Venus or Mars for terraforming and colonisation?

[Forum Explorer]

Getting just carbon and water out of that reaction seems extremely unlikely. You'd probably end up with complex carbohydrates, so maybe you'd cover the surface of the planet with a crust of sugar!

Sure, there'd be a bunch of byproducts, that's not really a bad thing when the goal is to remove as much CO2 as possible from the atmosphere. I think one of the proposals suggested getting a bunch of minerals launched into Venus as well to cause other reactions.

One small potato at sufficient velocity could vaporize the Earth.

Not really. Even at lightspeed, it would only cause a massive fusion explosion. Which might wipe out a city if you're unlucky, but that doesn't matter one whit to the Earth as a whole.

Now admittedly, I'm talking about throwing an entire moon's worth of matter, which is a lot more massive than a potato. But on the other hand, there's no reason to even try and get it to a percent of lightspeed. Furthermore we don't really care about any damage done. So long as we remove enough CO2 for heat to actually begin dissipating, any added heat is ultimately irrelevant.