Comments on: Japan’s Spacecraft Reaches Venus, But Did It Miss Its Orbital Path?

By: Lee Johnson

Lee Johnson — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:13:58 +0000

I have read about tera forming Venus is countless scifi books and it all starts with blocking a significant portion of the sun energy reaching Venus. Is this remotely possible. And if it was how come the huge cloud cover doesn’t do the same thing or does it have to done from higher up. (further from the planets surface)
Just wondering

By: ChH

ChH — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:21:27 +0000

I read somewhere that our moon aides in slowly stripping the rarefied upper layers of our atmosphere, and that ours would be thicker without the moon. Anyone know if that has any validity and/or if a large moon orbiting Venus would have a similar effect?

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:48:04 +0000

How is Venus, “approximately the same distance from the sun”? Since it is at least a little (~40,000,000 km), wouldn’t that be enough to perhaps spark the runaway greenhouse effect? Of, if not the cause, at least contribute to it?

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:15:31 +0000

Crazy thought. Something for the long-term future. Wouldn’t Venus make for a better terraforming candidate than Mars?

I’ve never understood how Mars was supposed to be made habitable. It lost most of it’s atmosphere long ago; any attempt to rebuild that might work in the short term but would eventually fail for the same reasons, right? Lack of mass, lack of geomagnetic field, whatever.

Venus has held it’s atmosphere. It needs cleaning and a change in chemistry to be sure. However the atmospheric dynamics seem favourable for a thick atmosphere. One that could be breathable by a plant, animal, or person. At least theoretically.

Just speculating here.