Letter: Letters: Let's move Venus

From BERNARD HOWLETT

Instead of beavering away on climate control research to render Mars
habitable in the distant future, wouldn’t it be better in the long term
to accelerate Venus into the position once thought to be occupied by Erehwon?
It might sort out its own climate.

What I had in mind is deflecting some of the minor planets, whose motional
energy exceeds Venus’s, to adjust Venus’s orbit progressively by direct
collision. This would also increase its total mass, but the increase need
not be excessive.

To leave Venus where it is seems such a waste of a potentially habitable
planet.

With sophistication (and a bit of luck!) we might also be able to give
it a moon – we could bump Mercury out a bit.

Bernard Howlett Loughton, Essex