I was just watching a documentary about travelling to/from Mars & colonisation, etc, and I was wondering about the exploration of Venus. True enough we’d never be able to walk around on the surface any time soon, but I got to thinking about how to build a long-term floating base in the atmosphere.
Assuming you could generate enough power, given that the atmosphere there is made up largely of CO2, N, and H2SO4, what plastics & other materials could be made from those compounds/elements? Could they used for structural materials?

Spiny Norman said:

I was just watching a documentary about travelling to/from Mars & colonisation, etc, and I was wondering about the exploration of Venus. True enough we’d never be able to walk around on the surface any time soon, but I got to thinking about how to build a long-term floating base in the atmosphere.
Assuming you could generate enough power, given that the atmosphere there is made up largely of CO2, N, and H2SO4, what plastics & other materials could be made from those compounds/elements? Could they used for structural materials?

Given the abundance of carbon dioxide, the manufacture of carbon fibre/graphite composites, which have high temperature tolerance.
H2SO4, water and other hydrogen-bearing compounds are somewhat rare in the atmosphere, about 25 parts per million: although carbon fibre/graphite composites are nearly 100% carbon, synthesis of them usually involve hydrogen-bearing intermediate compounds.

So you would have to have a very efficient process that recaptured all the water/acid used in making the composites, or have a major operation extracting that 25 ppm.

If you’d been reading Wookie’s newsletter you’d know all about this SN.

Good thing about having a dense CO2 atmosphere is that even nitrogen gas is strongly buoyant.

dv said:

Good thing about having a dense CO2 atmosphere is that even nitrogen gas is strongly buoyant.

OK, so we can cross a repeat of the Hindenburg incident of our list.

Spiny Norman said:

I was just watching a documentary about travelling to/from Mars & colonisation, etc, and I was wondering about the exploration of Venus. True enough we’d never be able to walk around on the surface any time soon, but I got to thinking about how to build a long-term floating base in the atmosphere.
Assuming you could generate enough power, given that the atmosphere there is made up largely of CO2, N, and H2SO4, what plastics & other materials could be made from those compounds/elements? Could they used for structural materials?

I personally think that the risks associated with people walking around on the surface of Venus have been overstated, but perhaps not.

My very first contribution to the forum about landing on Venus was called “let’s send a toilet to Venus”. Rocks are perfectly stable on the the surface of Venus, and ceramics are artificial rocks. Using a piston to compress the atmosphere to create a compressed safe zone for sensitive electronics was another innovation of mine.

Building with ceramics using natural stuff from the surface if Venus would suit me. Call it synrock.

High in Venus atmosphere, the temperature and pressure are simultaneously comfortable. Certainly a range of plastics could be made from the CO2, H2O, N and sulfur compounds. Ditto carbon fibre. But remember that water is only 20 ppm in the atmosphere and so the extremely important hydrogen is very rare. Without the hydrogen you can say goodbye to all of the plastics. For polymers that leaves a range of modified carbon compounds including for example disulphide bridges, ketones and nitrogen substituting for carbon. The real key to making useful materials would be getting rid of the oxygen, separating it out for breathing.

Can we get to Mars first?

tauto said:

Can we get to Mars first?

1. The cheapest way to Mars is via Venus. Literally.
2. Venus is the Earth’s twin. Mars isn’t.

dv said:

Spiny Norman said:

I was just watching a documentary about travelling to/from Mars & colonisation, etc, and I was wondering about the exploration of Venus. True enough we’d never be able to walk around on the surface any time soon, but I got to thinking about how to build a long-term floating base in the atmosphere.
Assuming you could generate enough power, given that the atmosphere there is made up largely of CO2, N, and H2SO4, what plastics & other materials could be made from those compounds/elements? Could they used for structural materials?

Given the abundance of carbon dioxide, the manufacture of carbon fibre/graphite composites, which have high temperature tolerance.
H2SO4, water and other hydrogen-bearing compounds are somewhat rare in the atmosphere, about 25 parts per million: although carbon fibre/graphite composites are nearly 100% carbon, synthesis of them usually involve hydrogen-bearing intermediate compounds.

So you would have to have a very efficient process that recaptured all the water/acid used in making the composites, or have a major operation extracting that 25 ppm.

Given that oxygen, carbon and nitrogen are by far the most common elements there, I thought I would look up polymers requiring only carbon and nitrogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nitride

Beta carbon nitride (β-C3N4) is a superhard material predicted to be harder than diamond.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is a family of compounds with a general formula near to C3N4 and structures based on heptazine units. It has useful catalytic properties. Graphitic carbon nitride can be made by polymerization of cyanamide, dicyandiamide or melamine.

There’s also paracyanogen polymer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanogen#Paracyanogen
The structure of this polymeric material is thought to be rather irregular, with most of the carbon atoms being of sp2 type and localized domains of pi conjugation.

And dicyanopolyyne polymer. But that’s not so useful.
Dicyanopolyynes are composed of a chain of carbon atoms with alternating single and triple bonds, terminated by nitrogen atoms.

You could also synthesise oxycarbon chemicals from CO2 in the atmosphere of Venus.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxocarbon
These tend to be metastable, but can be quite big.

What do you call a chemical made up only of elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen?

mollwollfumble said:

There’s also paracyanogen polymer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanogen#Paracyanogen
The structure of this polymeric material is thought to be rather irregular, with most of the carbon atoms being of sp2 type and localized domains of pi conjugation.

And dicyanopolyyne polymer. But that’s not so useful.
Dicyanopolyynes are composed of a chain of carbon atoms with alternating single and triple bonds, terminated by nitrogen atoms.

You could also synthesise oxycarbon chemicals from CO2 in the atmosphere of Venus.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxocarbon
These tend to be metastable, but can be quite big.

What do you call a chemical made up only of elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen?

Unstable.