Slashdot Mirror
The Sierras of Titan
eldavojohn writes "Cassini has detected the tallest mountains on Titan, a large moon of Saturn. More importantly, clouds have also been detected in Titan's atmosphere. Why is this news important? Well, as scientists scan the skies for the easiest piece of mass to colonize, things that resemble Earth's geology & atmosphere are going to require the least effort & resources. These mountains mean that Titan may have tectonic plate movement similar in some ways to earth's. From the article, '"You can think of Titan as the Earth in deep freeze," said Dr Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar team member at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It has a lot of the geological processes that Earth has. In fact, it is more Earth-like than anywhere else in the Solar System. But the surface is very cold; it's about minus 178C."'"
I titled this article "The Sierras of Titan" as a pun for Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s early sci-fi novel 'The Sirens of Titan." The book means a lot to me so I heavily recommend it but before you mod me offtopic, let me explain why Vonnegut picked Titan, of all the mass in the galaxy.
There have been experiments on the abundant chemicals on Titan done by astronautical & nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin who has been quite influential in the proliferation of humans to other pieces of mass ASAP.
While you may be able to argue that these experiments were too early or had inherent flaws within them, they were done to try to prove that a "chemical revolution" could occur on Titan similar to what we theorize happened on earth early on. I haven't heard many people address the fact that it could have taken billion of years to progress on earth but I am quite interested to see if there is a way to engineer bacteria to break methane down into oxygen or some other gas that we could potentially exploit to make oxygen.
As you may have seen in other media, Titan is often used because of these experiments. It's a bit of a romantic dream but these mountains are just a little more to add to the possibility.
Oh, I also forgot to include a link to the Cassini-Huygens mission which has images, videos, wallpapers and all that jazz of Titan and its mountains.
My work here is dung.
I can only imagine my son kicking the back of my chair for 6 years on the flight there....
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
...it's warmer than mid-winter Minnesota then?
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
... But Titan's crust is made out of water ice. If you were to take it out of the deep-freeze and bring it to a comfortable, Earth-like temperature - it would melt.
While surface features may be analogous to those found here on Earth, they're made out of entirely different things...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Send the Canadians to Colonize. I used to live in Northern Canada and walked to school in -30C weather with a -40C windchill --uphill and in the dark! Titan should be a cake-walk. Just make sure to send lots of beer and women to uhhhh compensate.
I think we should name them the Kazak Mountains.
Or the Winston Range.
The cold isn't the only thing that would-be colonists would be facing, right? Don't the gas giants have some helacious radiation belts? I seem to recall that Titan is sitting right in the middle of one, too. Perhaps a pro can chime in on that. Sure, we could warm up a nice little ice cave and whatnot, but would all that ice also be a worthy shield against the EM nastiness?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
so now we no what Hell freezing over will be like. Come to Titan... where your mother-in-law will actually like you!!!
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
Titan is not a good place to colonize because it is cold.... cold, cold, cold. Not only would you have to keep your colony on Xanadu warm from the cold, but you'd have to keep your warmth in or you would melt through the surface (which is 'rocks' made up of water ice). When Huygens landed it evaporated a cloud of frozen methane just from its measly heat... a whole colony would probably touch off a cryovolcano eruption.
Titan isn't a good place to live, but it is an awesome place to explore. Imagine a hot air balloon flying over these mountains and the lakes and rivers and the giant sand dune seas. Without UV from the sun to degrade the balloon's envelope and with plutonium to heat up the air inside such a balloon could last pretty much forever.... or at least until the plutonium is used up.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Why is this news important? Well, as scientists scan the skies for the easiest piece of mass to colonize, things that resemble Earth's geology & atmosphere are going to require the least effort & resources.
Titan's atmosphere and general environment doesn't resemble Earth in the least. Hence, this sentence makes no sense. We've already found the few pieces places that are easiest to terraform, namely Mars, Venus, and perhaps Europa. Anything in orbit around Saturn won't qualify as "easiest", just because of temperature and energy flux from the Sun. You would need to find a long term energy source to heat the moon up to temperatures at which liquid water exists and and to enable photosynthesis . Either Titan gets moved or you make a local energy source. Terraforming the Moon is probably as easy.
Also, implied is confusion between colonization and terraforming. People can settle Titan, but they probably aren't going to make it Earth-like. In which case, any plate techtonics and geological activity may be very undesirable.Right, there are mountains...ice mountains, not rock. I don't see what this "similarity" does for humans.
Adventures in Shaanxi
I was going to suggest that we simply move Titan closer to the sun...you know...with a rocket or something
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Well If there is one thing humans can do, it's heat up a planet!
Earth First... We will log the other planets later. It may be true eh?
Hey, global warming is what we're good at people. Lets attach a big heat tube from the earth to Titan.
It is a lot warmer in Antarctica and the easy-to-reach place has plenty of oxygen and water. If we really are running out of room, the continent should be colonized first...
Heck, if the "Global Warming" fear-mongering is even partially true, the continent will only become better — and it already is much better than any extra-terrestrial body.
That no settlements (as in "villages", not science labs) exist even on this much more habitable place is just a sign, how far off space colonization really is... I think, some South America's country(ies) tried to pay people to live there (just to claim territory, pretty much), but it still failed...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Saturn's rings effectively neutralize most radiation at Saturn... it's not much of a hazard at all. What little radiation there is wouldn't get through Titan's atmosphere anyway.
The only two planets with substantial radiation belts are Jupiter and Earth (i.e. the Van Allen belts). At Jupiter Io and Europa are in the belts, Callisto is too far out, and Ganymede has its own magnetic field that would protect spacecraft near it from the radiation.
BTW, the sort of radiation in these belts are electrons and energetic ions of regular stuff like Hydrogen and Oxygen. Not neutrons.... which makes it a little easier to protect against.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Except Europa
We need all the tubes we've got to build the internets out of...
Wow! We have only known that since 1981. Mars is red too.
an ill wind that blows no good
now if sould moce it closer to the sun.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Whenever someone brings up colonizing another planet, I can't help but wonder "why?" Yes, there is the novelty factor of being able to do it. But how practical is it? What is the objective? Would we do it to preserve the species? From what? An asteriod hitting Earth and turning it into a wasteland? Could Earth possibly be any worse than Titan... or even Mars... in that case?
Think about it. What is the best Earth alternative we could realistically hope to find?
Want to colonize "Earth in Deep Freeze?" Antarctica isn't too far away. If nothing else, it has plenty of water and even oil. And if Global Warming gets as bad as some fear it might, Antarctica might not end up being such a bad place! Or what about colonizing the bottom on the ocean? Certainly that would be easier than traveling half way across the solar system... or farther.
Seems to me that Earth would have to be all but vaporized for it to be much worse than any place you could find in outer space.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Readers are currently distracted by more trendy slashdot themes like the space elevator, anime, and global warming.
an ill wind that blows no good
Good thing we already know how to warm a planet up.
Geekoid Mountains!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So we move Titan and put it in orbit at 93 million miles from the sun, in the same orbital path as the Earth, but on the opposite side of the sun. Do I have to do ALL the thinking here!?!?
But Seriously -- someday we'll really do this. Or at least try
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
In other news, they're troubleshooting a flaky solar panel up on the space station: Live status
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Oh, wow! Earth has earthquakes. Titan has earth... er titanquakes. THEY'RE BOTH ALIKE! LET'S COLONIZE!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
-178c temperatures and highly poisonous hydrogen cyanide gas...I'd be surprised if there were any people left on earth once we figure out how to fly them onto to this thing!
Has anyone started sellings plots of Titan moon land yet?
While I find this interesting, it is nothing new to see mountains on planetary objects besides Earth. The thing I find most interesting is the organic compounds that have been found/thought to be on Titan. It makes a very interesting spot to create a waystation in the distand future. Titan, and well as Io and Europia are very interesting moons that we should explore more. But I doubt the American public is very willing to fund more in depth explorations of these places... I can only hope. Although, I wonder what the new probe on its way to Pluto will find.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
So, we're looking for a planetoid that moves, because that makes building a permanent settlement easier? Oh, yeah, I'd love to set up a new colony in a place that has the stability of Loma Prieta.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Well, as scientists scan the skies for the easiest piece of mass to colonize, things that resemble Earth's geology & atmosphere are going to require the least effort & resources."
That's a rather meaningless (or outright WRONG) statement.
Mars: tectonically dead or nearly so. Dust storms but no real analogue to Earthly seas, precipitation, or geological processes. Ability to colonize? Relatively easy.
Titan: mountains, clouds, precipitation, "seas", etc. Ability to colonize? Extremely difficult.
Similarity to Earthly processes is meaningless. There are plenty of Earthly processes that make things HARDER, not easier.
-Styopa
Isn't that a little like saying the bodies in the morgue are better friends than anyone else I know ?
They're friendly, they'll sit there and listen to me for hours, they're just a little cold on the surface.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
In Soviet Russia, Titan colonizes you!
Either Titan gets moved or you make a local energy source. Terraforming the Moon is probably as easy.
Nahh, simply push that gas giant over the edge so she ignites into a second small star in the solar system.
quite easy, just start flinging crap into it until the mass get's high enough to start up the furnace.
Sheesh, you science types have to make everything so difficult.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Unfortunately, the title should be "The Sierra of Titan". The word sierra refers to an entire mountain range, and the plural is rarely appropriate. This might weaken the Vonnegut allusion a bit, but at least it uses the word correctly.
This is a common mistake. TFA quotes one of the scientists behind the work saying: "One could call them Titan's Sierras." While I might not expect much of slashdot summaries, he should know better.
'"One could call them Titan's Sierras," the University of Arizona-Tucson researcher [ET explorer Bob Brown] added.'
I get the Vonnegut pun in "The Sierras of Titan". But none of "the" Sierras are even the tallest in the US (or North America). Alaska's Mt McKinley is taller. While Everest (and over 100 others) in the Himalayas are taller than any in the Andes from their somewhat arbitrary base, the equatorial Andes start at the 26mi "high" equatorial bulge.
So Aconcagua, the tallest of the Andes, is the farthest peak jutting into space. Aconcagua rises the highest from the Marianas Trench, the lowest point in the Earth's crust, atop the equatorial bulge. Thus it is the closest to our solar neighbor (at least half the time, during its rotation with the Earth, anyway).
One might better call them "los Andes de Titan", or whatever that translates to in the whistle/crackle language spoken on Titan.
--
make install -not war
Once you got that thing going it would be hell to stop it again.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Isn't it basically ALL clouds, or does the red haze not count?
And like a tree falling in a forest, if you have a cloud inside a thick haze, would anyone notice?
"There are plenty of Earthly processes that make things HARDER, not easier."
Here we are having a nice scientific discussion, and you had to bring PORN into it. Sheesh
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Watch out for the wampas.
..The Tetons of Titan!
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Those stilts would have to be made of something strong enough to provide physical support yet not conductive of heat which would melt their foundations.
No metals would work, nor even concrete. So what were you suggesting, or hadn't you thought it through?
So let's say we put a tether on Titan and attached an ion drive. How many years would it take to move it out of orbit around Jupiter and into an orbit around, and closer to, the sun? I'm not too picky about the temperature personally, but below -150C... well, let's put it this way: Have you ever heard about how using hairspray to make a flamethrower can cause the can to explode? Well something similar happens when you try to pee at extremely low temperatures. I just don't want to rupture any internal (or external) organs as the stream solidifies, is what I'm saying. So if we could move Titan somewhere closer to -50C or above, that would be great.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The lower temperature will make it easier to provide a room temperature superconductor.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
but perfect for an eco-friendly hydrogen economy! http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/13/012 249.shtml
What bilge. The editors have stated publicly that they shoot for a certain formulaic mix, rather than to pick the best stories. It's becoming obvious that one element of the mix is the laughably stupid story.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Location, Location, Location!
It seemed like a minor bit in the original post, but the utter infeasibility (requiring nuclear processes) of making oxygen from carbon and hydrogen has to be pointed out.
Actually, I think a better question would be why use air?
Air has oxygen and water vapor in it, both of which react with a wide variety of materials in the right conditions. Water also condenses (obviously) well above the temperature on Titan, and oxygen boils right around the surface temperature at the ambient pressure. Condensed fluids are useless dead weight, and at the cost per pound of an interplanetary probe, dead weight is not cool. Realistically, NASA would probably choose a non-reactive, pure gas like helium or nitrogen specifically for this reason. Nitrogen has a nice feature in that the Titan atmosphere is 98% N2 (only 1.6% CH4, actually), so the difference in partial pressure inside and outside the envelope is almost neglible, and it won't leak very fast at all.
Any heat generated inside the envelope would decrease the density of a given volume and pressure, so you can achieve some buoyancy. Nitrogen or air, the latter being a worse case, are already at or above the density of Titan atmosphere, so they would need to stay significantly warmer than the outside environment to produce significant lift. The warmer it is, the faster it loses heat, meaning it needs either more insulation than just a pressure envelope, or a bigger reactor to supply more heat. Either means more weight which means more lift needed. All this time you're also increasing the launch weight from Earth. Just warming it to get more lift is a catch 22 of sorts.
So you come out far ahead if you can contain hydrogen or helium, which have 1/14 to 1/7* the density respectively at a given T and P. Because of the greater lifting effectiveness, you don't need as large of an envelope which means lower launch mass. Of course, these gasses could still certainly benefit to a degree with the power supply contained inside the envelope, and you could probably save even a tiny bit more mass in that scheme...or add more scientific payload.
The downside is that hydrogen and helium are non-polar particles with extremely small radii, so they have a serious tendency to leak out of their containers. Thus the envelope may have to be thicker to effectively contain them, which is another weight tradeoff. I couldn't make a firm conclusion off the bat, but I'd be willing to bet that helium or hydrogen still come out clearly on top. * Diatomic hydrogen has a molecular mass 1/14 that of diatomic nitrogen. Helium may have an atomic weight 4 times as much as hydrogen, but it is mono-atomic in it's natural state, so the density is only twice that of hydrogen gas.