[Future] Mars & Venus, Terraformed...

[Pbartender]

I was fiddling around with an idea for a D20 Future campaign setting... A little bit of Cowboy Bebop, a little bit of Lucky Starr, a little bit of the Rolling Stones, and a little bit of the Stainless Steel Rat.

The setting is confinded to the solar system (no FTL drives yet), and in general technology is PL6, but on the brink of PL7. Mars and Venus are terraformed and recently colonized. Many of the other planets, moons and asteroids have domed or subterranean habitats.

During my web searches for resources, I found a neat website with a couple of wonderful java applets: http://bulk.vttoth.com/BULK/MOLA/mola.html and http://bulk.vttoth.com/BULK/MOLA/venus.html

They're designed to vary the sea levels on Mars and Venus.

Five minutes, and I've got a great pair of maps for terraformed Mars:

Low Gravity, Thin Atmosphere, Cold World, Barren World.

In general, terraformed Mars has climate and terrain ranging from that of Montana or Wyoming near the equator to sub-arctic at the poles.

and terraformed Venus:

Normal Gravity, Thick Atmosphere, Hot World, Water World.

In general, terraformed Venus has a climate similar to Earth's tropical islands near the poles (the Carribeans or Hawaii), and something like a Finnish sauna near the equator.

 

[Krieg]

Blue Mars (Fractal Terrains):
http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~jslayton/mars/

For CC2 (same page as above):

Blue Mars:
http://members.shaw.ca/evildrganymede/art/planets/bluemars.htm

Cythera (Blue Venus):
http://members.shaw.ca/evildrganymede/art/planets/cytherea.htm

Wet Mars & Venus:
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~pmcgee/teform2.htm

Mars:

Venus:

Red, Green & Blue Mars site (from the books):
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwb/rgbmars.html


Several of the above links also have larger maps of the planets themselves, not just the global views.

 

[Krieg]

*CLICK*

 

[Pbartender]

Very nice, Krieg. I've actually got a really nice map of Mars that I made myself from a grey-scale altitude map of Mars, and a real image map...

http://gallivantingkangaroo.net/images/MarsMap.jpg

On this website:

Cythera (Blue Venus):
http://members.shaw.ca/evildrganymede/art/planets/cytherea.htm

Is the greyscale elevation map of Venus that I'd been looking for and couldn't find... Thanks! I can make a much more detailed Venus map now.

That last set of links (the Australian site) has some really nice images that I'd consider using. The only problem is that I'm using much deeper oceans on Venus (there's an in-game reason for it) than everyone else does... Though I could come up with alternate reasons...

 

[Turanil]

I think that terraforming Mars is much more feasible than terraforming Venus from a scientific perspective. It would require Tech level 7 or even 8, 6 is not enough. I mean, you must bring there asteroids with water-ice and release them in the atmosphere, yet without crashing on the ground like a meteor bomb. It will take hundreds of asteroids to fill oceans. Adding atmosphere to Mars is less difficult (using that method) than removing 90% of Venus CO2 and Sulfuric Acid atmosphere. Once this is done, people still need breath-masks since (unmodified) humans cannot tolerate breathing CO2. Who can fathom the technology level that permits to transform CO2 into a mixture of 80% Nitrogen and 20% Oxygen?

 

[Pbartender]

I think that terraforming Mars is much more feasible than terraforming Venus from a scientific perspective. It would require Tech level 7 or even 8, 6 is not enough. I mean, you must bring there asteroids with water-ice and release them in the atmosphere, yet without crashing on the ground like a meteor bomb. It will take hundreds of asteroids to fill oceans. Adding atmosphere to Mars is less difficult (using that method) than removing 90% of Venus CO2 and Sulfuric Acid atmosphere. Once this is done, people still need breath-masks since (unmodified) humans cannot tolerate breathing CO2. Who can fathom the technology level that permits to transform CO2 into a mixture of 80% Nitrogen and 20% Oxygen?

Oh, certainly Mars is easier than Venus... But once you have generators that manipulate gravity, breaking molecules and atoms down into their component protons, neutrons and electrons then rearranging them into another element shouldn't be that tough.

My reasoning is that, in my campaign setting, Mars was terraformed the slow, old fashioned way... With diverted comets, and properly bred plant-life of increasing complexity as the environment improves.

Now, get ready for some pseudo-science; this is the fiction part of my science fiction...

The trouble with Venus is (1) the vast amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which also causes a very high atmoshperic pressure, and (2) significant concentrations of sulfur dioxide and other acidic poisons. Venus has the right amount of Nitrogen. It just has far, far too much CO2 and no O2... That's an easy conversion.

Venus, in my game, will have been the first great experiment in bio-engineering. Organisms (namely green slime, brown mold, and their ilk...) were built specifically to remove the CO2 and other toxins from the Venusian atmosphere and convert it directly into oxygen, water, soil, and other byproducts. This would have the effect of producing a breathable atmosphere, reducing the surface pressure from 92 bar to just over 1 bar, eliminating the planet's greenhouse effect, and creating a fertile base of soil and water.

It worked, for the most part, but the organisms produced much more water than the scientists and engineers expected, almost completely flooding the planet.

According to NASA:

Atmospheric composition (near surface, by volume):
Major: 96.5% Carbon Dioxide (CO2), 3.5% Nitrogen (N2)
Minor (ppm): Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) - 150; Argon (Ar) - 70; Water (H2O) - 20; Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 17; Helium (He) - 12; Neon (Ne) - 7

Getting rid of the Carbon Dioxide and using some of it to make Oxygen would fix a lot of the problem.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

I belive one theory as to why the Martian atmosphere is so thin is that it was ripped away by a rogue meteor that drifted to close. You might intentionally do the same to Venus, if you have gavity manipulators.

 

[Pbartender]

I belive one theory as to why the Martian atmosphere is so thin is that it was ripped away by a rogue meteor that drifted to close. You might intentionally do the same to Venus, if you have gavity manipulators.

Now there's a great idea... a gravitic siphon.

You could send some of the extra to Mars.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Redirecting the meteor past one planet would require what, 20+ ranks in astrophysics.

I don't want to be the one to crunch the numbers for a bank shot.
(Hmm, smilies not working... Well, this is me cringing.)

 

[Pbartender]

No... I don't mean using the Gravity Generators to fly an asteroid by, I mean using the Gravity Generators themselves to suck the CO2 out directly. Set up a chain of Gravity Generators leading out into space, and you've got yourself an atmospheric bucket brigade.