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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (887991)9/15/2015 3:53:12 PM
From: combjelly  Read Replies (2) of 1575300
 
Musk sees it as an insurance policy for humanity. Being bound to one planet means that a single event can eliminate the species. Living in space habitats is pretty precarious. Living on another planet is the best solution. Of all of the planets and moons, Mars is the easiest to terraform with existing technology. Evaporating the CO2 at just the south pole would bulk out the air pressure to about 30%.

Now personally, I think Venus is a better proposition. Not to terraform, that is beyond our technology at the moment. Since the atmosphere is so thick and primarily CO2, that can be taken advantage of. At an altitude where the air pressure is similar to what is at the Earth's surface, the temperature is close to room temperature. There is also enough atmosphere above that point to reduce radiation exposure. Finally, in a CO2 atmosphere, a 70% nitrogen 28% oxygen with 2% other gases mixture has the buoyancy about 2/3s of helium in our atmosphere. So a balloon-ilke structure, filled with breathable air would float at a level where the temperature is tolerable. The structure could be built in place using atmospheric components and some stuff brought from Earth. The navy is experimenting with technology to make jet fuel from sea water. Similar technology could be used to make plastics from the Venusian atmosphere. There are low amounts of nitrogen and oxygen in the Venusian atmosphere, so it is a matter of concentrating them.
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