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I came away thinking that it was impractical even in the long term after watching this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

⬐ dylan604

which is scary in that also probably means we have no way of recovering Earth from what we continue to do to it

The wonderful pop science channel Kurzgesagt has a video on this:

https://youtu.be/G-WO-z-QuWI

There's a Kurzgesagt video on terraforming Venus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI&t=606s

⬐ simonh

With that level of technology and industrial capacity, we could just build a few tens of thousands of orbitals far more cheaply.

⬐ CogitoCogito

I just watched that video and only have one question: are you being serious?

⬐ gregjor

A few hundred years? With what technology? We can’t deliberately terraform this planet in that time period and we don’t have to launch millions of tons of equipment off the planet to do it.

Going from “Some planet has these chemicals in its atmosphere or crust” to “We can make it earth-like” is a huge leap that just gets waved away. We can’t extract fresh water from the ocean economically at scale yet. So far we’ve had lots of failed attempts to land even small probes on Venus.

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]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit#:~:text=In%20p...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russ...

[3]: https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co....

⬐ Melatonic

I like your venus idea a lot - always seemed like the better planet to terraform anyways. Probably a LOT more chemicals and gasses to work with and of course more sunlight / heat. It has to be easier to remove shit we don't want than it might be to ship it all the way to mars.

⬐ njarboe

Too bad Venus’ day is 243 Earth days long. Quite a terraforming project to spin it up. It’s gravity is quite Earth like, unlike Mars.

⬐ ncmncm

That is not the primary problem.

The primary problem is that even attempting it would bring on global catastrophe just that much faster.

⬐ yupper32

> 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.

What's the point of bringing this up? Are you saying that their research is futile and that they shouldn't bother? That we should be funding something else?

There are separate groups of people working on the social aspects. Let MIT and other research institutions deal with coming up with solutions, and let politicians and activists deal with getting the world ready.

From everything I've seen, it'll take a global-scale engineering project of some sort to solve this problem. Might as well have the group of solutions ready for when/if the world is ready.

⬐ headcanon

> Are you saying that their research is futile and that they shouldn't bother?

Not at all! We should absolutely be researching and developing this type of solution. I fully believe that eventually every populated planet will have some form of solar mitigation strategy like this, but our political structures would have to evolve as well.

I sincerely hope we're able to politically and societally support such a project this century, but I'm not optimistic on that timescale.

Kurzgesagt did a video on terraforming Venus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

My amateurish take on it - total effort to terraform Venus might be lower, however exploring/colonizing Mars is much easier.

There is a decent kurzgesagt video explaining what transforming a new planet would look like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

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.

How To Terraform Venus (Quickly) - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

You might enjoy this video on terraforming Venus, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

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.

⬐ sidcool

Great video. I am convinced that Mars is the way to go