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[Starver]

Saxifrage vs Claybourne? (vs Hiroko?)

[Starver]

Well, she blended the Green and Red philosophies (save that obviously any blend away from Red was an anthema to Ann, even Ann's own footprints upset her!).  And it was her Zygote that immediately sprang to mind, with a young Nirgal running laps round the lake, when I read the article.

Not that I can be sure that anybody but thee and me understands what I've just been babbling about, here in a science fact thread... 

[Reelya]

We should drill down and dump a bunch of extremophiles down there, for science.

We can start with the cast of Jackass.

[WillowLuman]

We shouldn't put anything from Earth in there. It's possible that there could be Martian life-forms in there, or evidence thereof, so that'd be like the worst possible thing we could do for science.

[Karnewarrior]

Agreed. We need to make as certain as possible that Martian life is dead/nonexistent before we start dumping our own life there.

Besides, we need to save our extremophiles for Venus. I've always thought that we should send over a bunch of airborne photosynthetic bacteria and let them float over the Venusian clouds, eating away at the greenhouse below. Worst case scenario there is that we seed life to a second planet, ensuring that even if Humanity dies, life itself will last until at least the sun dies.

[Egan_BW]

We should drill down and dump a bunch of extremophiles down there, for science.

“Being unable to find Martians already existing, we decided to make our own.”

"If martians did not exist, it would be necessary to create them."

[GiglameshDespair]

Agreed. We need to make as certain as possible that Martian life is dead/nonexistent before we start dumping our own life there.

Besides, we need to save our extremophiles for Venus. I've always thought that we should send over a bunch of airborne photosynthetic bacteria and let them float over the Venusian clouds, eating away at the greenhouse below. Worst case scenario there is that we seed life to a second planet, ensuring that even if Humanity dies, life itself will last until at least the sun dies.

Bar the planet exploding I'm sure life would continue anyway even if the surface was sterilised: with deep-sea life. While much of it relies on marine snow, I do believe some tube worms and the like do not, so yeah. They'd last until the core got cold.

[Reelya]

Agreed. We need to make as certain as possible that Martian life is dead/nonexistent before we start dumping our own life there.

Besides, we need to save our extremophiles for Venus. I've always thought that we should send over a bunch of airborne photosynthetic bacteria and let them float over the Venusian clouds, eating away at the greenhouse below. Worst case scenario there is that we seed life to a second planet, ensuring that even if Humanity dies, life itself will last until at least the sun dies.

The problem is that the clouds of Venus don't contain many of the elements need to replicate the bacteria or algae, so you have to work out how that's going to work.

EDIT: One idea that I like is the proposal to pulverise the surface of Venus into rocks. If you do that to about 1km deep, then atmosphere would seep in and the CO2 reacts with the rocks oxides to form carbonates, with calcuations suggesting this would get the surface temepature down to 127^c and the total pressure down about half. The best thing about this however is that it doesn't need to shift a ton of matter from somewhere else to achieve it, you just need some way to dig up the ground.

[JoshuaFH]

Agreed. We need to make as certain as possible that Martian life is dead/nonexistent before we start dumping our own life there.

Besides, we need to save our extremophiles for Venus. I've always thought that we should send over a bunch of airborne photosynthetic bacteria and let them float over the Venusian clouds, eating away at the greenhouse below. Worst case scenario there is that we seed life to a second planet, ensuring that even if Humanity dies, life itself will last until at least the sun dies.

The problem is that the clouds of Venus don't contain many of the elements need to replicate the bacteria or algae, so you have to work out how that's going to work.

EDIT: One idea that I like is the proposal to pulverise the surface of Venus into rocks. If you do that to about 1km deep, then atmosphere would seep in and the CO2 reacts with the rocks oxides to form carbonates, with calcuations suggesting this would get the surface temepature down to 127^c and the total pressure down about half. The best thing about this however is that it doesn't need to shift a ton of matter from somewhere else to achieve it, you just need some way to dig up the ground.

I imagine it would require some extreme orbital bombardment of some kind, cause I don't think any machine can survive the acidic hellscape for very long to do all that heavy pulverization manually.

[Reelya]

Not a machine made from any materials we normally use, at least.

But it's stuff we could work out, and even though we "know" how to do the massive asteroid bombardment, the total investment in doing the science for machines that can survive Venus is probably far less than trying to e.g. extract large amounts of hydrogen from Jupiter for Venus, or sending the estimated 2000+ asteroids needed to shoot at Venus. For example, NASA now has a CPU that can survive Venus:

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/02/nasa-has-finally-built-a-computer-chip-to-survive-on-venus/

And it's for an actual Venus rover they're planning

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2016/02/29/nasa-venus-landsail-rover-could-launch-in-2023

If that works out, then it's clear that Mars can be a sort of testbed for Venus stuff. For example, get a 3D printer working on Mars, capable of making rover-parts. Then work out how you can make a 3D printer on Venus produce parts from local materials. For example, the CPUs NASA just built for Venus conditions are silicon carbide. Silicon and Carbon are abundant on Venus' surface, so it's possible that basic circuitry based on that could actually be printed by Venusian 3D printers.

[Karnewarrior]

But while a self-replicating Venusian machine could be useful, it's a near future project.

On the other hand, we know of literally tens of thousands of extremophiles, if not millions. Some of them are going to be capable of reproducing somewhere on Venus. So then, if our goal is to bring life to Venus, rather than make it possible for humans to walk around outside unassisted, we have an option already viable, the only work being the actual rocket firing and finding the extremophiles to survive there. Evolution can take over from there, probably quite rapidly, if it's bacteria.

[GiglameshDespair]

OK, but why bring life to Venus, if it's limited to extremophile bacteria?

Terraforming something for human life makes sense, but I don't actually see much value in introducing bacteria to a place for the sake of having bacteria there. It seems somewhat unlikely they'd ever develop beyond that stage into more advanced forms of life.

[JoshuaFH]

OK, but why bring life to Venus, if it's limited to extremophile bacteria?

Terraforming something for human life makes sense, but I don't actually see much value in introducing bacteria to a place for the sake of having bacteria there. It seems somewhat unlikely they'd ever develop beyond that stage into more advanced forms of life.

Well, I suppose with things like CRISPR we can genetically engineer extremophile bacteria that are able to terraform the planet just through living and reproducing as bacteria are wont to do. That'd perhaps be the easiest way to doing it, and is reminiscent of how Earth managed to accidentally terraform itself into an Oxygen-rich paradise for life.

Might take thousands or millions of years though, but hey, cost effective!

[Egan_BW]

Agreed. We need to make as certain as possible that Martian life is dead/nonexistent before we start dumping our own life there.

Besides, we need to save our extremophiles for Venus. I've always thought that we should send over a bunch of airborne photosynthetic bacteria and let them float over the Venusian clouds, eating away at the greenhouse below. Worst case scenario there is that we seed life to a second planet, ensuring that even if Humanity dies, life itself will last until at least the sun dies.

The problem is that the clouds of Venus don't contain many of the elements need to replicate the bacteria or algae, so you have to work out how that's going to work.

EDIT: One idea that I like is the proposal to pulverise the surface of Venus into rocks. If you do that to about 1km deep, then atmosphere would seep in and the CO2 reacts with the rocks oxides to form carbonates, with calcuations suggesting this would get the surface temepature down to 127^c and the total pressure down about half. The best thing about this however is that it doesn't need to shift a ton of matter from somewhere else to achieve it, you just need some way to dig up the ground.

Terraforming with railguns.

[MrRoboto75]

#StopVenusAbuse