Rain On Saturn's Titan

BradeRunna writes: "Space.com has a very interesting article describing earth-like weather (even rain) on Saturn's moon, Titan. Especially of note as the surface temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess we'll have to wait until the Cassini spacecraft makes it out there in Summer 2004 to get the full skinny ..." A sidebar to the article is a cute comparison between Earth's weather and Titan's.

Comments

I believe I can fly.

[Forge]

From The article.

Titan's gravity is only about one seventh that of Earth. The intense chill, however, means a low energy atmosphere that hangs around, instead of escaping this relatively weak force of gravity. So Titan's atmosphere is denser than Earth's and extends much higher into the sky.

Lower gravity and denser atmosphere means that you could not only survive on Titan with a much simpler space suite than you need for work on the moon but you can also fly with simple wings sprouting from your arms.

No. I am serious about both points. Since the atmosphere is denser than earth but less dens than say water, you don't need a pressure suite just something completely sealed that wont tear easily and keeps the Methane off your skin. More importantly it only has to deal with cold temperatures not the -200 to +200 degree fluctuations in earth orbit.

About the wings. The reason we were never able to fly with arm mounted wings is that #1 we are generally not strong enough to build manipulate wings that can support a human and #2 those wings have to be so very large.

However on Titan they need only be 1/7th the size of your tipical glider's wingspan. Posibly less if you consider the denser atmosfare. So just as we can fly throgh water by flaping our bare arms we should be able to fly on titan with tiny wings just barley longer than our arms and as little as 2 feet thick. I.e. The sort of thing that can be built into a plastic suite that's all soft on the outside to prevent sparks from igniting that methane.

Better yet wings of that size could be made retractable and the smaller suite means you could store a larger air supply. A rebrether ( filters out your own CO2 ) would do wonders too.

R. Kelly would be proud.