h a l f b a k e r yA riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a rich, flaky crust
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Take the planet Mercury, crash it
into
Venus at just the right angle so that
the ejecta forms a single large
moon.
We will also want to cause a more
habitable spin for the resulting
Neo-
Venus, and a molten iron core so it
has a nice magnetic field. The
correct angle and velocity
required
can be determined by computer
simulation.
[edit] A realistic method for moving
the orbit of a planet is to gradually
add (or remove) energy from the
planet's orbit using a large number
of asteroid flybys. I believe this has
already been seriously proposed as
a method for moving Earth farther
out from the gradually heating Sun
over the next 500 million years, but
I can't find a link at the moment.
This is probably how Earth's moon formed
http://www.spacedai...news/lunar-01d.html
[JakePatterson, Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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Hang on a moment. Are you planning to use mercury as a new core for venus? |
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I suppose we're going to do this by harnessing the power of vampires? |
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RK: The moon would be formed
from the ejecta from the collision,
which would be mostly material
from the outer layers of Mercury
and Venus. The energy from the
collision would also melt both
planets, and as the Neo-Venus
cools its crust would solidify, but it
would maintain a molten iron core
for a long time, just as Earth has. |
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To be sure, it wouldn't be
habitable for a while, but if we
follow up by crashing a substantial
number of icy bodies from the
Oort Cloud into it we might be
able to get it to a habitible stage
before the Sun goes all red giant
on our asses. Oh, and moving
Mercury would be good practice
for when we have to move Earth
out of the way of the expanding
Sun. |
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Right, I think I get you now. The new moltern core is just some of old venus heated up. And mercury survives in some form. Right? |
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In that case, could we then catch mercury, and put it somewhere near earth? The raw materials that could be mined would be quite valuable. |
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If you're going to start playing solar marbles, I think rearranging the asteroids would be a better bet. Mercury will be too useful a platform for studying the sun. |
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And testing high-factor sun creams. |
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you could use my mars moving method
to get it there |
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[RK]: Mercury would be good and
gone, but it could result in an
increase in mass of Venus from
four fifths that of Earth to about
the same, plus the creation of a
large moon which would help
stablize Venus's rotation. |
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[DC]: I am talking about long
timespans here, there would be
plenty of time (like, a million
years) to use Mercury as a
platform for studying the sun
before it would be crashed into
Venus. The sun is getting
hotter, and if we do nothing our
oceans will be boiled off into space
within 500 million years, so if we
want to stick around this solar
system we had better figure out
how to move planets around well
before then. We could move Mars
into a long orbit around Jupiter,
and for bonus points the plane of
its new Jovian orbit should be
perpendicular to the plane of its
present Solar orbit. While we are
doing that, we could be gradually
moving the orbits of Earth and
Neo-Venus farther from the sun. |
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[schematics] I took the liberty of
annotating your idea with a more
realistic method for moving
planets, which I will add to the
body of this idea as soon as I click
OK on this annotation... |
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PLEASE . . .I beg you!: Don't do anything to Mercury until after NASA's Messenger mission is completed in 2013 or so. I have plans for that planet. . . |
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Ummm.... If you're going to cool Venus off with bodies from the OOrt cloud, why don't you just send them into the planet at an angle, and use them to alter the rotation of Venus. A lot of little changes will be easier to correct mistakes on than one big one. |
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Besides, we're still grieving the loss of Pluto from our planetary list. No need to cause another tragedy. The astrologers will go nuts! |
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//The astrologers will go nuts!// Just for that, [+]. |
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//If you're going to cool Venus off with bodies from the OOrt cloud, why don't you just send them into the planet at an angle, and use them to alter the rotation of Venus.//
The posted idea is much better. You only need one asteroid to transfer momentum from Jupiter to Mercury, and you do this millions of times. You can only add linear momentum this way, not angular, so that's the point of moving Mercury out to smash into Venus. Getting enough comets out of the Oort cloud to directly change the rotation of Venus would be far more difficult. |
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Why don't we put all the planets, and the major asteroids, into the same orbit as Earth? Then they'd all the right temperature to live on and we'd solve the population crisis. |
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Population crisis? Did someone start a crisis without telling me? I'm really hurt. . . |
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Why is it important to give Venus a moon? If you want to speed up Venus' rotation rate, first find a rate we can live with - something closer to the 24-hour spin we all know and love but easier to attain.
Then, build two very tall towers (carbon nano-tube structures derived from Venus' atmosphere would be my choice for material) on directly opposite sides of the planet. Each tower would siphon atmosphere from the bottom and eject it at altitude, causing an accelerating effect. It would be a miniscule effect, but it builds up with time. Still, the overall effect is less traumatic than colliding asteroids and/or planets on to a planet that has already seen more than enough abuse. |
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I understand your point. If we want to terraform Venus, we may have to give it a moon like ours by knocking a nearby small planet (Mercury) into it much like the Earth's might have been made.
I've seen that science channel show "what if we had no moon?" that presented all the benefits of having a natural sattelite, from catching metorites to helping generate a magnetic filed. Venus may need such stuff if it's going to be habitable. |
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What's so great about planets? I know we have one and it's the best one, but is that the best way? Seems like a lot of mass for the amount of living space and you are left with no easy exit. Ring worlds seem even more dangerous, but maybe one with some natural gravity and some added with spin. |
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Why planets? Large-scale civilizations need large-scale resources to function. In an age of 'reduce, reuse, recycle' we often forget that growth requires that new resources be available at costs that do not inspire sticker shock. |
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What I do not understand is why we want to treat Mercury as if it is somehow has nothing to offer but mass for use in ATTEMPTING to give Venus an Earth-like environment. Suppose we make the attempt and it does not work? We lose a whole planet - and everything it has to offer - without gainfully changing Venus. |
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but why do the large scale resources have to be spherical? If we progress to the point where we can move planets, I'm just wondering if we can then look at a different configuration of land mass. A ring world would give you lots more usable land and an easy way to come and go. |
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//easy way to come and go// Go where? You've taken all the planets and converted them into a ring!
There are subtle issues at work here: humans are used to a world that is mysterious because we constantly discover things we did not know about. Constructed worlds (rings, cylinders, spheres and, yes, glass-encased asteroids) are all about limitations - just so many square kilometers, metric tonnes, cubic meters etc. Natural planets are also limited in the geometric sense, but they are able to provide inhabitants with a sense of open-endedness that I doubt could ever be manufactured. |
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