# terraforming



## 3blake7 (Jun 14, 2015)

I am working on a story that takes place 600 years in the future so I've had to do a fair amount of research on the rate of advancement of technology, population growth, etc; to get a realistic idea of what the world would be like 600 years from now. One of the biggest things is immortality and I got help on that. I read articles on it and someone on the science forums explained where the field of study is on that one. Basically it's 30 years optimistically and pretty much guaranteed in a 100 years. I did population projections already and had to come up with solutions to avoid extreme population control measures. One was subterranean cities, to save the surface land for tree farms and livestock. They would be nearly self-sustaining and have LED hydroponics. The next thing is terraforming but by then our population is so huge the growth is nearly unmanageable and terraforming entire planets only buys us a couple hundred years. That's what I would like to talk about. I have attempted more science based forums but the threads went off topic and it was ultimately a disaster. 

So.. The approach is, to build a StarTram with a 300 megagram payload capacity, then use it to send up about 200 autonomous spacecraft. There would be a surveyor, excavator, hauler, loader, feeder and crusher; which all exist already and have been made mobile. There would also be a separator, smelters, mold casters, part casters, grinders and assemblers. All of those exist but not as mobile machines. We would send the autonomous spacecraft to the asteroid belt and possibly the moon as well. They would mine iron, nickel, manganese, carbon and aluminium to make steel. I read that M-type asteroids can be 90% iron and 5% nickel and since they are so pure they can skip to the smelters. That makes the asteroid belt more efficient I assume. At first the autonomous space industry would mine steel and thorium to build more of themselves. After about 22 years of self-replication, they would begin making steel and building a Venus Spacescraper, a Venus Sunshade and around 340 million supertankers. The supertankers are 20 gigaliters, that's like 4 Empire State buildings and have 10 gigawatt liquid fluoride thorium reactors, which is enough to power NYC and they are propelled by magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters. I calculated that a space industry that self-replicated for 22 years, would be able to make enough steel for everything within 100 years. So after 122 years, it would take another 450 years to terraform Venus, Mars and the moon. The supertankers would move carbon dioxide from Venus to Mars and The Moon. It would also move Hydrogen from Jupiter to Venus, Mars and The Moon. It would move water from Ceres to Mars. The Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide would be converted into water using the Bosch reaction. Some would also be converted into Urea using the Haber process, to fertilize Venus and Mars. Schreibersite mined from the M-Type asteroids, which are high in phosphorus would be used to fertilize Venus and Mars. 

Thats the basic plan. I have a not-perfect spreadsheet that I would like some help on. Maybe I am going into too much detail, lol

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iWafabsRk7x09R5-iQ5UtrVkoOfj22ImoC-bwlyKKwk/edit?usp=sharing

Some concerns I have are traffic jams at Venus. Also, where thorium can be found, I know the moon has some but I was hoping it can be found in the asteroid belt as well. Another concern was the ability to move large populations of people into space, which I solved with an Antarctic Spacescraper, with 8 StarTrams on it's compass rose like configuration. I roughly estimated it could do 400 million a year if it launched a vehicle out of one of it's eight tubes every 15 minutes. That would mean that the Antarctica space scrapper would have to be built by +122 years, and immediately start sending people into space. The autonomous space industry can start mass producing space stations at that point.


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## Terry D (Jun 15, 2015)

I would suggest not bogging down your story with an overabundance of technical detail. Those details exist to support the story not to replace it. You can't create a completely accurate description of terraforming because it has not yet been accomplished, we don't know what it will really take to do it. You can, however, create a process which, though ultimately flawed, is realistic enough to support your story without being implausible. No reader is going to want to know everything there is to know about terraforming. They want a story. It's good for you to understand the science, but you need to remember that only about 10% of your research will end up in your book.


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## 3blake7 (Jun 16, 2015)

Thanks Terry. I didn't originally intend to put all this in a story, it was more to help me come up with the universe the story would take place in. Like so far the universe has hundreds of billion living on space stations throughout the solar system, everyone's immortal, and Mars, Venus and Luna have been terraformed and there is a mass colonization of people living in space. It's the year 2600. It's a little aggressive, 2700 would be more realistic.


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## Terry D (Jun 16, 2015)

3blake7 said:


> Thanks Terry. I didn't originally intend to put all this in a story, it was more to help me come up with the universe the story would take place in. Like so far the universe has hundreds of billion living on space stations throughout the solar system, everyone's immortal, and Mars, Venus and Luna have been terraformed and there is a mass colonization of people living in space. It's the year 2600. It's a little aggressive, 2700 would be more realistic.



It's a bold concept. Good luck with it. I'm glad to hear that you aren't intending to try and get all of your research into the story. Too many writers get so wrapped up in the science that they forget the story.


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