Absolutely true, but Mars also lacks a global magnetic field. It does have large, localised fields, but you're right, in comparison, it receives far less solar radiation than Venus.

With regards Venus' heavy atmosphere, I'm assuming we would be able to terraform it to reverse the greenhouse effect (somehow!), which would reduce the surface temperature to bearable levels.

The long Venusian day is a problem, but you've got to offset that against the much lower Martian gravity. I've seen some fairly exotic solutions for both the radiation and long day, involving orbital screens amongst other things. I have no idea how feasible these would be given current technology.

In either case, you'd probably have to start life off in bio-domes. I'll have to dig up some articles about the terraforming of both planets. I personally feel that Venus could be a much better candidate. Heck, let's do 'em both! After all, Venus may have been very much like Earth a few billion years ago.

There's also the options of Ganymede and Titan, although Jupiter's own intense magnetosphere could be a problem with Ganymede.

As long as there are trees and libraries, orangutans can live anywhere

It may be that we establish space colonies well before we colonise other planets.

I'm just hoping we invent FTL drives sometime soon. Then we can go to alien planets and make strange patterns in their cornfields and abduct their yokels just to confuse them

I think that the moons of Jupiter are probably the best spot to terraform, for the reasons listed above. But I personally don't think a manned mission to Mars is worth the cost and time, because anything that needs done on Mars can be done quicker and MUCH safer with robots. Manned missions are not needed until probes identify class M planets, or until we establish a moon base.

You mean PQ15 planets right? LOL

The current plan is to estabish a moon base first, then go to Mars.

Direct would be cheaper.
Proposed in "Mission to Mars" from one of the Mars society guys

OK, dug out a few old articles on Venusian terraforming.

The lack of a magnetic field on Venus is not necessarily a problem. Assuming the atmosphere could be transformed into an Earth-like one, it should provide sufficient shielding from radiation - Earth's would, even in the absence of the Van Allen belts.

It could be possible to stimulate a magnetic sphere, and solve the day/night issue by increasing Venus' rotation speed. Controlled asteroid strikes is one suggestion (although I'm somewhat sceptical of this). Moving a large body into orbit to provide angular momentum is another I've seen, but don't think this would be sufficient, from what I've seen of the maths.

However, the day/night issue again, isn't a significant problem as having a cycle that is completely divorced from the natural circadian rhythm is far better than one that is within a percentage. Humans would have difficulty adapting to a 28 hour day, for example, but if you ignored the day length completely, it might well prove to be a simpler adaptation.

The biggest problem with terraforming Venus is providing sufficient quantities of hydrogen to combine with the oxygen to form water, and what to do with the excess oxygen left over. Much of the atmosphere would have to be either removed or combined into rocks (the carbon, for example) if it were to be retained.

Nanotechnology might provide the answers to these problems, rather than organic terraforming.

You are probably right in that Mars would be easier to terraform. It is certainly capable of maintaining a thick enough atmosphere to support humans, but I still believe that Venus would ultimately provide a more terran-like environment.

Sorry to be so vague but it's nearly 3am and my brain is shutting down for the night

Small issue with the venusian day. Even if you terraformed the atmosphere, you wouldn't be able to grow any chlorophyll-based plants in the wild. You may be able to set up huge external lighting and heat systems in localized areas, but I don't know of many plants that can survive for a YEAR without any light at all. And, without venus's greenhouse effect, I imagine it would get pretty chilly at night, given than a night lasts all year...

I think what Ook Ook was trying to say with the asteroids is to speed up the day. If he wasn't, a polar shot or equatorial shot might do the trick if it was just right.

Certainly, but on a very long timescale, geological systems take ages to respond to external stimuli, for example Scotland is still moving up and the south of England is dropping as the landmass recovers from the loss of the weight of the icesheet from the last Ice age, so how the Venusian crust would react to the loss of all that pressure would be unpredicable and last a long time. I would be suprised if humans could walk unprotected on Venus within 5,000 years!
Don't get me wrong, I would love it if it wasn't so, but wanting something don't make it true.


Superficially they seem to be, but the gas giants are so radioactive that when the Pioneer (or Voyager or whatever) probes passed then the glass in the camera ports turned black, it takes a lot of radioactivity to do that, so much in fact that unless you really want children with two heads and a very short life expectancy, I'd avoid them.


True, except where you say a polar shot you should say about 10 shots an hour for few years; planetary masses are huge, also any rapid change in motion would cause even more geological stress for the poor planet.

Here's a thought though, if we were to speed up Venus, perhaps using some of the asteroid belt as reaction mass, the additional rotational speed would probably throw off some of the atmosphere which would be a good start to terraformation, also the increased rotation in the solar flux would probably increase the magnetic field, so although it would be a very long term project, hell, lets start chucking rocks at Venus. It's not like we could make it a worse place to live.
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