Chapter 11 Chapter 6 Venus Hell World

Venus is like hell, full of scorching carbon dioxide, it is really not suitable for human habitation.But launching a rocket loaded with algae to Venus can turn carbon dioxide into oxygen and transform Venus. A large number of lunar immigrants and the establishment of lunar colonies, in addition to arousing human impulses to expand their activities and enter space deeper than before, the development on the moon will further enrich our industry and restore us as a race. self-confidence, and to reduce some of our fear of premature destruction.The moon will never be entirely satisfactory as a second world.No matter what changes we make on its surface, it will still be obvious to lunar settlers that they live on a barren rock.The environment is drab, the discipline is tiresome, and every sunset looks exactly like every other.The stars twinkle like a million diamonds, but they look exactly like they did last month.A man would not be able to leave the base unless he was wearing the most ridiculous clothing, in which the slightest crack in that suit would result in an uncomfortable death.When he leaves the base or the city, he must rely on the watch to survive, and if he forgets to pay attention to it, or if it breaks, he will run out of oxygen and die.In this one-sixth of the acceleration of gravity, there is very little sports or entertainment here, except for exploration and ball games.

Life will be highly regulated for safety and efficiency.A man who stops to gaze in wonder at the wonders of the technology that keeps him alive on the moon hears a small voice say: Oxygen is worth pennies per cubic inch, and you must work here and not enjoy yourself.The huge blue globe in the sky gradually became a nuisance to the pioneers of the new colony.The earth always stopped in roughly the same place in the sky, twinkling like a jealous, meddling, evil eye that reminded him that he depended on the fickleness of the market and the whims of accountants.He will feel that, at any moment, because of the mysterious drop in demand for a matchbox-sized computer (J press: because of the mysterious decline in demand for a matchbox-sized computer), or because his Earth Base Corporation receives a If the order book cuts its investment, it will be easy to be called home.The Earth and Moon industrial systems will probably last a century, but in the early decade on the Moon, few colonists will feel the significance of eternity.

The few people on Earth will share these concerns in different ways.For them, the conquest of the moon was a successful experience but only an experience.For these folks, it opens up a path to a larger enterprise.A new concept, which is imperceptible at first, will be described on a higher level after all.The following account has rarely been heard since the Puritans in the seventeenth century were dissatisfied with the oppression of the Stuart royal family and decided to immigrate to the United States. Simply put: Every day the earth looks a scarier place than the day before, and we pay attention to the newspapers every day: whether the balance of power has changed, whether nuclear war is imminent; or whether a rebellion has broken out, and honest inhabitants have been murdered; or extremists whether a government has been taken over; whether an elected politician is killed; or whether a strike shuts down a power plant; or whether the human population has increased to such an extent that people will suffer hunger never imagined before; or whether some zealous environmental scientist has discovered why all life has an end New reasons and more.Our emotions are no longer exciting or pleasant, but horror sits behind us like a shadow forever dark.

This is our time to leave this decaying world and discover another.We must cut out our roots and build a new civilization that has nothing to do with the old.Has not such immigration produced in the past the great essence of culture?The disciples of Moses, the conquerors of Normandy, the Elizabethan explorers, the Chinese merchants, the French Protestants, the Mormons, left the places where they were persecuted and despised, without obtaining riches incomparable in their former kingdoms and achievements?We must do the same things we did before we were saved when the earth was destroyed.It is not difficult to persuade some government or council of industrialists to build us a spaceship in exchange for a stake in a business.In our new world, there will be no wars and no pollution, and we are determined to prevent them.Not overpopulated, at least in previous generations.We are to build the new Eden that idealists have been seeking, even though we may have to endure years of pain and hardship.Where should we go to find such a place?The Moon doesn't interest us because it's effectively ruled by the Earth.And we want to breathe natural air, we want meadows, forests and large farms, those unventilated moon domes and sealed caves are not what we want.There is very little air of any kind on Mars, so let's go to Venus!

Venus?An astronomer's first reaction would be to wonder how anyone could be ignorant enough to attempt to live there.Even if Venus is almost the same size as Earth, its current environment is completely unsuitable for human life.The proportion of water vapor in its atmosphere is about 0.7%.On a small scale, the ratios of nitrogen and mercury to chlorine compounds are low.The other 90% contains non-breathable carbon dioxide gas. The earth's atmosphere only contains about 0.03% carbon dioxide, but because Venus is closer to the sun than the earth (67 million miles vs. 9300 miles Thousands of miles apart), carbon dioxide is accumulated by volcanic sources, rather than being fixed in the planetary crust as it is on Earth.There has been no rain in the early days to prevent an increase in carbon dioxide.From its aggregation developed a process known as the detached greenhouse effect.Because solar radiation can enter the greenhouse but cannot escape, the indoor temperature is higher than the outdoor temperature.Venus mimics this process on a planetary scale. The sun's visible radiation penetrates a thick layer of carbon dioxide. When the planet's surface absorbs solar infrared rays, it heats up the surface and re-emits those infrared rays. Among the clouds and the atmosphere.The data obtained by the unmanned American and Soviet Russian spacecraft that explored Venus in the 1960s tell us the generally accepted conclusion that the temperature on the surface of Venus is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius). The temperature is twice as hot as the hottest part of a standard kitchen stove.Astronomers deduce that the vast area on Venus should be red-hot to be precise.

The rich carbon dioxide gas layer is the main source of the extreme pressure on the surface of Venus.A man standing on such a planet, assuming that by some means he is prevented from being scorched or suffocated, would experience the same great pressures on him as a diver at a depth of two hundred and fifty feet below the surface.Atmospheric pressure is about a hundred times greater than that of the Earth's surface.Suppose now a step further that man escapes all sorts of unpleasant dangers, and that his eyes magically penetrate thick dust and low clouds, he may be in danger of being driven mad by accidental optical hallucinations.The high atmospheric density creates superbending, in which visible light actually bends more than ninety degrees, unlike the very small bends in water.A person standing on Venus would see the entire surface of the planet, including the landmarks on the opposite side, because visible light rays travel almost in a perfect circle rather than in nearly straight lines.He might have had the impression that he was standing at the bottom of a deep bowl, surrounded by high cliffs that were actually the horizon, a situation that is difficult to imagine in terms of terrestrial landscapes.In the case of Venus, a man looking south from the Brooklyn Bridge with a telescope could see Atlantic City towering above him, part of the road climbing up a huge cliff.Higher and higher up, he could see Florida, and above that the Caribbean Sea.At the highest point, he could see the South Pole, not just one South Pole, but dozens of South Pole, scattered high and low at different points around the cliff.So far he has not seen the total chaos caused by the random dispersal of an infinite number of Antarctica.Geographers use the curves of light to predict where each South Pole should be, and why it should be there.To every observer on Venus, it is as if all surfaces are unsecured and turned upside down, just like an umbrella is turned upside down in a strong wind.A man on the Brooklyn Bridge is like an insect perched on top of an umbrella.He could go south without climbing to Atlantic City.Aside from the altered geography of the surrounding cliffs, he can still be considered to be at the bottom of a deep bowl.If he looked back, he could see that part of the Brooklyn Bridge was now on the cliff.Beyond it, the Adirondacks, and then the Brooklyn Bridge, and so on.

These anomalies are not difficult to understand.Five planetary bodies: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon and Mars, developed from the same cloud of dust and gas thrown off the rapidly spinning sun five billion years ago.Superficially, they resemble each other more than any other planet in the solar system.So far their atmosphere is completely different.Although the atmospheric pressure on Earth is about a hundred times lower than that on Venus, and at least a hundred times greater than that on Mars, the atmosphere on Mercury is much less than that on Mars.In fact, if Mercury has any atmosphere, the Moon must have none.Here are some numbers that explain the secret:

Planet's principal distance from the Sun (millions of miles) Mass (Earth = 1) Mercury thirty-six ○. ○ five Venus sixty-seven ○.eight one Earth Ninety Three One. ○ Moon ninety-three. ○ one One hundred and forty-two Mars.all This watch tells us a simple story.Venus and Earth have roughly the same mass, which doesn't explain why they have such different atmospheric pressures.But their similar masses do suggest that if the Earth could be moved 10 million miles closer to the Sun than it is now, it too would develop an escaped greenhouse carbon dioxide layer surrounding a planet where no life could develop.On the other hand, if Venus were about 15 million miles farther from the Sun than it is now, its atmosphere would be the same as that of Earth and, presumably, would have intelligent human habitation.On Mars, Mercury, or the Moon, no matter where those planets are located, there could never be enough oxygen to sustain life.Their mass is too low, which means their gravitational field is too weak, to maintain such an atmosphere.Mars, the heaviest of the three, has a thin layer of carbon dioxide gas that was accurately predicted by its planetary mass before uncrewed spacecraft determined its existence.Obviously, for a planet to hold any atmosphere, it would have to be slightly larger than Mercury, but not as large as Mars.An atmosphere sufficient to support compatible advanced Earth-type flora and fauna could only develop naturally on a planet at least twice the size of Mars.

Also of great importance is the distance of the planet from the sun, which must be within the inner sphere of the solar system, in other words, within the narrow region bounded by the orbits of Mars and Venus.Inside this region, it is too hot for Earth-type life to live, and outside this region, it will be too cold for life. Although we can know from the table that our planet is in Near the danger zone near the superheating limit, the Earth is right inside the inner sphere.However, now there is little chance that anything will change our trajectory.Such a change would require a collision with another planet, or a sudden gravitational perturbation by some unknown object.The chances of such a catastrophe actually occurring must be considered very slim.

As we have seen, Venus was formed at the edge of the inner sphere, and had much of the atmosphere, which was obtained by much heat, which may not always be the case, and it is convincing to say that Venus, when it was first formed, had the same Earth's very similar environment.Over hundreds of millions of years, the two planets appeared to be the same world, with similar primordial air of hydrogen, ammonia, methane, and so on.Observers of this remote period may feel safe predicting that high civilizations will eventually develop above both.Then, probably 100 million years after the formation of Venus, a fatal change began, as a result of heating by the closer sun, carbon dioxide began to accumulate in space, slowly at first, but then very rapidly, 4 million years later , and the result is the dire world I describe.

The first appearance of Venus presented a terrible sight to the would-be colonists.The men who found the new English colonies faced extreme hardship and danger, and they were strong men who endured whatever happened to the new world in which they were built.They might even be despondent at the sight of being scorched, smothered, smashed, blinded, and mad at the same time.Carl K., director of the Planetary Research Laboratory at Cornell University.Professor Shagang believes that Venus is a lot like hell. Since Shagang, the biologist and astronomer, is one of the world's leading Venus experts, it is almost impossible that in what he wrote about Venus, his work was not cited.In the 1960s uncrewed spacecraft returned to Venus and returned to Earth, he made an excellent assessment.He has been fascinated by the question of life on other planets, and the origin of life on Earth.He was one of a group of biologists who confirmed the theory that ultraviolet light from the sun originally produced organic compounds from Earth's primordial atmosphere.He made a laboratory simulation of Earth's primordial atmosphere, which was harmful to life, and bombarded it with ultraviolet light.This action produces a group of chemical compounds called nucleic acids, a basic building block of life.He co-wrote a semi-popular book with fellow Soviet astronomer Shelovsky: Intelligent Beings in the Universe, considered a best-selling authority on such a broad and theoretical subject. Shagang completed an article on Venus in 1961 that may have changed human history in time. In this page, he changes his approach and proposes a bold strategy that no one has ever thought of.He mused for a long time about the terrifying environment of Venus and came to the conclusion that there is a single cause for all planetary, heat, pressure, and super-flexibility problems: the abundance of carbon dioxide gas.He suggested that all difficulties could be solved, and that Venus could be made as habitable as Earth if carbon dioxide could be separated into its two constituent elements: carbon and oxygen. On Earth, splitting carbon dioxide into its two constituent elements is a standard link in the photosynthesis chain.Plants and trees do this every second of the day.The carbon dioxide gas we exhale is reduced to oxygen and carbon by our abundant plants.If there were no plants, and no oceans to produce the rain that nourishes plant life, we would immediately be without oxygen to breathe.Shagang only suggested that if the right plants could be introduced into the atmosphere of Venus, the same thing would happen there, and the carbon dioxide would split to provide the colonists with oxygen to breathe.Shagang and his colleagues believe they have found the ideal form for introducing Venusian plants.