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nukevenus

nuke the dark side of venus to clear the clouds so it cools down
  (+9, -7)
(+9, -7)
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ok venus is hot because the clouds trap heat.... now ive seen those nuke tests and they clear clouds right? so why not nuke the dark side of venus, we can let the heat escape through the dark side and the shiny clouds on the light side prevent more heat coming in!!

venus takes 244 earth days for one of its days so i dont see how this could go wrong.... once its cool again im sure we can start to do stuff like land on the surface....

eventually the volcanoes will die out and all will be well, if not a little warm, it is 30% close to the sun...

seraphim, Nov 08 2005

Venus 2.0 Venus_202_2e0
Vernon does Venus. [bungston, Nov 09 2005]

TERRAFORMING VENUS http://www.rfreitas...erraformSRS1983.htm
[nuclear hobo, Mar 28 2007]

[link]






       Crazy Venusian Street Bum(CVSB): Repent! Repent! The evil Humans have come to nuke our venusian home! Run! Run! Run for your lives! There isn't anywhere to run! Noooooooo!   

       The reason why the clouds clear when a nuclear bomb goes off, is the clouds are essentially water vapor, when it gets heated it expands and moves away from the heat. Also the blast wave does a jiffy to.   

       I'm not sure whether the clouds would clear or not.
EvilPickels, Nov 08 2005
  

       // eventually the volcanoes will die out // no, no they won't.
jonthegeologist, Nov 08 2005
  

       \\it is 30% close to the sun...\\ Is this a to be continued moment, or does this make sense in some way that I'm not seeing.   

       Welcome to the halfbakery [seraphim]. (Lovely name by the way). Take a look around, and at varying points, it's been proposed to nuke most of the planets around here.
hidden truths, Nov 08 2005
  

       + from me for "I don't see how this could go wrong...". Plus a nifty idea.
bungston, Nov 08 2005
  

       I was under the impression that massive nuclear attacks would throw dust up into the atmosphere, creating more clouds - that whole nuclear winter thing, remember?   

       But I think the way to go here, with the nuclear arsenal at our disposal, is to blast most of the atmosphere into space - apparently there is just too much of it.
DrCurry, Nov 08 2005
  

       I also like taking advantage of the dark side and long day of venus. [Curry] - you would want to detonate the nukes well up in the atmosphere.   

       I am not entirely clear where the moisture in the clouds would go...
bungston, Nov 09 2005
  

       meh, specifics.... the world wasnt built on specifics!!!   

       raging generalisations are the best..   

       ok um... firstly, venus is 30% closer to the sun than we are so it would (by my reckoning) have 30% more solar energy put on it, and be 30% hotter than earth...   

       second, yes, the volcanoes WILL eventually die out as the internal pressure becomes unable to support that kind of eruption levels.   

       i like your idea of just blasting a large amount of the atmosphere away, except my plan requires that we get the oceans back in one peace to sink the c02 and stop the greenhouse effect.   

       um... anything else ive missed?
seraphim, Nov 09 2005
  

       Yup [seraphim], you missed the Inverse-Square Law. If Venus is 30% closer to the Sun than Earth, then, as a quick BOTEC (back of the envelope calculation), despite the obvious apparent backwardness of the logic, you can start with a numeric value of 1.3 (130%), and SQUARE it, to get 1.69 or 69% more sunlight arriving on Venus than Earth receives.   

       For a more normal calculation, start with Venus being 70% of Earth's distance from the Sun, then the Earth is 100/70=1.43 or 43% farther from the Sun than Venus. The Inverse Square Law applied to 1.43 gives Earth 1/2.045 or about half the sunlight arriving at Venus (Venus gets 2.045 times as much as Earth, 104.5% more).   

       Either way you figure it, even if the two methods don't agree, Venus is LOTS sunnier than Earth.
Vernon, Nov 09 2005
  

       If venus is 7/10 AU from the sun, it gets (10/7)^2 the solar intensity. That's 100/49, or just slightly more than twice Earth-normal solar radiation per unit area.   

       Nukes make the clouds go away by increasing the temperature, thus increasing the mass of vapor that a given volume can hold. When the atmosphere cools down again, the clouds will return.   

       Your plan is assuming that Venus could support oceans of liquid water. Remember that the clouds are not water clouds like on Earth, but rather they are clouds of SO2 and H2SO4 (sulphur dioxide and sulphuric acid). Not exactly good for swimming, even if they are returned to liquid.   

       I fail to understand how your plan will stop the volcanic activity. If the heat driving the volcanic activity is coming from inside the planet, simply cooling the surface won't do a thing.   

       Besides all that, I have to bone any idea that includes both "Let's nuke X" and "I don't see how this could go wrong".
Freefall, Nov 09 2005
  

       I agree that it's non-linear, but is an inverse square relationship really the appropriate one here? Isn't radiative heat transfer something to do with the power of four? Or am I thinking of the British Lions again?
Texticle, Nov 09 2005
  

       What if you hit it with so many nukes, that a nuclear winter started?
MikeOxbig, Nov 10 2005
  

       i think youlle find that the clouds around venus are about 97 percent c02....   

       anyway this is HALF bakery.... not fullt planned good idea bakery...   

       ok so nukes are out... what about a giant sunglasses lens, just the one, that should stop enough sunlight hitting venus to let it cool...   

       wed need thrusters on it cause of solar wind but a small ion drive should do it...
seraphim, Nov 12 2005
  

       [seraphim] still wrong. Volcanism has nothing to do with internal pressures, but more to do with heat convection which, in turn, is about core and mantle heat *generation*.   

       If the heat source dies, volcanism will die too. I would argue that the heat source is unlikely to die out anytime soon.
jonthegeologist, Nov 13 2005
  

       I'm not sure that stopping the volcanos is an issue at all. We have volcaons on earth, and it's no problem.   

       Nukes probably could cause a cooling of venus, either through nuclear winter, knocking off some of the atmosphere, or "clearing clouds,"   

       However, I wouldn't count on the cloud clearing properties. The stratosphere of venus, where the clouds are, moves much faster than the planet itself... Also, the different composition of the clouds may be a problem.   

       I don't think sequestering all that CO2 into the oceans will work very well either. You'll need oceans in the first place, and venus probably has less than a thousandth the water of earth. Also, it sure is a lot of CO2.   

       So to sequester the CO2, you'd need more ocean, which means more water... or at least, more hydrogen to form water... The easiest source of this would be comets, which have more CO2.
ye_river_xiv, Mar 27 2007
  

       // i dont see how this could go wrong// Yes, but you don't see the "Shift" and "'" key's either.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 28 2007
  

       Venus is 0.7 AU from the sun!?   

       # If K*(1/(1Au)^2) = 100 W/m^2   

       Then K = 100 W*Au^2/m^2   

       Therefore, Venus should have 100*(1/0.7^2) = 204 W/m^2 at the surface   

       (# making some really bad assumptions of course, like that no light is absorbed by Earth's atmosphere which is untrue, but I'm not going to research this any further)   

       Anyway, nuclear winter on venus is a good idea! [+]
quantum_flux, Oct 26 2007
  
      
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