships are not locked to a planet, unlike planet terraformers. So you can reuse them elsewhere.

Venus has roughly 50 atm so that would be 100-200 years with a normal fleet...

100-200 years still seems like a long time. And, at least in game terms, Venus is an unusually difficult planet to terraform. Whereas, what I've read suggests that such assumed difficulty may not be all that realistic.

Also, how many Mars-like planets or other easily terraformed worlds could your fleet of huge terraforming ships terraform in the 100-200 years it will take to finish Venus? I may have roleplaying reasons why I'd like to use Venus. But I'd imagine most players figure it's hardly worth the effort.

...or just throw down enough infrastructure to hold a couple million people and put close to 1,000 facilities on Venus and get it done in about 10 years.

To hold a couple million people on Venus, wouldn't that take a large amount of infrastructure? And how much time and resources does it take to build 1000 facilities? Considering the expense and difficulty, wouldn't it be much, much easier and faster to skip Venus and start colonizing other moons and nearby star systems, instead?

That said, I suppose there's something to be said for having another high population, habitable world right next to Earth and Mars, centralizing your production and making the heart of your empire rather easy to defend (instead of being more spread out).

[doulos05]

That's a huge, huge investment, isn't it? Instead of those gigantic terraforming ships, couldn't you have built gigantic capital ships that would help you defend your systems or lay waste to spoilers or NPRs?

To be fair, though, terraforming ships are not locked to a planet, unlike planet terraformers. So you can reuse them elsewhere.

Actually, that's not true. You can pick up terraformers and carry them anywhere. Your civilians will do this for you if you ask nicely (via contracts).

To hold a couple million people on Venus, wouldn't that take a large amount of infrastructure? And how much time and resources does it take to build 1000 facilities? Considering the expense and difficulty, wouldn't it be much, much easier and faster to skip Venus and start colonizing other moons and nearby star systems, instead?

That said, I suppose there's something to be said for having another high population, habitable world right next to Earth and Mars, centralizing your production and making the heart of your empire rather easy to defend (instead of being more spread out).

They're free. Your economy makes infrastructure for free. Your civilians transport it for free (in fact, you get to tax them for shipping it for you). Now, you do need to produce some initial infrastructure for your first colony, but using civilian contracts to move the initial 1,000 or so infrastructure doesn't cost you much and then your economy will do it by itself.

[sublight]

Just a quick note to say that using a basic infrastructure colony to run terraforming facilities on Venus doesn't work. The colony cost of a world increases the agricultural workforce requirement to the point that even a small colony with a negligible service industry will have zero free manufacturing workers to run facilities/factories when the colony cost approaches 15.

However, using orbital habitates or underground infrastructure should work, and you could easily re-imagine either as your floating cloud cities of Venus.

Edit: See Prince of Space's post further down.

[Garfunkel]

The entire terraforming process is highly abstracted. I wouldn't mind if Steve was inspired and revamped it with more detail. On the other hand, the way it is currently allows you to use handwave the process to fit the story you're telling or whatever you want. Personally I never use GH/Anti-GH gasses but the actual "real" stuff but that's me.

[Prince of Space]

However, using orbital habitates or underground infrastructure should work,

Has anybody actually tried using underground infrastructure on Venus? The release notes for 6.40 indicate that UI only works for bodies whose gravity is too low. I just SMed in some UI on Venus and the game treats it like regular infrastructure. The planet still require 2500 infrastructure (or underground infrastructure, apparently) per 1 million population.

[GreatTuna]

Hm.

As stated, the system is pretty abstract. Gases like carbon dioxide, methane and safe greenhouse are increasing temperature, anti-greenhouse reduces temperature, toxic gases like methane are... well, toxic, and very toxic gases, like fluorine, are very toxic. Also, greenhouse factor can't go beyond 3, limiting cold planets. And... that's it pretty much.

I'd rather see completely new system than crutches you propose. They add unnecessary complexity.


As for 'how to terraform Venus' topic, I usually leave one shipyard to build terraformers constantly until it's terraformed OR just skip the planet entirely, sometimes leaving automines. My 'colonize everything!' attitude has limits, and I don't see much value in spending resources on Venus when there's... 8? other colonizable planets (Mars, Luna, Mercury, 4 satellites of Jupiter and Titan).

[Thundercraft (OP)]

I'd rather see completely new system than crutches you propose. They add unnecessary complexity.

I could get behind revamping terraforming to a new system if it added some depth. But, any way you look at it, such a change would add to complexity.

Perhaps having to mine new elements and dealing with such may be asking too much. But how is my Suggestion 3 adding too much complexity? All this requires is having a few new Terraforming things to research at higher tech levels, which would unlock new terraforming commands like "CO2 Sink" and "Methane Sink", allowing you to remove specific gases noticably faster than normal (and without having to build a fleet of giant terraforming ships).

If that's too complex or unwanted, you can still skip such research options and pretend that they don't exist.

My 'colonize everything!' attitude has limits, and I don't see much value in spending resources on Venus when there's... 8? other colonizable planets (Mars, Luna, Mercury, 4 satellites of Jupiter and Titan).

That was my understanding: That Venus just isn't worth the effort. But, as I said, that's not realistic. Humanity would not completely give up on Venus because it's a bit more difficult than Mars. We'd at least try. The habitability potential is just to good to ignore.

You point out that Mars and several other places in the Solar System are "colonizable". However, there's a big difference between "colonizable" and "habitable". The former means it is suitable to build a colony on. The latter literally means "suitable for human dwelling." It's the difference between a mere outpost that relies heavily on imports and creating a new home to spread to - to recreate the surface of Earth - an environment ideal for humans which has almost limitless room for population growth and could easily become self-sufficient.

Barring a highly innovative means like building a Shell World, I don't see how small bodies like Luna or the moons of Jupiter or Saturn could be made habitable, no matter the time or effort.

Mars and Venus are the only realistic terraforming options in the Solar System. Aside from Earth, they're the only ones in the Goldilocks Zone that are also even remotely close to the right gravity.

In contrast to the game difficulty of terraforming Venus, I find it unrealistic that it is, apparently, far easier and cheaper to build massive colonies on hostile places like the satellites of Jupiter and Titan or Mercury (or Luna, for that matter). In real life, they'd be not only hard pressed to support their own food and life support requirements, the constant maintenance costs would be astronomical. (Not to mention dealing with insane temperatures, radiation, and low gravity.)

Since Aurora seems to pride itself in realism and depth of play, such hand-waving or abstraction bugs me a little. Missiles must always be king and we aren't even allowed to have a beam FC with more than 1.4 mkm range... because, "realism". However, when it comes to terraforming, we must keep things simple... for the sake of simplicity and game play? How does that logic follow?

Granted, Aurora does a wonderful job with a lot of planetary details like gravity, atmospheric composition, greenhouse effect, even albedo. But to keep terraforming itself rather simple and abstract seems, to me at least, like stopping just short of the goal posts.

[doulos05]

I think you're overestimating just how habitable Venus is. Saying "Venus is perfect except for the atmosphere." is like saying "This house is perfect except for the cracks in the foundation." I think it's perfectly conceivable that, in a universe where we have unlocked the secret of interstellar travel, we would choose to skip over Venus because it's easier to just leave Sol. Having said that, I'd certainly be interested in techs that expanded the  terraforming minigame. One specializing in each gas would be cool, but perhaps a bit much...

[GreatTuna]

Oh, great, now we are using realism argument. In a game where atmospheres are measured in pressure and ships fly in ether which stops them when they're out of fuel :v. Arbitrary speed limits included (though you can't ever get past speed of light).

If you want to terraform Venus that much, go and do it. If you think it's too much effort, go and do not terraform it. If you really, really, REALLY want habitable Venus, you have SM mode. It's not cheating when you are roleplaying.


Now, if technologies are too complex or unwanted - how about just not implementing them? They are very niche and not worth the effort.

Barring a highly innovative means like building a Shell World, I don't see how small bodies like Luna or the moons of Jupiter or Saturn could be made habitable, no matter the time or effort.

You add 0.1 atm of oxygen and 0.3 atm of nitrogen. That's how you make them habitable. (add carbon dioxide for warmth).

In contrast to the game difficulty of terraforming Venus, I find it unrealistic that it is, apparently, far easier and cheaper to build massive colonies on hostile places like the satellites of Jupiter and Titan or Mercury (or Luna, for that matter). In real life, they'd be not only hard pressed to support their own food and life support requirements, the constant maintenance costs would be astronomical. (Not to mention dealing with insane temperatures, radiation, and low gravity.)

The astronomical maintenance costs are reflected in colony cost. Ever tried building colony in 6.0 cc (even with terraforming)? I bet you didn't, with all that 'unrealistic' arguments, but you'll have to either ship a lot of infrastructure or make civilians ship a lot of infrastructure to make anything beyond small-size colony. Same with Venus, but it's hot instead of cold.

Since Aurora seems to pride itself in realism and depth of play, such hand-waving or abstraction bugs me a little. Missiles must always be king and we aren't even allowed to have a beam FC with more than 1.4 mkm range... because, "realism". However, when it comes to terraforming, we must keep things simple... for the sake of simplicity and game play? How does that logic follow?

Again, game where ships fly in TN-ether prides itself in realism?  How about terraformers getting their gases from nowhere, or all objects but comets having perfectly circular orbits?
I never played Aurora because it's "realistic". I played it because it's complex. And I do like complexity, but your kind of complexity is not needed.
You want to lift the 5 ls limit (like there's not enough reasons to use beams over missiles anyway), and you want to add third type of infrastruture (sky cities), two mineable minerals (hydrogen and iron) that are used only for one purpose, and some kind of sinks, modules to be used on Venus and then forgotten.
_{Note: I'm not against suggesting things like these, but you shouldn't act like they absolutely should be added. Also, realism is boring, we have enough of it IRL.}

[MarcAFK]

I've only scanned this topic, but this kind of in depth discussion about game mechanics is why I love aurora.  I had an idea for a modification of the terraforming system that would be a little more interesting but not add too much micromanagement however I've lost the details. 
Anyway, why even bother terraforming Venus? People should be able to live there without all that silly modification.
The current record for survival at extreme air pressure was set with a hydrogen oxygen mixture at simulated depth of 701 meters below sea level. That's 71 atmospheres, almost Venusian. The temperature would suck though.

[doulos05]

Not sure it's smart to take hydrogen and oxygen, pressurize it to 71 bars and then heat it to Venusian temperatures...

[MarcAFK]

It's only like 4% oxygen so it doesn't explode that much.