How To Terraform Venus (Quickly)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Offered as a readable explainer whenever Venus terraforming or alternatives to Mars colonization come up.
What it is
Kurzgesagt lays out a speculative plan to terraform Venus, covering its hostile atmosphere and how it might be made Earth-like, with a sources page linked.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2021 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends nerpderp82 · 2021-07 · on “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight (2016)”
You might enjoy this video on terraforming Venus, [this video] I think we should consider the whole solar system our galactic ship while making sure to keep the current habitation quarters in top notch shape.
Recommends Gigachad · 2021-09 · on “Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel”
There is a decent kurzgesagt video explaining what transforming a new planet would look like [this video] Essentially it would be almost infinitely easier to reverse all climate change on earth than to make another planet livable but it is in theory possible.
Recommends headcanon · 2022-06 · on “MIT researchers propose Brazil-sized fleet of “space bubbles” to cool the Earth”
There's a good video on this that talks about how a similar technique might be used to terraform Venus over hundreds of years [0] The main physics problem I see is that Langrange points are naturally unstable [1], so the bubbles would need to be constantly correcting their orbit. This problem would be compounded by solar radiation "blowing" the bubbles back to Earth. There are clever ways to mitigate this for other designs which are addressed in the video, but I don't see it addressed in the article. Edit: it looks like it is addressed somewhat in the source article linked in another comment, by placing the bubbles a bit further towards the sun than the L1 point to compensate for solar winds
Recommends chasil · 2026-02 · on “Where did all the starships go?”
The Kurzgesagt video on teraforming Venus is interesting. It only takes a thousand years, assuming perfect execution. [this video]
Cites TrainedMonkey · 2022-01 · on “How the Soviets put a lander on Venus”
Kurzgesagt did a video on terraforming Venus [this video] My amateurish take on it - total effort to terraform Venus might be lower, however exploring/colonizing Mars is much easier.
Cites downrightmike · 2022-07 · on “Mars Colonization Will Never Happen”
It would only take a few hundred years to turn Venus into a pretty close Earth analog. It has issues to be dealt with, but would really have much more resources available that Mars. Even solar power would be more viable on Venus than Mars. Plus it would give us a good midway point to start planet harvesting Mercury if we wanted it. [this video]
Cites barbariangrunge · 2023-06 · on “Mars Declared Unsafe For Humans: No one can survive for longer than four years”
A friend showed me this once while we were taking about how radiation sort of makes mars colonization unviable How to terraform Venus quickly: [this video]
Cites avmich · 2024-06 · on “Everything about Mars is the worst (2017)”
You'd think Venus would be much worse in this regard than Mars. Then you get these suggestions - [this video] - and start thinking...