Inhabitable Planets Too Close Together?

namelessfly wrote:Okay,

I will bite.

You need to process 1eex9 m^3 per second.

Assumethat you have many gas processors.

Each gas processor is flying through the atmosphere at 300 m/s.

Each gas processor is somewhat over 10 meters in diameter giving a frontal area of 100 m^2

100m^2 x 300m/s = 3eex4 m/s

You need 3eex4 flying gas processors which is comparable to the number of commercial aircraft in the world.

You don't mention that each device also needs to process 30000 cubic meters of gas per second. It is not enough to just scoop it up and spit it out again. It actually has to change that gas as it goes through. And if the atmosphere it is changing contains significant amounts of gas it cannot convert into oxygen (e.g. nitrogen, methane, ammonia), the device will have to scoop up a lot more gas to make up for it.

And since we are talking in the context of the Honorverse, this will have to be done by a brand new colony, with what they bring with them initially, without assistance from other sources.

SWM wrote:And since we are talking in the context of the Honorverse, this will have to be done by a brand new colony, with what they bring with them initially, without assistance from other sources.

I understand they have this FTL stuff working in the Honorverse. So you can just send back your 8 million ton freighter to get more.

I don't think he gets the concept of before FTL colonization and terraforming.

Utterly layman questions. Lightning generators and dumping ice asteroids. Would either help?

A current technology processes Oxygen into CO2 and H2O, so I imagine that some future technology device that very rapidly processes CO2 and H2O into something such as C12H26 or solid Carbon is plausible.

I do agree that flying atmosphere processors rather than stationary ground units built at terrain features that focus atmospheric flows might be improbable, but the obvious resemblance to contemporary aircraft is intended to put the task into perspective.

It is plausible, perhaps even probable, that a hybrid biological/industrial process would be used. The colony would inoculate the planet with tailored microbes then supply them with nutrients and energy from orbiting lasers to accelerate the biological process.

Of course terraforming an airless world such as Mars seems easier to me. You can select or preprocess comets so that you are supplying the right ratio of atmospheric constituents. If you boost the comets into planetary synchronous orbit, you can gently drop the processed gases to the planet via beanstalk.

Of course this terraforming requires industrial capacity that would be established in space by the new colony.

SWM wrote:

namelessfly wrote:Okay,

I will bite.

You need to process 1eex9 m^3 per second.

Assumethat you have many gas processors.

Each gas processor is flying through the atmosphere at 300 m/s.

Each gas processor is somewhat over 10 meters in diameter giving a frontal area of 100 m^2

100m^2 x 300m/s = 3eex4 m/s

You need 3eex4 flying gas processors which is comparable to the number of commercial aircraft in the world.

You don't mention that each device also needs to process 30000 cubic meters of gas per second. It is not enough to just scoop it up and spit it out again. It actually has to change that gas as it goes through. And if the atmosphere it is changing contains significant amounts of gas it cannot convert into oxygen (e.g. nitrogen, methane, ammonia), the device will have to scoop up a lot more gas to make up for it.

And since we are talking in the context of the Honorverse, this will have to be done by a brand new colony, with what they bring with them initially, without assistance from other sources.

Anyone realizing that interstellar space colonies are at least a needed first step to terraforming planets and that space colonies are or at least were probably more common than planetary colonies?

ONeil was right.

namelessfly wrote:A current technology processes Oxygen into CO2 and H2O, so I imagine that some future technology device that very rapidly processes CO2 and H2O into something such as C12H26 or solid Carbon is plausible.

I do agree that flying atmosphere processors rather than stationary ground units built at terrain features that focus atmospheric flows might be improbable, but the obvious resemblance to contemporary aircraft is intended to put the task into perspective.

It is plausible, perhaps even probable, that a hybrid biological/industrial process would be used. The colony would inoculate the planet with tailored microbes then supply them with nutrients and energy from orbiting lasers to accelerate the biological process.

Of course terraforming an airless world such as Mars seems easier to me. You can select or preprocess comets so that you are supplying the right ratio of atmospheric constituents. If you boost the comets into planetary synchronous orbit, you can gently drop the processed gases to the planet via beanstalk.

Of course this terraforming requires industrial capacity that would be established in space by the new colony.

I don't really care whether they are flying or not. Your proposal requires 30,000 processors each producing 30,000 cubic meters of free oxygen every single second.

For that matter, I don't care whether you do it on the planet, or do it in space and freeze it into giant comets for impact on the planet. One way or another, you have to create 1.16e18 kilograms of free oxygen. And to do that in 30 years, you have to create 1,200,000,000 kilograms of oxygen per second, every second, for those 30 years. In addition to any other gases you may need, if this is an airless planet.

I suggest that trying to do this in 30 years may be too ambitious.

The physical volumes seem daunting, especially if you are processing atmospheric CO2 into free oxygen. However; the volumes involved are comparable to the flow through our current fleet of jet engines. The physical volumes of processing amonia ice extracted from comets or other bodies into nitrogen and oxygen are far less daunting, by about three orders of magnitude.

The key fact to remember is that modern humans process materials at rates orders of magnitude higher than was plausible a few centuries ago. What seems obviously unfeasible to us will be quite feasible in the future.

I must also point out that the ability to perform such tasks is a function of will as much as phisical capability. I recently installed an acorn slab welding table in my shop. To most people the task of moving and precisely positioning this two ton mass would be impossible without a crane. For me, all that was needed was a steel crowbar and a few wood blocks.

SWM wrote:

namelessfly wrote:A current technology processes Oxygen into CO2 and H2O, so I imagine that some future technology device that very rapidly processes CO2 and H2O into something such as C12H26 or solid Carbon is plausible.

I do agree that flying atmosphere processors rather than stationary ground units built at terrain features that focus atmospheric flows might be improbable, but the obvious resemblance to contemporary aircraft is intended to put the task into perspective.

It is plausible, perhaps even probable, that a hybrid biological/industrial process would be used. The colony would inoculate the planet with tailored microbes then supply them with nutrients and energy from orbiting lasers to accelerate the biological process.

Of course terraforming an airless world such as Mars seems easier to me. You can select or preprocess comets so that you are supplying the right ratio of atmospheric constituents. If you boost the comets into planetary synchronous orbit, you can gently drop the processed gases to the planet via beanstalk.

Of course this terraforming requires industrial capacity that would be established in space by the new colony.

I don't really care whether they are flying or not. Your proposal requires 30,000 processors each producing 30,000 cubic meters of free oxygen every single second.

For that matter, I don't care whether you do it on the planet, or do it in space and freeze it into giant comets for impact on the planet. One way or another, you have to create 1.16e18 kilograms of free oxygen. And to do that in 30 years, you have to create 1,200,000,000 kilograms of oxygen per second, every second, for those 30 years. In addition to any other gases you may need, if this is an airless planet.

I suggest that trying to do this in 30 years may be too ambitious.

My argument for an industrial terraforiming process is a recognition of the fact that the energy flow through global photosynthesis is only about 40eex12 Watts. I can't imagine that an unterraformed planet would support life at this level.

Compare this to global insolation on the order of 1eex17 Watts, and it is trivial.

Compared to the technology that will presumably be avaiable, and natural biology is implausible mechanism. The fusion rocket of a plausible colony ship of 1eex6 tons might produce on the order of 1eex9 to 1eex10 newtons with an exhaust velocity of 3eex7 m/s with a power of perhaps 3eex16 Watts to 3eex17 Watts.

I will conceded that it is probable that the terraforming process will be solar powered rather than fusion powered. Orbiting solettas (big ass mirrors) might be used to boil off the atmosphere. Alternatively; atmospheric CO2 might be injected into the oceans while free oxygen extracted from comets is injected into the atmosphere. Throw in ocean plankton with growth stimulated by OTEC plants to fix CO2 as CalciumCarbonate.


I can speculate about possible mechanisms and processes but Ineednot be specific to make the point that if we have the technology to build the interstellar colony ships, the colonistswill be able to brute force terraform their planets into marginally habitable worlds. The ecology will be unstable requiring continued industrial intervention, but it will be livable.

Mars like planets are easier than Venus type planets.

I conceded right at the beginning that energy was not an issue. Nor am I concerned about volume of the gas, as such. I also already agreed that sufficient rate of gas flow can be achieved.

What you have not convinced me about is the idea that it would be possible to convert oxides into free oxygen at a rate of 1.2 billion tons per second, unless you already have a well-established industry at the planet. I could see those kinds of production rates for an entire well-populated highly industrialized planet, if it decided to concentrate on it. But we are talking about new planets with nothing on it except what the colonists bring along. I disbelieve it.

If someone really wanted to do it, and invested enough manpower and an industrial planet's GNP into it, and had the current Honorverse technology to work with, I will accept that it could be done. But there is just no way you will convince me that this was done as a matter of course during the major colonization period of the Honorverse.

SWM wrote:If someone really wanted to do it, and invested enough manpower and an industrial planet's GNP into it, and had the current Honorverse technology to work with, I will accept that it could be done. But there is just no way you will convince me that this was done as a matter of course during the major colonization period of the Honorverse.

Well, the survey ships could bring along some. If they found a planet that could be colonized, but had no O2 in the air, they could have some sort of system they leave behind to begin the teraforming process. The system would then have hundreds of years to convert the system rather than dozens. This would allow them to both find more planets that they could sell, and sell each of the planets for a higher price due to increase in habitability.

And if they were von Neumann type machines, they could leave only one or two on each planet, and still have it much more livable than before the next wave arrived.

Side note: auto-correct really hates the words "von Neumann"