Gas Torus Around Venus

[Tom Kalbfus]

Remember the Smoke Ring by Larry Niven? What if we built an artificial one around Venus, give it an orbital period of 3 hours, and we enclose this atmosphere in a balloon like structure much like a thin inflatable doughnut. the torus is a zero-gee environment, and the walls of this balloon keep the atmosphere from escaping. The atmosphere of Venus can be skimmed to collect the gases the fill the torus, the oxygen would be separated out from the carbon dioxide, The nitrogen would also be obtained from Venus, water would likely be imported. The torus would be about 200 km thick with lots of clouds, that would tend to filter out the intense sunshine towards the middle. The atmospheric pressure would not diminish much as one moved towards the transparent walls of this torus and would be breathable by humans throughout.

 

[Reynard]

" Due to the similarity in pressure and temperature and the fact that breathable air (21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen) is a lifting gas on Venus in the same way that helium is a lifting gas on Earth, the upper atmosphere has been proposed as a location for both exploration and colonization."

There, Bespin's Cloud City.

 

[simonh]

The torus would be about 200 km thick with lots of clouds, that would tend to filter out the intense sunshine towards the middle.

edited - maths error

I make that about 11 x 10^15 tons of air. That's 63 billion times to total mass of all the gold ever mined in human history. It's also roughly double the mass of the atmosphere of the Earth, because ours does decrease in density very rapidly with altitude while yours has a fairly uniform density.

Venus has a much denser atmosphere than ours, but 96% of it is carbon dioxide. To form a breathable nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere in the torus you'd need to extract all the nitrogen in the Venus atmosphere. It's touch and go, but there might just be enough. If not you'd need to transport the last few hundred trillion tons of the stuff you'd need to make up the shortfall from Earth. Oxygen shouldn't be a problem because you can process that from the carbon dioxide.

What would you make the walls of the torus out of?

Simon Hibbs

 

[JBRocky]

" Due to the similarity in pressure and temperature and the fact that breathable air (21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen) is a lifting gas on Venus in the same way that helium is a lifting gas on Earth, the upper atmosphere has been proposed as a location for both exploration and colonization."

There, Bespin's Cloud City.

Dang beat me to it, but you are correct it could be just like Cloud City not to mention a better place to colonize than Mars.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The torus would be about 200 km thick with lots of clouds, that would tend to filter out the intense sunshine towards the middle.

edited - maths error

I make that about 11 x 10^15 tons of air. That's 63 billion times to total mass of all the gold ever mined in human history. It's also roughly double the mass of the atmosphere of the Earth, because ours does decrease in density very rapidly with altitude while yours has a fairly uniform density.

Venus has a much denser atmosphere than ours, but 96% of it is carbon dioxide. To form a breathable nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere in the torus you'd need to extract all the nitrogen in the Venus atmosphere. It's touch and go, but there might just be enough. If not you'd need to transport the last few hundred trillion tons of the stuff you'd need to make up the shortfall from Earth. Oxygen shouldn't be a problem because you can process that from the carbon dioxide.

What would you make the walls of the torus out of?

Simon Hibbs

Carbon, from the carbon-dioxide, I hear its a very strong material in the right form, say diamond for instance?