From: vincent@triumfunspam.ca.retro.com   
      
   on Fri, 06 May 2005 00:08:55 +0100, Peter Fairbrother    
   sez:   
   ` James Nicoll wrote:   
      
   ` >  wrote:   
   `   
   ` >> It seems to me that I'd rather have Venus than Mars in   
   ` >> co-orbit with Earth.  It's closer to the right size, which   
   ` >> means it can hang on to more atmosphere, which helps a   
   ` >> lot.   
   ` >   
   ` > But Venus is very H poor, because it's at the wrong end   
   ` > of billions of years of conditions that are very unlike Earth's.   
   ` > Mars, OTOH, is frozen but not nearly as H poor (Which doesn't   
   ` > make it H rich, of course).   
      
   ` So the correct way to move Venus is to form a large magnetic field and use   
   ` it to collect hydrogen and momentum from the solar wind, thus solving two   
   ` problems at once. Neat.   
      
   ` Perhaps better than my earlier idea (posted here some time ago) of using a   
   ` big rubber band stretched between Venus and Mars.   
      
   I proposed the idea here some years ago of firing ions of opposite charge   
   at each planet until the electrostatic attraction trumped orbital inertia.   
   It was a standard excercise in high school to compute what charge would be   
   needed between earth and moon to keep the latter in orbit, and the number   
   comes out to around 6x10^13 coulomb, which means a coupla megAmps for a   
   year. Nudging planets would require more, but still not utterly unfeasible   
   numbers. The trick is just to get the ions to agree to carry the planets   
   along as they move to neutralize their charge...   
      
   --   
   ==========================================================================   
       vincent@triumf[munge].ca                            Pete Vincent   
           Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.   
      
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