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From: REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: plants living on Venus
Message-ID: <16811@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Feb-84 08:15:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.16811
Posted: Fri Feb 17 08:15:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Feb-84 04:00:55 EST
Lines: 18

From:  Robert Elton Maas 

The other day I came up with a neat idea. Let's build plants that can
live on Venus, not on the solid surface under the clouds, but on the
top of the clouds, with roots that extend into the clouds to suck up
sulfur and other nutrients and with solar panels (leaves) that collect
solar energy and radiate back microwave and far infrafed, and of
course bubbles of hydrogen (which must be actively maintained) for
maintaining flotation.

We'd program these plants to have electronic genes and to mate and
reproduce, and those which can't maintain flotation will sink and die,
leaving more room at the top for those which can, and these creatures
might survive long after Earth cremates itself in a nuclear war. Maybe
someday the plants will consume so much of the atmospheric nutrients
that it'll be thinned to where plants can touch ground and maybe even
take root the way Earth plants do, being able to see the Sun from the
ground and being able to do away with their flotation bulbs.