Re: SETI and The Fermi Paradox

 On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:08:06 -0700 (PDT), BradGuth <bradguth@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sep 2, 1:15�am, Puck Greenman <dubh.gh...@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 21:04:36 -0700 (PDT), BradGuth <bradg...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sep 1, 1:16�pm, Puck Greenman <dubh.gh...@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 06:32:13 -0700 (PDT), BradGuth <bradg...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sep 1, 5:40�am, Puck Greenman <dubh.gh...@hotmail.com> wrote:

snip

There's even plans on hold by an obscure group within NASA (meaning
public funded) that already has most everything figured out. �With
their likely employment demise, of being asked to leave because of
insufficient funding, there's a good chance these same folks could be
obtained as consultants and engineers for either accomplishing their
original mission ideas or those of mine.

That assumes that cost, is not an issue.

The raw elements of Venus are worth trillions upon trillions.


Perhaps, but for what it would cost, to get just one working mine on Venus, and ignoring
the cost of first finding your ore, you could mine the whole asteroid belt.


I'm certain William Mook would agree with that.  I do not.

But let us go with that for now.

Moving about safely in hostile �environments, requires two things, protection from the
environment, and a bolt hole.

On the surface of Venus, your diving suit, if I can use the analogy, would probably be
some sort of vehicle, and your bolt hole, would be a biosphere, of some sort; yes?.

No. �Human DNA doesn't care about pressure. �Your physiology can
adjust to pressure a whole lot better than it can adjust to vacuum.


The DNA, may not, but the rest of the body does.


Not really all that insurmountable, because it'll all equalize.


Bullshit!

The only way to work under that kind of pressure is saturation, or containment, as in a
submarine type vehicle.

Prolonged saturation is out.

A sustained pressure of as little as three or four atmospheres can, and does, have
disastrous effects on the metabolism.

For example, the bones soften,.

It happens to deep water divers, and it happens to navies, digging tunnels under rivers,
where increased air pressure is used to hold the water back.

Farther, saturation at that kind of pressure would mean that you needed enormous backup
pressure in your air tanks, in order to breath.

With a thousand psi in your tanks, your lungs would be crushed flat.

Thirteen hundred PSI might just allow you a few gasping breaths, then suffocation.

Don't take my word for it, go ask at your local diving school, about the pressure
requirements, and the damage that prolonged exposure to high pressure can do. 

Or you could ask your Union rep, about the health risks of working under compression, if
you work in the construction trade,


Six hundred feet is about the deepest that a free, saturation diver can reach, you are
talking a pressure of about five times that.


Your lack of such knowledge and inability to constructively think
deductively is noted.


Yeah, right.

France offers a 1000 psi habitat cell, although
others should exist.


Relevance?

Both have �several requirements in common, but the two that first spring to mind, are

1: Hermetic seals, capable of withstanding the heat, the corrosive atmosphere, �and the
atmospheric pressure �(about 1260 > 1300 psi) .

To give you an idea, 300 ft of water is about �10 bar, 140 > 150 psi

For your bolt hole, you may be able to find something that, with the aid of extensive
insulation, and minimal exposure, will suffice for a while.

Your vehicle, OTOH, will be somewhat more difficult, as all of it's external moving parts,
will need flexible protection.

Then there is your landing craft.

It will need seals which will function, both in the intense cold of outer space and in the
lead melting heat of Venus surface.

It will also need to be able to withstand ninety several atmospheres, which will make it
one very heavy baby, but it will need to be able to reach escape velocity in a very dense
atmosphere.

2: Thermal insulation.

For your bolt hole, I would suggest a tunnel, a hundred feet �down in the bed rock, but
for your diving suit, I know of no technology �that would give protection, and allow
reasonable mobility.

You're making more trouble and grief out of this than necessary. �For
the moment, forget about waking around on that toasty surface, because
we'll obviously get to that later.


Walking was the last thing that I had in mind.

However, if you cannot move about on the surface, how are you to retrieve these trillions
of dollars worth of treasures?


Rigid airships


What makes you think that rigid airships would be any easier to construct for that
environment than for our own?

Besides, you cannot get a balloon into orbit, especial with a 300Km jet stream to
negotiate, so you still need landers

and otherwise mostly robotics.


And where would these robots get their power?

You can't use solar energy, and we cannot build atomic reactors small enough to be of any
use.

Wind energy is probably out too, as the highest recorded wind speed on the surface is
barely a force three, less than 8mph.

Surface habitats would
come come later, although significant structures seem to exist as is
(hope they're mostly unoccupied).


What?   On the surface of Venus?

I think that you get too much of your information, from comics.

What is your expertise?

I'm an engineer.

Then we engineer, rather than procrastinate, exaggerate the negatives
and otherwise whine a lot.


But you don't engineer, you fantasise.

�Start thinking like an Einstein, and just
make things happen in spite of what others are thinking.


Just like that huh?

What expertise have you of alloy and composite rigid airships? (we got
<82 kg/m3 buoyancy and only 90.5% gravity to work with)


What exactly do you mean by "composite"?
Which alloys, and which composites, did you have in mind?


Either any number suitable metal alloys


For example?

and/or a composite of basalt
fibers and milliballoons


Milliballoons, Mm, that is a new one on me.

I assume that you are referring to some sort of bubbles filled with a light gas.

using a thermally suitable binder.


For example?


Farther: Assuming that you could build it, what would you do with it?


Unlike yourself, I'd use logic along with my imagination, and
otherwise stick within the laws of physics.


So you don't actually know; Okay.

You seem clearly unaware
of the payload hauling capacity of such a rigid airship.


I am very well aware of the capabilities of dirigibles.

I am also very well aware of the limitations, and one of the limitations is that they are
notoriously slow and unwieldy, even in the best of conditions.

Remote control, does nothing to help that lack of maneuverability .

Another is that no airship, will ever make orbit which still leaves you with the problem
of getting your treasures, back home.