Venus
Description
Venus is at the centre of a concerted terraforming operation by a concerted corporate effort, a private answer to the publicly oriented terraforming operations on Mars. Despite Venus having no life upon it and no evidence of any past life upon it, despite its hellish conditions and despite the great wealth and understanding developing it could bring to mankind some ‘ecological’ protestors have been trying to sabotage the programme to preserve a second planet from being ‘vandalised’, as they see it. Despite their attempts Venus is a hive of activity on the surface and in orbit with monitoring stations manned by the participating corporate entities to observe the slow process of terraforming and ships constantly bringing, or shunting, cometary ice to bombard the atmosphere, provide water and cool the surface along with a flight of solar shade, superimposed between the planet’s orbit and the sun to bring its temperature down and to tame the runaway greenhouse effect present on the surface.
Government
The Venusian terraforming project is fronted by several of Earth’s largest corporate entities. Not satisfied with having their own legal territory in the form of corporate embassies and space stations they have undertaken to make their own habitable planet which can be parcelled up, bought and sold and otherwise exploited as these companies see fit. This effort is governed by a corporate council maintained with special representatives of the five involved corporations and advised by members of the companies they have subcontracted to. Voting power on the board is determined by investment in the project and assets committed to it. Companies that wish to have more influence and control over the project are, therefore, incited to commit more to its progress.
Geography
Venus is Earth’s tempestuous twin. Almost the same size as Earth and with much the same gravity Venus is almost a story of what Earth could have been. Extreme volcanism and other conditions on Venus lead to a runaway greenhouse effect that evaporated all the water, split it into hydrogen and oxygen and then outgassed most of the hydrogen from the atmosphere, leaving Venus with a hot blanket of carbon dioxide as its primary atmospheric component and clouds of sulphuric acid to add insult to injury and to make its name – that of a love goddess – all the more inappropriate. The efforts to terraform Venus are put forward at what amounts, for terraforming, as breakneck speed employing and testing any and all technologies or methods that might work from solar shades to cometary bombardment, nanotechnology and synthetic and artificial bacterial cloud seeding using modified bacteria from Earth that thrive in the harshest of conditions. All attempts to thin and cool Venus’ atmosphere, to introduce water and to bind the sulphur and carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Starport quality
A, Naval, Scout, Research, TAS
Size
8
Atmosphere Type
5
Hydrographic Percentage
5
Population
A
Government Type
4(F)
Law Level
9
Tech Level
E
Price Multiplier
1.5
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