Joann Evans wrote

Peter Fairbrother wrote:

Suppose you joined Mars and Venus together with a big elastic band?

It breaks.

Probably. A tether with controlled drag and winches along it's length would
be better. I was thinking more in terms of a "star trek tractor beam" as a
first approximation.

Or if infinitely elastic, sooner or later, it will be stretched close
to/into the Sun. *Then* it breaks.

You can swing it out of the way of the Sun (and the Earth) above the plane.
Actually as the orbits are slightly inclined you might not even need to.

And that's ignoring what the rotations and atmospheres of both
worlds, are doing to this thing.

Venus's rotation is quite slow, and Mars is lighter. I never said it would
be easy...

However you only (!) have to slow Venus by about 5.2 km/sec and move it 41
Gm away to put Venus at 1AU from the Sun.

It's just a wild thought for now. I don't think you could get Venus to more
than a ~136 Gm (Earth's orbit is 149 Gm, Venus 108 Gm mean) orbit that way
anyway, and even that needs lots of trickery, but I've got more calculations
and thinking to do.


--
Peter Fairbrother