Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2021–2026
12:42 · 23M views · Jul 6, 2021
Kurzgesagt lays out a speculative plan to terraform Venus, covering its hostile atmosphere and how it might be made Earth-like, with a sources page linked.
Offered as a readable explainer whenever Venus terraforming or alternatives to Mars colonization come up.
9 comments from Hacker News
There's a good video on this that talks about how a similar technique might be used to terraform Venus over hundreds of years [0] The main physics problem I see is that Langrange points are naturally unstable [1], so the bubbles would need to be constantly correcting their orbit. This problem would be compounded by solar radiation "blowing" the bubbles back to Earth. There are clever ways to mitigate this for other designs which are addressed in the video, but I don't see it addressed in the article. Edit: it looks like it is addressed somewhat in the source article linked in another comment, by placing the bubbles a bit further towards the sun than the L1 point to compensate for solar winds. Also, If a bubble does eventually become unstable, they may be cheap enough to destroy it and send another one up. However, the primary problem I see with this approach is that we are simply not politically ready as a species to attempt a global-scale engineering project like that. Some countries may find that climate change actually benefits them [2], or may even impact a geopolitical rival even worse. These countries may be inclined to send a few missiles toward L1 if thats the case. Edit: Additionally, even if this does succeed, countries may see this as an excuse to keep burning stuff despite the additional negative consequences of carbon emissions [3] [0]: this video [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK] [3]: [LINK] .
There is a decent kurzgesagt video explaining what transforming a new planet would look like this video Essentially it would be almost infinitely easier to reverse all climate change on earth than to make another planet livable but it is in theory possible.
You might enjoy this video on terraforming Venus, this video I think we should consider the whole solar system our galactic ship while making sure to keep the current habitation quarters in top notch shape.
The Kurzgesagt video on teraforming Venus is interesting. It only takes a thousand years, assuming perfect execution. this video
It would only take a few hundred years to turn Venus into a pretty close Earth analog. It has issues to be dealt with, but would really have much more resources available that Mars. Even solar power would be more viable on Venus than Mars. Plus it would give us a good midway point to start planet harvesting Mercury if we wanted it. this video