Why can't i terraform Venus?

[Radu2605]

If i can terraform Mars, why not Venus.
Venus would be far easier to make habitable then Mars, because Venus has a warm, iron planet core, therefore it can have a magnetic field.But Venus spins insanely slow(i think a day on Venus is like 250 days on Terra or something like that), therefore it dosen't. If the planet would be made to spin faster it would start generating a magnetic field, therefor it would start cooling and it would become habitable in some time.
While Mars dosen't have a warm core, while it's made of iron it has cooled down, therefore it can't create a magnetic field.For Mars to be terraformed you would need to make it's core molten again witch is 1000 times harder than making Venus spin faster.
Is there a mod that makes Venus terraformable?

 

[grommile]

Making Venus spin faster won't cool it down.

Venus has an actual atmosphere – the thickest of any terrestrial planet in the Sol system, with a pressure at reference altitude of 91 atmospheres, consisting of 96% CO2 and ~3.5% N2 – which means that despite its day being longer than its year, its surface temperature of 464 °C is much less polarised than that of a long-day no-atmosphere planet like Mercury.

if you want to terraform it, using your platform's mod search tool to look for something like "terraforming toxic worlds" will probably get you what you want (it's not a particularly difficult feature to mod in).

 

[Mastikator]

You don't need a molten core to make mars terraformable, you just need to create an artificial magnetic field or planetary shield of some kind strong enough to resist solar wind. That may sound like a lot of work (it is), but it's way less than accelerating Venus's spin or removing Venus's atmosphere and replacing it with an oxygen nitrogen one.

The easiest way of terraforming Mars is probably to use thousands of asteroids to gravity boost Ceres into a collision course with Mars. There's enough matter and energy in the belt to make Mars molten and big.

 

[tribnia]

Maybe we could finally terraform Venus when we reach 25000 A.D. in stellaris 2.

 

[Radu2605]

You don't need a molten core to make mars terraformable, you just need to create an artificial magnetic field or planetary shield of some kind strong enough to resist solar wind. That may sound like a lot of work (it is), but it's way less than accelerating Venus's spin or removing Venus's atmosphere and replacing it with an oxygen nitrogen one.

The easiest way of terraforming Mars is probably to use thousands of asteroids to gravity boost Ceres into a collision course with Mars. There's enough matter and energy in the belt to make Mars molten and big.

To make an artificial magnetic shield to cover an entire planet you wold need something that can produce as much energy as a sun, magnetic shields can be made by machines, but they require an insane amount of power. Still it wouldn't need to be at maximum power all the time, because Mars is kinda far away from the sun, so in theory giving Mars a magnetic shield is plausible.
Crashing asteroids Into Mars can work, it would make Mars big and molten, but it takes thousand of years maybe even millions of years for a planet to cool down. So even if you make Mars big and molten, by the time it cools down humans probably won't exist anymore.
To cool it manually you would need to use the nearly the same amount of power that you would use to warm it with machines, plus the moving of asteroids, unless we find a way to cool it, it would be better to warm it manually.

 

[Radu2605]

Making Venus spin faster won't cool it down.

Venus has an actual atmosphere – the thickest of any terrestrial planet in the Sol system, with a pressure at reference altitude of 91 atmospheres, consisting of 96% CO2 and ~3.5% N2 – which means that despite its day being longer than its year, its surface temperature of 464 °C is much less polarised than that of a long-day no-atmosphere planet like Mercury.

if you want to terraform it, using your platform's mod search tool to look for something like "terraforming toxic worlds" will probably get you what you want (it's not a particularly difficult feature to mod in).

Because Venus dosen't have a magnetic field all sorts of solar radiation(gamma, plasma, etc.) enters unchallenged and because of the thick atmosphere it can't leave, therefore it just keeps building up heat. If we stop the radiation it would slowly start creeping out of the thick atmosphere, therefore it would slowly cool.
At the start it would be slow, but as the atmosphere begins to turn back into liquid, it would get thinner and thinner so more and more heat would leave faster.
Nearly all teluric large sattelites/planets in our solar system can be made habitable if we give them an magnetic field.
And a planet needs to have a spinning. molten iron core to have a magnetic field, or an artificial one.

 

[grommile]

At the start it would be slow, but as the atmosphere begins to turn back into liquid,

The boiling point of carbon dioxide at 91 atmospheres is around 30 °C. (it enters the supercritical phase at around 100 atmospheres.)

The current surface temperature on Venus averages 464 °C.

You're gonna be waiting a while.

 

[Methone]

because Venus has a warm, iron planet core,

Source?

If the planet would be made to spin faster it would start generating a magnetic field

So? Magnetic fields just prevent solar radiation from blowing off the atmosphere. And that's, uh... not really a concern Venus has. And even then, it's something that takes place over geologic time, not noticeable in the ~200 years Stellaris takes place in.

therefor it would start cooling and it would become habitable in some time.

No, it really wouldn't.

r Mars to be terraformed you would need to make it's core molten again witch is 1000 times harder than making Venus spin faster.

For Mars to be long-term habitable, you mean. And even then, it's not guaranteed that 'melt the core again' is the only way to do it.

To make an artificial magnetic shield to cover an entire planet you wold need something that can produce as much energy as a sun

NO YOU REALLY WOULDN'T.

Because Venus dosen't have a magnetic field all sorts of solar radiation(gamma, plasma, etc.) enters unchallenged

I'm sorry, but you're really showing your ignorance. Only the charged particles of the solar wind are inhibited by a magnetic field, and those are, uh, really diffuse. Gamma radiation, for starters, the Sun hardly emits any gamma at all. And second, gamma is just light. It's not charged, and it'll go right through a magnetic field.

If we stop the radiation it would slowly start creeping out of the thick atmosphere, therefore it would slowly cool.

No, it really wouldn't, because Venus has enough atmosphere to be 100x Earth's pressure, made mostly of carbon dioxide, and it also gets straight-up 50% more light. That is a lot of greenhouse effect, and a magnetic field would do virtually nothing about that.

 

[Janx14]

Balance and performance. Sol can't be a super system, and if we go around making everything terraformable then we end up with the same performance problem habitats gives.

 

[Mastikator]

To make an artificial magnetic shield to cover an entire planet you wold need something that can produce as much energy as a sun, magnetic shields can be made by machines, but they require an insane amount of power. Still it wouldn't need to be at maximum power all the time, because Mars is kinda far away from the sun, so in theory giving Mars a magnetic shield is plausible.
Crashing asteroids Into Mars can work, it would make Mars big and molten, but it takes thousand of years maybe even millions of years for a planet to cool down. So even if you make Mars big and molten, by the time it cools down humans probably won't exist anymore.
To cool it manually you would need to use the nearly the same amount of power that you would use to warm it with machines, plus the moving of asteroids, unless we find a way to cool it, it would be better to warm it manually.

I'm curious why you think that's the case. The Earth's magnetic field energy would take ~3,620 gigawatts (according to these equations) to recreate.
Now if you just google "sun watt total" you get 384.6 yotta watts as the answer. And since 1 yottawatt = 1,000,000,000,000,000 gigawatts (one quadriollion) that's uhhh not even close?

You're off by a factor of 100,000,000,000,000 or a hundred trillion.

 

[Radu2605]

I'm curious why you think that's the case. The Earth's magnetic field energy would take ~3,620 gigawatts (according to these equations) to recreate.
Now if you just google "sun watt total" you get 384.6 yotta watts as the answer. And since 1 yottawatt = 1,000,000,000,000,000 gigawatts (one quadriollion) that's uhhh not even close?

You're off by a factor of 100,000,000,000,000 or a hundred trillion.

I never searched for how much energy is required, or how much the sun produces. I sad a stupid number and i knew it was wrong, but i never bother editing the coment, because just moving enough material from Terra to Mars would be nearly impossible without some kind of better spaceship engine would be very hard. If we were to colonize Mars we would probably send a bunch of colonist and they would have to grow using the available materials on Mars, witch we do not know how many are found. The first step to colonizing a plant, would be to see if there are enough resources there to build a colony there, because i don't think is possible to move hundred's of tons of steel between planets will be possible without some kind of better way to break Terra's gravity.
Also Mars would probably lose it's atmosphere again because of low gravity. Mars would need to be hit by asteroids to make it bigger, therefore increasing it's gravity.
Cooling Venus would also probable require less energy, time and resources then warming Mars and the cooling Mars to make it habitable.
So with current tech we couldn't make them habitable like Terra, even tho we could probably be able to send small expeditions there.
In conclusion both planets can be made habitable if we would invest enough materials, just as Europa(Jupiter's sattelite) and Titan are probably teraformable.
If humanity would put it's petty differences aside and unite in one nation, we would progress far quicker and we would probably be able to get to a different planet in like 50 years.We probably even have the tech to reach Mars, but it would require international funding.
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[Radu2605]

Balance and performance. Sol can't be a super system, and if we go around making everything terraformable then we end up with the same performance problem habitats gives.

Couldn't just they add a rule to stop the AI from terraforming.
It's not like the AI uses it in any good way, outside terraforming and then never colonizing it.

 

[Janx14]

Couldn't just they add a rule to stop the AI from terraforming.
It's not like the AI uses it in any good way, outside terraforming and then never colonizing it.

If they aren't colonizing it then it isn't causing the problem. Terraforming itself isnt the issue.

Making it even easier for the player to roll over the AI isn't a good idea either. It also doesn't solve the balance/performance issues in multiplayer either.

 

[Methone]

Cooling Venus would also probable require less energy, time and resources then warming Mars and the cooling Mars to make it habitable.

I REALLY REALLY DOUBT THAT. Venus has about twice the diameter, and nearly 4x the surface area, of Mars. It has something like 10,000x the atmospheric pressure, and the surface temperature differences... hoo boy. Earth's average is 288 Kelvin. Mars's is 210, a difference of 78K. Venus's average surface temperature is nearly 700K. A difference of 612K.

So Venus has 4x the surface area, thousands of times the atmosphere, and nearly 8x worse temperature than Mars. I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no way to look at these two planets and say "Yeah, Venus is easier to terraform."

 

[ubuntufreakdragon]

You don't need magnetic fields to create an atmosphere they just help to keep said atmosphere.
You could of cause try to use massed asteroid swing bys to lift Venus' orbit decreasing Jupiter's but than you have to make sure neither planet nor your asteroids crash into the planet in between.
terraforming mars is easier, creating some atmosphere faster than it vanishes is not that difficult for lets say a few 1000 years, at some point you will have depleted all sources for this, but this takes time.

 

[Me_]

We can build Dyson spheres and Ringworlds, terraforming Venus is a little project compared to that.

The real reason is purely gameplay based - we can't terraform Venus in order to avoid having too many habitable planets. In a sense, a big chunk of rocky planets should be terraformable by a civilization capable of the Ringworld-sized projects, but that would mean tons more pops in late game, and there are already complaints about habitats being too easy to spam.

 

[Mastikator]

I never searched for how much energy is required, or how much the sun produces. I sad a stupid number and i knew it was wrong, but i never bother editing the coment, because just moving enough material from Terra to Mars would be nearly impossible without some kind of better spaceship engine would be very hard. If we were to colonize Mars we would probably send a bunch of colonist and they would have to grow using the available materials on Mars, witch we do not know how many are found. The first step to colonizing a plant, would be to see if there are enough resources there to build a colony there, because i don't think is possible to move hundred's of tons of steel between planets will be possible without some kind of better way to break Terra's gravity.
Also Mars would probably lose it's atmosphere again because of low gravity. Mars would need to be hit by asteroids to make it bigger, therefore increasing it's gravity.
Cooling Venus would also probable require less energy, time and resources then warming Mars and the cooling Mars to make it habitable.
So with current tech we couldn't make them habitable like Terra, even tho we could probably be able to send small expeditions there.
In conclusion both planets can be made habitable if we would invest enough materials, just as Europa(Jupiter's sattelite) and Titan are probably teraformable.
If humanity would put it's petty differences aside and unite in one nation, we would progress far quicker and we would probably be able to get to a different planet in like 50 years.We probably even have the tech to reach Mars, but it would require international funding.

According to IEA Europe in 2018 produced a total of 2 billion ton of TNT equivalent energy, and 1 ton equivalent is 41.868 gigajoules. So 2 billion x 41.868 over 1 year is 2653 gigawatts.
Since you need 3620 gigawatts to recreate earth's magnetic field and a modern day Europe is 73% of the way there, yeah I think terraforming Mars by just making a magnetic field is entirely feasible.

Add the US to Europe's energy and we're there already. And that's the magnetic field for Earth. Mars is smaller, the solar wind is weaker so the energy usage would be much less.

Edit- In the future could you please try searching for how much energy is required? It would behoove you to know the facts before you make grand declarations- only to have someone spend 5 minutes of googling things and crushing your aspirations.

 

[NEXUS12]

Moving away from the scientific debate, I'd say that the reason we can't terraform Venus is because of balance reasons? You already have Earth + another terraforming candidate in your home system alone.

Otherwise, you could then start talking about the habitability of some of the moons of Jupiter/Saturn etc. A civilisation that could terraform Mars would definitely have the ability to settle colonies elsewhere in the system.

 

[Methone]

Moving away from the scientific debate, I'd say that the reason we can't terraform Venus is because of balance reasons? You already have Earth + another terraforming candidate in your home system alone.

Otherwise, you could then start talking about the habitability of some of the moons of Jupiter/Saturn etc. A civilisation that could terraform Mars would definitely have the ability to settle colonies elsewhere in the system.

Yeah. It kinda gets into the argument of "Why can't machine empires settle barren worlds?"

 

[HFY]

Moving away from the scientific debate, I'd say that the reason we can't terraform Venus is because of balance reasons? You already have Earth + another terraforming candidate in your home system alone.

Otherwise, you could then start talking about the habitability of some of the moons of Jupiter/Saturn etc. A civilisation that could terraform Mars would definitely have the ability to settle colonies elsewhere in the system.

Ssh!

Those are next, right after we get the door open with Venus.