Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Venus as the Moon
This is an idea I’ve had, what if the Solar System formed differently with the result of the planet Venus taking the place of our Moon in orbit around Earth and our Moon taking its position in Venus’s orbit? To make it so that Venus doesn’t dominate our skies nor tidally lock itself or the Earth, I’m removing this satellite to an orbital diameter of 1,300,832 km, instead of the Moon’s distance of 384,400 km. This changes the length of a lunar month from 27.322 days to 170.87 days with about 2.14 months per year. I’ve checked this orbit and it seems that the attraction between Venus and Earth is greater than the difference in attraction between the Sun and Venus when it is closest to the Sun in its orbit about Earth and when its farthest away in that same orbit. You want numbers? Ok, the gravitational pull of Earth at 1,300,832 km is 0.000024 g and the difference in gravitational pull of the Sun at the distances of 148,699,168 km and 151,300,832 km is 0.000021 g and this does not take into account the gravitational pull of Venus on Earth, its seems that although this orbit is extreme, it is orbitally possible.
Another consideration is the tides of our new satellite, Our moon exerts a difference of gravitational force between the Earth’s nearside and far side of about 0.00000022 g, replace the Moon at about 384,400 km with Venus at 1,300,832 km and we get a difference of gravitational forces of about 0.00000038 g, in other words the tides would be 173% of what they are now, and high tide would be 173% of what we experience now, this is not too bad and civilization can adjust. As for the length of day, on Earth it remains 24 hours; on Venus I’ll substitute the value obtained by Jean-Dominique Cassini in 1666 of 23 hours and 21 minutes.
Venus appears in our skies as a blue-white disk of the same apparent diameter as our Sun or the Moon, it goes through phases similar to the Moon but it is also seen rotating. A complete cycle of phases takes about a year because a complete revolution of Venus around Earth takes an amount of time equal to half a revolution of the Earth around the Sun. In this altered Earth’s History, the year is not split into months. Instead the date is simply the year plus a number of days, or substituting for months we could use the signs of the Zodiac. When the Sun appears in a certain constellation in our sky that indicates what time of year it is, there are 12 Zodiac constellations and so on this Earth Astrology was more influential in the formation of the calendar than in ours. A ‘sign’ is a period of time roughly equivalent to a month with a variable number of days. So instead of saying its, May 3, 2005, you might say Aquarius 3, 2005 or whatever. The Zodiac sign indicates what time of the year it is, and gives people an idea of what the season is.
The Constellations of the year are as follows: Winter Gemini (31 days), Cancer(28 days, 29 on leap years), Leo (31 days); Spring Virgo(30 days), Libra (31 days), Scorpius (30 days); Summer Sagittarius (31 days), Capricorn (31 days), Aquarius (30 days); Autumn Pisces (31 days), Aries (30 days), Taurus (31 days). Unlike Our calendar, this calendar ends its year in late fall rather than in winter. New Years day comes before Christmas and Traditionally Christmas is celebrated on Gemini 8th, however the Russian Orthadox Church celebrates it on Gemini 25th.
History has preceded much like it did in our universe, the continents are in the same places as are the borders between nations. The fact that the ‘Moon’ is blue, has oceans and an atmosphere with clouds has attracted the imaginations of astronomers and science fiction writers. Some time in the late 1940s a V2 Rocket was launched above the atmosphere and a spectrographic analysis was taken of the “Moon’s” atmosphere and it was confirmed to have an atmosphere much like Earths. Ground based telescopes have confirmed the existence of rivers and vegetation on its surface. Radio communication was attempted with the ‘Moon’, but no response ever came other than a radar echo. The arrangement of continents on Venus are the same as on the real Venus, except that there are oceans filling all regions below the 0 km mean elevation datum. Typically take a map of the real Venus and everything you see that is green or blue is covered with water. Two main continents dominate the planet, those are Ishtar and the equator straddling Aphrodite. A lot of smaller land masses also dot the oceans. In 1957 Sputnik was launched and President Kennedy later announced his decision to land a Man on the Moon before this decade is out, and the Apollo program had begun. The main problem was that while a rocket capable of delivering people to the Moons surface was possible, bringing the astronauts safely back to the Earth was out of the question for chemical rockets such as the Saturn V. The solution was helped by two things, the first was the Moon’s Earthlike environment, and the second was the public fears about astronauts bring back deadly diseases obviously these was life on Venus, whether it was a danger to humans was yet to be determined. The solution was simple, don’t worry about bringing the Astronauts back, send them over and keep them resupplied by further rockets as necessary, eventually the Nerva Nuclear Rocket engine will be developed and will be capable of bringing them back to Earth, but the important thing was to beat the Soviets to the Moon. Surveyor probes were sent, and those that reached its surface sent back pictures of alien plant life although plant life with green leaves and so forth. Rovers tend to get bogged down after a time unless they are in deserts or in high artic regions, weather proves to be a problem for the long term survivability of remote controlled probes.
Apollo 11 is now on the Launch Pad, its 1969 and the huge moonship takes of from the launch pad 39a. There is no Moon lander. Instead there is an enlarged Apollo Capsule with Heat Shields and parachute with additional mass devoted to landing rockets so a touch down on solid ground can be achieved.
Now I ask the audience, how would you design such a mission? Would you have more than 3 astronauts onboard? Since the mission does not call for a return to Earth, the additional mass that would otherwise be used for the return stages can be devoted instead to the landing capsule. What would you bring, keeping it limited to TL 7 of course?
