04-24-2015, 07:42 PM
Some things to note; Venus has already been terraformed in OA, and most of these technologies were used (active cooling, import of hydrogen/water and oxygen sequestration). Even Landis balloons were used in the earlier history of that planet.
But there are lots of other cytherian (venus-like) worlds in the Terragen Sphere; they may even outnumber lifeless gaians, although we've never run the numbers. So any technique that is at all plausible will probably have been used somewhere.
Finally, as I always do when we discuss terraforming Venus, I'd like to mention that Venus probably has an oxygen surplus; assuming it once had a lot of water, this was split by photolysis and the hydrogen was lost, but the oxygen (and some of the deuterium) remained behind. The most useful way to get rid of this oxygen would be to import hydrogen and create water on the planet. Trouble is, hydrogen is volatile and low density, so it is expensive to import hydrogen rather than drop water ice on the surface; if you import a lot of water then you would need to get rid of a larger quantity of oxygen before the planet becomes fully habitable.
But there are lots of other cytherian (venus-like) worlds in the Terragen Sphere; they may even outnumber lifeless gaians, although we've never run the numbers. So any technique that is at all plausible will probably have been used somewhere.
Finally, as I always do when we discuss terraforming Venus, I'd like to mention that Venus probably has an oxygen surplus; assuming it once had a lot of water, this was split by photolysis and the hydrogen was lost, but the oxygen (and some of the deuterium) remained behind. The most useful way to get rid of this oxygen would be to import hydrogen and create water on the planet. Trouble is, hydrogen is volatile and low density, so it is expensive to import hydrogen rather than drop water ice on the surface; if you import a lot of water then you would need to get rid of a larger quantity of oxygen before the planet becomes fully habitable.