>
>William Elliot wrote to Mark Bloss about Back to Apes
 >>> Mark Bloss on Back to Apes 
 
 MB> Hee!  You're in a hurry huh?  Earth was a greenhouse too, you know?
 WE> Yea, but it got fixed by the early inhabitants.
 
 So could Venus.  A ha!
 
 MB> We aren't going to be setting foot on Venus until it cools
 MB> down in about a billion years or so.  How can you possibly say "we'll
 MB> never set foot there" when you won't be here in a billion years?
 
 WE> What an optimist to think our species will persist for a billion
 WE> years. 
 
 Certainly it is optimistic.  Estimates predict that the Earth will be 
 very much like Mars is now in about a billion or two years.  One, the 
 Earth is moving away from the sun ever so slightly, and two, the Sun 
 is growing ever so slightly cooler, so that in 1 or 2 billion years 
 Earth's orbit will be 1.5x the distance from the sun than it is now, 
 and the sun in 2 billion years will be about 5%-15% cooler.  At that 
 time, the mean temperature on the surface of this planet (if we don't 
 create a nuclear holocaust to keep it warmer) will be about -230 to 
 -170 F.  And if we do create a nuclear holocaust to keep it warmer, 
 that will leave this planet as barren as our neighbor is now with a 
 mean temperature of about -130 to -70 F.
 
 Here is some more speculation:
 
 It is possible, that life didn't begin on Earth, but on Mars instead.
 And the species that thrived there became space-farers like ourselves
 6.5 billion years ago, accidentally or intentionally "seeding" their
 venusian Earth next door, before blowing themselves away in a nuclear
 holocaust.  Who can say what microbes we may already have inadvertantly
 dispersed on various solarian neighbors?
 WE> At 90% Earth gravity and 90 atms we'd have to make rockets 80 times
 WE> more powerful.   
 Okay - but if life has started or will start on Venus - don't you think
 it will adapt to the conditions?  Especially since those conditions will
 drastically change over the next 1 to 2 billion years?  And if we want
 to investigate Venus now, we don't need to make huge rockets.  Just a
 probe about the size of a June Bug will do, and just as powerful.
 
... One fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
--- GEcho 1.11++TAG 2.7c
---------------